The Open Government and Open Data Governance Clinic
The Governance Innovation Clinic — known as the Open Government and Open Data Governance Clinic — was offered at Yale Law School in Fall 2016 and Spring 2017. The program included 37 graduate students from law, management, international affairs, statistics and public health.
Projects included:
Spring 2017
Project: Ethics of N of 1 Clinical Trials
Client: Mt. Sinai Medial Center
Problem: The continued growth of technology is expanding our capacity to pursue transformative biomedical research through innovative methods of data-capture and data-sharing. A clear illustration of the “Open Science” movement, n-of-1 trials provide a participatory research model in which both researcher and patient benefit, accelerating the pathway to personalized medicine. In an effort to contribute to the “Open Science” movement, the goal of the GovLab team on Responsible Biomedical Data Governance is to develop a “legal by design” interactive platform to help clinicians design ICH-compliant n-of-1 trials utilizing the data-sharing capacity of the latest technological advances.
Project: Smarter Crowdsourcing- Anti-Corruption
Client: The Inter-American Development Bank and the Government of Mexico
About: In order to help the Government of Mexico identify innovative practices to combat corruption, the Smarter Crowdsourcing project, led by The GovLab and the IADB, will convene experts from diverse backgrounds in a series of online conferences to gather insights and ideas from around the world. The Goal of the clinic project is to identify the most salient sources of corruption and the key stakeholders in anti-corruption in Mexico with a focus on identifying innovative approaches (using technology, citizen participation, open data) to addressing corruption, not on building comprehensive national strategies.
Project: Human-Centered Design: The Human side of Tablets
Client: Connecticut Department of Corrections
About: The project was focussed on informing the design and implementation of the Connecticut Department of Corrections’ proposed program to introduce tablets in their facilities. The DOC’s program aimed to reduce recidivism among inmates by using tablets to improve vocational training, entertainment and communication. The Clinic project involved research to study global best practices as well as multiple interviews with inmates and officials to make human-centered design recommendations which were within the the capabilities of the DOC.
Project: Expanding the NPC Data Labs model to the United States
Client: National Philanthropy Capital
About: The project explored opportunities to bring the NPC’s Data Labs model to the United States and understand the pre-conditions and partnerships necessary to enable it. The NPC Data Lab Model allows government and non-profit programs throughout the United Kingdom to conduct high-quality, low-cost evaluations using administrative data to determine how effective these programs are. These evaluations can inform more evidence-based resource allocation and will offer insights for how other programs can improve their efficacy.
Project: Designing Citizens into Lawmaking: A survey of design choices for crowdlaw systems.
Client: Podemos/Madrid City Council
About: With world-wide citizen trust in government at an all time low, the podemos party in Madrid, Spain has drafted a citizen engagement law to reconnect with their constituents and crowdsourcing citizen opinion for improved law-making. The Yale clinic team’s project was to further develop the law and provide feedback for its improvement. This involved identifying instructive cases from around the world, thinking creatively about potential mechanisms to involve citizens more effectively in the legislative process and offer discrete recommendations that Podemos could incorporate into their legislation.
Project: Data-Driven Analysis of Discrimination in Prosecution and Sentencing
Client: Legal Aid Society
About: The goal of the project is to develop an initial research question that will be helpful to the Legal Aid Society’s practice or its policy advocacy.
- On the policy advocacy side, the goal of the proposed project is to analyze the effect of open file discovery on the disposition of LAS cases and on the amount of time the cases are in court.
- On the practice side, the goal of the proposed project is to evaluate the quality and accessibility of various alternative-to-incarceration programs to help LAS attorneys better advise their clients.
Fall 2016:
Project: Training Government Officials on Appropriate Use of Randomized Controlled Trials
Client: J-PAL
About:Policy-makers lack access to timely and relevant empirical results to inform policy decision making. This leads to an over-reliance on observation in lieu of evidence-based strategies for testing the effectiveness of social programs.
We are developing an interactive tool that will help policymakers quantify the impact of their programs through randomized control trials. The tool will walk government personnel through what an RCT is, why to conduct one and how to implement it. It will also connect them to existing resources on the topic.
Project: Lawyer as Innovator: Improving the Efficiency of Government General Counsel
Client: Brookings Institute
About: Offices of Government Counsel often have outdated processes, software, and management tools. This makes it more difficult for OGCs to serve the mission of their agencies effectively and efficiently.
The team is working with General Counsels across four cabinet departments and conducting a wide range of interviews to the end of making specific recommendations focused on helping the government lawyer become a partner in the process of agency modernization and innovation. The recommendations will be published in a Whitepaper and accompanied by a Hackathon designed to transform some of the recommendations into practical prototypes for new ways of working.
Project: Data-Driven Justice
Client: Lafayette Parish, LA, Codington County, SD
About: In many U.S. localities, law enforcement does not have available mental health information which can be acted on to reduce the rate and recurrence of incarceration of those with mental health needs. Although access to mental health data could reduce incarceration among the mentally ill, the problem is that jurisdictions do not know how to ethically and responsibly share data to this end. We have partnered with two jurisdictions in order to 1) provide research and analysis to support the successful design and implementation of new data sharing programs; and 2) extract learnings, which if incorporated into an online decision support tool, could help other communities be able to share data responsibly
Project: Developing a Dispute Resolution Process for Contributing Data to Clinical Trials
Client: Sage Bionetworks
About: The ubiquity of mobile phones — and their many sensors for collecting data — offers a new way for biomedical researchers to recruit patients to participate in clinical trials quickly and easily. Using either Apple or Android platforms, participants consent to both make their data available to a clinician and to have their anonymized data published for others researchers who may be able to employ it in novel studies. This has the potential to accelerate research and cures dramatically.
However, the current process developed by Sage Bionetworks does not provide clinical trial participants with a method to raise meaningful ethical objections to third party re-use of their data.
In order to promote participant trust and establish ethical procedures in an emerging field, we are designing a flexible dispute resolution process so that those who make the gift of data have a voice in controlling their data. By looking at dispute resolution systems across disciplines and communities, we can design a system that balances the rights of data donors with the unique advantages of open health data.