Stefaan Verhulst
Jane Wiseman at DataSmart City Solutions: “Public trust in government is low — of the 43 industries tracked in the American Customer Satisfaction Index, only one ranks lower than the federal government in satisfaction levels. Local government ranks a bit higher than the federal government, but for most of the public, that makes little difference. It’s time for government to change that perception by listening to its customers and improving service delivery.
What can the cup holder in your car teach government about customer engagement? A cup holder would be hard to live without — it keeps a latte from spilling and has room for keys and a phone. But the cup holder was not always such a multi-tasker. The first ones were shallow indentations in the plastic on the inside of the glove box. Accelerate and the drinks went flying. Did a brilliant automotive engineer decide that was a design flaw and fix it? No. It was only when Chrysler received more complaints about the cup holder than about anything else in their cars that they were forced to innovate. Don Clark, a DaimlerChrysler engineer known as the “Cup Holder King,” designed the first of the modern cup holders, debuting in the company’s 1984 minivans. The engineersthought they knew what their customers wanted (more powerful engines, better fuel economy, safety features) but it wasn’t until they listened to customers’ comments that they put in the cup holder. And sales took off.
Today, we’re awash in customer feedback, seemingly everywhere but government. Over the past decade, customer feedback ratings for products and services have shown up everywhere — whether in a review on Yelp, a “like” on Facebook, or a Tweet about the virtues or shortcomings of a product or service. Ratings help draw attention to poor quality and allow companies to address these gaps. Many companies routinely follow up a customer interaction with a satisfaction survey. This data drives improvement efforts aimed at keeping customers happy. Some companies aggressively manage their online reviews, seeking to increase their NPS, or net promoter score. Many people really like to provide feedback — there are 77 million reviews on Yelp to date, according to the company. Imagine the power of that many reviews of government service.
If customer input can influence the automotive industry, and can help consumers make better decisions, what if we turned this energy toward government? After all, the government is run “by the people” and “for the people” — what if citizens gave government real-time guidance on improving services? And could leaders in government ask customers what they want, instead of presuming to know? This paper explores these questions and suggests a way forward.
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If I were a mayor, how would I begin harnessing customer feedback to improve service delivery? I would build a foundation for improving core city operations (trash pickup, pothole fixing, etc.) by using the same three questions Kansas City uses for follow-up surveys to all who contact 311. Upon that foundation I would layer additional outreach on a tactical, ad hoc basis. I would experiment with the growing body of tools for engaging the public in shaping tactical decisions, such as how to allocate capital projects and where to locate bike share hubs.
To get an even deeper insight into the customer experience, I might copy what Somerville, MA has done with its Secret Resident program. Trained volunteers assess the efficiency, courtesy, and ease of use of selected city departments. The volunteers transact typical city services by phone or in person, and then document their customer experience. They rate the agencies, and the 311 call center, and provide assessments that can help improve customer service.
By listening to and leveraging data on constituent calls for service, government can move from a culture of reaction to a proactive culture of listening and learning from the data provided by the public. Engaging the public, and following through on the suggestions they give, can increase not only the quality of government service, but the faith of the public that government can listen and respond.
Every leader in government should commit to getting feedback from customers — it’s the only way to know how to increase their satisfaction with the services. There is no more urgent time to improve the customer experience…(More)
Book description: “Robots are poised to transform today’s society as completely as the Internet did twenty years ago. Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times science writer John Markoff argues that we must decide to design ourselves into our future, or risk being excluded from it altogether.
In the past decade, Google introduced us to driverless cars; Apple debuted Siri, a personal assistant that we keep in our pockets; and an Internet of Things connected the smaller tasks of everyday life to the farthest reaches of the Web. Robots have become an integral part of society on the battlefield and the road; in business, education, and health care. Cheap sensors and powerful computers will ensure that in the coming years, these robots will act on their own. This new era offers the promise of immensely powerful machines, but it also reframes a question first raised more than half a century ago, when the intelligent machine was born. Will we control these systems, or will they control us?
