JPAM Call for Papers

Call for Papers Special Issue: Policy Informatics Submission Deadline: June 15, 2013 The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) invites papers for a special symposium on “Policy Informatics.� The focus of policy informatics is on advancing research and practice that can enhance our understanding of complex policy and managerial problems by leveraging advances in information and communication technologies. We are seeking papers with a systems perspective and a focus on the role of information and communications technology and its influence on governance and public institutions. We are interested in exploring policies and management practices that enhance the sustainability and resilience of programs, processes, laws and managerial innovations in government, quasi-government and nonprofit organizations. Papers should contain well-articulated extensions or redefinition of the boundaries of research.

Demonstrations of the usefulness of these approaches must be focused on issues and concerns that have broad ramifications for policy and decision makers at the state, local or federal levels of government.

Submissions for this special issue should be made through the regular online submission process for the journal at editorialexpress.com/jpam/. Please indicate with your submission that you would like your paper to be considered for this special issue. Initial submissions for this symposium will be accepted until June 15, 2013. Dr. Anand Desai and Dr. Yushim Kim will serve as special guest co-editors for this symposium along with JPAM editor-in-chief, Dr. Maureen Pirog.

Special issue of JPAM on policy informatics Guest co-editors Anand Desai John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State & Yushim Kim School of Public Affairs at Arizona State Communications regarding this proposal should be directed to Anand Desai at desai.1@osu.edu or 614.292.0826.

Rationale Consider the following questions and examples that reflect the changing landscape in which public policy and management decisions are made.

• Institutions. How should we think about and address the policy and institutional issues that arise from advances in information and communications technology?

• Governance. How is the relationship between the government and the governed changing with changing technologies? How are technological and societal systems interacting to create new governance structures and processes? For example: o The success of the Arab spring is attributed in part to ubiquitous social media.

• Regulation. How are advances in information and communications technology affecting regulatory practices. For example: o Have globalization, speed, and volume of financial transactions attained a level of complexity that surpasses the ability of managers to develop regulatory mechanisms?

• Democratization of data. What policies need to be put in place to ensure data transparency while ensuring that this transparency does not impinge upon privacy and public accountability? For example: o As metrological models showed the changing landfall locations for Hurricane Sandy, resources to mount rescue operations in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane were also moved to keep pace with the changing track of the storm. o Based on videos of the Deepwater Horizon underwater oil well during the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, independent scientists were able to estimate the rate of oil spill which suggested that the volume was much higher than that suggested by the original estimates from BP and the government. o A New York newspaper published a map using publicly available data on names and address of gun owners following the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

• Research. How is public policy and management research addressing the influence of advances in information and communications technology on

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governance, public institutions, and the interaction between governments and their citizens? How are our research methods and conceptualizations changing with enhanced computational power, access to simulation and visualization tools, big data, etc.? For example, o Complexity concepts. How are the language and conceptual frameworks in the policy and management literatures changing with the introduction of concepts such as complexity, sustainability, resilience, adaptability and emergence? o Forecasting. Combining multiple forecasting models of dynamic systems to produce better estimates as in the case of Nate Silver’s analyses of the polling results in advance of the 2012 national elections in the US or the tracking of hurricane paths. How will such tools influence our research practices? o Data from non-statistical samples. Administrative data on the whole population of interest or data collected from social media sites or automatic monitoring devices such as scanners or sensors confuse the distinctions between data samples and populations. What methods need to be developed to allow us to combine data from different sources in order to draw valid inferences? o Visualization of data for decision supports. At the intersection of design and data analysis lie opportunities inherent in visualization approaches.

We understand the strengths and weaknesses associated with most analytical tools. What do we need to know about the potential strengths and weaknesses associated with the use of visualization tools? o Computational modeling for scenarios development and policy learning.

With the rise of computational power, simulations are being employed to inform policy design and implementation strategies. How do we use the results of such analyses to inform our decisions and actions?

In brief, innovations in information and communications technologies and information collection, analysis, synthesis, and dissemination capacity are changing governance structures, processes, and institutions. The availability of large quantities of data, often on whole populations, promoted by open data and social media pose challenges and provide opportunities for decision support for practitioners, decision makers, researchers and policy makers. Computational simulation techniques and tools have attained a level of sophistication that allow for an ease of use that makes them accessible to general users.

