Big Policy Canvas

A Big Data Research Roadmap for Next Generation Policy Making
7th Session: Workshop II on a Roadmap to Future Government
(Samos, 2 July 2019)
Francesco Mureddu, Lisbon Council
This project has received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under
grant agreement No 769623
www.BigPolicyCanvas.eu

2www.BigPolicyCanvas.eu
A Few Words on the Speaker
• Current position: Associate Director at the Lisbon Council
• Background: PhD in Economics (impact of localization of innovation)
• Relevant projects
• Analysis of the value of new generation of eGovernment services
• Mid-Term and Final Evaluation of eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015
• CROSSOVER - Bridging communities for Policy Making 2.0
• Co-VAL: Understanding value co-creation in public services for transforming European
public administrations
• Big Policy Canvas: Needs, Trends and ICT Tools for Advanced Data-Driven Public
Sector
• JRC Policy Lab Framework: Future of Gov, Knowledge for Policy Platform
• Support to the Estonian Presidency for the elaboration of the next EGovernment
Ministerial Declaration
• Side activities: startupper, co-founder of Infrascan - Cybersecurity

A Few Words on the Lisbon Council
• The Lisbon Council for Economic Competitiveness and Social Renewal was founded
on the 6th of October 2003 as a non-profit association
• The Lisbon Council was set up to intellectually accompany the Lisbon Agenda,
Europe’s original growth and jobs programme
• Domains and activities
• Policy research programme in open and e-government, future science, digital
transformations of public administrations, ICT, innovation and start-ups
• Organization of High-Level Summits and Roundtables, community-building and
outreach, public speaking and advisory, smart crowdsourcing web tools for
policy analysis

Structure of the Workshop
• 1st Part (60’)
• (20’) Data Driven Policy Making and Big Policy Canvas. This first part of the
workshop depicts the presentation of the data-driven policy making area, going
into the project’s goals
• (20') Presentation of the Gov 3.0 roadmap on disruptive technologies in policy
making and public service provisioning
• (20) Q&A
• 2nd part (60’) – Working session on the Big Policy Canvas and Gov 3.0 Roadmaps
• Presentation of the clusters and research challenges
• Q&A

Project Facts
A H2020 Coordination and Support Action
under CO-CREATION-06-2017
Contract no.:
769623
Duration: 24 months
(Oct. 2017 – Sept. 2019)
Total Budget:
€499.725,00
Project Coordinator:
Ricard Munné
ricard.munne@atos.net

Our Vision & Mission
Foster collaboration amongst relevant stakeholders & offer the knowledge base,
research directions and recommendations towards materialising this vision
Transform the public sector to an effective, efficient, precise, consistent and
evidence-based policy making structure

Big Policy Canvas Project (1)
• The Big Policy Canvas project is a coordination and support action running for 24 months (until September 2019), under the
topic CO-CREATION-06-2017. Coordinator is ATOS, partners are NTUA, Fokus and Lisbon Council
• The Big Policy Canvas project aims at renovating the public sector on a cross-border level by mapping the needs of public
administrations, with methods, technologies, tools and applications, from both the public & the private sector, stepping upon
the power of open innovation and the rich opportunities for analysis and informed policy making generated by big data
• Big Policy Canvas’ concept lies in delivering a framework for the effective exploitation of relevant data and the encouragement
of networking and engagement among the relevant stakeholders for data-driven and informed policymaking, facilitated by
specific, proposed methods and tools.
• Big Policy Canvas is delivering a set of assets
- Big Policy Canvas Knowledge Base, is a state-of-the-art, online and dynamic repository that functions as an accumulator uniting all
the knowledge produced during the project. It is structured along the three dimensions of needs, trends and assets and furthermore
offers a mapping among them by defining how they are interconnected and how they influence each other
- Big Policy Canvas Assessment Framework, is a methodology for mapping needs and trends to application domains, as well as for
assessing the former in terms of their criticality or intensity respectively, with the ultimate goal of prioritising application domains
and bringing forward those of greater interest, importance, urgency and capability for innovation.
- Big Policy Canvas Roadmap for Future Directions. The roadmap capitalises on the project outputs to carve the way for the future of
EU policy-making and modelling

