Convergence of national science and technology policies: the case of Finland

It is a commonly held view that differences in national histories, cultures, political contexts, and the timing of a country’s entry into the industrialization process are reflected as diversity among countries in their goals, priorities, boundaries, directions, ranges, instruments and also in the performance of science and technology policy. This article, which examines development processes of Finnish science and technology policy, concludes that instead of divergence there is such startling convergence of organizational forms and practices. Finland has largely adopted its policy doctrines and instruments from the countries, which from the Finnish perspective, have been considered legitimate and successful.     

The European university landscape: A micro characterization based on evidence from the Aquameth project

This paper provides a new and systematic characterization of 488 universities, from 11 European countries: Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and UK. Using micro indicators built on the integrated Aquameth database, we characterize the European university landscape according to the following dimensions: history/foundation of university, dynamics of growth, specialization pattern, subject mix, funding composition, offer profile and productivity.     

How does open government data driven co-creation occur? Six factors and a ‘perfect storm’; insights from Chicago's food inspection forecasting model

It is becoming increasingly clear that the concepts of open government data (OGD) and co-creation are related; however, there is currently only limited empirical material available exploring the link between the two. This paper aims to help clarify the relationship between these two concepts by exploring a recently coined phenomenon: OGD-driven co-created public services. These services 1) utilize or are driven by OGD; 2) are co-created by stakeholders from different groups; and 3) produce public value for society. Due to the relative newness of the phenomenon an inductive exploratory case study is undertaken on Chicago's use of OGD in the co-creation of their food safety inspection forecasting model. This model forecasts critical food safety violations at food serving establishments and sends inspectors to the highest risk establishments first. The results of this exploratory work led to the discovery of a ‘perfect storm’ of six factors that seem to play a key role in allowing OGD-driven public service co-creation to take place. These factors are motivated stakeholders, innovative leaders, proper communication, an existing OGD portal, external funding, and agile development.