Suchergebnisse

Data Science (DS) is expected to deliver value for public governance. In a number of studies, strong claims have been made about the potential of big data and data analytics and there are now several cases showing their application in areas such as service delivery and organizational administration. The role of DS in policy-making has, on the contrary, still been explored only marginally, but it is clear that there is the need for greater investigation because of its greater complexity and its distinctive inter-organizational boundaries. In this paper, we have investigated how DS can contribute to the policy definition process, endorsing a socio-technical perspective. This exploration has addressed the technical elements of DS - data and processes - as well as the social aspects surrounding the actors' interaction within the definition process. Three action research cases are presented in the paper, lifting the veil of obscurity from how DS can support policy-making in practice. The findings highlight the importance of a new role, here defined as that of a translator, who can provide clarity and understanding of policy needs, assess whether data-driven results fit the legislative setting to be addressed, and become the junction point between data scientists and policy-makers. The three cases and their different achievements make it possible to draw attention to the enabling and inhibiting factors in the application of DS.

Political activity is dangerous. Arising inevitably out of men's ability to influence each other, conferring upon them the benefits of joint endeavour, an indispensable source of social boons, it is also capable of doing great harm. Men can be moved to injure others or to ruin themselves. The very process of moving implies a risk of debasement for the moved and for the mover. Even the fairest vision of a good to be sought offers no moral guarantee, since it may poison hearts with hatred against those who are deemed an obstacle to its achievement.No apology is required for stressing a subjective dread of political activity: the chemist is not disqualified as a scientist because he is aware that explosives are dangerous: indeed that chemist is dangerous who lacks such awareness.This feeling of danger is widespread in human society and has ever haunted all but the more superficial authors. Although, to be sure, few have, like Hobbes, brought it out into the open, it has hovered in the background, exerting an invisible but effective influence upon their treatment of the subject; it may be, to a significant degree, responsible for the strange and unique texture of political science.There are no objects to which our attention is so naturally drawn as to our own fellows. It takes a conscious purpose to watch birds or ants, but we can not fail to watch other men, with whom we are inevitably associated, whose behaviour is so important to us that we need to foresee it, and who are sufficiently like us to facilitate our understanding of their actions. Being a man, which involves living with men, therefore involves observing men. And the knowledge of men could be called the most fairly distributed of all kinds of knowledge since each one of us may acquire it according to his willingness and capacity.