Turning Data into Actionable Policy Insights

It is becoming clearer that data-supported input is essential in the policy making process. But at which point of the process, and in which format, can data aid policy making? And what does an organisation need to turn data into relevant insights? This paper explores the role of data from two perspectives. In the first part, data and data analysis are situated in the policy making process by mapping them onto the data supported policy making model and highlighting the different roles they can assume in each stage and step of the process. The second part discusses a practical framework for policy-oriented data activities, zooming in on the data-specific actions and the actors performing them in each data-supported step of the policy making process. We observe that a close collaboration between the policy maker and data scientist in the framework of an iterative approach permits to transform the policy question into a suited data analysis question and deliver relevant insights with the flexibility desired by decision makers. In conclusion, for data to be turned into actionable policy insights it is vital to set up structures that ensure the presence and the collaboration of policy-oriented and data-oriented competences.

Policy-Related Decision Making in a Smart City Context: The PoliVisu Approach

Dealing with the growing quest for better governance, the advancement of ICT provides new methods and tools to politicians and their cabinets on an almost daily basis. In this changing landscape, the PoliVisu project constitutes a step forward from the evidence-based decision making, going towards an experimental approach supported by the large variety of available data sets. Through utilizing advanced data gathering, processing and visualisation techniques, the PoliVisu platform is one of the most recent integrated examples promoting the experimental dimension of policy making at a municipal and regional level.

The Data Shake: An Opportunity for Experiment-Driven Policy Making

The wider availability of data and the growing technological advancements in data collection, management, and analysis introduce unprecedented opportunities, as well as complexity in policy making. This condition questions the very basis of the policy making process towards new interpretative models. Growing data availability, in fact, increasingly affects the way we analyse urban problems and make decisions for cities: data are a promising resource for more effective decisions, as well as for better interacting with the context where decisions are implemented. By dealing with the operative implications in the use of a growing amount of available data in policy making processes, this contribution starts discussing the chance offered by data in the design, implementation, and evaluation of a planning policy, with a critical review of the evidence-based policy making approaches; then it introduces the relevance of data in the policy design experiments and the conditions for its uses.

Towards a Public Sector Data Culture: Data as an Individual and Communal Resource in Progressing Democracy

An increased use of data has swept through many policy areas and shaped procedural and substantive policy instruments. Hence, citizens and governments, as both producers and consumers of data, become intertwined in even more complex ways. But the inherent logic of data-driven services and systems sometimes challenges the prerequisites and ideals of liberal democracy. Though a democratically sound data-practice and data-culture is crucial for ensuring a democratic usage of citizens data, discourse tends to overlook these aspects. Drawing on insights from the project Democracy Data, this chapter explores the opportunities and obstacles for establishing democratically oriented public sector data cultures.

Data-Related Ecosystems in Policy Making: The PoliVisu Contexts

The article explores the complexity of the ecosystems that develop around data supported policy making. This complexity, which can be traced back to the multiplicity of actors involved, the roles they assume in the different steps of the decision making process, and the nature of the relationships they establish, takes on new connotations following the rising use of data for public policies. In fact, issues related to data ownership and the ability to collect, manage, and translate data into useful information for policy makers require the involvement of several actors, generating ecosystems where co-creation strategies are confronted with the limits of action of the public administrations within broader social and decisional networks. Based on this background, the article aims to provide, through the analysis of the direct experiences conducted by the pilot cities involved in the PoliVisu project, an overview of the opportunities and challenges related to the impact of data in the evolution of decision making networks and ecosystems in the data shake era.

Data Ownership and Open Data: The Potential for Data-Driven Policy Making

As part of the rhetoric surrounding the Smart City concept, cities are increasingly facing challenges related to data (management, governance, processing, storage, publishing etc.). The growing power acquired by the data market and the great relevance assigned to data ownership rather than to data-exploitation knowhow is affecting the development of a data culture and is slowing down the embedding of data-related expertise inside public administrations. Concurrently, policies call for more open data to foster service innovation and government transparency. What are the consequences of these phenomena when imagining the potential for policy making consequent to the growing data quantity and availability? Which strategic challenges and decisions do public authorities face in this regard? What are valuable approaches to arm public administrations in this “war on data”? The Smart Flanders program was initiated by the Flemish Government (Belgium) in 2017 to research and support cities with defining and implementing a common open data policy. As part of the program, a “maturity check” was performed, evaluating the cities on several quantitative and qualitative parameters. This exercise laid to bare some challenges in the field of open data and led to a checklist that cities can employ to begin tackling them, as well as a set of model clauses to be used in the procurement of new technologies.

Innovation in Data Visualisation for Public Policy Making

In this contribution, we propose a reflection on the potential of data visualisation technologies for (informed) public policy making in a growingly complex and fast changing landscape—epitomized by the situation created after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on the results of an online survey of more than 50 data scientists from all over the world, we highlight five application areas seeing the biggest needs for innovation according to the domain specialists. Our main argument is that we are facing a transformation of the business cases supporting the adoption and implementation of data visualisation methods and tools in government, which the conventional view of the value of Business Intelligence does not capture in full. Such evolution can drive a new wave of innovations that preserve (or restore) the human brain’s centrality in a decision making environment that is increasingly dominated—for good and bad—by artificial intelligence. Citizen science, design thinking, and accountability are mentioned as triggers of civic engagement and participation that can bring a community of “knowledge intermediaries” into the daily discussion on data supported policy making.

Making Policies with Data: The Legacy of the PoliVisu Project

The PoliVisu project has the goal to investigate the potential of data use and visualisation in urban policy making. The project has explored how data supported policy making is adopted by public administrations and what we can learn from their experience. This is done by enrolling pilot cases with different and specific policy problems. From the experience of the PoliVisu pilots the influence and added value of data in the policy making process is assessed. Considering the recent “shake” in data production and use, PoliVisu has adopted four driving questions, as follow: what are the new roles data can play in the policy making process?, What is the added value of data for policy making? How can innovative visualisations contribute to improve the use of data in policy making processes? To what extent can an increased adoption of data affect the policy making process? How is the data shake affecting the involvement of non-institutional actors in the policy making process? This paper explores these questions, by presenting the experiences and the lessons learnt, also focussing on specific pilots’ initiatives and results.