WeSIS – A comprehensive, interactive web-based information system on global dynamics of social policy.
Social policy aims to guarantee social rights and create social security. In addition to market and family support networks, it is a central producer of welfare. Setting out to explore the dynamics of global social policies, the CRC’s goal is to describe, map, analyze, and explain state social policies globally since 1880 for countries with at least 500,000 inhabitants (as of today). The CRC’s analytical framework focuses on the interplay between transnational interdependencies and national responses, paying particular attention to global coordination efforts by international organizations. This unique research profile in terms of a historically and simultaneously globally comparative scope requires consistent research data that captures:
- the introduction of state social policies, their generosity and inclusiveness plus their development over time,
- trans- and international (inter-)dependencies and linkages between entities, as well as
- national attributes.
Applying common coding rules alongside standardization procedures and validation checks when entering data into the system ensures a high level of harmonized data, making WeSIS a “one-stop data shop” for (comparative) welfare scholars. Given the analytical framework, a unique feature of WeSIS is its combination of monadic and dyadic data at the country-year and country-country-year level, respectively. This way, a myriad of research questions can be addressed quite easily, such as questions about the economic interdependencies and their impact on state social policies; how colonial dependencies, migrant movements, or violent international relations affect the introduction and design of social policies; and whether and how national attributes condition or precede them.
Data + Database + Tools = Information System
At the core of WeSIS is a database, but WeSIS is more than that. It’s unique combination of data, a database and (analytical) tools at “both sides” of the system overcomes current limitations with oftentimes single, isolated and non-standardized welfare policy data(sets) turning WeSIS into an information system.
Featuring many visualizations co-created with social policy scholars on indicator explorer pages, correlation and map tools as well as country profiles, WeSIS enables the user to easily dive into the data and explore the dynamics of social policies. The possibility to save a specific selection of indicators, countries and time points as a user-specific dataset that can (a) be downloaded for further processing in open file formats, and (b) be made publicly available keeping a unique identifier, allows for making the research data FAIR. The user also benefits from an extensive and standardized documentation of each indicator alongside consistency and validation checks that ensure harmonization and accuracy at a new level on the “other side” of WeSIS, i. e., when the data is prepared for and uploaded to the database.
The Genesis of WeSIS
Based on insights from user-centered design processes, WeSIS was built in co-creation with the CRC’s policy scholars. Co-creation as a software development method takes the user onboard right from the beginning leading to exchange and empowerment of the participants and a mutual understanding of the requirements, needs and features of the system—both for computer as well as social scientists. Building WeSIS was accompanied by research dealing with the question if and how co-creation contributes to improvements and habitual changes in analyzing and visualizing (social policy) data.
Our WeSIS team includes:
Hemanth Kumar Halaharavi is a Master's degree student in Digital Media at the University of Bremen, serves as a student assistant under the Wesis project. Tasked with frontend development, he envisions and executes tasks for the project's new design, ensuring a seamless user experience.
Selim Namdar works as a technical employee and administrator at the University of Bremen in the faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science and the Institute for Information Management Bremen (ifib). In his role, Selim ensures that the servers are always running smoothly and he is the first point of contact for technical problems.
Mohamad Tofayel Ahmed is a dedicated Backend Developer passionate about digital media technologies. Currently, he is pursuing a Master's degree in Digital Media at the University of Bremen. He is committed to leveraging his technical skills and academic knowledge to contribute to innovative backend development projects. His expertise in software engineering principles and a keen interest in the latest digital trends makes him a valuable asset to the team.
Oxana Vitman is a PhD candidate in the Computer Science department at the University of Bremen. She is responsible for the quality control of WeSIS development. Her research is focused on problems related to Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. In particular, she is interested in text classification tasks, such as sarcasm detection, fake news detection, and machine-generated text detection.
Nadera Sultana Tany is a Scientific Technical Employee at the University of Bremen. She is a Full Stack developer for WeSIS project. Her research interest is on HCI, Serious Gaming, socio-cultural impact of digital media, user research and automotive cyber security.
Hannes Salzmann is a PhD candidate at the University of Bremen. His research focuses on the automatic determination of party positions. He contributes to the co-creation process of WeSIS, the data collection and the development of new indicators based on the available data in WeSIS.
Nils Düpont works as a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the CRC with a focus on political parties and partisan politics. He was involved in several larger data collections e.g. on welfare state generosity before he joined the CRC; there he spent a lot of time on the organization, harmonization and consistency of the data collection for WeSIS at the intersection between social and computer scientists. Methodologically, he is firmly rooted in comparative politics and macro-comparative analyses.
Andreas Breiter is Co-PI of the project, Full Professor for Informatics, Department for Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Bremen. Scientific Director of the Institute for Information Management Bremen (ifib), a not-for-profit research center at the University of Bremen.
Ivo Mossig is Co-PI of the project and Professor of Human Geography with a focus on economic and social geography at the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Bremen.
Alumni
Siu Yee Pun was a master student in Digital Media at the University of Bremen and working as a student assistant for the WeSIS project. She supported the UI/UX design and front-end development of WeSIS.
Gabriela Molina León was a PhD candidate at the University of Bremen and she has successfully defended her thesis in the second phase. In the first phase, she worked on requirement analysis studies for WeSIS, oversaw the design of the system, contributed to the front-end and data visualization development. In the second phase, she was responsible for quality control of the new and updated features. Her research focuses on interaction design for visualizations beyond the desktop, and its application in Computational Social Science.
Hendrik Heuer was a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Bremen associated with the Institute for Information Management (ifib). His focus areas were Data Science and Digital Humanities. He supported the design and back-end development of WeSIS.
Christian Jaros was a student assistant in his Master studies at the University of Bremen and was implementing the new UI design and working on the general front-end development.
Eric HS Lau had been working in WeSIS to update, create, and refresh the UI and UX design, as well as looking for and mitigating accessibility issues.
Gabriella Skitalinskaya had been a PhD candidate in the Computer Science department at the University of Bremen and had contributed to the WeSIS development through the implementation of back-end technologies and data analysis. Her research was focused on problems related to Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. In particular, she was interested in exploring applications of NLP, such as understanding quality characteristics of arguments and argument generation.
Jonas Klaff worked as a student assistant during his Bachelor and Master studies at the University of Bremen. He started and maintained the back-end development of WeSIS.
Julia Krohn was a Bachelor student at the University of Bremen and studied Computer Science. She created and designed the data visualizations on the indicator page together with the social scientists as part of her Bachelor's thesis.
Matthias Kümmel worked as a Computer Science expert in System Integration at the University of Bremen. He maintained the WeSIS servers.
Michael Lischka was a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of Bremen. His research focused on the dynamics of economic linkages between nation-states and their representation as networks. He contributed to the co-creation process of WeSIS, the data collection, and the conceptual preparation of map-based visualizations together with Gabriela.
Wei Luo was a student assistant during her Master's studies at the University of Bremen. She redesigned a new user interface and maintained the visual design guide for WeSIS.
Anton Schlegel worked as a student assistant during his Bachelor's and Master's studies at the University of Bremen. He started and maintained the front-end development of WeSIS.
Yanxiang Zhan was a student assistant during his Master's studies at the University of Bremen. He implemented the new UI design and maintained the front-end development of WeSIS.