The BPC Expert Committee
Ms. Nuria de Lama
Member of the Board of
Directors at the Big Data Value
Association (BDVA)
Dr. Giuseppe A. Veltri
Professor of research
methodology at University of
Trento
Dr. Vittorio Loreto
Professor of Physics of Complex Systems
at Sapienza University in Rome /
Research Leader at ISI Foundation in
Turin.
Dr. Gianluca Misuraca
Senior Scientist at the EC Joint Research
Centre, Institute for Prospective
Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS)
Dr. Peter Parycek
Head of the Competence Center for Public IT at
Fraunhofer FOKUS, Dept. for Digital PS / Prof. of E-
Governance at the Danube University Krems /
Member of the German Digital Council

BPC Community Objectives
Involvement of key stakeholders in co-creating the different activities of the project
Orient future research to support Public Sector transformation to an effective and
evidence-based policy making structure
BPC Community

Pillars of the engagement plan
• Experts Committee
• BDVA Collaboration
• Public Sector Transformation LinkedIn
Task Force 7: Application
SG8: Smart Government
and Smart Cities
New Mandate
BPC Results for the SG8
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4165795/

Get Involved!
@BigPolicyCanvas
BigPolicyCanvas
BigPolicyCanvas
“Next Generation Policy Making”
https://www.bigpolicycanvas.eu/community

Map of methods,
technologies and
tools to the public
sector needs,
trends, barriers
Analysis of gaps
and external
factors in public
administration
Refinement of
research
challenges and
first online
version of the
roadmap
First version of
research
challenges online
Preparatory and
introductory part
to the roadmap
Literature review Literature review
Methodology to Develop the Roadmap (1)
Refinement of
research
challenges and gap
analysis
Elaboration of
recommendations
Input from experts
Vienna Workshop
WP4:
PA Oriented
Methods,
Tools
&Technologies
Landscape
WP3:
PA Needs,
Trends and
Barriers
Landscape
Comments from the
experts in the
online first version
Comments on the
first online version
of the roadmap
Input from Events

Methodology to Develop the Roadmap (2)
• Major points addressed by the roadmap
- Which major research challenges should be considered and
addressed for evidence-based policy-making and policy-
monitoring in order to tackle wider societal challenges
- Which sub-challenges and emerging technologies are part of
these major challenges?
- How are these challenges related to the different policy
domains?
- What kind of instruments are necessary to tackle this
challenges?
- What is the anticipated impact of these challenges to each
policy domain and to the society?
- Which are the broad recommendation for policy makers,
researchers and industry that are meaningful to accelerate the
roadmap’s take-up?

General Structure
Introduction to the roadmap
• Rationale and scope
• Methodology
Current status and what is new
• Big Data
• Tasks of the policy makers
• Data Driven Government
• Key challenges of evidence-based policy making
Gaps and research needs
• External Framework Analysis
• Triangulation of Needs, Trends and Assets
• Research Gaps to be filled
Short and long-term research challenges
• Structure in following slide
Research directions and recommendations
• Future research directions
• Recommendation for research at EU level

Research Challenges Chapter
ü Research challenges will be grouped in clusters
ü For each cluster, we will present:
ü Description, vision, map against relevant gaps
ü For each research challenge, we will present:
ü Description and link with the state of the art
ü Importance in the policy making process
ü Timeline (short and long term)
ü Applications and tools

Results - Data-Driven Policy Making
• Data-driven policy making aims to make use of new data sources and new techniques for
processing these data and to realize co-creation of policies, involving citizens and other relevant
stakeholders
• Clearly it is related to the notion of evidence-based policy making, which considers relevant the
inclusion of systematic research, program management experience and political judgement in the
policy making process (Head 2018)
• However, data-driven policy making stresses the importance of big data and open data sources
into policy making as well as with co-creation of policy by involving citizens to increase legitimacy
(Bijlsma et al 2011) and decrease citizens’ distrust in government (Davies 2017)