In Machines of Loving Grace, John Markoff offers a sweeping history of the complicated and evolving relationship between humans and computers. In recent years, the pace of technological change has accelerated dramatically, posing an ethical quandary. If humans delegate decisions to machines, who will be responsible for the consequences? As Markoff chronicles the history of automation, from the birth of the artificial intelligence and intelligence augmentation communities in the 1950s and 1960s, to the modern-day brain trusts at Google and Apple in Silicon Valley, and on to the expanding robotics economy around Boston, he traces the different ways developers have addressed this fundamental problem and urges them to carefully consider the consequences of their work. We are on the brink of the next stage of the computer revolution, Markoff argues, and robots will profoundly transform modern life. Yet it remains for us to determine whether this new world will be a utopia. Moreover, it is now incumbent upon the designers of these robots to draw a bright line between what is human and what is machine.
After nearly forty years covering the tech industry, Markoff offers an unmatched perspective on the most drastic technology-driven societal shifts since the introduction of the Internet. Machines of Loving Grace draws on an extensive array of research and interviews to present an eye-opening history of one of the most pressing questions of our time, and urges us to remember that we still have the opportunity to design ourselves into the future—before it’s too late….(More)”
Gartner: “The journey to digital business continues as the key theme of Gartner, Inc.’s “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2015.” New to the Hype Cycle this year is the emergence of technologies that support what Gartner defines as digital humanism — the notion that people are the central focus in the manifestation ofdigital businesses and digital workplaces.
The Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report is the longest-running annual Hype Cycle, providing a cross-industry perspective on the technologies and trends that business strategists, chief innovation officers, R&D leaders, entrepreneurs, global market developers and emerging-technology teams should consider in developing emerging-technology portfolios.
“The Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies is the broadest aggregate Gartner Hype Cycle, featuring technologies that are the focus of attention because of particularly high levels of interest, and those that Gartner believes have the potential for significant impact,” said Betsy Burton, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “This year, we encourage CIOs and other IT leaders to dedicate time and energy focused on innovation, rather than just incremental business advancement, while also gaining inspiration by scanning beyond the bounds of their industry.”
Major changes in the 2015 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies (see Figure 1) include the placement ofautonomous vehicles, which have shifted from pre-peak to peak of the Hype Cycle. While autonomous vehicles are still embryonic, this movement still represents a significant advancement, with all major automotive companies putting autonomous vehicles on their near-term roadmaps. Similarly, the growing momentum (from post-trigger to pre-peak) in connected-home solutions has introduced entirely new solutions and platforms enabled by new technology providers and existing manufacturers.
Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2015
Source: Gartner (August 2015)
“As enterprises continue the journey to becoming digital businesses, identifying and employing the right technologies at the right time will be critical,” said Ms. Burton. “As we have set out on the Gartner roadmap to digital business, there are six progressive business era models that enterprises can identify with today and to which they can aspire in the future….(More)”
Paper by Ira Rubinstein and Woodrow Hartzog: “Perfect anonymization of data sets has failed. But the process of protecting data subjects in shared information remains integral to privacy practice and policy. While the deidentification debate has been vigorous and productive, there is no clear direction for policy. As a result, the law has been slow to adapt a holistic approach to protecting data subjects when data sets are released to others. Currently, the law is focused on whether an individual can be identified within a given set. We argue that the better locus of data release policy is on the process of minimizing the risk of reidentification and sensitive attribute disclosure. Process-based data release policy, which resembles the law of data security, will help us move past the limitations of focusing on whether data sets have been “anonymized.” It draws upon different tactics to protect the privacy of data subjects, including accurate deidentification rhetoric, contracts prohibiting reidentification and sensitive attribute disclosure, data enclaves, and query-based strategies to match required protections with the level of risk. By focusing on process, data release policy can better balance privacy and utility where nearly all data exchanges carry some risk….(More)”
Neil Lawrence in The Guardian: “….The modern information infrastructure is about movement of data. From data we derive information and knowledge, and that knowledge can be propagated rapidly across the country and throughout the world. Facebook and Google have both made massive investments in machine learning, the mainstay technology for converting data into knowledge. But the potential for these technologies in Africa is much larger: instead of simply advertising products to people, we can imagine modern distributed health systems, distributed markets, knowledge systems for disease intervention. The modern infrastructure should be data driven and deployed across the mobile network. A single good idea can then be rapidly implemented and distributed via the mobile phone app ecosystems.
