Publications
Reports, analysis and policy recommendations for brave leaders and communities.
The report provides insights into how the dominant ways of thinking about growth have taken shape and become entrenched: What has changed over the decades? And what might the future look like? Finnish discourse is also placed in the broader context of international societal and scientific debates, as well as global shifts in the operating environment.
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The European Democracy Shield is a timely and commendable initiative aimed at addressing the EU’s growing democratic challenges. However, it would benefit from a more human-centered approach focusing on citizen participation, civil society engagement, and more nuanced policies on digital regulation.
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The answer isn’t less democracy, but more. New participatory and deliberative processes aimed at involving citizens in decision-making are gaining traction across Europe, but their long-term success depends on how well they are embedded into the public administration and society.
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How can countries strengthen their capacity for long-term governance and ensure that future generations are taken into account in decision-making? In this white paper, we highlight ways to promote anticipatory governance based on the views of key Finnish stakeholders. By translating the Finnish experience into a broader context, we aim to provide universally applicable strategies for advancing long-term governance and promoting intergenerational justice.
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Experimentalism is a ‘hidden third option’ that overcomes pre-existing dichotomies and can update the governance of R&I funding while steering it towards societal transformation.
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What are the most appropriate institutional arrangements for effective governance? How can governance systems effectively operate across different levels, such as local, regional, national, and supranational? How can governments improve their capacity to evaluate policies, learn from successes and failures, and adapt to changing circumstances? By transforming the civil service, we can answer these questions.
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In this discussion paper, written together with Marcos Bonturi, former director of Public Governance at the OECD, Demos Helsinki shares the recent learnings in the field of public governance, identified four characteristics that describe a desirable future government, and presents inspirational governance innovation -cases from Finland, Brazil, Colombia and Serbia.
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Where and how could – and should – blockchain be used in public services? How can these uses be commissioned, developed and deployed in a fair and transparent manner? What needs special attention when using DLT in public services? In this publication, Demos Helsinki collects and shares learnings from experts who assessed four desirable, undesirable, likely and unlikely scenarios of potential DLT-based public services in the EU.
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AI systems can have a positive impact, but at the same time, biased algorithmic decision-making poses threats to equality and non-discrimination. Demos Helsinki conducted an assessment framework and a policy brief that would assist developers to establish an equitable journey for the development of AI services in the public sector, from design to deployment.
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Navigating the societal transformation requires the imagination of future possibilities ahead of us. This report uses a scenario approach to support this process, presenting four possible images of the future and encouraging readers to think about what futures they experience as preferable, or undesirable, and how our actions today can shape our tomorrow.
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An economy of wellbeing serves amongst other things, individual and community happiness, safety, cultural identity, education, and participation. In this study, Demos Helsinki partnered up with SOSTE and THL to assess what an economy of wellbeing in Finland might look like, and what next steps would facilitate a peaceful transition.
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Achieving an impactful decrease in homelessness — and preventing it from happening in the first place — requires significant structural and operational changes. While Housing First holds great potential to enable systemic change in homelessness, it also risks being interpreted and deployed as a mere housing management tool — a misunderstanding of tragic consequences.
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This briefing paper is a reflection of the potential transformative role of distributed Ledger technologies (DLT) in the European public sectors, aiming to support civil servants and decision-makers to navigate the rapidly changing environment of new technological possibilities and required societal transformations.
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