Keynote Speech: Policy Informatics

Policy Informatics
Addressing societal challenges in public policy
through multidisciplinary approaches
Prof. Dr. Maria A. Wimmer
University of Koblenz-Landau & NEGZ, DE
www.uni-Koblenz.de/agvinf
wimmer@uni-koblenz.de

Agenda
 Scoping and definitions
 ICT use along the policy lifecycle
 Example of policy informatics from OCOPOMO
 Grand challenges in policy informatics
2019/07/01 2Samos Summit 2019, (c) Prof. Dr. Maria A. Wimmer

Challenges along digital transformation
 Significant societal transitions to face in the world economy, climate
and demographics
 Today’s global challenges interconnected, dynamic and complex in
nature
 Citizen engagement, co-creation and co-production embodying a core
principle in democratic societies
 Longer-term transformation to be mastered and steered well ahead
of time
 Digitalization increasingly influencing the way public policy and
public service provisioning are executed
 In particular with the use of so-called disruptive technologies
2019/07/01 Samos Summit 2019, (c) Prof. Dr. Maria A. Wimmer 3

Executive
Bodies
Scoping: Public sector activity and core stakeholders
Public Administration
Parliaments
Courts
Policy
Formulation
Policy
Implementation
Observation,
Monitoring
Citizens
Companies, NGOs
Citizens
Companies, NGOs
P U B L I C G O V E R N A N C E

Exekutive
Bodies
Scoping: Key emerging terms along
public sector’s digital transformation
Public Administration
Parliaments
Courts
Policy
Formulation
Policy
Implementation
Observation,
Monitoring
Citizens
Companies, NGOs
Citizens
Companies, NGOs
P U B L I C G O V E R N A N C E
E-Government, Gov 2.0, Gov
3.0, Smart Cities, etc.
E-Democracy =
E-Participation + E-Voting;
ICT in Policy Making / Policy Informatics
Public (E-)Governance, E-Governance,
Good Governance, Open Government
E-Justice
Modernisation of Public
Administration, New Public
Management

Definitions: What is Public Policy ?
 Evans (2008) defines public policy as “courses of action, regulatory
measures, laws, and funding priorities concerning a given topic
promulgated by a governmental entity or its representatives”
 Examples of public policies:
 Austerity, climate change, education, healthcare, migration, public
safety, single market, social welfare, transport, etc.

Definitions: What is policy-making?
 Estrada (2011): “Work that is supported by the use of different
theories as well as quantitative or qualitative models and
techniques to analytically evaluate the past (causes) and future
(effects) of any policy on society, anywhere and anytime”
 Use of multiple research methods and data sources
 Policy-making requires
 Decision-making among alternative policies
 Inclusion of many different stakeholder views
 Involvement of different disciplines

Definitions: Policy-making characteristics
 Starts with societal problem, which is often hard to ‘define’
 Followed by a complex interactive process often having many
iterations
 In which many stakeholders are involved having own ideas
 Addresses intractable problems from a wide variety of topics that
are
 Rational bounded
 With many directions possible, often no ‘best’ alternatives
 Need the making of trade-offs
 Without clear evaluation criteria, and
 Political ideology plays a role

Definitions: What means governance?
 Capacity of governing systems to co-ordinate policy and to solve
public problems in a complex context
 "the sum of the many ways of individuals and institutions, public
and private, to manage their common affairs. It is a continuing
process through which conflicting or diverse interests may be
accommodated and co-operative action may be taken"
[Pierre, 2000]
[Commission on Global Governance, 1995]

Definitions: Governance concept
 Implies management of a country’s resources for development at all
levels using mechanisms, processes and institutions for
encouraging citizens and groups to articulate their interests,
mediate their differences and exercise their legal rights and
obligations
 Involves coordination and coherence among various actors with
different objectives such as political actors and institutions, interest
groups, civil society, non-governmental and transnational
organizations
[UNDP, 1997]
[Pierre, 2000]

Definitions: What is policy informatics?
“Policy informatics is an emergent area of study that explores how ICT
can support policy-making and governance. Policy informatics
recognizes that
 more kinds, sources and volumes of information [data],
 coupled with evolving analytical and computational tools,
 present important opportunities to address increasingly complex social,
political, and management problems”
 Conceptual boundaries blurring
 Basic assumption: “more intensive and creative use of information
and technology can improve policy-making processes and lead to
better policy choices”
[Helbig et al, 2012]

Agenda

Policy Informatics: ICT invasion in all phases of
the policy lifecycle Petitioning;
Opinion Mining and
Sentiment Analysis
(particularly from social media)
Serious Gaming
and simulation
Sensors
everywhere
Open
dashboards
Crowdsourcing
[Adapted from Howett and Ramesh, 1995;
and Janssen et al, 2015]

