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The FUPOL policy lifecycle
Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to outline an advanced policy lifecycle, the FUPOL model with its ability to link technical features in the area of policy modeling. The FUPOL Policy Lifecycle is based on 6 stages, which are further divided into 8 main tasks. These main tasks are split up into 19 subtasks to provide a very detailed policy lifecycle structure. The detailed breakdown allows one to link each task to various technical features, such as opinion maps, policy indicator dashboard, knowledge database, and simulation and visualization tools. The chapter further argues that the methodology applied is future proof and has the potential of accommodating new technologies in the future.
... FP7-ICT-2011-7 FUPOL project No. 287119 (2011-2015) "Future Policy Modelling" [3] gave the opportunity to perform market research and understand the needs of potential users, interested in sustainable transport scheme development. Popularity of cycling in European cities is undoubtedly increasing. ...
... Nevertheless, it was concluded that existing products aimed at cycling routes design mainly offer the capabilities of planning and publishing the routes, but do not provide functionality necessary for municipalities to build justified bicycle path network. Skopje bicycle inter-modality simulator was designed under the framework of FUPOL project [3]. It was designed to find a usable solution for bicycle stations location in the City of Skopje. ...
... To countermeasure this trend societies place their hopes on e-governance and new forms of policy modelling giving stakeholders, from scientists to business associations over civil society groups down to the single individual possibilities to access information and represent their insights and interests in the decision-making processes. However, current policy making is still a highly analog process and technologies are still barely used or not implemented consequently [8,9]. In fact, most governments miss a plan how new technologies and solutions can be considered and embedded in the entire policy making process. ...
Analytical Reasoning by applying machine learning approaches, artificial intelligence, NLP and visualizations allow to get deep insights into the different domains of various stakeholders and enable to solve complex tasks. Thereby the tasks are very heterogenous and subject of investigation in the different areas of application. These tasks or challenges should be defined by the stakeholders themselves and lead through a deep investigation to advanced analytical approaches. We therefore set up a strategic alliance of research, enterprises and societal organization with the goal of a strong collaboration to identify in a first step these challenges and workout technological solutions for each application scenario. We give in this paper a first draft of current challenges and technological advancements. The main contribution of this paper is next to an accurate description of the current challenges in the analytics domain, also the description of an agenda how these challenges can be solved. Furthermore, a process is explained, how the strategic alliance should act and organize their work to realize beneficial and useful analytical solutions.
... Beyond the albeit significant scientific results, marked by a consistent number of relevant publications [2,19,54,55], the above-mentioned projects share the credit of enhancing the debate over the intersections between policy modeling and science promoting, at the same time, the creation of an interdisciplinary research community. As the result of their activities somehow shows, CSS research is gradually driving a deep innovation in policy design. ...
In the last 20 years, the convergence of different factors—the rise of the complexity of science, the “data deluge” and the advances in information technologies—triggered a paradigm shift in the way we understand complex social systems and their evolution. Beyond shedding new light onto social dynamics, the emerging research area of Computational Social Science (CSS) is providing a new rationale for a more scientifically-grounded and effective policy design. The paper discusses the opportunities potentially deriving from the intersection between policy design issues and CSS methods. After a general introduction to the limits of traditional policy-making and a brief review of the most promising CSS methodologies, the work deals with way in which the insights potentially offered by CSS can concretely flow in policy choices. The attention is focused, to this end, on the legal mechanisms regulating the formulation and the evaluation of public policies. Our goal is two-fold: sketch how the project of a “smart society” is connected to the evolution of social sciences and emphasize the need for change in the way in which public policies are conceived of, designed and implemented.
Government policies aim to address public issues and problems and therefore play a pivotal role in people’s lives. The creation of public policies, however, is complex given the perspective of large and diverse stakeholders’ involvement, considerable human participation, lengthy processes, complex task specification and the non-deterministic nature of the process. The inherent complexities of the policy process impart challenges for designing a computing system that assists in supporting and automating the business process pertaining to policy setup, which also raises concerns for setting up a tracking service in the policy-making environment. A tracking service informs how decisions have been taken during policy creation and can provide useful and intrinsic information regarding the policy process. At present, there exists no computing system that assists in tracking the complete process that has been employed for policy creation. To design such a system, it is important to consider the policy environment challenges; for this a novel network and goal based approach has been framed and is covered in detail in this paper. Furthermore, smart governance objectives that include stakeholders’ participation and citizens’ involvement have been considered. Thus, the proposed approach has been devised by considering smart governance principles and the knowledge environment of policy making where tasks are largely dependent on policy makers’ decisions and on individual policy objectives. Our approach reckons the human dimension for deciding and defining autonomous process activities at run time. Furthermore, with the network-based approach, so-called provenance data tracking is employed which enables the capture of policy process.
