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PUBLISHED ON: Proceedings of the 22nd International System Dynamics Conference (ISDC) YEAR: 2011ISBN: 978-1-935056-08-9AUTHOR/s: Armenia, Stefano, Yannis Charalabidis, Diego Falsini, Fenareti Lampathaki, David Osimo and Katarzyna SzkutaREFERENCE PEOPLE/ORGANISATION: Crossroads ProjectLINKS: http://crossroad.epu.ntua.gr/ DESCRIPTION: The role of Government has evolved over the last thirty years and while its role in service provision has diminished, its regulation activity is growing. The world has become increasingly interconnected, complex, and fast-evolving and the effects of individual behavior and policy choices are not predictable. The paradox is that while the amount of data available to governments has increased exponentially, yet policymakers clearly struggle to make sense of it so that during the last years, the European Commission has decided to invest heavily in research on this issue. In this paper, the authors report about their experience in the CROSSROAD Project, whose main goal was to build a roadmap in order to provide strategic directions for future research in the domain of "ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling". The roadmap, recently approved by European Commission, intends to be the basis for developing a shared vision, inspire collaborative and interdisciplinary research between academia, business, civil society and government, and provide support and orientation to policy-modeling also after the project end. In this context, the paper analyzes the Model-based Governance issue as the part of the roadmap that suggests the development of advanced tools for an efficient and effective decision-making process.

Government 3.0: Rethinking Governance and Re-Imagining Democracy for the 21st Century at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU is a semester-long exploration of how to use technology to improve governance. Through conversations with leading technology and policy innovators, in-depth reading and, above all, personal reflection we will teach ourselves more about advances in technology, how those innovations can be applied to making decisions and solving problems and design new experiments that might help advance institutional innovation.

In a government bureaucracy, any innovation can take years to come to fruition. But that can change, says Tom Kalil, deputy director for policy for the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. Kalil recently participated in a two-day conference at Wharton titled, "For the Win: Serious Gamification," which looked at the application of gaming techniques in business, education, government and other scenarios. Before the conference, Kalil spoke with Kevin Werbach, a conference organizer and a professor of legal studies and business ethics at Wharton, about why gamification has become a hot topic at the White House.

The purpose of the project is to create and convene an interdisciplinary network of thinkers and doers that could help with making the transition from closed-and-centralized to open-and-collaborative institutions of governance.

An anthology of essays from the McKinsey Center for Government (written by political leaders, civil servants, economists and policy experts) exploring the approaches that governments around the world are taking to common, emerging problems.

An idea: the State of Massachussetts' chief innovation officer

BudgIT is creative start-up driven to retell the Nigerian budget and public data  in a finer detail across every literacy span.  We aim to stimulate citizens interests around public data and hence trigger  discussions towards better governance. We are committed to principles of open data & governance, citizen participation and data transparency. 

A pilot program that enables people to submit comments about certain District agencies and view how District residents graded those agencies. The goal is to help residents engage better with government and help government agencies improve the quality of their services.

A Big Data road map for government. Produced by TechAmerica Foundation, a nonprofit arm of what seems to be trade association of the high tech industry. The leadership of the commission is firmly in the hands of large companies: IBM, SAP, Amazon.

Have you ever wanted a mobile app that ties your location to crime statistics, government environmental and health data, and weather and solar flare data to calculate the hourly probability of a zombie apocalypse?

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.

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.

It turns out you can govern in 140 characters. Social media is often accused of coarsening our public discourse and of making us stupid. But some innovative public leaders are taking to their keyboards and finding that the payoff is a direct and personal connection with their communities.

The need for policy makers to understand science and for scientists to understand policy processes is widely recognised. However, the science-policy relationship is sometimes difficult and occasionally dysfunctional; it is also increasingly visible, because it must deal with contentious issues, or itself becomes a matter of public controversy, or both. We suggest that identifying key unanswered questions on the relationship between science and policy will catalyse and focus research in this field. To identify these questions, a collaborative procedure was employed with 52 participants selected to cover a wide range of experience in both science and policy, including people from government, non-governmental organisations, academia and industry.

Approved March 2012

The interconnectedness of the global economy makes it more vulnerable to major shocks. In the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, global leaders are acutely aware of the threats another such crisis would pose to economic recovery, social cohesion and political stability. How can governments and business prepare for and respond to such unanticipated events?