Results - The Policy Cycle
• Policy making is the process
of creating and monitoring
policies to solve societal
challenges
• In this respect, it is often
conceptualized as a policy
cycle, consisting of several
different phases, such as
agenda setting, policy design,
policy implementation,
monitoring and evaluation

Results – Data Driven Government (1)
• Agenda setting:
• The challenge addressed is to detect (or even predict) problems before they become
too costly to face
• One traditional problem of policy making is that statistics become available only long
time after the problems have emerged, hence increasing the costs to solving them
• Alternative metrics and datasets can be used to identify early warning signs at an
earlier stage and lower costs helping to better understanding causal links
• Moreover according to Höchtl et al. (2016, p. 159) governments can identify emergent
topics early and to create relevant agenda points collecting data from social networks
with high degrees of participation and identifying citizens’ policy preferences

• Policy design
• Big data and data analytics solutions can be used for providing
evidence for the ex ante impact assessment of policy options, by
helping to predict possible outcomes of the different options
• In this regard, Giest (2017, pag. 376) argues that the increased use of
big data is shaping policy instruments, as “The vast amount of
administrative data collected at various governmental levels and in
different domains, such as tax systems, social programs, health records
and the like, can— with their digitization— be used for decision-making
in areas of education, economics, health and social policy”

• Policy implementation
• Big data and data analytics can help identifying the key stakeholders to involve in
policy or to be targeted by policies
• One way in which big data can influence the implementation stage of the policy
process is the real-time production of data
• The execution of new policies immediately produces new data, which can be used to
evaluate the effectiveness of policies and improving the future implementation
• Testing a new policy in real time can provide insights whether it has the desired
effect or requires modification
• Furthermore big data can be used for behavioral insights

• Policy evaluation
• Big data and data analytics approaches can help detecting the impact
of policies at an early stage (Höchtl et al., 2016, p. 149), before formal
evaluation exercises are carried out, or detecting problems related to
implementation, such as corruption in public spending.
• Most importantly, big data can be used for continuous evaluation of
policies, to inform the policy analysis process, while even empowering
and engage citizens and stakeholders in the process (Schintler and
Kulkarni 2014, p. 343).

• In summary, big data tools and technologies present interesting
opportunities to address some of the aforementioned key challenges of
data-based policy making:
• Anticipate detection of problems before they become intractable;
• Generate a fruitful involvement of citizens in the policy making activity;
• Making sense of thousand opinions from citizens;
• Uncover causal relationships behind policy problems;
• Identify cheaper and real-time proxies for official statistics;
• Identify key stakeholders to be involved in or target by specific policies;
• Anticipate or monitor in real time the impact of policies.

Gap Analysis and Research Needs (1)
Step 1: Needs selection
•Selection of Needs form the Knowledge Base
Step 2: Need breakdown
•Breakdown of Need into its functionalities
Step 3: Assets assessment
•Assessment of assets linked to the Need against
functionalities
Step 4: Gap identification
•Gap between assets assessment and functionality

• Development of new evaluation frameworks and tools for the assessment of the impact of
policies. Such evaluation frameworks should build on a set of evaluation criteria and indicators
adapted to the specific domains
• Development of new procedures and tools for the establishment of a management system
integrating both, financial and nonfinancial performance information linked with quality data,
impact measurement and other performance indicators
• Development of new tools, methodologies and regulatory frameworks to boost participation
of citizens in policies making by mean of crowdsourcing and co-creation of policies
• Development of new regulations, tools and technical frameworks that ensure absence of bias
and transparency in the policy making process and cybersecurity of IT systems in the public
administration

• Development and deployment of frameworks and tools that allow the secure sharing of
information and data within the public administration, as well as the interoperability of
systems and databases. These frameworks include the standardization of organizational
processes
• Development of specific interoperable cloud infrastructures and (re-usable and integrating)
models for the management and analysis of huge volumes of data
• Development of new regulations, tools and technical frameworks that ensure absence respect
of citizens’ privacy and data ownership/security, especially in case the personal information
need to be migrated across public administration agencies
• Development and establishment of a unique reliable, secure and economically sustainable
technical and IT infrastructure which would work as a backbone for all the public services
developed and implemented in the public sector
• Development of information management systems and procedures for the collection, storing,
sharing, standardization and classification for information pertaining to the public sector

