I’m excited to share that our latest paper — AI as a Framework for Public Service Innovation — has just been published in Public Money & Management (IF 2023: 2.2, Q2, SSCI)

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Young people in droves are leaving the country. The #kaburajadulu is a highly phenomenal in Indonesia. But what is the policy implication? One argument is for the need to have “talent policy” to entice talents and help them thrive
x.com/jakpost/stat...

Back to the classics and the first computational social scientist: Herbert Simon. A polymath whose thoughts has shaped much of my thinking since reading his work back in the PhD classes

Publication alert. AI can be seen as an extension of the “digital transformation”. We reviewed articles published on AI in PA journals in the past decade using topic modeling (a form of machine learning) and identified key topics and trends.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I am excited that our book “Topics in Public Administration”, where we showcase how to do topic modeling (a form of machine learning) and corpus linguistics on PA literature, has been published. Great collab with Richard Walker and Jiasheng Zhang
www.cambridge.org/core/element...

It is a sad to hear the passing of Prof Christopher Hood, who made popular the concept of “new public management”. We are grateful to have done a review of his work back in 2019, showing how the ideas diffused. A great scholar leaves a legacy way into time.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Radicalists say “it’s impossible to mix social goals and profit”. It’s like mixing water and fire. Social enterprise is just invented just for that. Project Dignity, hiring 60% ratio of disabled in its resto chain, is proving them wrong.
sgvisionaries.com/2025/01/05/m...

What can save us from AI? We argue that “entrepreneurialism” will. And that hinges on skills such as problematization, organizing, and compassion.
open.substack.com/pub/yantocha...

It’s hard to imagine, in the foreseeable future, that AI will replace human data scientists. But it can offer support and time saving, from producing initial codes (in Python or R) that data scientists can take further for correction/refinement, producing dummy data. All of which are fun.

“CanChatGPT do data science” was an intriguing question. We drilled into this in 2023. And now it forms a new pedagogical strategy in courses that I teach. From “creating dataset”, “producing codes” to test some models, to understanding its limits as a way of knowing.
aibusiness.com/nlp/can-chat...

May this new year (2025) bring you with plenty of sparks, brightness, and enlightenment in all things that matter. Be like a light that plays its role among a symphony of other lights in the world. 🧶🍄🌕💥🏵️🎯

Oh yes Prof Don. Stores and shops (and the anime, cosplay, and all weird stuffs) is a different face of Japan. So much more to explore and learn about them.

It is part of the culture to find a quiet time in the train, for Japanese. Even for other Asian (non Japanese) groups they won’t know this until they get to know the Japanese culture. It’s always nice to know what other culture prefers or shuns (if we believe in institutional theory)

Digital public goods are taking shape and gaining acceptance, from CBDC, metaverse, crypto, to NFT (non fungible tokens). We offer a theoretical analysis of the boom and bust (up to 2022/2023) of NFT. With tips on how to make digital public good working for all.

urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

No matter how good a paper is — even those published in top tier journals - they remain a “draft” (in progress). Forget perfection. It’s still an “original draft”, “pure draft”, or “draft one version number 470”. Best discussed over a pitcher of super chill/dry Sapporo, Tsingtao or Heinecken.

Many elderly don’t have proper food. Who cares? One man — never calls himself a “social entrepreneur” — whips up a US$3, 3-dish menu for them. This pricing is unthinkable. A sacrifice for less profit, with a big heart to provide hundreds of lives. 0:00 to 9.49 minute.
youtu.be/M5pRXR03TYU?...

Non western context is a fertile ground for new theory and theorizing. Public Administration and Development is a great outlet for this kind of work. I pubs it there and will do so again. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

AI optimists or pessimists? Techno-optimism vs pessimism is too simplistic a way to classify attitudes toward AI. A more nuanced view could help, incl teasing out who benefit more or less (with differing level of skills, ways of using AI etc). Tech-possibilism?

open.substack.com/pub/yantocha...

Creative citizens can change policies. But how? This blog post, grounded in a study published in Public Management Review, discusses the details.
open.substack.com/pub/yantocha...