Digital public infrastructure and the economics of public value: what is ‘public’ about DPI?

Public and private value creation using artificial intelligence: An empirical study of AI voice robot users in Chinese public sector

Public value creation is traditionally considered as the citizens' collective expectations with respect to government and public services. Recent e-government literature indicates that what exactly constitutes public value in digital government is still debated. Whereas previous research acknowledges aspects such as co-production and the orchestration role of government in the context of public value creation, there is only a limited understanding of how public value is created by the interactions between government and business actors, and the role digital technologies play in that process. Furthermore, so far, research into public value creation processes is limited to specific services that aim to meet a specific goal; for a more complete view, an integrative perspective is required to address the multiplicity of goals. Societal challenges including climate change, sustainability, and the transition towards circularity will require governments to play a crucial role. Businesses are also transforming their vision by adding societal goals to their economic objectives and contributing to these societal challenges. This necessitates even more the need to explicitly consider the role of business in public value creation processes. In this paper we argue that there is a need to understand public value creation as an interactive process, involving both government and business actors. In this process, voluntary information sharing enabled by digital infrastructures has the potential to contribute to the value creation processes, but the increased complexity of digital technologies obscures the effects they can have on value creation. Therefore, we develop a framework that allows to reason about public value creation as an interactive process, involving government and businesses, facilitated by voluntary information sharing. The framework also allows to reason about how the technological design choices of the underlying digital infrastructure influence this value creation process. For the framework development, we use an in-depth case study from the domain of international trade. We analyze the interactions between customs authorities and supply chain actors for jointly creating public value related to revenue collection, as well as safety and security of goods entering the European Union, using business data made available via a global blockchain-enabled infrastructure. In future research, the framework that we developed can be used to analyze more complex cases with additional public value aspects, such as sustainability and circularity.

In both policy and academic debates in Britain, as elsewhere in Europe, concern is increasingly expressed over the implications of spousal immigration for ‘integration’. Continued practices of ‘homeland’ transnational marriage within some ethnic minority communities, in particular, are presented as problematic, and new immigration restrictions likely to particularly affect such groups are justified on the grounds of promoting integration. The evidence base to underpin this concern is, however, surprisingly limited and analysis is based on differing and often partial conceptualisations of integration. Through an examination of the evidence in recent studies, we interrogate the impact which spousal immigration can have within differing domains of integration. Exposing the complex processes at play we demonstrate the need for future research to deploy a nuanced, more comprehensive concept of integration if it is to avoid simplistic assertions that these forms of marriage migration have a single, direct impact on integration processes.

The three big of the title include: What is 'public value'?; Is public value different from the aggregation of private values?; Is it possible to identify and evaluate public values? The author provides qualified responses to each of these questions and then turns to the issue of public values and infrastructure, suggesting that infrastructure provides an especially useful laboratory for studying public value. First, infrastructure issues force an engagement of both public and private values and decisions about the nexus of the two. Second, infrastructures provide a good vantage point for studying both empirical and normative 'publicness'.

The paper offers a substantiation of directions and essence of building up public value by implementing decentralized information platforms within the existing GaaP model based on government centralized platforms. The paper provides a critical analysis of the most resonant and significant foreign government centralized platforms from the UK, India, Estonia, Italy and Ukraine. Their example indicates the technological way of forming new public value using three main mechanisms of adjustment of business processes. While comparing with the existing practice of using centralized platforms, the author proposes a new meaning of building up public value through the introduction of decentralized information platforms. An important conclusion has been made that despite governments being skeptical about integrating state databases with registers based on blockchain, such integration is very likely to happen in 2–3 years, which will be possible due to introduction of new web modules and recognition of trusted private registers based on blockchain. The configuration of the existing organizational GaaP model allows creating additional public value and mobilizing state and private resources to arrange various configurations of public services. For this purpose, in each country, not only the GaaP model, but the three known mechanisms for its provision should be organized properly. In order to create a greater expected public value, public authorities need to correlate and coordinate the contributions of interested private and state entities to better meet different expectations and needs and avoid the consequences of opportunistic actions by third parties. Without the effective orchestration mechanisms, the GaaP model risks to have a significantly negative impact on society and creation of public value. The foreign experience shows that adoption of platform organization is not an absolute condition for a greater public value yet. State governance also requires greater functionality of mechanisms for organizing business processes (orchestration, choreography and deployment of small ecosystems) in terms of provision of public value from centralized information platforms for simultaneous support of different service delivery processes to select the optimal configuration of the method of public service delivery, the benefit of which can be appreciated only by its consumers-citizens and only if there is at least one alternative.