Questions from the First Part
• How can co-creation for data-driven policy making be realized? How can transparency be
ensured? What contributions can disruptive technologies (AI, Machine Learning, Internet of
Things, Big data, etc.) deliver?
• Which (technical, semantic, organizational, legal) requirements need to be met to enable data-
driven policy making?
• Which organizational capabilities are necessary for data-driven policy making and for the use
of disruptive technologies?
• What are the obstacles and bottlenecks for the use of Big Data in policy making, and what
challenges or risks may the use of disruptive technologies embody in these domains?

Research Clusters and Challenges
• We define five main research clusters related to the use of Big Data in policy making
• Four of them are built on the Big Data cycle and value chain, while the fifth one is
transversal at each phase of the cycle

Research Clusters (1)
•Privacy, transparency and trust. Even more than with traditional IT architectures, Big Data requires systems for
determining and maintaining data ownership, data definitions, and data flows, especially when dealing with
pervasive collection. Ubiquity of algorithms in everyday lives is an important reason to focus on addressing
challenges associated with the design and technical aspects of algorithms and preventing bias from the onset. In
fact, the use of algorithms for automated decision-making about individuals can result in harmful discrimination,
and biased decision making (based on bias in the training data). Finally, opening big government data can increase
transparency in policy making.
•Data acquisition, cleaning and storing. The appropriateness of any Big Data source for decision-making should be
made clear to users, investigating systematic errors and the issue of representativeness. Any known limitations of
the data accuracy, sources, and bias should be readily available, along with recommendations about the kinds of
decision-making the data can and cannot support.

• Data clustering, integration and fusion. Combination and meaning extraction of big data
stemming from different data sources to be repurposed for another goal. This requires the
composition of teams that combine to types of expertise: data scientists, which can combine
different datasets and apply novel statistical techniques; domain experts, that help know the
history of how data were collected and can help in the interpretation. Interesting aspect is the
need to ensure interoperability and exchange of data and information from different databases
within the public administration.
• Modelling and analysis with big data. Here the point is to develop effective infrastructures
merging the science of data with the development of highly predictive models, to come up with
engaging and meaningful visualizations and friendly scenario simulation engines. Understanding
the present through data is often not enough and the impact of specific decisions and solutions
can be correctly assessed only when projected into the future. Hence the need of tools allowing
for a realistic forecast of how a change in the current conditions will affect and modify the
future scenario: scenario simulators and decision support tools

•Data visualization. Making sense and extract meaning of data can be achieved by
placing them in a visual context: patterns, trends and correlations that might go
undetected in text-based data can be exposed and recognized easier with data
visualization software. This is clearly important in a policy making context, in particular
when considering the problem setting phase of the policy cycle and the visualization
often results of big data modelling and analysis.
•Data governance, data ownership, security and privacy. Disruptive technologies raise a
number of issues connected to data ownership, security and privacy. Identification of
the best practices to ensure ownership, privacy and security of personal data in the age
of big data, ubiquitous data collection and distributed computing is an important area of
research.

Research Challenges
Research Cluster Research Challenges
C1- Privacy, Transparency and Trust
RC 1.1 - Big Data nudging
RC 1.2 - Pervasive data collection
RC 1.3 - Algorithmic bias and transparency
RC 1.4 – Open Government Datasets
C2 - Data acquisition, cleaning and representativeness
RC 2.1 – Real time big data collection and production
RC 2.2 - Quality assessment, data cleaning and formatting
RC 2.3 - Representativeness of data collected
C3 - Data clustering, integration and fusion
RC 3.1 - Identification of patterns, trends and relevant observables
RC 3.2 - Extraction of relevant information and feature extraction
RC 3.3 - Integration and interoperability of Public Administration datasets
C4 - Modelling and analysis with big data
RC 4.1 - Identification of suitable modelling schemes inferred from existing data
RC 4.2 - Collaborative model simulations and scenarios generation
RC 4.3 - Integration and re-use of modelling schemes
C5 - Data visualization
RC 5.1 – Automated visualization of dynamic data in real time
RC 5.2 - Interactive data visualization

Questions
• Initial question
• Do you agree with the clusters presented? Do you want to add any other?
• Questions after each cluster is presented:
• Do you agree with the research challenges? Do you have any other suggestion?
• Question for each research challenge presented:
• Can you suggest any application cases?
• Can you suggest any related tools?
• Do you have any views related to the short- and long-term research related to
this challenge?

