This document summarizes a conference on Policy Making 2.0. It discusses the challenges of modern policy making, such as dealing with unknown unknowns and distributed governance. It outlines the goals of developing a research roadmap to strengthen the policy making community. The proposed method is open and recursive. The document envisions a third way of policy making that is open, evidence-based, and addresses the full policy cycle from anticipating issues to evaluation. It acknowledges challenges in ensuring technology leads to real policy impacts and cultural changes. Next steps include collaboratively curating examples and continuing discussion through online groups.

1. POLICY-MAKING 2.0 CONFERENCE
David Osimo
www.crossover-project.eu
#policy20
Policy Making 2.0: a research roadmap
towards actual policy impact

2. MAIN POINTS
 The problem: The challenges of policy making
 The goals of the roadmap: a platform to strengthen the
community towards shared objectives
 The method: open and recursive
 A vision for a new policy 2.0
 The research challenges to get there
 The critic: is this enough? Between techno-utopianism
and real policy impact
 What’s next? The beginning of a beautiful friendship…

3. POLICY-MAKING IN A COMPLEX WORLD: THE
CHALLENGES
 Detect and understand problems before they become
unsolvable, ensuring long-term thinking, dealing with
“unknown unknowns”
 Involve open intelligence in policy-making, and extract “good
ideas” from it
 From words to action: ensure implementation and actual
behavioural change
 Reduce uncertainty on the possible systemic impacts of
policies, and reduce time-to-impact evaluation
 All this,dealing with a distributed governance model.
The traditional division of “market” and “state” no
longer fits a reality where public decision and action
is effectively carried out by a plurality of actors.

4. GOALS: BUILDING BRIDGES, OVERCOMING THE
FRAGMENTATION IN AN EMERGING FIELD
Disciplines Policy domains Stakeholders Countries
•Economics,
•physics,
•mathematics,
•computer science,
•psychology,
•social sciences
•Health,
•economy,
•labour market,
•social affairs,
•environment,
•transport
•Researchers,
•industry,
•civil society,
•government
•FP7 vs Hackers
•EU,
•US,
•BRICs,
•developing
countries

5. METHOD: OPEN AND RECURSIVE

6. METHOD: OPEN AND RECURSIVE
202
cases
4 case
studies
740 members
236
responde
nts
200+ people in
f2f discussions
Brussels: 70
participants, 42
papers
Washington: 30
participants, 16
papers
40 comments
GSS and third
party workshops
50
apps
prize
Links
to US
PIN

7. A VISION: A THIRD WAY OF POLICY MAKING?
+ Emergent
+ Open
+ Peer2peer
+ Unexpected
Direct Democracy
- Social media
- Populism
- Unstructured discussion
- Loudest voice
+ Expert based
decisions
+ Robust
+ Relevant
Technocracy
- Black box
- Closed models
- Reductionism

8. A VISION: A THIRD WAY OF POLICY MAKING?
+ Emergent
+ Open
+ Peer2peer
+ Unexpected
Direct Democracy
- Social media
- Populism
- Unstructured discussion
- Loudest voice
+ Expert based
decisions
+ Robust
+ Relevant
Technocracy
- Black box
- Closed models
- Reductionism
Policy-making 2.0:
Open and evidence based

9. COVERING THE FULL POLICY CYCLE

10. ANTICIPATING THE UNEXPECTED: BIG AND OPEN DATA

11. POLICY DESIGN: SMART CROWDSOURCING

12. POLICY OPTIONS SIMULATION
UrbanSIM case

13. TURNING POLICY IN IMPACT: APPS FOR
BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE

14. SENSE MAKING IN EVALUATION THROUGH OPEN
DATA
http://stateofworkingamerica.org/who-
gains/#/?start=2000&end=2008

15. ROADMAP OVERVIEW (1)
Name State of the Art Gaps Short Term
Research
Long Term
Research
Systems of
Atomized
models
Some modelling
environments provide
libraries of ready-to-use
models, but in most
cases, they are not
completely open
Developing
components for
a specific
framework
constrains use
Open-source
modelling and
simulation
environments,open
visualisation of
results
Definition of open
modelling
standards,
interoperability
Collaborativ
e Modelling
Mainly performed offline,
urgent need for Intuitive
Interfaces
Citizens
collaboration in
the public policy
modelling
process
Group model
building and
systems thinking,
Web 2.0 tools for
collaboration
Collaborative
Internet-based
modelling tools
Big Data Public health,
environmental analysis,
crisis management and
anticipation
Privacy, data
access and
sharing data,
interpreting data
Crowdsourcing,
data mining,
network analysis,
predictive
modelling
Collecting,
cleaning, storing
data,summarizing
data and
extracting some
meaning
Opinion
Mining
Argument mapping
software, automated
content analysis, voting
Advise Applications
Detection of
spam and fake
reviews, limits
of collaborative
filtering
Improving the
accuracy of
algorithm for
opinion detection,
reduction of human
effort
Usable, peer-to-
peer opinion
mining tools for
citizens