The information infrastructure does not require large scale thinking and investment to deliver. In fact, it requires just the reverse. It requires agility and innovation. Larger companies cannot react quickly enough to exploit technological advances. Small companies with a good idea can grow quickly. From IBM to Microsoft, Google and now Facebook. All these companies now agree on one thing: data is where the value lies. Modern internet companies are data-driven from the ground up. Could the same thing happen in Africa’s economies? Can entire countries reformulate their infrastructures to be data-driven from the ground up?
Maybe, or maybe not, but it isn’t necessary to have a grand plan to give it a go. It is already natural to use data and communication to solve real world problems. In Silicon Valley these are the challenges of getting a taxi or reserving a restaurant. In Africa they are often more fundamental. John Quinn has been in Kampala, Uganda at Makerere University for eight years now targeting these challenges. In June this year, John and other researchers from across the region came together for Africa’s first workshop on data science at Dedan Kimathi University of Technology. The objective was to spread knowledge of technologies, ideas and solutions. For the modern information infrastructure to be successful software solutions need to be locally generated. African apps to solve African problems. With this in mind the workshop began with a three day summer school on data science which was then followed by two days of talks on challenges in African data science.
The ideas and solutions presented were cutting edge. The Umati project uses social media to understand the use of ethnic hate speech in Kenya (Sidney Ochieng, iHub, Nairobi). The use of social media for monitoring the evolution and effects of Ebola in west Africa (Nuri Pashwani, IBM Research Africa). The Kudusystem for market making in Ugandan farm produce distribution via SMS messages (Kenneth Bwire, Makerere University, Kampala). Telecommunications data for inferring the source and spread of a typhoid outbreak in Kampala (UN Pulse Lab, Kampala). The Punya system for prototyping and deployment of mobile phone apps to deal with emerging crises or market opportunities (Julius Adebayor, MIT) and large scale systems for collating and sharing data resources Open Data Kenya and UN OCHA Human Data Exchange….(More)”
Springwise: “Out of New York’s 12,000 intersections, less than 100 offer navigation tools to help visually impaired residents cross safely. Audible sign technology is available but the process of installing it across cities is slow — most only have it at about 10 percent of crossings. Offering an alternative,SeeLight is a crowdsourced app that makes all the necessary information about urban crossings available to blind and visually impaired users.
The app collates data from government agencies and uses crowdsourced information to fill in the existing gap. Users can help by timing the length of any walk signal and recording the direction of the crossing using the app, which will then store that information along with a GPS tag. They can also add a brief description, noting whether the intersection has tactile paving or a pedestrian crossing light. When a visually impaired person approaches a crossing, they can then use the app to assist them through voice navigation.
SeeLight is not the first app to crowdsource accessibility data — we recently wrote about AXS Map, which collects user reviews about how accessible places around the world are for users in wheelchairs. SeeLight is currently crowdfunding on Indiegogo to finance improvements to the current app, which is available now for free. …(More)
Commentary by George C. Alter and Mary Vardigan: “This issue of the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics highlights the ethical issues that arise when researchers conducting projects in low- and middle-income countries seek to share the data they produce. Although sharing data is considered a best practice, the barriers to doing so are considerable and there is a need for guidance and examples. To that end, the authors of this article reviewed the articles in this special issue to identify challenges common to the five countries and to offer some practical advice to assist researchers in navigating this “uncharted territory,” as some termed it. Concerns around informed consent, data management, data dissemination, and validation of research contributions were cited frequently as particularly challenging areas, so the authors focused on these four topics with the goal of providing specific resources to consult as well as examples of successful projects attempting to solve many of the problems raised….(More)”
Paper by Jonathan Cave: “Recent work on privacy (e.g. WEIS 2013/4, Meaningful Consent in the Digital Economy project) recognises the unanticipated consequences of data-centred legal protections in a world of shifting relations between data and human actors. But the rules have not caught up with these changes, and the irreversible consequences of ‘make do and mend’ are not often taken into account when changing policy.
