Press Release: “The Lisbon Council launches The Public-Data Opportunity: Why Governments Should Share More, a new discussion paper that looks at the state of play for public-sector data sharing – and calls for better protocols and procedures to deliver data-driven service to all Europeans. The paper analyses the importance of data-sharing between European Union public agencies, identifies the barriers and proposes seven policy recommendations that will help lift them. It builds on the research conducted by the “Understanding Value Co-Creation in Public Services for Transforming European Public Administrations” project, or Co-VAL, a 12-partner research consortium, co-funded by the European Union. And was launched at The 2019 Digital Government Conference convened by the Presidency of the European Council of Finland in Helsinki….(More)”
Becoming a data steward
Shalini Kurapati at the LSE Impact Blog: “In the context of higher education, data stewards are the first point of reference for all data related questions. In my role as a data steward at TU Delft, I was able to advise, support and train researchers on various aspects of data management throughout the life cycle of a research project, from initial planning to post-publication. This included storing, managing and sharing research outputs such as data, images, models and code.
Data stewards also advise researchers on the ethical, policy and legal considerations during data collection, processing and dissemination. In a way, they are general practitioners for research data management and can usually solve most problems faced by academics. In cases that require specialist intervention, they also serve as a key point for referral (eg: IT, patent, legal experts).
Data stewardship is often organised centrally through the university library. (Subject) Data librarians, research data consultants and research data officers, usually perform similar roles to data stewards. However, TU Delft operates a decentralised model, where data stewards are placed within faculties as disciplinary experts with research experience. This allows data stewards to provide discipline specific support to researchers, which is particularly beneficial, as the concept of what data is itself varies across disciplines….(More)”.
New Zealand launches draft algorithm charter for government agencies
Mia Hunt at Global Government Forum: “The New Zealand government has launched a draft ‘algorithm charter’ that sets out how agencies should analyse data in a way that is fair, ethical and transparent.
The charter, which is open for public consultation, sets out 10 points that agencies would have to adhere to. These include pledging to explain how significant decisions are informed by algorithms or, where it cannot – for national security reasons, for example – explain the reason; taking into account the perspectives of communities, such as LGBTQI+, Pacific islanders and people with disabilities; and identifying and consulting with groups or stakeholders with an interest in algorithm development.
Agencies would also have to publish information about how data is collected and stored; use tools and processes to ensure that privacy, ethics, and human rights considerations are integrated as part of algorithm development and procurement; and periodically assess decisions made by algorithms for unintended bias.
They would commit to implementing a “robust” peer-review process, and have to explain clearly who is responsible for automated decisions and what methods exist for challenge or appeal “via a human”….
The charter – which fits on a single page, and is designed to be simple and easily understood – explains that algorithms are a “fundamental element” of data analytics, which supports public services and delivers “new, innovative and well-targeted” policies aims.
The charter begins: “In a world where technology is moving rapidly, and artificial intelligence is on the rise, it’s essential that government has the right safeguards in place when it uses public data for decision-making. The government must ensure that data ethics are embedded in its work, and always keep in mind the people and communities being served by these tools.”
It says Stats NZ, the country’s official data agency, is “committed to transparent and accountable use of operational algorithms and other advanced data analytics techniques that inform decisions significantly impacting on individuals or groups”….(More)”.
The Limits of Science
Ronald W. Dworkin at National Affairs: “In the modern world, science has become the ultimate guide for describing reality. It’s easy to see the appeal. Science has a beautiful clarity and economy; its laws are straightforward and unchanging. It reveals the workings of the world around us with such calmness and exactness, and with such an appearance of impartiality, that we feel satisfied with its answers and seek nothing more.
Newtonian mechanics represent the nearest approach to this ideal of science ever achieved. Given the masses, positions, and motions of objects, their future positions and motions can be calculated with extraordinary precision. Sir Isaac Newton’s method was a revolution. Before Newton, science was conducted in an altogether different way; investigators speculated rather than experimented. It was Newton who stripped objects of all but their most basic attributes — mass and density — and timed their fall, drawing conclusions from what he observed rather than from what he imagined. By reducing objects to a few measurable characteristics, he was able to discover the universal laws that governed the behavior of all objects.