RC 1 – Privacy, transparency and trust
• Algorithmic bias and transparency
• Many decisions are automated and performed by algorithms: e.g. predicting risks of hospital
admissions or recidivism in criminal justice
• Algorithms are designed by humans, and increasingly learn by observing human behaviour through
data, therefore they tend to adopt the biases of their developers and of society as a whole
• As such, algorithmic decision making can reinforce the prejudice and the bias of the data it is fed with,
ultimately compromising the basic human rights such as fair process.
• Bias is typically not written in the code, but developed through machine learning based on data.
• For this reason, it is particularly difficult to detect bias, and can be done only through ex-post auditing
and simulation rather than ex-ante analysis of the code.
• There is a need for common practice and tools to controlling data quality, bias and transparency
• Furthermore, as required by GDPR, there is a need for ways to explain machine decisions
• Main relevant methodologies are algorithm co-creation, regulatory technologies, auditability of
algorithms, data management processing algorithms and data quality governance approaches
• Codes and standards: NESTA “Code of Standards for Public Sector Algorithmic Decision Making

RC 2 – Data Acquisition, Cleaning and Storing
Quality assessment, data cleaning and formatting.
• More data does not necessarily mean good or better data, and many of the data available lack the
quality required for its safe use in many applications, especially when we are talking about data
coming from social networks and internet of things.
• Quality assessment is a phase where the data is prepared following the requirements
• Data cleaning is the process of correcting (or removing) corrupt or inaccurate records from a database.
Data cleaning may be performed interactively with data wrangling tools, or as batch processing
through scripting.
• A final action is formatting, as once one has downloaded sets of data is not obvious at all that their
format will be suitable for further analysis and integration in the existing platforms.
• Regarding data quality, it is mandatory to use existing and develop new frameworks including
big data quality dimensions, quality characteristics, and quality indexes
• Considering frameworks for quality assessment, the UNECE Big Data Quality Task Team released
in 2014 a Framework for the Quality of Big Data within the scope of the UNECE/HLG project
“The Role of Big Data in the Modernisation of Statistical Production” (UNECE 2014)
• For what concerns data cleaning, the need for overcoming the hurdle is driving development of
technologies that can automate data cleansing processes to help accelerate business analytics

RC 3 – Data clustering, integration and fusion
Integration and interoperability of PA databases
•The integration and interoperability of government data is becoming increasingly urgent as government holds
massive and fastly growing amounts of data that are dramatically underexploited.
•The achievement of the once only principle, as well the opportunities of big data only add to the urgency.
•New solutions are needed that balance the need for data integration with the safeguards on data protection,
the demand for data centralisation with the need to respect each administration autonomy, and the
requirement for ex ante homogenization with more pragmatic, on demand approaches based on the “data
lake” paradigm.
•And appropriate, modular data access and interoperability is further complicated by the need to include
private data sources as provider and user of government data, at the appropriate level of granularity.
•This needs to work with full transparency and full consent by citizens, ideally enabling citizens to track in real
time who is accessing their personal data and for what purposes.
•Data integration has long been a priority for public administration but with the new European
Interoperability Framework and the objective of the once only principle is has become an unavoidable
priority
•The Data & Analytics Framework (DAF) by the Italian Digital Team aims to develop and simplify the
interoperability of public data between PAs, standardize and promote the dissemination of open data,
optimize data analysis processes and generate knowledge to be re-used

