Institutions often speak about data as if its meaning were simply waiting to be extracted. A number appears in a dashboard, a trend emerges in an administrative series, a…
Institutions spend considerable effort observing the people they serve. They collect administrative data, measure demand, classify cases, monitor outcomes and increasingly use digital systems to identify patterns across large…
Institutions are expected to know many things. Governments need to understand populations, services, risks, economic conditions, legal obligations and the consequences of public decisions; regulators need to understand the systems…
Every institution has people who seem to know how things really work. They remember why a particular decision was made, understand the history behind an unusual procedure, know which…
Institutions produce enormous quantities of documents. Policies describe what should happen, procedures specify how tasks should be performed, databases preserve records, reports explain what has happened, and guidance attempts…
When governments want to preserve what they know, they tend to create places in which knowledge can be stored. They build databases, document procedures, maintain archives, publish guidance, create…
Public institutions have become very good at acquiring things that promise to make them smarter. They build databases, commission analytical platforms, recruit specialists, purchase decision-support systems and, increasingly, experiment…