Data visualization tools have also expanded our ability to display and disseminate complex temporal and spatial information. How are these changes reflected in research that supports public policy and managerial decisions and action?

The recent National Academy of Science report on Using Science as Evidence in Public Policy suggests “A systems perspective helps decision makers and researchers think broadly about the many effects a policy may produce and the ways in which a planned social intervention interacts with other existing interventions and institutional practices.�

This policy informatics special issue focuses on identifying these challenges and opportunities that advances in complexity theory, information and technology can offer in

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better understanding complex policy, governance and institutional issues and communicating the utility of systems approaches to policy and decision makers and practitioners.

Description of the types of papers we are seeking 1. Manuscripts that define and clarify the field of policy informatics by illustrating its relevance to challenging public policy issues and problems that have broad ramifications for researchers and policy and decision makers at the state, local or federal levels of government in a number of substantive fields of public policy.

2. Manuscripts that creatively undertake a systems perspective on the above issues and problems, that is, 1) paying attention to interrelationships and mechanisms, 2) clearly defining the boundary of the system, and 3) explicitly dealing with multiple perspectives.

3. Manuscripts that demonstrate the utility of emerging tools and techniques for a chosen public policy and managerial problem. These papers may include, but not be limited to conceptual frameworks informed by complexity and systems thinking, and novel modeling approaches.

4. Manuscripts that bring credible policy and managerial insight or novel perspectives in understanding complexity of policy problems through creative analysis and synthesis.

5. Manuscripts that present strengths of an interdisciplinary approach – an approach that is useful when a specialty in one discipline is not enough to understand an issue so it requires specialties from other disciplines - to public policy and managerial issues.

Structure 1. Research Papers We will select research papers that satisfy the description of the types of papers we are seeking above. These papers can explore the role of information and communications technologies in tackling social issues such as healthcare, social security, transportation and the environment. They can also cover issues of governance, institutional arrangements, organizational forms and management. The papers must clearly demonstrate why the chosen issue matters for policy makers and what policy research has been conducted to understand the issue. We encourage research papers that explore and exploit the utility of tools and techniques based on a systems perspective. The paper must highlight how the approach brings novel policy or managerial insight on the issue.

2. A Policy Retrospective We will solicit a synthetic review paper of works and development in the area of information and communications technology support for policy-making and decisionmaking for a Policy Retrospective. This paper will trace the origins of policy informatics research and provide a perspective on the history of the area. This Policy Retrospective

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may be developed by several experts in various areas that may fall into the category of policy informatics. We will reach out and contact potential collaborators.

3. A Point/Counterpoint exchange (e.g. Debates on matters of policy, management and research method, such as “Policy Analysis in the Age of Big Data”) Digital devices produce, transfer and store copious amounts digital information worldwide. While the concept is still fuzzy, “Big Data” is gaining a currency in both academia and practice. In the public sector, President Obama’s administration opened the door to various types of government data accessible to the public by starting Data.gov in 2009. In 2012, the World Economic Forum urged concerted action by governments, development organizations, and companies to realize “the potential for channeling these torrents of data into actionable information that can be used to identify needs, provide services and predict and prevent crises for the benefit of low-income populations.” We think it is timely to ask what all this means for public policy analysis and management.

To guide the discussion on the topic, we will ask authors the following questions: • What opportunities will the data-intensive science and decision-making environment bring to policy analysis?

• How does one distinguish “big” data from “small” data? Does “big” data imply “small” data?

• What challenges will policy analysis and synthesis using Big Data confront?

• What challenges and opportunities does data transparency offer?

• What educational preparation should you suggest for next generation policy analysts in the age of data and information explosion?

4. Methods articles We will additionally consider submissions that are focused on the development of new analytical methods or analyses of strengths and limitations of existing analytical methods used in policy and management research as it is in current JPAM section.

5. Book reviews The issue will include 2-3 book reviews by leading scholars as well as doctoral students who are interested in the current theme. We are particularly interested in reviewing recent books informed by systems thinking and complexity sciences for the field of public policy, policy analysis, organization and management. Suggestions of books for potential review are welcome.

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