The needs for policy informatics (1/2)
 Combination of public governance and digital sciences
 Comprehensive involvement of actors and alignment of policy and
implementation
 Engagement of actors: state, private sector, Citizens, non-government
organisations (NGOs)
 Multidisciplinary, involving digital sciences, systems thinking, global
system sciences …
 Policy modelling
 Applied to different stages in the policy lifecycle, referring to different
approaches of modelling public policies
 Different theories and paradigms of modelling and simulation:
Agent-based modelling, Macroeconometric modelling, Systems
Dynamics, Statistical modelling, etc.
14Samos Summit 2019, (c) Prof. Dr. Maria A. Wimmer2019/07/01
[Majstorovic et al 2015]
[Helbig et al 2015]

The needs for policy informatics (2/2)
 Policy analysis, modelling and public governance, including citizen
engagement to be brought together
 Different approaches to policy analysis and modelling
 Exploiting alternative ICT solutions
 Overcoming problems of engaging stakeholders in the process using
modelling approaches and /or ICT solutions
to support successful public policies throughout the different
phases in the policy lifecycle thereby adhering to good governance
principles
15Samos Summit 2019, (c) Prof. Dr. Maria A. Wimmer2019/07/01

Agenda

Process and tools from OCOPOMO to
support open collaboration in policy
modelling
[Wimmer et al 2012a, Scherer et al 2013, Scherer et al 2015]

Integrated ICT toolbox supporting open
collaboration in policy modelling
Simulation analysts
Modeller
Stakeholders
Facilitators
Modellers
Facilitators
Repository
scenarios,
documents,
...
- CCD models
- text annotations (txt, pdf, html)
- CCD2DRAMS transformation
simulation
outputs
CMS: Content
Management Server
CSET: Collaboration and Scenario Editing Tools
Calendar
ChatVersion
User Search
Process
Collaboration
Space
CCD Tool
Concept
Annotation
Content
Discussion
Document
Polling
and Rating
Link
Notification
Rule
Simulation
SE: Simulation Environment
- DRAMS Rules
- running
simulations
Legend
:
name
Modules: Produced or exchanged
artifacts:
Integration data
flow:
Managers:
Action
[Wimmer et al 2012a]

Exemplifying the Approach through a
Case study
Competence centres for knowledge
transfer in the Campania Region

Developing Scenarios and subsequent CCD
Model with Annotations
[Scherer et al 2015]

CCD Model:
Actor-Network-Diagram

CCD Model:
Action-
Diagram

Ensuring traceability along artefact transformations
and model programming [Scherer et al 2015]

Traceability as core asset for transparency
and understanding
Document
Viewer
CCD
Viewer
Simulation
Log
Trace Graph
Visualisation
Linked CCD
Elements
Highlighted
Text Phrase
Scenarios and
Background
Documents
Zoom and Filter Control
Derived Fact
with
Template Trace Tag
Selected
Log Entry
Initial Fact
with
Template and Instance Trace Tag
Rule
with
Trace Tag
[Lotzmann and Wimmer 2012]

Ensuring traceability along artefact
transformations

Why Scenario-based Policy Modelling?
 Stakeholder participation and collaboration enables different views
in the development of a policy context
 Scenario development is bottom-up, co-creative and evidence-
based
 Comparison of model-generated scenarios with evidence-based
narrative scenarios generated by stakeholders
 Integrated ICT based policy analysis and modelling platform
enabling stakeholders to engage without particular competency in
policy modelling concepts

Why integrating Scenario and Formal Model?
 Stakeholder-generated scenarios inform formal policy model design
 Goals, scope and social processes specified by participating
stakeholders
 Stakeholders see natural-language pseudo code
 Formal policy models produce simulations, which result in model-
based scenarios
 Enforces precision in use of language, expectations, goals
 Key in model design is a set of if-then rules
 Participating stakeholders evaluate model generated scenarios
 Surprises involve further investigation of model & scenarios
 Iterations in developing formal policy models

Complementarity of Scenario and Policy Models
 Chaining
 Scenarios built with goal in mind (backward chaining)
 Models built from behavioural and contextual evidence – using
forward chaining rules
 Richness and precision
 Scenarios developed using rich, natural language
 Rule-bases in models are precise, formal statements
 Exploration and exploitation
 Scenario exercises seem naturally to encourage exploration –
ideas generation
 Models facilitate exploitation and understanding of prevailing
context