16. ROADMAP OVERVIEW (2)
Name State of the Art Gaps Short Term
Research
Long Term
Research
Visual
Analytics
Demographics
visualisationslegal
Arguments
visualisation,discussion
arguments visualisation
Usability:availability
of low cost, ready to
use
andreconfigurable
infovis systems
Impact
evaluation of
visual analytics
on policy
choices,
simultaneous
multiple
visualisation
Intuitive affordable
visual analytics
interface for citizens
Serious
Gaming
Purpose-built gaming and
simulation for
understanding of policy
issues and of individual
behaviour
Changes in public
policy making
perception ,
institutional changes
Immersive
interfaces,
Citizens- and
experts-
generated
gaming
Augmented reality
citizens-generated
gaming and
simulation,Ubiquitou
s feedback systems
on public
governance
Linked Open
Government
Data
Used toIncrease the
awareness of citizens on
specific issues, and
promote accountability of
public officials
How to reduce
human efforts;
Identification of good
ideas;
Finding necessary
investments;
How to improve
usability of tools.
Assessing the
technical
features of a
dataset,
Assessing the
usefulness of a
dataset for
particular users
Integration of open
government data
(OGD) and social
media data (SMD)

17. POLICY-MAKING 2.0 IS MORE THAN THE SUM OF
ITS RESEARCH CHALLENGES
Source: IPTS-NTUA Case studies

18. TAKING A CRITICAL VIEW: CAN TECHNOLOGY
CHANGE POLICY-MAKING?
 Learning lessons from 20 years of technology adoption
in government: bottlenecks are cultural and
organisational, not technological
 Technology will not suddenly free policy-making from
politicking, corruption, personal interests, short term
thinking, low interest from citizens…
 Main interest of these tools for policy-makers is in
providing:
 High quantity of participants (X people said this)
 Robust-looking evidence to justify choices (complex data said
that..)

19. YET:
 Technology is not neutral. Open data, open models,
open consultation, simulation of different impacts,
uncovering hidden feedback, usable tools and
visualisation create incentives and lower barriers to
entry
 Policy-making 2.0 need also a new cultural approach to
implementation: more focus on design; massive skills
needed by policy-makers and civil society; learning by
doing and barcamps; better understanding of the limits
of policy-making
 Technology is just one issue!

20. POLICY TOOLS RELEVANT FOR POLICY CHALLENGES

21. A REALITY CHECK: POLICY-MAKING 2.0 STILL MORE
PROMISING THAN IMPACTFUL
 2050 PATHWAYS : high usage (16K pathways created, 200
stakeholders involved in the building phase). Higher awareness by
citizens. Output used by govt to back up the Carbon Strategy.
 GLEAM: adopted by mainstream gov’t agency to anticipate disease
spread through transportation. Adopted also for educational
purposes
 OPINION SPACE 3.0: significant participation (5K individuals) ,
endorsement at top level (Secretary of State Clinton)
 URBANSIM: High usage by US local gov’t
OPEN QUESTIONS:
 Do they actually lead to better policies?
 Do they predict impact better than other models?
 Do they bring new relevant ideas useful for policy-making?
Lack of systematic robust evaluation of different policy-methods.
Initial evidence points to the potential impact, but very far from
counterfactual / RCT approach available to date.

23. WHAT’S NEXT?
1. Share experiences on the Policy-Making 2.0 group on
Linkedin
2. Collaborative curation: 200+ inspiring examples in Diigo
Group: http://groups.diigo.com/group/crossoverproject
3. Follow-up with EgovPoliNet - http://www.policy-
community.eu/
4. Meeting in Samos http://samos-summit.blogspot.ie/
At a minimum level, collaboration does not need a dedicated
project
LET’S START MAKING IT HAPPEN TODAY AND TOMORROW!
david.osimo@gmail.com