Cities face new and unanticipated challenges as they consider adding software. For city, town, county and regional governments around the world, this is the dawn of a new era, digital cities. Over 557,000 municipalities in the world and most of them still rely primarily on paper processing for their workflow. The 2013 attempt by… Read More
Boston New Urban Mechanics Office Leads Civic Tech Implementation
Boston, the “City on a Hill”, prides itself as a thought leader on topics of philosophy (transcendentalism), political theory (John Adams, Declaration of Independence) and public policy (Boston’s implementation of the 1965 Racial Imbalance Act) for over 300 years. Clearly the City of Boston hasn’t always got it right. But the City gets big credit… Read More
Re-Phrase the Declaration of Independence to Find Its Power for the 21st Century
Following the recommendation of a friend to read the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July, I struggled through the antiquated sentence structure, nouns and verbs to excavate the power of our forefathers’ anger, vision and intent in declaring their separation from a tyrant King who they claimed had usurped their basic rights as… Read More
Open Governments, Open Data: A New Lever for Transparency
Citizen Engagement, and Economic Growth Posted on June 26, 2014 by Stefaan Verhulst in GovLab Digest Joel Gurin at the SAIS Review of International Affairs: “The international open data movement is beginning to have an impact on government policy, business strategy, and economic development. Roughly sixty countries in the Open Government Partnership have committed to… Read More
National Hackathon Offers New Fixes for Urban Problems
The second annual national “Civic Hacking” event, May 30 – June 1, brings together participants from the fields of software development, design, research, non-profits, local government and more to use their skills to solve civic challenges. Civic Hacking events are scheduled in over 122 locations across the U.S. and beyond. Sponsored by Intel, this is… Read More
Gas Leak Explosion Symbolizes Huge Need for Infrastructure Improvements
Gas leaks resulted in an explosion causing two buildings in East Harlem, NYC to collapse on March 12, 2014. Eight deaths and a substantial destruction of property catch the public attention this week, suggesting an even larger long smoldering issue of inadequate investment in the infrastructure we build our lives on and take for granted.… Read More
Slovenia Must Stop Dragging its Feet on Privatisation
By Luka Oresković and SaÅ¡o Stanovnik On Sunday, Slovenians vote for a new head of state in the second round of presidential elections. Although the incumbent, Danilo Türk, seemed a certain winner before the first round in November, Borut Pahor, the former centre-left prime minister, surprised pundits and pollsters by winning 40 per cent of… Read More
Why the Kremlin Won’t Privatize Rosneft
by Luka Oreskovic After World War II, French governments from both sides of the political aisle pursued a policy known as dirigisme. Dirigisme entailed consolidating fragmented industrial assets into large holdings, or “national champions’, that could carry long-term economic growth and speed up recovery in the postwar years. National champions to this day remain enshrined… Read More
Water Privatization in Russia: More Than a Drop in the Ocean
By Luka Oreskovic Without water, humans can only live for a few days. Yet only about 1 percent of the earth’s water is suitable for human consumption. Rising GDP brings increases in demand for food production, including meat, which demands the greatest amount of water. Treating water is therefore a key utility. With over $400… Read More
Selling the Georgian Dream
By Luka Oreskovic Eight years ago, an enthusiastic crowd gathered in front of the Tbilisi parliament for Mikheil Saakashvili’s presidential inauguration. “We must create the Georgia that our ancestors dreamed of,” he told them, “the Georgia that we dream of.” His dream was that of a democratic, NATO member country with a growing liberalized economy,… Read More
Cuba Puts Brakes on Move toward Non-State Economy
In April Cuban government officials announced plans to move about 40 percent of the country’s output to the nonstate sector in five years. This followed a move two years ago to lay off employees in state owned enterprises and encourage them to become entrepreneurs, operating their own businesses. Over 250,000 Cubans took advantage of this… Read More
Greece to Raise €50 billion by 2015 via Privatization
Greek government aims to raise €50 billion by 2015 via privatization—or 1/6th of its estimated 2011 $308 billion GDP (40% is public sector). Caught between the European financing bailout requirements, the general concerns of Greek citizens about losing their country’s treasured assets and the specific concerns of more well paid and unionized employees of state… Read More
Vietnam Privatization Slowed by Book Value vs. Market Value Rule
The Ministry of Finance in Vietnam plans to privatize 367 state-owned enterprises by 2015 (as many as 93 SOEs this year). The privatization process is slower than hoped because of the government’s rule that SOEs cannot sell stakes to investors at prices below the SOE’s book value. Government officals are asked to consider allowing… Read More
Source and Use of the Term: Privatization
The Economist magazine introduced the term “privatization” in the 1930s in its coverage of Nazi German economic policy. Voucher privatization has mainly occurred in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe, such as Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Additionally, Privatization from below is/has been an important type of economic growth in transition… Read More
Water for Life – Privatization & Regulation Reduce Child Mortality in Argentina
The experience of Argentinian municipalities in the 1990’s offer lessons for the benefits of privatizing water local government supplies. Some municipalities privatized and others did not, yielding a comparison of results. Those municipalities that privatized the water delivery systems found a greater reduction in child mortality. Studies suggest that the combination of privatization and effective… Read More
Write for Asset Stewardship
The Asset Stewardship team welcomes thoughtful, data driven articles, analysis and case studies on topics pertaining to asset stewardship. Themes include nationalization, privatization, public-private partnerships, privatizing municipal services and charter schools. We plan to gather materials and serve as a resource to those interested in these topics. If you are interested in submitting an article,… Read More
Revisiting Privatization, Now is the Time
Background Over the past two decades, the privatization of state enterprises has gone from novelty act to global orthodoxy. More than 100 governments have sold stakes in state companies to private investors, raising $1 trillion and transforming the state’s economic role. Just as privatization’s promise may have been oversold, so its ills have been exaggerated.… Read More