Many of the most-protected ‘personal’ data are not personal at all, but are created to facilitate the operation of larger (e.g. administrative, economic, transport) systems or inadvertently generated by using such systems. The protection given to such data typically rests on notions of informed consent even in circumstances where such consent may be difficult to define, harder to give and nearly impossible to certify in meaningful ways. Such protections typically involve a mix of data collection, access and processing rules that are either imposed on behalf of individuals or are to be exercised by them. This approach adequately protects some personal interests, but not all – and is definitely not future-proof. Boundaries between allowing individuals to discover and pursue their interests on one side and behavioural manipulation on the other are often blurred. The costs (psychological and behavioural as well as economic and practical) of exercising control over one’s data are rarely taken into account as some instances of the Right to be Forgotten illustrate. The purposes for which privacy rights were constructed are often forgotten, or have not been reinterpreted in a world of ubiquitous monitoring data, multi-person ‘private exchanges,’ and multiple pathways through which data can be used to create and to capture value. Moreover, the parties who should be involved in making decisions – those connected by a network of informational relationships – are often not in contractual, practical or legal contact. These developments, associated with e.g. the Internet of Things, Cloud computing and big data analytics, should be recognised as challenging privacy rules and, more fundamentally, the adequacy of informed consent (e.g. to access specified data for specified purposes) as a means of managing innovative, flexible, and complex informational architectures.
This paper presents a framework for organising these challenges using them to evaluate proposed policies, specifically in relation to complex, automated, automatic or autonomous data collection, processing and use. It argues for a movement away from a system of property rights based on individual consent to a values-based ‘privity’ regime – a collection of differentiated (relational as well as property) rights and consents that may be better able to accommodate innovations. Privity regimes (see deFillipis 2006) bundle together rights regarding e.g. confidential disclosure with ‘standing’ or voice options in relation to informational linkages.
The impacts are examined through a game-theoretic comparison between the proposed privity regime and existing privacy rights in personal data markets that include: conventional ‘behavioural profiling’ and search; situations where third parties may have complementary roles conflicting interests in such data and where data have value in relation both to specific individuals and to larger groups (e.g. ‘real-world’ health data); n-sided markets on data platforms (including social and crowd-sourcing platforms with long and short memories); and the use of ‘privity-like’ rights inherited by data objects and by autonomous systems whose ownership may be shared among many people….(More)”
New paper by Jennifer L. Gustetic et al in Space Policy: “In an increasingly connected and networked world, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recognizes the value of the public as a strategic partner in addressing some of our most pressing challenges. The agency is working to more effectively harness the expertise, ingenuity, and creativity of individual members of the public by enabling, accelerating, and scaling the use of open innovation approaches including prizes, challenges, and crowdsourcing. As NASA’s use of open innovation tools to solve a variety of types of problems and advance of number of outcomes continues to grow, challenge design is also becoming more sophisticated as our expertise and capacity (personnel, platforms, and partners) grows and develops. NASA has recently pivoted from talking about the benefits of challenge-driven approaches, to the outcomes these types of activities yield. Challenge design should be informed by desired outcomes that align with NASA’s mission. This paper provides several case studies of NASA open innovation activities and maps the outcomes of those activities to a successful set of outcomes that challenges can help drive alongside traditional tools such as contracts, grants and partnerships….(More)”
New book by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind: “This book predicts the decline of today’s professions and describes the people and systems that will replace them. In an Internet society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others, to work as they did in the 20th century.
The Future of the Professions explains how ‘increasingly capable systems’ – from telepresence to artificial intelligence – will bring fundamental change in the way that the ‘practical expertise’ of specialists is made available in society.
The authors challenge the ‘grand bargain’ – the arrangement that grants various monopolies to today’s professionals. They argue that our current professions are antiquated, opaque and no longer affordable, and that the expertise of the best is enjoyed only by a few. In their place, they propose six new models for producing and distributing expertise in society.
The book raises important practical and moral questions. In an era when machines can out-perform human beings at most tasks, what are the prospects for employment, who should own and control online expertise, and what tasks should be reserved exclusively for people?
Based on the authors’ in-depth research of more than ten professions, and illustrated by numerous examples from each, this is the first book to assess and question the relevance of the professions in the 21st century. (Chapter 1)”