Agenda

Current trends influencing policy-making &
shaping policy informatics
Disruptive technologies such as
 Big and open data
 Artificial intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics
 Natural Language Processing
 Simulation, visualisation (AR, VR) and gaming
 Internet of Things, Smart Cities, Smart Government
 Blockchain etc.
Combined with a paradigm shift towards much more citizen- and
needs-driven developments
 Crowdsourcing
 Co-creation and co-production
and their use
in combination

Public value
expectations along
policy lifecycle
Policy
formulation
Policy
implementat
ion
Policy
execution
Policy
enforcement
and
evaluation
efficiency
efficiency
accountability
transparancy
responsiveness
public interest
will of the people
listening
citizen involvement
evidence-based
protection of
individual
rights accountability
transparancy
evidence-based
equal access
balancing of
interests
robust
honesty
fair
timelessness
reliable
flexible
fair
[Helbig & Janssen, 2016]

Grand challenges in policy informatics: Demand for
multidisciplinary research in different directions
32Samos Summit 2019, (c) Prof. Dr. Maria A. Wimmer
Modelling and
simulation
Data and in-
formation charac-
teristics and use
Government
capabilities and
legitimacy
Citizen and
stakeholder
engagement
Translating research results
into policy actions and
support
Design Science
Research
Public
Administration &
Policy Research
Policy
Makers
2019/07/01
[See www.policy-community.eu]

Discussions
 What further challenges would you see in public policy
making?
 Who would be strategically and at operational level
responsible to resolve the challenges?
 What instruments and tools would be needed to resolve
these challenges?
 Already existing or yet to be developed?

References
Commission on Global Governance. Our Global Neighbourhood, New York: Oxford University Press,
1995
Sophie J. Evans, Public Policy Issues Research Trends, Nova Science Publishers, Inc. 2008
N. Helbig, M. Nakashima, S. Dawes. Understanding the Value and Limits of Government Information in
Policy Informatics: A Preliminary Exploration. In Proceedings of dg.o '12, ACM, 2012, pp. 291 - 293
Helbig N, Dawes SS, Dzhusupova Z, Klievink B, Mkude CG (2014) Stakeholder engagement in policy
development: observations and lessons from international experience. In: Janssen M, et al (eds) Policy
practice and digital science—integrating complex systems, social simulation and public administration in
policy research. Springer Science, Berlin, 2015
Howlett, M., & Ramesh, M. Studying Public Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems. Toronto:
Oxford University Press, 1995
M. Janssen, N. Helbig. Innovating and changing the policy-cycle: policy-makers be prepared!
Government Information Quarterly, 2016
U. Lotzmann, M. A Wimmer. Provenance and Traceability in Agent-based Policy Simulation. In:
Proceedings of 26th European Simulation and Modelling Conference - ESM'2012, 2012
Majstorovic D, Wimmer MA, Lay-Yee R, Davis P, Ahrweiler P. Features and added value of simulation
models using different modelling approaches supporting policy-making: a comparative analysis. In
Janssen M, Wimmer MA, Deljoo A (eds) Policy practice and digital science—integrating complex
systems, social simulation and public administration in policy research. Springer Sciences, London,
2015

References
Pierre, J. Debating governance authority, steering, and democracy, Oxford University
Press, USA, 2000
S. Scherer; M. A. Wimmer, S. Markisic: Bridging narrative scenario texts and formal policy
modeling through conceptual policy modeling. In: Artificial Intelligence and Law. November
2013, Volume 21, Issue 4, pp 455-484, 2013
S. Scherer, M.A. Wimmer, U. Lotzmann, S. Moss, D. Pinotti. An evidence-based and
conceptual model-driven approach for agent-based policy modelling. In: Journal of Artificial
Societies and Social Simulation. 18 (3) 2015
UNDP. Governance for sustainable human development: UNDP policy document, 1997
M. A. Wimmer, S. Scherer, S. Moss, M. Bicking. Method and Tools to Support Stakeholder
Engagement in Policy Development. The OCOPOMO Project. In: International Journal of
Electronic Government Research (IJEGR), 8 (3), 2012a, pp.98-119
M. A. Wimmer, K. Furdik, M. Bicking, M. Mach, T. Sabol, P. Butka. Open Collaboration in
Policy Development: Concept and Architecture to integrate scenario development and
formal policy modelling. In: Yannis Charalabidis, Sotiris Koussouris (Eds.). Empowering
Open and Collaborative Governance. Technologies and Methods for Online Citizen
Engagement in Public Policy Making. Springer Verlag: Berlin / Heidelberg, 2012b, pp. 199
- 219

Many thanks for your attention!
wimmer@uni-koblenz.de
http://www.uni-koblenz.de/agvinf

Keynote Speech: Policy Informatics

More Related Content

Similar to Keynote Speech: Policy Informatics (20)

More from Samos2019Summit (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

Keynote Speech: Policy Informatics