Data and Analytics Framework (Source: Italian Digital Team)
DAF is a combination of:
• A Big Data Platform to centralize and store (data lake), manipulate and standardize (data engine), re-distribute
(API & Data Applications) data and insights. Data Mgmt & Analytics as a Service;
• A Data Team (data scientists + data engineers) which uses and evolve the Big Data Platform to analyze data,
create ML models and build data applications and data viz;
• Laws and regulations to make this activity possible;
With the aims:
• Interoperability (aka Get out of the Silos): public data is public and all PP.AA. should have access to it: data
sharing & exchange problem optimally solved.
• Knowledge for better policy making & processes management: better policy implementation and ex-post
monitoring, optimized services to citizens, less expensive and more efficient data management processes
• Data Products (aka deliver value & insights): machine Learning in interconnected software applications
• Democratizing Data & Crowdsourcing (aka API, Data Viz & Open Data): citizens (esp. civic hackers)
contribute to the surfacing of knowledge

RC 4 – Modelling and analysis with Big Data
•Collaborative modelling simulation and scenario generation.
•Decision-making processes have to be supported with meaningful representations of the present
situations along with accurate simulation engines to generate and evaluate future scenarios
•Hence the need of tools allowing for a realistic forecast of how a change in the current conditions will
affect and modify the future scenario: scenario simulators and decision support tools
•Such engaging and meaningful visualizations and friendly scenario simulation engines should allow
stakeholders to collaboratively engage in the modelling and simulation process
•The weakest form of involvement is feedback to the session facilitator, similar to the conventional way of
modelling. Stronger forms are proposals for changes or (partial) model proposals.
•In this particular approach the modelling process should be supported by a combination of narrative
scenarios, modelling rules, and e-Participation tools (all Integrated via an ICT e-Governance platform): so
the policy model for a given domain can be created iteratively using cooperation of several stakeholder
groups (decision makers, analysts, companies, civic society, and the general public.
•The Citychrone++ platform, provides users with a powerful tool to assess the present status of
urban accessibility and design and evaluate future scenarios
•It integrates flexible data analysis tools with a simple scenario simulation platform in the area of
urban accessibility.

Citychrone++ – Interactive Scenario Simulator (source: Loreto)
Current Scenario New scenario
Understand the present
● Study the role of current infrastructures and services (knockout, variations..);
● Interplay of different transport modalities;
● Easy implementation of new scenarios (new infrastructures, new business models, etc.)
● Fast impact assessment, different perspectives (economical, social, infrastructural, etc.)...
Plan the Future
real-time
feedback
devising new solutions

RC 5 – Data visualization
•Visualization of dynamic data in real time.
•Due to continuing advances in sensor technology and increasing availability of digital infrastructure that allows
for acquisition, transfer, and storage of big data sets, large amounts of data become available even in real-time.
•Since most analysis and visualization methods focus on static data sets, adding a dynamic component to the
data source results in major challenges for both the automated and visual analysis methods
•Besides typical technical challenges such as unpredictable data volumes, unexpected data features and
unforeseen extreme values, a major challenge is the capability of analysis methods to work incrementally
•Furthermore, scalability of visualization in face of big data availability is a permanent challenge, since
visualization requires additional performances with respect to traditional analytics in order to allow for real time
interaction and reduce latency
•Finally, visualization is largely a demand-and design-driven research area. In this sense one of the main
challenges is to ensure the multidisciplinary collaboration of engineering, statistics, computer science and graphic
design.
•Visualization of dynamic data in real time allows policy makers to react timely with respect to issues they
face, identifying problems at an early stage, detect unexpected patterns and connections between data.
•An example can be given by movement data (e.g., road, naval, or air-traffic) enabling analysis in several
application fields (e.g., landscape planning and design, urban development, and infrastructure planning).

Contribute to the Roadmap
Input from experts and stakeholders
• The most important part of the roadmap is published in commentable format
- Current status and what is new
- Gap analysis and research needs
- Short and long-term research challenges
• New version of the roadmap in commentable format has just been published
• The tool used is http://roadmap.bigpolicycanvas.eu/ linking to
https://www.bigpolicycanvas.eu/results/roadmap

Thank you for your attention
Francesco Mureddu
Francesco.Mureddu@lisboncouncil.net
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 769623

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