Purpose: This article explores the evolution of practical global governance measures aimed at promoting public values in an anarchic (in the sense of without government) international operating environment. The process of international organization has occupied a central position in the discourse, and the physical manifestations of various formal international organizations and informal institutions have provided practical experiments in policy implementation. From the starting point of the universal lowest common denominator of values generated by an overlapping consensus of competing epistemological traditions (that of avoiding interstate war), the process of international organization has gradually expanded to embrace non-traditional security public values. Middle powers have played a key role in the expansion of the global governance paradigm, and aspirations for more comprehensive public value generation. The centrality of multilateralism and the roles of middle powers have, however, increasingly come under pressure from the realities of great power contestation in the international operating environment. The relatively new “minilateral” manifestations of international organization are also demonstrated as coming up short when providing public value promotion. This article, therefore, asks and attempts to answer the central global governance question of how can public values be promoted in the international operating environment in the absence of a central governing authority?
 Method: This research project used a qualitative approach consisting of literature review and document analysis. The results of this study should be supplemented by quantitative and qualitative studies in the future. The literature review consists of a comprehensive assessment of scholarly academic publications from competing perspectives in the fields of political and moral philosophy, public administration, and international relations. The document survey is mainly related to the policy documentation output of national governments and international organizations, as well as media reports.
 Results: The research identifies how new practical challenges to established multilateral manifestations of international organization and the global normative aspirations of middle powers, as well as shortcomings of the more recent minilateral arrangements require radical out of the box thinking. Hence, new modalities and conceptualizations are proposed to address the challenges of public value provision through the process of international organization. These include non-traditional security minilaterals, regional international commissions, and a central role for the new conceptualization of “second-tier” powers.
 Conclusion: Global public values are generated at the international level, in the absence of global government, through the process of international organization. Various models of practical manifestation of the related theoretical concepts have been proposed, and have been implemented, with varying degrees of success. In a time of increased great power contestation, however, multilateral institutions and middle powers, their chief proponents, have been undermined. The proliferation of minilaterals and minilateralism has proven to be an inadequate procedural replacement. Hence the need to explore additional agencies of “disruptive innovation.”

In April 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Austrian Red Cross announced it was encouraging a cooperation with Google and Apple’s Exposure Notification Framework to develop the so-called Stopp Corona app – a contact tracing app which would support health personnel in monitoring the spread of the virus to prevent new infections [1]. The involvement of Google and Apple to support combating a public health emergency fuelled controversy over addressing profit-driven private interests at the expense of public values. Concerns have been raised about the dominant position of US based big tech companies in political decision concerning public values. This research investigates how public values are safeguarded in cooperation with big tech companies in the Austrian contact tracing app Stopp Corona. Contact tracing apps manifest a bigger trend in literature, signifying power dynamics of big tech companies, governments, and civil society in relation to public values. The theoretical foundation of this research form prevailing concepts from Media and Communication Studies (MCS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS) about power dynamics such as the expansion of digital platforms and infrastructures, the political economy of big tech companies, dependencies, and digital platforms and infrastructure governance. The cooperative responsibility framework guides the empirical investigation in four main steps. First steps identify key public values and main stakeholders. The next steps analyse public deliberations on advancing public values and the translation of public values based on the outcome of public deliberations. This research applies a qualitative case study, including document analysis and expert interviews. In total, 52 documents were analysed and six expert interviews conducted. Findings show that key public values at stake concerning Stopp Corona involve data protection and privacy, (cyber-)security and safety, accuracy, voluntariness and consent, accessibility, inclusiveness, transparency, trust, etc. Public deliberations of multiple stakeholders about public values can help to safeguard public values. While an involvement of EU, state, civil society, and science and research can be witnessed in defining and advancing public values, Google and Apple, ultimately, translate the outcome of public deliberations through technological design choices. Therefore, public deliberations require a public-value oriented process which is transparent and involves a strong civil society and science and research community, and a unified EU voice.

Safeguarding Public Values in Cooperation with Big Tech Companies: The Case of the Austrian Contact Tracing App Stopp Corona

There is an increasing demand for new and better measurement tools that can help researchers, policymakers and program managers to assess collaborative efforts to enhance public innovation in order to solve complex problems and enhance the creation of public value. Building on a research project that developed and tested a criteria-based assessment tool, this chapter makes the case for criteria-based measurement of collaborative innovation and its impact on public problem solving and value creation. First, we explain the main purposes and characteristics of criteria-based measurement of collaborative governance initiatives. Then, we define the key variables and indicators of collaboration, innovation and public value. Next we present the results from deploying the tool to measure and assess 24 cases of collaborative crime prevention. Finally, we discuss the prospects for criteria-based measurement of collaborative innovation processes and their public value outcomes.

