Verhulst Among World’s 100 Most Influential People in Digital Government
The list is the first of its kind to show the full international spread of innovative work in the field, celebrating world-changing individuals from every continent. Each honoree has exerted outsize influence on the transition to more effective governance through technology. Through policymaking, research, advocacy, or other means, all have worked to ensure that the services government provides make full use of the opportunities offered by digital technology — while avoiding the pitfalls.
Stefaan Verhulst was selected to the list along with Beth Simone Noveck, co-founder and co-director of The Governance Lab. Verhulst is The GovLab’s chief research and development officer. He spent more than a decade as chief of research for the Markle Foundation, where he continues to serve as senior advisor. He is known for his scholarship on ways technology can improve people’s lives and the creation of more effective, data-driven and collaborative forms of governance. His recent work on Open Data and Data Collaboratives focuses on unlocking of data to improve the way public problems are solved. His BlockChange project examines how blockchain technology (which uses distributed ledger technologies for transparent and secure public databases) can empower underserved populations. His work on People-Led Innovation provided a new methodology to engage with people at every stage of the policy innovation cycle.
His latest books (co-authored with Andrew Young) include Open Data in Developing Economies: Toward Building an Evidence Base on What Works and How (2018) and the Global Impact of Open Data (2017). The co-author and editor of such volumes as Legal Responses to the Changing Media (1998), In Search of the Self: Conceptual Approaches to Internet Self Regulation (2001), The Routledge Handbook of Media Law (2013), he also served as the UNESCO chairholder in communications law and policy at Oxford University and was founder and co-director of Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy at Wolfson College (Oxford) and the International Media and Info-Comms Policy and Law Studies at the University of Glasgow School of Law. He has served as a consultant to the European Union, the World Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank, the World Economic Forum, UNICEF, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and others.
The 100 Most Influential People Working in Digital Government list was curated from nominations of digital government experts from leading organizations, including the Alan Turing Institute, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations, Future Cities Catapult, USAID, and the Open Government Partnership.
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