The Open Governance Research eXchange (OGRX) began with a few ideas and a few key partners seeking to develop answers and solutions to an important question: How to make governance innovation more evidence based by making key findings on what works and why more accessible?

An ever-changing landscape not only requires innovation in how we seek to address major social problems. We also need to move away from faith based innovations to more evidence based ones – promoting and leveraging research across disciplines, and sharing the findings that emerge in a succinct and streamlined manner. Enter OGRX, the first and only platform where innovators can access and search curated research from different disciplines and countries on opening governance.

Today, The Governance Lab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and its partners are pleased to announce two exciting milestones for the OGRX community: (1) the addition of three new partners, and (2) the growth of our repository of curated publications.

New Year, New Partners

Making All Voices Count, Data for Policy and Open Culture Foundation have joined OGRX as the new Contributing Partners, dedicated to advancing this platform, this community open governance practitioners and advocates, and to enhancing the scholarship of the growing area of governance innovation.

• Making All Voices Count works at the intersection of technology, innovation, governance and civic engagement to promote transparency, combat corruption, empower citizens, and foster a more effective and accountable government. Making All Voices Count operates in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Mozambique, South Africa, Nigeria, Liberia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia and The Philippines. Information about some of its project is now available on OGRX, including its research on citizen consultation platforms in Brazil, interactive radio to improve accountability in Tanzania, and understanding the demand for open data among civil society actors in South Africa, among many others.

• Data for Policy is an independent initiative launched in 2015 to build discourse around the theory and application of data science relevant to governments and policy research organizations through international conferences. Its works is also supported by a number of key stakeholders that include academic institutions, government agencies, nonprofits and businesses. Data for Policy brings together its stakeholders in an annual, international conference designed to focus on a topical and timely issue around using data for policy. From its inaugural conference in 2015 about big data, to its 2017 convening focused on data science, Data for Policy continues to create actionable ways for policy makers and others to become more data-driven. Papers from its most recent conference are available here.

• Open Culture Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit founded in 2014 by several independent members of Taiwan’s open source community. OCF’s main goal is to support local community advocates to use open technologies in broader sectors, including open source software, open hardware, and open data. The Foundation also helps government, businesses and NGOs better understand the benefits of adopting open source, and promotes the importance of open data to other audiences, including the general public. OCF’s Taiwan Open Government Report, covering 2014-2016, is now available on OGRX.

We’re always looking to grow the OGRX platform with more curated content that expands the base of accessible, shareable knowledge about governance innovation. To do so requires collaboration from dedicated partners, thus we welcome the opportunity to add to our roster of innovative members. If you would like to join the OGRX community as a Network Partner, Contributing Partner and/or an Event Partner, please contact Andrew Young at [email protected], Director of Knowledge at The GovLab and Editor-in-Chief of OGRX.

From 999 to 1000, and Beyond

We are also thrilled to announce that the OGRX research platform now features 999 books, research reports, journal articles, and other publications focused on new and innovative methods for problem-solving. This curated compendium is thanks to contributions from OGRX partners and other users and practitioners within the community.

Which publication will help OGRX go from 999 to 1000 publications? Who will provide the next governance innovation piece to help OGRX reach this important milestone? Share your suggestions through the OGRX Submission Form, and/or make your voice heard using #OGRX and tagging @TheGovLab on Twitter!

In the meantime, below are some recent additions to OGRX:

• Gender Biases in Cyberspace: A Two-Stage Model, the New Arena of Wikipedia and Other Websites seeks to promote gender inclusive digital space by elaborating two stages through which the virtual world excludes women: first, by controlling websites and filtering out women; and second, by exposing women who survived the first stage as a hostile environment.

• Who Benefits From Civic Technology? argues that only by knowing who is using civic technology can we begin to understand what, where and how significant the impact of civic technology can possibly be.

• Public Policy and the Promise of Digital Credit for Financial Inclusion investigates the digital credit policy environment and its potential in supporting pro-poor digital credit market development using regulatory documents specifically mentioning either digital or online credit or lending, and informal documents relevant to digital credit based on a systematic web search

• Data Driven Decisions for Flood Risk Management discusses how flood risk management can be addressed through data driven decision making, communication, and community engagement.

• An (Increasingly) Visible College: Mapping and Strengthening Research and Innovation Networks with Open Data analyzes the Gateway to Research, an open dataset about research funding and university-industry collaborations in the UK in a project to map innovation in Wales.

As governance continues to evolve, so will the need for different types of resources to support the research, analysis and implementation of governance innovations driven by academics, advocates, policy makers and others – across regions. Going forward, OGRX will continue its mission to identify, curate, and share this research. And for our Spanish-language colleagues, please check out RIGA, the Repositorio de Investigaciones Cuantitativa y Cualitativa sobre Innovaciones en Gobernanza.