Urbanites increasingly turn to digital mobility platforms to make use of means of transportation and to plan and book journeys. While these platforms can contribute to making urban travel more sustainable and efficient, they can also lead to governance challenges and have negative external effects, raising questions about how public values can best be safeguarded. In this article, public values are defined as normative concepts that describe both the impact on and democratic control of an affected public. This article aims to initiate a more structured discussion about platform urbanism, specifically how and to what extent public values are incorporated in platform design and operation in the realm of mobility. It introduces an assessment framework for mobility platforms that was developed as part of a transdisciplinary research project in the Netherlands. This framework is grounded in two academic debates regarding 1) the rise of platform urbanism and 2) new forms of mobility that accompany the densification of cities. The paper refers to the mobility pilots Kutsuplus, UbiGo and Whim to illustrate how the safeguarding of public values can be evaluated. In the concluding section, the paper discusses some ways in which the assessment framework can be used for future research, for instance through scenarios.

From its entry into force in 1976 up to its present membership of 160 States Parties, the interpretation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (hereafter, the Covenant) has always involved confronting normative and institutional complexities. Unlike the specific prohibitions contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Covenant norms purposely contemplate dynamic implementation over time, with the quality of treaty compliance expected to accommodate and adjust to States' governance capabilities, resource endowments, and fiscal contexts. Such interpretive variability, however, did not necessarily doom the Covenant to normative indeterminacy. Rather, as we show in Part I (A Normative Lattice: The Determinacy of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights), the lattice-like normative system of the Covenant still enables a reasoned assessment of international responsibility and compliance by State and non-State actors with Covenant obligations. Covenant interpreters must first identify the legal social protection baseline applicable to the State (e.g. the ‘minimum core content of Covenant obligations’ that are jointly determined at the outset by each State Party with the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights upon the State's accession to the Covenant), in conjunction with two overarching obligations flowing parallel with this baseline – the ‘principle of nondiscrimination’, which requires a State Party to guarantee non-discrimination in their implementation of Covenant rights; and the ‘principle of non-retrogression’, which commits a State Party to social protection conduct that will, at the very least, not fall below its pre-committed legal baseline of the ‘minimum core’ of Covenant rights. These two principles and the ‘minimum core’ baseline comprise the starting point for the periodic assessment of compliance with the Covenant. Beyond this point, Covenant interpreters have to assess the State's continuing obligation to ‘progressively realize’ Covenant rights as the State's fiscal, economic, and governance contexts and capabilities accordingly adapt and develop over time. We further note that the programmatic, evolutive, and transactional nature of economic, social and cultural rights inimitably involves a spectrum of actors – States as well as non-State actors (such as international organizations). As we show in Part II (Expanding Universes: Covenant Interpreters and Violations by State and non-State Actors), international responsibility for Covenant violations could attach, not just for conduct of States and non-State actors that breach individual substantive obligations in Articles 6 to 15 of the Covenant, but also from breach of the overriding ‘duty to cooperate’ that was built into the telos and design of Covenant obligations. The duty to cooperate, as recognized throughout the General Comments issued by the Committee, is an obligation that has particular salience especially in times of economic emergencies or resource scarcities impairing States Parties' abilities to ‘respect, protect, and fulfill’ economic, social and cultural rights. As is axiomatic with the law of international responsibility, Covenant violations give rise to a corollary duty to make reparations. However, the ultimate form of relief granted would depend on the actual jurisdictional remit of the forum chosen to adjudicate the Covenant violation. In this respect, the proliferation of authoritative institutions that now interpret the Covenant (e.g. the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; States Parties; international, regional, and national courts and tribunals; other specialized agencies of the United Nations) explains the diversity of forms of relief recognized as sufficient reparations for Covenant violations. In the Conclusion (Reframing International Responsibility for Covenant Violations), we point out the convergence of various dialectical achievements throughout nearly five decades since the entry into force of the Covenant: 1) the sustained quasi-legislative work of the Committee throughout its General Comments; 2) the continuing interpretive practices of national, regional, and international courts and tribunals in regard to economic, social, and cultural rights; 3) the broad participation and interpretive praxis of States, international organizations, and other non- State actors in the settled reportage procedures before the Committee; and 4) the recent adoption of empirical methodologies for assessing human rights compliance. These developments helped ripen a modern interpretive paradigm for the authoritative determination of international responsibility for Covenant violations.

