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A collection of news, notes, and events we attended.
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15 Nov 2018Internet users know the cyber risk, but they need to be told what to do!
To encourage secure online behaviour, warning messages that tell users what they can do to protect themselves are more effective than warning messages that raise fear about the risks of unsecured behaviour. These were the conclusions of a paper recently published by our colleagues from Behavioural Insights, René van Bavel and Nuria Rodríguez-Priego. The relevance of this paper is that too many campaigns use warning messages that raise fear, and not enough focus on telling
31 Oct 2018Future of Government 2030+ prototypes at London Design festival
We were very happy to learn that the prototypes produced by the students from the University of the Arts London, for the Future of Government 2030+ project, were presented during this year's London Design Festival. Our prototypes were part of the Service Design exhibition, which showed how students and staff can push the boundaries of service design to address challenges in a variety of contexts and at different scales. In particular, the Future of Government
30 Oct 2018The power of network interventions in changing preadolescents’ behaviour
Have you ever wondered how to incentivize your family or a friend to change his/her own behaviour? Rewarding him/her directly with an individual prize is always a good incentive? For instance, will your child exercise more because you give him an "individual" prize or it could be probably more productive to give a prize to his/her best friends instead? This second type of incentive, the "social rewards", is based on the idea that your offspring's
10 Sep 2018Migration version of the Scenario Exploration System increasingly used with migration officials, researchers and civil society
Dissemination of the migration version of the Scenario Exploration System (SES) serious game is gaining pace. This summer, the EU Policy Lab was invited to facilitate game sessions and train "scenario exploration masters" at two bigger events. Altogether, over 100 participants experienced the game. In August, we took part in the 6th EMN Educational Seminar on Migration: Causes and Consequences of Forced Migration (22 - 24 August 2018) organised by the UN Migration Agency, International Organisation for
4 Sep 2018Megatrends workshop with East Poland House
In our foresight work, we use megatrends (long-term driving forces that are observable now and will most likely have significant influence on the future) to consider in a structured way all the various changes going on in different areas. Our basis is a set of 14 global megatrends that are relevant for the future of Europe, organized in the Megatrends Hub. It is also a great way of introducing a structured way of thinking about
4 Sep 2018Policy conception – issue mapping with Eurostat and EU Member States
In the first half of this year, we have been working with the Eurostat unit responsible for agriculture and fisheries statistics. They are setting up a system of statistics on agricultural input and output (SAIO), together with Member States' statistical services. Our role was to help develop a format for the discussions of Directors of Agricultural Statistics from across the EU at their annual meeting, so that they would be in a position to give
20 Jul 2018RapidFutureGovernmentPrototyping
Speculating about the Future of Government 2030+ In the course of the FTA2018 conference, about 25 people gathered to ideate about future forms and processes of decision making. International foresight and design experts met with public servants from the European Commission that are working on public administration innovation. This interesting group was provoked by two future persona stories from the Future of Government 2030+ project that were build up in a series of citizen dialogues
12 Jul 2018Integration in the context of diversity: discussing new developments and future challenges
The high inflow of refugees and migrants to Europe in 2015 and 2016 put a renewed policy focus on integration, and it also revived the question "integration into what?" considering growing diversity in European societies. What are new developments and emerging issues related to integration and diversity and what will be upcoming challenges in the mid-term future? Representatives from local and regional authorities, civil society, the European Commission and researchers gathered in an expert session
14 Jun 2018Support to policy conception – platform to business relations
Throughout 2017 the EU Policy Lab provided support to the Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) and Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW) in the analytical work that led to preparing a policy proposal on improving business relationships between online platforms (such as e-commerce or app stores, social media) and those who offer products and services through them (i.e. platforms' business users). As the research and development work
8 Jun 2018Final Event of #Blockchain4EU: Blockchain for Industrial Transformations
On May 24 we organised the final event of #Blockchain4EU at the Berlaymont, European Commission headquarters in Brussels. We gathered high level EU policy makers such as the Director-General of the Joint Research Center (JRC), Vladimir Šucha, and several stakeholders already engaged with, potentially interested in, or working in sectors that may be impacted by Blockchain and other DLTs. It was an opportunity to present the project's main outputs, with the launch of our Final