The significance of provenance in various settings has emphasised its potential in the policy-making process for analytics in Smart Cities. At present, there exists no framework that can capture the provenance in a policy-making setting. This research therefore aims at defining a novel framework, namely, the Policy Cycle Provenance (PCP) Framework, to capture the provenance of the policymaking process. However, it is not straightforward to design the provenance framework due to a number of associated policy design challenges. The design challenges revealed the need for an adaptive system for tracking policies therefore a model-driven approach has been considered in designing the PCP framework. Also, suitability of a networking approach is proposed for designing workflows for tracking the policy-making process.
Problem identification and solution finding are major challenges in policy modeling. Statistical indicator-data build the foundation for most of the required analysis work. In particular finding effective and efficient policies that solve an existing political problem is critical, since the forecast validation of the effectiveness is quite difficult. Simulation technologies can help to identify optimal policies for solutions, but nowadays many of such simulators are stand-alone technologies. In this paper we introduce a new visualization approach to enable the coupling of statistical indicator data from Open Government Data sources with simulators and especially simulation result data with the goal to provide an enhanced impact analysis for political analysts and decision makers. This allows, amongst others a more intuitive and effective way of solution finding.
Public authorities normally consider statistical data about indicators in their decision makings. Such valid kind of data allows an objective observation about indicator developments over time. In case of a significant deviation from the normal indicator level, it is difficult to understand the reasons for upcoming problems. In this article we present an approach that allows an enhanced information gathering through an improved information overview about the depending aspects to such an indicator by considering governmental data-sources that provide also other types of data than just statistics. Even more, our approach integrates a system that allows generating explanations for Open Government Data, especially to specific indicators, based on Linked-Open Data and shows it in graphical form to enable a fast overview gathering. This allows decision-makers to get hints for unexpected reasons of concrete problems that may influence an indicator.
Commonly, data used in public authorities are statistical data about certain indicator. Such valid kind of data allows an objective observation about indicator developments over time. In case of a significant deviation from the normal indicator level, it is difficult to understand the reasons for upcoming problems. In our paper we present an approach that allows an enhanced information gathering through an improved information overview about the depending aspects to such an indicator by considering government data-sources that provide also other types of data than just statistics. Even more, our approach integrates a system that allows generating explanations for Open Government Data, especially to specific indicators, based on Linked-Open Data. This enables decision-makers to get hints for unexpected reasons of concrete problems that may influence an indicator.
The policy making process in public authorities is nowadays usually an offline process. ICT is just very conservatively used, which also limits the inclusion of citizens' opinions. In difference the ICT sector consists of a rapid development in the area of eParticitpation and also in data-storing approaches and visualizations. But today it is hard to assign such new technical approaches to the policy modeling process, because of their non-ICT orientation. In this paper we introduce a new detailed ICT-based policy modeling process and an assignment of some modern ICT technology features. To support decision-makers, the main contribution of this paper is an assignment of useful visualization-types to the technological features and furthermore to the ICT-based policy-making process. Therewith we describe an approach how interactive visualizations can lead to a more effective policy making.
The three action levels of governance: Re-framing the policy process beyond the stages model Mountain islands of theoretical structure, intermingled with, and occasionally attached together by foothills of shared methods and concepts, and empirical work, all of which is surrounded by oceans of descriptive work not attached to any mountain of theory Thus Schlager (1997: 14) characterises the present landscape of the study of the policy process 1 . This varied landscape partly mirrors the complexities of the object of study itself. A key element in many approaches to describing this landscape is the stages model of the policy process. In this chapter we will review the functionality of that so called ‘model’. Sabatier (1999: 1–2) specifies the elements of the policy process as ‘an extremely complex set’, consisting of: (a) a multiplicity of actors (both individual and corporate) each of which have different interests, values, perceptions and policy (b) ...