IntroductionAs a visual artist it seems to me that the ideal relationship between government and cultural producers is a coalitional one; an “alliance for combined action of distinct parties, persons or states without permanent incorporation into one body” (Oxford English Dictionary). The word “coalition”, however, is entirely absent from the document that forms the basis of the analysis of this paper, Creating Value: An Arts and Culture Sector Policy Framework 2010-2014, from the Government of Western Australia’s Department of Culture and the Arts. Released in March 2010, Creating Value has been introduced by the DCA’s Deputy Director General Jacqui Allen as the “first arts policy in Australia to adopt a public value approach” (DCA, New Policy Framework) whereby "the Department of Culture and the Arts is charged with delivering public value to the Western Australian community through our partnership with the culture and arts sector." As indicated in Allen’s press release, this document achieves its aim of providing “clarity in [the DCA’s] relationships with the culture and arts sector”. As an artist, cultural worker, or someone generally interested in the cultural wellbeing of Australian communities it would seem timely to consider just how this new and influential policy framework envisages the specific working relationships that make up the “partnerships across the culture and arts sector, government, the public and private sector” (DCA, Creating Value 2).In this brief paper it is my intention to interrogate the idea of “coalition” in relation to the evidence provided in the DCA’s Policy Framework, Creating Value, in order to examine the extent to which this State’s involvement in culture and arts may indeed be considered coalitional. In approaching the notion of the coalitional I take the position that there are two key elements to this idea, the first being the notion of an “alliance for combined action” and the second being that the distinct parties involved are not incorporated into one body. What is difficult, at this intersection between the strategic advances of governance and the more organic development of culture, is to distinguish between levels at which the interests of both parties in a coalition or partnership are served by the alliance. As I will argue later in this paper, there is an important distinction to be made between working under temporary contract to specifications (in which one party’s design is realised through a primarily economic exchange with those providing the requisite goods and services) and the kind of negotiated relationship between means and ends that is required to support the genuine development of culture. The question is whether the artist (or other cultural producer), receiving funding to produce cultural work according to “public value” criteria, is able to develop culture or merely able to reproduce an understanding of culture given by the funding brief and assessment panel? It seems to me that significant cultural development is only possible where the public value of the outcomes of cultural production is subject to continuous negotiation and debate – surely it is in the coalitional outcomes (the alliance of distinct parties for combined action) of such discussion that a meaningful identification with culture occurs?In the following discussion around Creating Value my approach is to focus upon some aspects of the policy framework that provide particular evidence of the kind of “combined action” of government and the culture and arts sector that the DCA is proposing in this document. When seen against a more cultural understanding of the “action” of making art and the dynamic processes of producing and identifying with culture, it becomes clear why it may be considered that the DCA and many Western Australian cultural producers may not be engaged in the same project at all, let alone be in effective partnership or coalition.“Public Value” and the Specifications of Cultural ProductionEliseo Vivas observes that in the process of creatively applying symbolic order and understanding to the physical world, humanity acquires culture and an ability to better exploit the world. He also notes that in this process “of constituting the world, [human-kind’s] merely physiological needs are complicated by new needs” (129); new systems of cultural values that assume no less importance in human activity than our more basic bodily needs. Vivas pertinently states, however, that more often than not in human society within a complex and existing symbolic order these cultural needs simply become an aspect of our practical functioning (an extension of survival), and we tend to inhibit our capacity to constitute the world through creative and symbolic endeavours. This depiction of cultural production as an activity that is constitutive of the world is particularly significant in relation to the DCA’s Creating Value. Despite noting that “it is through creative people that we better understand our world” (DCA, Creating Value 8), which echoes with Vivas’s contention that “the poet is needed to give the practical man his stage” (Vivas 129) the policy framework seems rather to exemplify the inhibiting of culturally constitutive activities (production) in favour of “practical functioning” (reproduction).What can be observed particularly well in the DCA’s policy framework is how effectively ideas associated with creative and cultural production have been co-opted to the cause of “practical functioning”. Looking for instance at the notion of “creativity” within Creating Value we discover that “creativity is the driving force of the arts and culture sector” (DCA, Creating Value 5) and that “creativity” is one of the “priority public value principles” for the policy framework, along with “engagement”. Reading more closely one understands that creativity is seen as producing the “distinctive” and the “unique”, a brand that is recognised as Western Australian and which, through such “recognition” and “significance” and through its “enriching” and “transforming” capacities (7), is seen to “add to a sense of place and belonging” (11) for the WA community. This in turn makes WA a “better place to live, work and visit” and ultimately delivers “economic and social outcomes that encourage and support growth” (2). The DCA’s strategies appear to have little to do with a dynamic conception of culture in which new worlds and systems of values may be constituted, but is focussed upon the optimisation and rationalisation of economic outcomes under the guise of “public value”.My contention is that, as difficult as the notion may be to entertain, a department of culture and the arts ought to understand that creative and cultural production are part of a dynamic system that continually engages in a process of tentatively constituting the world. The arts and culture sector undeniably has an important role to play in the formation of and identification with a national cultural identity, which can manifest in international prestige, tourist dollars and other forms of economic growth (Abbing 246; Chaney 166-67). Western Australian culture is not, however, as the DCA seems to perceive, a static and monumental edifice that acts as a singular landmark for Western Australia in local, national and international contexts. The DCA’s arts and culture policy framework talks of its strategies “reflecting the DCA’s vision, values and strategic objectives” (DCA, Creating Value 13) and in a number of places suggests that it will “respond to changing needs” (2, 5, 8). Surely an approach that was interested in the specific value that creative and cultural production has to offer to the community would recognise that it is not in a singular vision but in the world creatively renegotiated and reconstituted by different people and groups of people that such a value and identification is to be found? Furthermore, if Vivas is right, then the support and promotion of culture ought to be as much about cultural needs not yet anticipated, for cultural products whose significance is not currently recognised, as it is about being responsive and catering to the demands of those whom the DCA identifies as the present consumers and stake-holders in WA arts and culture. What is missing from the partnership, as conceived by the DCA between itself and the culture and arts sector, is an adequate mechanism by which “public value” is recognised as a system of constantly changing values in which the culture and arts sector play an important role in developing, extending and negotiating through their creative and cultural production.As Jürgen Habermas suggests, to approach culture strategically in terms of outcomes and deployment is to compromise the internal development that actually provides arts and cultural work with its meaning and significance (Habermas 71). Culture becomes not a distinctive composite of differing and changing world views linked by the “living” process of their “nature-like” coexistence and development, but a monolithic identity or brand with representative products (no matter how diverse those products may be).This policy framework document would suggest not a coalitional “alliance for combined action” but more accurately a process of putting the various strategic goals and cultural aspirations (with “public value” specifications) of the DCA up for tender in much the same way that another Government department might seek tenders for the construction of a bridge or building. It is perhaps telling that Creating Value is described as a “road map to help the Department achieve its vision” (DCA, Creating Value 2).“Engagement” and the Use Value of FreedomCreating Value states that “there is a complex relationship between creativity and engagement, which are the principles driving the delivery of public value outcomes” (DCA, Creating Value 5). The policy framework goes on to suggest that the conception of “engagement” that inf

