Faisal Awartani

Can AI Replace the People in Public-Opinion Research? Field research is expensive, slow and often frustrating. Researchers recruit and train enumerators, arrange access, travel to communities, chase respondents and clean incomplete data—sometimes only to confirm something that was already broadly predictable. So why not let AI estimate what people are likely to say? This is not necessarily bad research. With enough historical data, AI can identify stable relationships between people’s...

Across many countries, development partners are increasingly investing in Centre of Government (CoG) reforms to strengthen policy coordination, improve public sector performance, and enhance the ability of governments to deliver services effectively and transparently. While governance reform often focuses on institutional structures and technical solutions, experience shows that sustainable reform also depends on understanding the local institutional context, stakeholder relationships,...

According to the World Bank, Palestine and the United States both had 100% access to electricity in 2023. Palestine also nearly matched the United States in access to basic drinking water: 99% compared with 100% in 2024. And among the electricity generated locally, non-hydroelectric renewable sources accounted for 24.5% in Palestine, compared with roughly 14% in the United States in 2021. Healthcare produces an even more remarkable comparison. In 2023, health expenditure amounted to...