Blog

This week, The GovLab and the Burnes Center for Social Change published two new resources aimed at leveraging the power of artificial intelligence and collective intelligence to tackle pressing public challenges. 

Five participants from the inaugural Solving Public Problems Education Accelerator recently pitched their social impact projects to the Rockefeller Foundation. 

In this blog, the Data Program provides a curation of tools that we’ve developed over the years to enable systematic, sustainable and responsible re-use of data - i.e. data stewardship.

Age is not an impediment to helping improve your community. High school students make up two of the ten citizen teams selected to participate in the Multi-City Challenge Mexico 2020 (MCC), an initiative where citizens and the governments of Hermosillo, Reynosa, San Nicolás, San Pedro, and Torreón are co-creating solutions to address urban challenges. The students were selected among 237 proposals received to solve the ten urban problems of the participating municipalities.

Today, the Open Data Policy Lab is excited to announce a first ever online executive course on Data Stewardship: Developing a Data Reuse Strategy for Solving Public Problems to give leaders in the public sector, private sector, and civil institutions the skills they need to address today’s challenges with data.

By Matt Ryan, Senior Fellow, The GovLab Beth Simone Noveck, Director, The GovLab Peter Baeck, Head of the Center for Collective Intelligence Design, Nesta Around the globe there is increasing recognition that the traditional ways of solving public problems are insufficient for the challenges of the 21st century.  Political leaders, policy makers and service providers at […]

Report by Stefaan Verhulst and Andrew Young: “Across the world, significant time and resources are being invested in making government data accessible to all with the broad goal of improving people’s lives.Evidence of open data’s impact—on improving governance, empowering citizens, creating economic opportunity, and solving public problems—is emerging and is largely encouraging. Yet much of the […]

Anniversaries allow us to pause, reflect and consider plans for what can come next. The second annual NYC Open Data Week, taking place from March 3-10, 2018, provides a similar occasion for members of the burgeoning open data movement to take stock of the distance traveled and consider strategies for advancing to the next stage. […]

Stefaan Verhulst in the Journal AI and Society: “This paper seeks to explore the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Collective Intelligence (CI), within the context of innovating how we govern. It starts from the premise that advances in technology provide policy makers with two important new assets: data and connected people. The application of […]

Innovative Action-Research Center Expands Communications Team to Amplify Its Work in Open Data and Open Governance The Governance Lab is pleased to announce that Timi Lewis has joined as Director of Communications. Timi will lead public relations, social media, digital media, and external engagement for the action-research center based at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. […]

By Hannah Pierce and Audrie Pirkl Please find below the next installment in The GovLab Index series inspired by the Harper’s Index. Following the 2017 Collective Intelligence Conference, this installment highlights outcomes, impacts and trends related to efforts to tap into collective intelligence toward solving public problems. We begin with a selection of statistics across […]

The Open Governance Research Exchange (OGRX) is a platform that seeks to identify, collect and share curated insights on new ways of solving public problems. It was created last year by the GovLab, World Bank Digital Engagement Evaluation Team and mySociety. Today, while more than 3000 representatives from more than 70 countries are gathering in Paris […]

For the third consecutive year The GovLab is getting ready to participate in the Open Government Partnership Global Summit. This year’s OGP Summit will be held in Paris, France on December 7th-9th. The annual event’s international collection of representatives from across sectors will once again “gather to share their experiences and best practices and push […]

Guest Post by Julian Carver Julian Carver was the acting Chief Information Officer at the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) until June 2012. From March 2013 – April 2015 he led the Canterbury Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) Programme at Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), a $5m investment in a set of tech projects to support the […]

Proponents of open data have long argued that the release of government information to the public could result in meaningful impact for citizens. To date, though, little evidence has demonstrated the real-world impacts of open data. Indeed, the field has lacked a taxonomy or framework to help measure and assess the effects of the broad […]

New repository of case studies documents the impact of open data globally odimpact.org Despite global commitments to and increasing enthusiasm for open data, little is actually known about its use and impact. What kinds of social and economic transformation has open data brought about, and what is its future potential? How—and under what circumstances—has it […]

New Medium Blog by Stefaan Verhulst and David Sangokoya, both at The GovLab: “In late July 2014, a sick passenger from Liberia traveled to Nigeria and brought the Ebola virus to Lagos, Africa’s largest city, with a population of 21 million. In response, government agencies, universities and hospitals collaborated with private telecommunications companies and healthcare organizations […]

This Fall, members of the GovLab team are teaching courses at the intersection of governance, technology and society, while experimenting with new technologies and teaching methodologies. Here are some of the courses being taught this semester, with links to more details. Courses Internet Governance: Mapping Internet Governance Principles, Policies, and Practices – taught by Stefaan […]

The GovLab Editorial Board Meetings (“EdBoard”) showcase news and events that encourage thought and discussion about GovLab’s work. EdBoard is an opportunity for the GovLab team to reflect on a) how approaches and technologies could help solve problems differently, and b) how news items relate to our projects with an eye toward ensuring our work […]

MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Opening Governance formed to gather evidence and develop new designs for governing  NEW YORK, NY, March 4, 2014 – The Governance Lab (The GovLab) at New York University today announced the formation of a Research Network on Opening Governance, which will seek to develop blueprints for more effective and legitimate […]

Improving people’s lives by changing how we govern. Current societal problems demand radical innovation in how we govern. Policy makers around the world are facing increasingly complex and interconnected societal challenges: How can we provide health care for everyone at lower cost; reduce poverty and economic inequality; reduce and prevent obesity; redesign urban environments; fight […]

This Fall, the GovLab staff are teaching a variety of courses at the intersection of governance, technology and society – experimenting with new technologies and teaching methodologies. We are also overseeing a variety of Wagner capstone projects. Here are some of the courses being taught this semester, with links to more details, as well as […]

Tim Harford has an interesting article in this week’s Financial Time’s Life and Arts section (or Magazine for British readers) describing a famous academic dividing line around the question whether people will work together to save the “commons”. The key protagonists who have produced different answers to one of the most important social questions of […]

SESSION #1 THEME: If Only We Knew…how to find the people who knew the most about a topic. CHANGE AGENT: Hon. Jean Philbert Nsengimana, Minister of Youth and ICT, Rwanda FACILITATOR: Beth Noveck, The Governance Lab and Chris Vein, Chief Innovation Officer for Global Information and Communications Technology Development at World Bank The following is a liveblog […]

Follow #govlab The Experiment Ready set go…tomorrow the Governance Lab is holding its Making Engagement Work ‘Experiment’, a two day event where participants work together to identify and overcome the impediments that limit citizen engagement and prevent more open and agile institutions. GovLab Experiment is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation […]