Stefaan Verhulst - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Stefaan Verhulst

Research paper thumbnail of Mobile phone data for informing public health actions across the COVID-19 pandemic life cycle

Research paper thumbnail of Access to new data sources for statistics

OECD Statistics Working Papers, 2017

Complete document available on OLIS in its original format This document, as well as any data and... more Complete document available on OLIS in its original format This document, as well as any data and map included herein, are without prejudice to the status of or sovereignty over any territory, to the delimitation of international frontiers and boundaries and to the name of any territory, city or area.

Research paper thumbnail of Comparative Analysis of International Co- and Self-regulation in Communications Markets

Globalisation, liberalisation and convergence of communication markets have triggered intensive d... more Globalisation, liberalisation and convergence of communication markets have triggered intensive debates about the options for regulatory reform, including the growing role of alternative modes of regulation (self-regulation, co-regulation). These alternatives or supplements to traditional statutory regulation are marked by the involvement of nongovernmental actors in regulatory processes. Both industry and policy makers consider alternative regulation to have great potential for solving problems in communication markets. Regulators are increasingly required to assess the potential and limitations of alternative regulatory institutions to inform or improve regulatory systems. As part of this, they are examining how existing alternative regulatory schemes work and what improvements can be made to them. Regulatory authorities are seeking to identify best practice in other countries in relation to self- and co-regulation and regulatory innovation. Empirical evaluations are intended to c...

Research paper thumbnail of The Potential of Social Media — Intelligence to Improve People’s Lives: Social Media Data for Good

In this report, developed with support from Facebook, we focus on an approach to extract public v... more In this report, developed with support from Facebook, we focus on an approach to extract public value from social media data that we believe holds the greatest potential: data collaboratives. Data collaboratives are an emerging form of public-private partnership in which actors from different sectors exchange information to create new public value. Such collaborative arrangements, for example between social media companies and humanitarian organizations or civil society actors, can be seen as possible templates for leveraging privately held data towards the attainment of public goals.

Research paper thumbnail of Encouraging and Sustaining Innovation in Government: Technology and Innovation in the Next Administration

Political Economy - Development: Domestic Development Strategies eJournal, 2016

This paper provides analysis and a set of concrete recommendations, both for the period of transi... more This paper provides analysis and a set of concrete recommendations, both for the period of transition before the inauguration, and for the start of the next presidency, to encourage and sustain innovation in government. Leveraging the insights from the experts who participated in a day-long discussion, we endeavor to explain how government can improve its use of using digital technologies to create more effective policies, solve problems faster and deliver services more effectively at the federal, state and local levels.

Research paper thumbnail of Emerging Uses of Technology for Development: A New Intelligence Paradigm

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021

Research paper thumbnail of Data Collaboratives as a New Frontier of Cross-Sector Partnerships in the Age of Open Data: Taxonomy Development

Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2017), 2017

Data collaboratives present a new form of cross-sector and public-private partnership to leverage... more Data collaboratives present a new form of cross-sector and public-private partnership to leverage (often corporate) data for addressing a societal challenge. They can be seen as the latest attempt to make data accessible to solve public problems. Although an increasing number of initiatives can be found, there is hardly any analysis of these emerging practices. This paper seeks to develop a taxonomy of forms of data collaboratives. The taxonomy consists of six dimensions related to data sharing and eight dimensions related to data use. Our analysis shows that data collaboratives exist in a variety of models. The taxonomy can help organizations to find a suitable form when shaping their efforts to create public value from corporate and other data. The use of data is not only dependent on the organizational arrangement, but also on aspects like the type of policy problem, incentives for use, and the expected outcome of data collaborative.

Research paper thumbnail of The Emergence of a Third Wave of Open Data: How To Accelerate the Re-Use of Data for Public Interest Purposes While Ensuring Data Rights and Community Flourishing

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Gender gaps in urban mobility

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2020

Mobile phone data have been extensively used to study urban mobility. However, studies based on g... more Mobile phone data have been extensively used to study urban mobility. However, studies based on gender-disaggregated large-scale data are still lacking, limiting our understanding of gendered aspects of urban mobility and our ability to design policies for gender equality. Here we study urban mobility from a gendered perspective, combining commercial and open datasets for the city of Santiago, Chile. We analyze call detail records for a large cohort of anonymized mobile phone users and reveal a gender gap in mobility: women visit fewer unique locations than men, and distribute their time less equally among such locations. Mapping this mobility gap over administrative divisions, we observe that a wider gap is associated with lower income and lack of public and private transportation options. Our results uncover a complex interplay between gendered mobility patterns, socio-economic factors and urban affordances, calling for further research and providing insights for policymakers and ...

Research paper thumbnail of Data Collaboratives

Proceedings of the 18th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, 2017

This panel 1 is dedicated to the theme of 'data collaboratives', a novel form of public private p... more This panel 1 is dedicated to the theme of 'data collaboratives', a novel form of public private partnership to leverage data for addressing societal challenges. The panel brings together prolific researchers and practitioners to share lessons and discuss how value is created from data collaboratives for the solving of public problems. The panel will highlight prominent examples of data collaboratives at international, national, and regional/city-levels and discuss the value creation mechanisms underlying them, as well as more broadly best practices and challenges associated with data collaboratives. The panel offers an opportunity for conference attendees to engage with this emerging new theme through interactive discussions and presentations of cutting-edge research and practice.

Research paper thumbnail of Open Data in Developing Economies: Toward Building an Evidence Base on What Works and How

Recent years have witnessed considerable speculation about the potential of open data to bring ab... more Recent years have witnessed considerable speculation about the potential of open data to bring about wide-scale transformation. The bulk of existing evidence about the impact of open data, however, focuses on high-income countries. Much less is known about open data's role and value in low- and middle-income countries, and more generally about its possible contributions to economic and social development. Open Data for Developing Economies features in-depth case studies on how open data is having an impact across the developing world-from an agriculture initiative in Colombia to data-driven healthcare projects in Uganda and South Africa to crisis response in Nepal. The analysis built on these case studies aims to create actionable intelligence regarding: (a) the conditions under which open data is most (and least) effective in development, presented in the form of a Periodic Table of Open Data; (b) strategies to maximize the positive contributions of open data to development; an...

Research paper thumbnail of A Research Roadmap to Advance Data Collaboratives Practice as a Novel Research Direction

International Journal of Electronic Government Research, 2018

An increasing number of initiatives have emerged around the world to help facilitate data sharing... more An increasing number of initiatives have emerged around the world to help facilitate data sharing and collaborations to leverage different sources of data to address societal problems. They are called “data collaboratives”. Data collaboratives are seen as a novel way to match real life problems with relevant expertise and data from across the sectors. Despite its significance and growing experimentation by practitioners, there has been limited research in this field. In this article, the authors report on the outcomes of a panel discussing critical issues facing data collaboratives and develop a research and development agenda. The panel included participants from the government, academics, and practitioners and was held in June 2017 during the 18th International Conference on Digital Government Research at City University of New York (Staten Island, New York, USA). The article begins by discussing the concept of data collaboratives. Then the authors formulate research questions and...

Research paper thumbnail of How Search Engine Data Enhance the Understanding of Determinants of Suicide in India and Inform Prevention: Observational Study

Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of How Search Engine Data Enhance the Understanding of Determinants of Suicide in India and Inform Prevention: Observational Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND India is home to 20% of the world’s suicide deaths. Although statistics regarding suic... more BACKGROUND India is home to 20% of the world’s suicide deaths. Although statistics regarding suicide in India are distressingly high, data and cultural issues likely contribute to a widespread underreporting of the problem. Social stigma and only recent decriminalization of suicide are among the factors hampering official agencies’ collection and reporting of suicide rates. OBJECTIVE As the product of a data collaborative, this paper leverages private-sector search engine data toward gaining a fuller, more accurate picture of the suicide issue among young people in India. By combining official statistics on suicide with data generated through search queries, this paper seeks to: add an additional layer of information to more accurately represent the magnitude of the problem, determine whether search query data can serve as an effective proxy for factors contributing to suicide that are not represented in traditional datasets, and consider how data collaboratives built on search quer...

Research paper thumbnail of Data collaboratives as “bazaars”?

Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, 2017

Purpose In “data collaboratives”, private and public organizations coordinate their activities to... more Purpose In “data collaboratives”, private and public organizations coordinate their activities to leverage data to address a societal challenge. This paper aims to focus on analyzing challenges and coordination mechanisms of data collaboratives. Design/methodology/approach This study uses coordination theory to identify and discuss the coordination problems and coordination mechanisms associated with data collaboratives. The authors also use a taxonomy of data collaborative forms from a previous empirical study to discuss how different forms of data collaboratives may require different coordination mechanisms. Findings The study analyzed data collaboratives from the perspective of organizational and task levels. At the organizational level, the authors argue that data collaboratives present an example of the bazaar form of coordination. At the task level, the authors identified five coordination problems and discussed potential coordination mechanisms to address them, such as coordi...

Research paper thumbnail of Innovations in Global Governance: Toward a Distributed Internet Governance Ecosystem

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014

is co-founder and chief research and development officer of The Governance Lab (GovLab), where he... more is co-founder and chief research and development officer of The Governance Lab (GovLab), where he is responsible for building a research foundation on how to transform governance using advances in science and technology. Stefaan spent more than a decade as chief of research for the Markle Foundation, where he continues to serve as senior advisor. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Culture and Communications at New York University (NYU). Previously at Oxford University he co-founded and was the head of the program in comparative media law and policy at the Centre for Socio Legal Studies, and also served as senior research fellow of Wolfson College. He is still an emeritus fellow at Oxford. Stefaan has served as a consultant to numerous international and national organizations and has authored and co-authored several books.

Research paper thumbnail of Diasporic and Transnational Communication

Javnost - The Public, 1999

Research paper thumbnail of The Social Dynamics of Open Data

The Social Dynamics of Open Data is a collection of peer reviewed papers presented at the 2nd Ope... more The Social Dynamics of Open Data is a collection of peer reviewed papers presented at the 2nd Open Data Research Symposium (ODRS) held in Madrid, Spain, on 5 October 2016. Research is critical to developing a more rigorous and fine-combed analysis not only of why open data is valuable, but how it is valuable and under what specific conditions. The objective of the Open Data Research Symposium and the subsequent collection of chapters published here is to build such a stronger evidence base. This base is essential to understanding what open data’s impacts have been to date, and how positive impacts can be enabled and amplified. Consequently, common to the majority of chapters in this collection is the attempt by the authors to draw on existing scientific theories, and to apply them to open data to better explain the socially embedded dynamics that account for open data’s successes and failures in contributing to a more equitable and just society.

Research paper thumbnail of The Concept of Self Regulation and the Int e rnet

Research paper thumbnail of An Architecture for Privacy In a Networked Health Information Environment

Cambridge …, 2008

As we move toward the creation of a networked health information environment, the potential of pr... more As we move toward the creation of a networked health information environment, the potential of privacy intrusions increases, with potentially devastating impact on quality and access to healthcare. This paper describes the risks we face and proposes a framework to minimize ...

Research paper thumbnail of Mobile phone data for informing public health actions across the COVID-19 pandemic life cycle

Research paper thumbnail of Access to new data sources for statistics

OECD Statistics Working Papers, 2017

Complete document available on OLIS in its original format This document, as well as any data and... more Complete document available on OLIS in its original format This document, as well as any data and map included herein, are without prejudice to the status of or sovereignty over any territory, to the delimitation of international frontiers and boundaries and to the name of any territory, city or area.

Research paper thumbnail of Comparative Analysis of International Co- and Self-regulation in Communications Markets

Globalisation, liberalisation and convergence of communication markets have triggered intensive d... more Globalisation, liberalisation and convergence of communication markets have triggered intensive debates about the options for regulatory reform, including the growing role of alternative modes of regulation (self-regulation, co-regulation). These alternatives or supplements to traditional statutory regulation are marked by the involvement of nongovernmental actors in regulatory processes. Both industry and policy makers consider alternative regulation to have great potential for solving problems in communication markets. Regulators are increasingly required to assess the potential and limitations of alternative regulatory institutions to inform or improve regulatory systems. As part of this, they are examining how existing alternative regulatory schemes work and what improvements can be made to them. Regulatory authorities are seeking to identify best practice in other countries in relation to self- and co-regulation and regulatory innovation. Empirical evaluations are intended to c...

Research paper thumbnail of The Potential of Social Media — Intelligence to Improve People’s Lives: Social Media Data for Good

In this report, developed with support from Facebook, we focus on an approach to extract public v... more In this report, developed with support from Facebook, we focus on an approach to extract public value from social media data that we believe holds the greatest potential: data collaboratives. Data collaboratives are an emerging form of public-private partnership in which actors from different sectors exchange information to create new public value. Such collaborative arrangements, for example between social media companies and humanitarian organizations or civil society actors, can be seen as possible templates for leveraging privately held data towards the attainment of public goals.

Research paper thumbnail of Encouraging and Sustaining Innovation in Government: Technology and Innovation in the Next Administration

Political Economy - Development: Domestic Development Strategies eJournal, 2016

This paper provides analysis and a set of concrete recommendations, both for the period of transi... more This paper provides analysis and a set of concrete recommendations, both for the period of transition before the inauguration, and for the start of the next presidency, to encourage and sustain innovation in government. Leveraging the insights from the experts who participated in a day-long discussion, we endeavor to explain how government can improve its use of using digital technologies to create more effective policies, solve problems faster and deliver services more effectively at the federal, state and local levels.

Research paper thumbnail of Emerging Uses of Technology for Development: A New Intelligence Paradigm

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021

Research paper thumbnail of Data Collaboratives as a New Frontier of Cross-Sector Partnerships in the Age of Open Data: Taxonomy Development

Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2017), 2017

Data collaboratives present a new form of cross-sector and public-private partnership to leverage... more Data collaboratives present a new form of cross-sector and public-private partnership to leverage (often corporate) data for addressing a societal challenge. They can be seen as the latest attempt to make data accessible to solve public problems. Although an increasing number of initiatives can be found, there is hardly any analysis of these emerging practices. This paper seeks to develop a taxonomy of forms of data collaboratives. The taxonomy consists of six dimensions related to data sharing and eight dimensions related to data use. Our analysis shows that data collaboratives exist in a variety of models. The taxonomy can help organizations to find a suitable form when shaping their efforts to create public value from corporate and other data. The use of data is not only dependent on the organizational arrangement, but also on aspects like the type of policy problem, incentives for use, and the expected outcome of data collaborative.

Research paper thumbnail of The Emergence of a Third Wave of Open Data: How To Accelerate the Re-Use of Data for Public Interest Purposes While Ensuring Data Rights and Community Flourishing

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Gender gaps in urban mobility

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2020

Mobile phone data have been extensively used to study urban mobility. However, studies based on g... more Mobile phone data have been extensively used to study urban mobility. However, studies based on gender-disaggregated large-scale data are still lacking, limiting our understanding of gendered aspects of urban mobility and our ability to design policies for gender equality. Here we study urban mobility from a gendered perspective, combining commercial and open datasets for the city of Santiago, Chile. We analyze call detail records for a large cohort of anonymized mobile phone users and reveal a gender gap in mobility: women visit fewer unique locations than men, and distribute their time less equally among such locations. Mapping this mobility gap over administrative divisions, we observe that a wider gap is associated with lower income and lack of public and private transportation options. Our results uncover a complex interplay between gendered mobility patterns, socio-economic factors and urban affordances, calling for further research and providing insights for policymakers and ...

Research paper thumbnail of Data Collaboratives

Proceedings of the 18th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, 2017

This panel 1 is dedicated to the theme of 'data collaboratives', a novel form of public private p... more This panel 1 is dedicated to the theme of 'data collaboratives', a novel form of public private partnership to leverage data for addressing societal challenges. The panel brings together prolific researchers and practitioners to share lessons and discuss how value is created from data collaboratives for the solving of public problems. The panel will highlight prominent examples of data collaboratives at international, national, and regional/city-levels and discuss the value creation mechanisms underlying them, as well as more broadly best practices and challenges associated with data collaboratives. The panel offers an opportunity for conference attendees to engage with this emerging new theme through interactive discussions and presentations of cutting-edge research and practice.

Research paper thumbnail of Open Data in Developing Economies: Toward Building an Evidence Base on What Works and How

Recent years have witnessed considerable speculation about the potential of open data to bring ab... more Recent years have witnessed considerable speculation about the potential of open data to bring about wide-scale transformation. The bulk of existing evidence about the impact of open data, however, focuses on high-income countries. Much less is known about open data's role and value in low- and middle-income countries, and more generally about its possible contributions to economic and social development. Open Data for Developing Economies features in-depth case studies on how open data is having an impact across the developing world-from an agriculture initiative in Colombia to data-driven healthcare projects in Uganda and South Africa to crisis response in Nepal. The analysis built on these case studies aims to create actionable intelligence regarding: (a) the conditions under which open data is most (and least) effective in development, presented in the form of a Periodic Table of Open Data; (b) strategies to maximize the positive contributions of open data to development; an...

Research paper thumbnail of A Research Roadmap to Advance Data Collaboratives Practice as a Novel Research Direction

International Journal of Electronic Government Research, 2018

An increasing number of initiatives have emerged around the world to help facilitate data sharing... more An increasing number of initiatives have emerged around the world to help facilitate data sharing and collaborations to leverage different sources of data to address societal problems. They are called “data collaboratives”. Data collaboratives are seen as a novel way to match real life problems with relevant expertise and data from across the sectors. Despite its significance and growing experimentation by practitioners, there has been limited research in this field. In this article, the authors report on the outcomes of a panel discussing critical issues facing data collaboratives and develop a research and development agenda. The panel included participants from the government, academics, and practitioners and was held in June 2017 during the 18th International Conference on Digital Government Research at City University of New York (Staten Island, New York, USA). The article begins by discussing the concept of data collaboratives. Then the authors formulate research questions and...

