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"Traditional policy analysis approaches are characterized by a focus on system modeling and choosing among policy alternatives. While successful in many cases, this approach has been increasingly criticized for being technocratic and ignoring the behavioral and political dimensions of most policy processes. In recent decades, increased awareness of the multi-actor, multiple perspective, and poly-centric character of many policy processes has led to the development of a variety of different perspectives on the styles and roles of policy analysis, and to new analytical tools and approaches - for example, argumentative approaches, participative policy analysis, and negotiation support. As a result, the field has become multi-faceted and somewhat fragmented. Public Policy Analysis: New Developments acknowledges the variety of approaches and provides a synthesis of the traditional and new approaches to policy analysis. It provides an overview and typology of different types of policy analytic activities, characterizing them according to differences in character and leading values, and linking them to a variety of theoretical notions on policymaking. Thereby, it provides assistance to both end users and analysts in choosing an appropriate approach given a specific policy situation. By broadening the traditional approach and methods to include the analysis of actors and actor networks related to the policy issue at hand, it deepens the state of the art in certain areas. While the main focus of the book is on the cognitive dimensions of policy analysis, it also links the policy analysis process to the policymaking process, showing how to identify and involve all relevant stakeholders in the process, and how to create favorable conditions for use of the results of policy analytic efforts by the policy actors."

Welcome to the Participation Compass - your gateway to better participation. This tool provides practical information for those working to involve people. By registering you can add methods, cases, library resources, news and experts to our database.

A detailed case study of commuting and social networks in San Jose, which suggests that sentiment analysis has the potential to help cities and local transportation authorities define their priorities, planning, investments and assess the impact of infrastructure investments.

If the goal is to accelerate societal learning, the interplay between scientists, policymakers and the wider public will be critical. However, the existing patterns of interaction leave much to be desired. First, the science-policy relationship is often difficult and dysfunctional. Second, the international governance infrastructure - the United Nations, World Bank, WTO and others - was designed to meet the needs of the post-WW2 era and is ill-adapted to the interconnected and transdisciplinary challenges it now faces. And finally, our main public communication channels seem better attuned to the linear and polarised narrative of crisis than to the nuanced, detailed, anticipatory work of crisis avoidance or minimisation.

We present a novel platform for supporting public deliberation on difficult decisions. ConsiderIt guides people to reflect on tradeoffs and the perspectives of others by framing interactions around pro/con points that participants create, adopt, and share. ConsiderIt surfaces the most salient pros and cons overall, while also enabling users to drill down into the key points for different groups. We deployed ConsiderIt in a contentious U.S. state election, inviting residents to deliberate on nine ballot measures. We discuss ConsiderIt's affordances and limitations, enriched with empirical data from this deployment. We show that users often engaged in normatively desirable activities, such as crafting positions that recognize both pros and cons, as well as points written by people who do not agree with them.

Austria , Germany , Greece , Switzerland , United Kingdom Type of initiative Project or service Case Abstract NOMAD aims to introduce the experience of setting a political agenda in a non-moderated, crowd sourcing way, by providing decision-makers with automated solutions for content search, acquisition, analysis and visualisation, while gathering online information from social media, blogs, news feeds and the web, following upon complex sets of issues.

"The Data Journalism Handbook is a free, open source reference book for anyone interested in the emerging field of data journalism." Includes sections on visualization, sourcing and analysis of large data sets, and various public policy related case studies.

A case study of the impact of public participation on technology policy: xenotransplantation. In a nutshell: no impact detectable, the field was dominated by civil servants and experts.

The lack of shared expert knowledge capacity in the U.S. Congress has created a critical weakness in our democratic process.Along with bipartisan cooperation, many contemporary and urgent questions before our legislators require nuance, genuine deliberation and expert judgment. Congress, however, is missing adequate means for this purpose and depends on outdated and in some cases antiquated systems of information referral, sorting, communicating, and convening.

also saw that in PIN mailing list

A collection of tools and projects used for web-based participation, e-consultations, e-participation and online public engagement - with all of the content available now under a Creative Commons license.

On September 15th 3000 citizens from 25 countries took part in a global event: "World Wide Views on Biodiversity". The project engages ordinary citizens in the process of policymaking and awareness raising to sustain a living and healthy planet. About hundred citizens in each participating country attended day-long meetings to learn about biodiversity issues, make up their minds about them, and express their views. They all voted on a set of predefined questions and the answers will be presented at COP11 in India in October 2012.

Regulation Room is designed and operated by the Cornell eRulemaking Initiative (CeRI) and hosted by the Legal Information Institute (LII). The site is a pilot project that provides an online environment for people and groups to learn about, discuss, and react to selected rules (regulations) proposed by federal agencies. It expands the types of public input available to agencies in the rulemaking process, while serving as a teaching and research platform.

"This study investigates the ethical aspects of deploying and researching into so-called climate engineering methods, i.e. large-scale technical interventions in the climate system with the objective of offsetting anthropogenic climate change. The moral reasons in favour of and against R&D into and deployment of CE methods are analysed by means of argument maps."

An excellent example of collaborative argument mapping using MindMeister by Ralf Grötker's DebattenProfis team.

HDI Forum III: The Health Datapalooza promises to bring together a diverse group of data experts, technology developers, entrepreneurs, policy makers, health care system leaders, CIOs, CTOs, and community advocates to support innovative applications of health and health care data. The Health Data Initiative (HDI), originally launched in 2010 by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as the Community Health Data Initiative, is a public-private collaboration that encourages innovators to utilize health data to develop applications to raise awareness of health and health system performance and spark community action to improve health. The Forum will feature keynote addresses, an Apps Expo, demonstrations of new, cutting-edge apps, and thought-provoking panel discussions. There will also be plenty of time for networking and one-on-one interaction. It is a great opportunity to be in on the vanguard of data applications to improve health and health care. This year's event promises to be one you do not want to miss!

interesting case of data-intensive policy-making