This report considers how, and to what extent, ICTs are being used to facilitate the provision of information and to support consultation and active participation of citizens to enable better policy-making. Numerous case studies from OECD member countries present specific government applications. These describe not only successes but also, importantly, the issues and constraints. Increasing engagement should, on the one hand, enable better policy but, on the other hand, it will increase the resources and time needed to construct policy. The report highlights 5 main challenges for e-engagement, those of: scale; building capacity and active citizenship; ensuring coherence; evaluating e-engagement; and ensuring commitment. Given the expanding knowledge base of e-engagement practice and the emergence of government policy, there is every indication that the use of ICTs to engage citizens will increase. This report makes an important start in developing a methodological framework that addresses how ICT can be designed and used to effectively and efficiently support information provision, consultation and participation in policymaking.
ICT tools and their methods to support the policy lifecycle in urban planning have drastically changed with the emergence of social media, advanced simulation techniques, open government data, big data, opinion mining, advanced text analytics and visualization. All those components should be combined with GIS. Current ICT solutions supporting e-participation and collaborative urban planning are focused on solving a specific problem. They are not integrated neither on the conceptual nor on the technical level. The conceptual level referring to the policy lifecycle, the technical level to data integration and user interface. This paper describes a new integrated approach to policy design and implementation. It consists of an advanced policy lifecycle and an IT-solution with features supporting all phases of the proposed lifecycle. The concept as well as the technical architecture as implemented in the Future Policy Modelling Project (FUPOL) to achieve such a complete integration with separate applications is outlined.
This article looks at the current and future roles of information visualization, semantics visualization, and visual analytics in policy modeling. Many experts believe that you can't overestimate visualization's role in this respect.
The article outlines a set of visionary scenarios on how the European society could develop by 2030 by using advanced ICT tools and modelling techniques and integrating them into governance processes and policy making mechanisms. These scenarios have been designed through a foresight exercise conducted by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) as part of the CROSSROAD Project, a support action of the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme. After presenting the conceptual framework and methodological approach followed, the scenario design framework developed and the resulting views of what the European Information Society might be by 2030 are presented. The article follows with a discussion of the implications of the scenarios design in terms of key areas of expected change and grand challenges to be addressed. It concludes by identifying policy challenges and proposing possible future research directions in the domain of ICT for governance and policy modelling needed to build a truly open Digital Europe twenty years from now.
The general shift towards a polycentric understanding of policy making requires the involvement of stakeholders as active participants into the policy process at different levels of societal organization. This is particularly true for water resource management where the traditional approach to solving environmental problems with technological fixes and end-of-pipe solutions has started to shift towards a more thoughtful attitude. This involves the development of integrated approaches to problem solving and to include stakeholder perspectives. This tendency receives strong support by the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) that emphasizes an integrated approach to water resources management at basin scale. The WFD requires the inclusion of stakeholders in the process of developing and adopting a river basin management plan. In order to improve stakeholder-based policy design and modeling processes innovation and research is required in linking analytical methods and participatory approaches. Factual knowledge and analytical techniques have to be combined with local knowledge and subjective perceptions of the various stakeholder groups.
Reflecting on the European Commissions stated aim to broaden democracy this paper examines the nature of e-participation and
considers concepts of democracy and issues surrounding citizen participation in pubic affairs. The paper describes how citizens
are engaging with government and with each other about policy related issues that concern them, using technology specially
designed for the purpose. The paper describes a case study of electronic participation developed for the Environment Group
of the Scottish Executive in Summer 2001. Using the empirical data from this study the paper explores best practice guidelines
for governments who wish to engage citizens in policymaking. The difficult task of addressing the requirements of all stakeholders,
i.e. government, civil society organizations (CSOs) and citizens in designing the technology is discussed. The use and moderation
of the electronic tools over the engagement period is assessed. Finally, the paper considers how the use of electronic tools
can be monitored and their impact on citizen participation and the decision-making of government be assessed.
It is alleged that rural people in South Africa are being excluded from the rest of the world in terms of communication and exchange of information due to lack of appropriate ICT policies. This research used grounded theory method to study the local authority of Dr S.J. Moroka in order to understand the limitations of the South African ICT policy for poor rural communities. It found lack of leadership for integrating multiple policy initiatives and evidence of a culture of non-compliance with policies. These are major challenges that need to be addressed. This chapter makes several practical suggestions for the integration of isolated, disadvantaged, and poverty-stricken rural communities into the rest of the world, enabling them to benefit from ICT-related services on a sustainable basis.
Keywords: Traditional leadership, grounded theory method, ICT Policies, rural communities, South Africa
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D1.2 Standards, Interfaces and APIs for Interplatform Communication in Web 2.0 Socila Media
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