Over the past decades, digital technologies have become ubiquitous, impacting and changing the ways society operates. Immense public and economic value is being created by improving access to information and resources. Hence, many public administration units around the globe continue to focus on digital transformation. Although mostly associated with digitizing services and workflow via software platforms, India’s efforts have taken a “Lego building block approach” toward technology which can be repurposed and recombined to deliver solutions at the social level. These digital public infrastructure (DPI) blocks have had significant impact on socio-economic development. In this special issue, we explore the role of DPI in digitally transforming public service delivery and in creating public value. The issue aims to make an important contribution to public administration and digital government literature, by examining India’s DPI and its positive externalities, in particular its role in financial and health inclusion. These papers include vital knowledge that can support policy processes on digital transformation and public value creation for India and other developing countries of the global South.

International Governance via Shared Sovereignty Arrangements between International (Donor) Organisations and Weak States

The implementation of good governance in the EU member states was investigated (by interpretation and application), considering the different functions of government bodies. Good governance as a pivotal public value in each of the member states has fundamental roots in the different phases of European history. In these phases we find aspects of the rule of law, democracy, and the institutional state developing and becoming natural dimensions of good governance, a common public value for European states. The outcome was that good governance norms developed in the member states sometimes in a general, abstract way, such as the concept of the rule of law, the notion of democracy, and the classical framework of constitutional institutions. There is, however, a tendency to specify these general dimensions of the good governance concept through principles, in some countries more than others. A principles-based development of policies in the member states was discovered, which is the key to good governance in these states. In different legal forms—constitutions, laws, policy papers, case law, and reports of ombudsmen and audit institutions—are the six specific aspects of the theoretical framework pertaining to Europe. These principles have been developed as legal principles by the (four) powers in the states of Europe, both as norms for the administration, as well as rights for citizens.