Research paper thumbnail of How Search Engine Data Enhance the Understanding of Determinants of Suicide in India and Inform Prevention: Observational Study

Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2019

Research paper thumbnail of How Search Engine Data Enhance the Understanding of Determinants of Suicide in India and Inform Prevention: Observational Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND India is home to 20% of the world’s suicide deaths. Although statistics regarding suic... more BACKGROUND India is home to 20% of the world’s suicide deaths. Although statistics regarding suicide in India are distressingly high, data and cultural issues likely contribute to a widespread underreporting of the problem. Social stigma and only recent decriminalization of suicide are among the factors hampering official agencies’ collection and reporting of suicide rates. OBJECTIVE As the product of a data collaborative, this paper leverages private-sector search engine data toward gaining a fuller, more accurate picture of the suicide issue among young people in India. By combining official statistics on suicide with data generated through search queries, this paper seeks to: add an additional layer of information to more accurately represent the magnitude of the problem, determine whether search query data can serve as an effective proxy for factors contributing to suicide that are not represented in traditional datasets, and consider how data collaboratives built on search quer...

Research paper thumbnail of Data collaboratives as “bazaars”?

Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, 2017

Purpose In “data collaboratives”, private and public organizations coordinate their activities to... more Purpose In “data collaboratives”, private and public organizations coordinate their activities to leverage data to address a societal challenge. This paper aims to focus on analyzing challenges and coordination mechanisms of data collaboratives. Design/methodology/approach This study uses coordination theory to identify and discuss the coordination problems and coordination mechanisms associated with data collaboratives. The authors also use a taxonomy of data collaborative forms from a previous empirical study to discuss how different forms of data collaboratives may require different coordination mechanisms. Findings The study analyzed data collaboratives from the perspective of organizational and task levels. At the organizational level, the authors argue that data collaboratives present an example of the bazaar form of coordination. At the task level, the authors identified five coordination problems and discussed potential coordination mechanisms to address them, such as coordi...

Research paper thumbnail of Innovations in Global Governance: Toward a Distributed Internet Governance Ecosystem

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014

is co-founder and chief research and development officer of The Governance Lab (GovLab), where he... more is co-founder and chief research and development officer of The Governance Lab (GovLab), where he is responsible for building a research foundation on how to transform governance using advances in science and technology. Stefaan spent more than a decade as chief of research for the Markle Foundation, where he continues to serve as senior advisor. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Culture and Communications at New York University (NYU). Previously at Oxford University he co-founded and was the head of the program in comparative media law and policy at the Centre for Socio Legal Studies, and also served as senior research fellow of Wolfson College. He is still an emeritus fellow at Oxford. Stefaan has served as a consultant to numerous international and national organizations and has authored and co-authored several books.

Research paper thumbnail of Diasporic and Transnational Communication

Javnost - The Public, 1999

Research paper thumbnail of The Social Dynamics of Open Data

The Social Dynamics of Open Data is a collection of peer reviewed papers presented at the 2nd Ope... more The Social Dynamics of Open Data is a collection of peer reviewed papers presented at the 2nd Open Data Research Symposium (ODRS) held in Madrid, Spain, on 5 October 2016. Research is critical to developing a more rigorous and fine-combed analysis not only of why open data is valuable, but how it is valuable and under what specific conditions. The objective of the Open Data Research Symposium and the subsequent collection of chapters published here is to build such a stronger evidence base. This base is essential to understanding what open data’s impacts have been to date, and how positive impacts can be enabled and amplified. Consequently, common to the majority of chapters in this collection is the attempt by the authors to draw on existing scientific theories, and to apply them to open data to better explain the socially embedded dynamics that account for open data’s successes and failures in contributing to a more equitable and just society.

Research paper thumbnail of The Concept of Self Regulation and the Int e rnet

Research paper thumbnail of An Architecture for Privacy In a Networked Health Information Environment

Cambridge …, 2008

As we move toward the creation of a networked health information environment, the potential of pr... more As we move toward the creation of a networked health information environment, the potential of privacy intrusions increases, with potentially devastating impact on quality and access to healthcare. This paper describes the risks we face and proposes a framework to minimize ...