An analogous revolution occurred in political thought around the same period. While ancient philosophers tried to define virtue, Thomas Hobbes, whose lifetime spanned Newton’s early years, took the opposite approach. Stripping people of all but their most basic (and base) attributes — selfishness and vanity — he claimed to explain mankind’s mechanics, as it were, and the structure of civilization. His rules of the social contract explained how the basic machine of society works, just as Newton’s laws of motion explained how the machine of the universe works.
The scientific revolution has now entered a second phase. It has moved beyond the hard sciences and Hobbesian philosophy and become the unifying principle of many activities in daily life. Through the relatively new disciplines of psychology, neuroscience, human science, and social science, it has inserted itself into how people think and behave at the individual level, affecting everything from interpersonal relationships to psychological health to education. The scientific revolution permeates our lives, shaping our sense of reality and truth. But sometimes it does so in ways that result in sheer absurdity. This is because of flaws within the scientific method itself — in other words, at the scientific revolution’s core. These flaws rarely show up in hard science, but they grow more obvious, and more problematic, as humanity takes the place of inanimate objects as the method’s primary target.
To better understand what has happened, it will help to take a brief look back at the scientific revolution’s first phase….(More)”.
Breaking Down Information Silos with Big Data: A Legal Analysis of Data Sharing
Chapter by Giovanni De Gregorio and Sofia Ranchordas in J. Cannataci, V. Falce & O. Pollicino (Eds), New Legal Challenges of Big Data (Edward Elgar, 2020, Forthcoming): “In the digital society, individuals play different roles depending on the situation they are placed in: they are consumers when they purchase a good, citizens when they vote for elections, content providers when they post information on a platform, and data subjects when their data is collected. Public authorities have thus far regulated citizens and the data collected on their different roles in silos (e.g., bankruptcy registrations, social welfare databases), resulting in inconsistent decisions, redundant paperwork, and delays in processing citizen requests. Data silos are considered to be inefficient both for companies and governments. Big data and data analytics are disrupting these silos allowing the different roles of individuals and the respective data to converge. In practice, this happens in several countries with data sharing arrangements or ad hoc data requests. However, breaking down the existing structure of information silos in the public sector remains problematic. While big data disrupts artificial silos that may not make sense in the digital society and promotes a truly efficient digitalization of data, removing information out of its original context may alter its meaning and violate the privacy of citizens. In addition, silos ensure that citizens are not assessed in one field by information generated in a totally different context. This chapter discusses how big data and data analytics are changing information silos and how digital technology is challenging citizens’ autonomy and right to privacy and data protection. This chapter also explores the need for a more integrated approach to the study of information, particularly in the public sector.
The Next Step for Human-Centered Design in Global Public Health
Tracy Johnson, Jaspal S. Sandhu & Nikki Tyler at SSIR : “How do we select the right design partner?” “Where can I find evidence that design really works?” “Can design have any impact beyond products?” These are real questions that we’ve been asked by our public health colleagues who have been exposed to human-centered design. This deeper curiosity indicates a shift in the conversation around human-centered design, compared with common perceptions as recently as five years ago.
The past decade has seen a rapid increase in organizations that use human-centered design for innovation and improvement in health care. However, there have been challenges in determining how to best integrate design into current ways of working. Unfortunately, these challenges have been met with an all-or-nothing response.
In reality, anyone thinking of applying design concepts must first decide how deeply they want design to be integrated into a project. The DesignforHealth community—launched by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Center for Innovation and Impact at USAID—defines three types of design integration: spark, ingredient, or end-to-end.
As a spark, design can be the catalyst for teams to work creatively and unlock innovation.
Design can be an ingredient that helps improve an existing product. Using design end-to-end in the development process can address a complex concept such as social vulnerability.
As the field of design in health matures, the next phase will require support for “design consumers.” These are non-designers who take part in a design approach, whether as an inspiring spark, a key ingredient in an established process, or an end-to-end approach.
Here are three important considerations that will help design consumers make the critical decisions that are needed before embarking on their next design journey….(More)”.
Should Consumers Be Able to Sell Their Own Personal Data?
The Wall Street Journal: “People around the world are confused and concerned about what companies do with the data they collect from their interactions with consumers.
A global survey conducted last fall by the research firm Ipsos gives a sense of the scale of people’s worries and uncertainty. Roughly two-thirds of those surveyed said they knew little or nothing about how much data companies held about them or what companies did with that data. And only about a third of respondents on average said they had at least a fair amount of trust that a variety of corporate and government organizations would use the information they had about them in the right way….
Christopher Tonetti, an associate professor of economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, says consumers should own and be able to sell their personal data. Cameron F. Kerry, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and former general counsel and acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, opposes the idea….
YES: It Would Encourage Sharing of Data—a Plus for Consumers and Society…Data isn’t like other commodities in one fundamental way—it doesn’t diminish with use. And that difference is the key to why consumers should own the data that’s created when they interact with companies, and have the right to sell it.YES: It Would Encourage Sharing of Data—a Plus for Consumers and Society…
NO: It Would Do Little to Help Consumers, and Could Leave Them Worse Off Than Now…
But owning data will do little to help consumers’ privacy—and may well leave them worse off. Meanwhile, consumer property rights would create enormous friction for valid business uses of personal information and for the free flow of information we value as a society.
In our current system, consumers reflexively click away rights to data in exchange for convenience, free services, connection, endorphins or other motivations. In a market where consumers could sell or license personal information they generate from web browsing, ride-sharing apps and other digital activities, is there any reason to expect that they would be less motivated to share their information? …(More)”.
Democracy Beyond Elections
United Nations Democracy Fund: “newDemocracy and the United Nations Democracy Fund have recently announced a 2-year agreement centred on doing democracy differently. Making democracies more inclusive requires bold and innovative reforms to bring the young, the poor, and minorities into the political system to start to address the crisis of political representation which sees people becoming less and less engaged.
newDemocracy has been selected to develop and distribute a handbook on ‘Democracy Beyond Elections’ designed to show how nations at various levels of development can apply the principles of representation and deliberation in ways that are appropriate for their economic and educational circumstances. This handbook is now available to read online here, and available for download here….(More)”.
Massive Citizen Science Effort Seeks to Survey the Entire Great Barrier Reef
Jessica Wynne Lockhart at Smithsonian: “In August, marine biologists Johnny Gaskell and Peter Mumby and a team of researchers boarded a boat headed into unknown waters off the coasts of Australia. For 14 long hours, they ploughed over 200 nautical miles, a Google Maps cache as their only guide. Just before dawn, they arrived at their destination of a previously uncharted blue hole—a cavernous opening descending through the seafloor.
After the rough night, Mumby was rewarded with something he hadn’t seen in his 30-year career. The reef surrounding the blue hole had nearly 100 percent healthy coral cover. Such a find is rare in the Great Barrier Reef, where coral bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 led to headlines proclaiming the reef “dead.”
“It made me think, ‘this is the story that people need to hear,’” Mumby says.
The expedition from Daydream Island off the coast of Queensland was a pilot program to test the methodology for the Great Reef Census, a citizen science project headed by Andy Ridley, founder of the annual conservation event Earth Hour. His latest organization, Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef, has set the ambitious goal of surveying the entire 1,400-mile-long reef system in 2020…(More)”.
Private Law, Nudging and Behavioural Economic Analysis: The Mandated-Choice Model
Book by Antonios Karampatzos: “Offering a fresh perspective on “nudging”, this book uses legal paternalism to explore how legal systems may promote good policies without ignoring personal autonomy.
It suggests that the dilemma between inefficient opt-in rules and autonomy restricting opt-out schemes fails to realistically capture the span of options available to the policy maker. There is a third path, namely the ‘mandated-choice model’. The book is dedicated to presenting this model and exploring its great potential. Contract law, consumer protection, products safety and regulatory problems such as organ donation or excessive borrowing are the setting for the discussion. Familiarising the reader with a hot debate on paternalism, behavioural economics and private law, this book takes a further step and links this behavioural law and economics discussion with philosophical considerations to shed a light on modern challenges, such as organ donation or consumers protection, by adopting an openly interdisciplinary approach….(More)”.