Stefaan Verhulst

Web Science Institute Paper by Kieron O’Hara: “In their report on the development of the UK AI industry, Wendy Hall and Jérôme Pesenti
recommend the establishment of data trusts, “proven and trusted frameworks and agreements” that will “ensure exchanges [of data] are secure and mutually beneficial” by promoting trust in the use of data for AI. Hall and Pesenti leave the structure of data trusts open, and the purpose of this paper is to explore the questions of (a) what existing structures can data trusts exploit, and (b) what relationship do data trusts have to
trusts as they are understood in law?

The paper defends the following thesis: A data trust works within the law to provide ethical, architectural and governance support for trustworthy data processing

Data trusts are therefore both constraining and liberating. They constrain: they respect current law, so they cannot render currently illegal actions legal. They are intended to increase trust, and so they will typically act as
further constraints on data processors, adding the constraints of trustworthiness to those of law. Yet they also liberate: if data processors
are perceived as trustworthy, they will get improved access to data.

Most work on data trusts has up to now focused on gaining and supporting the trust of data subjects in data processing. However, all actors involved in AI – data consumers, data providers and data subjects – have trust issues which data trusts need to address.

Furthermore, it is not only personal data that creates trust issues; the same may be true of any dataset whose release might involve an organisation risking competitive advantage. The paper addresses four areas….(More)”.

Article by Kathryn L.S. Pettit and Rob Pitingolo: “Child advocacy organizations, such as members of the KIDS COUNT network, have proven the value of using data to advocate for policies and programs to improve the lives of children and families. These organizations use data to educate policymakers and the public about how children are faring in their communities. They understand the importance of high-quality information for policy and decisionmaking. And in the past decade, many state governments have embraced the open data movement. Their data portals promote government transparency and increase data access for a wide range of users inside and outside government.

At the request of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which funds the KIDS COUNT network, the authors conducted research to explore how these state data efforts could bring greater benefits to local communities. Interviews with child advocates and open data providers confirmed the opportunity for child advocacy organizations and state governments to leverage open data to improve the lives of children and families. But accomplishing this goal will require new practices on both sides.

This brief first describes the current state of practice for child advocates using data and for state governments publishing open data. It then provides suggestions for what it would take from both sides to increase the use of open data to improve the lives of children and families. Child and family advocates will find five action steps in section 2. These steps encourage them to assess their data needs, build relationships with state data managers, and advocate for new data and preservation of existing data.
State agency staff will find five action steps in section 3. These steps describe how staff can engage diverse stakeholders, including agency staff beyond typical “data people” and data users outside government. Although this brief focuses on state-level institutions, local advocates an governments will find these lessons relevant. In fact, many of the lessons and best practices are based on pioneering efforts at the local level….(More)”.

Jonathan D. Paul in Frontiers in Earth Science: “Pluvial flooding can have devastating effects, both in terms of loss of life and damage. Predicting pluvial floods is difficult and many cities do not have a hydrodynamic model or an early warning system in place. Citizen science and crowdsourcing have the potential for contributing to early warning systems and can also provide data for validating flood forecasting models. Although there are increasing applications of citizen science and crowdsourcing in fluvial hydrology, less is known about activities related to pluvial flooding. Hence the aim of this paper is to review current activities in citizen science and crowdsourcing with respect to applications of pluvial flooding.

Based on a search in Scopus, the papers were first filtered for relevant content and then classified into four main themes. The first two themes were divided into (i) applications relevant during a flood event, which includes automated street flooding detection using crowdsourced photographs and sensors, analysis of social media, and online and mobile applications for flood reporting; and (ii) applications related to post-flood events. The use of citizen science and crowdsourcing for model development and validation is the third theme while the development of integrated systems is theme four. All four main areas of research have the potential to contribute to early warning systems and build community resilience. Moreover, developments in one will benefit others, e.g., further developments in flood reporting applications and automated flood detection systems will yield data useful for model validation….(More)”.

Alex Ingrams in the Review of Policy Research: “Big data applications have been acclaimed as potentially transformative for the public sector. But, despite this acclaim, most theory of big data is narrowly focused around technocratic goals. The conceptual frameworks that situate big data within democratic governance systems recognizing the role of citizens are still missing. This paper explores the democratic governance impacts of big data in three policy areas using Robert Dahl’s dimensions of control and autonomy. Key impacts and potential tensions are highlighted. There is evidence of impacts on both dimensions, but the dimensions conflict as well as align in notable ways and focused policy efforts will be needed to find a balance….(More)”.

Shannon C. Lefaivre et al in Frontiers of Genetics: “The Ontario Brain Institute (OBI) has begun to catalyze scientific discovery in the field of neuroscience through its large-scale informatics platform, known as Brain-CODE. The platform supports the capture, storage, federation, sharing and analysis of different data types across several brain disorders. Underlying the platform is a robust and scalable data governance structure which allows for the flexibility to advance scientific understanding, while protecting the privacy of research participants.

Recognizing the value of an open science approach to enabling discovery, the governance structure was designed not only to support collaborative research programs, but also to support open science by making all data open and accessible in the future. OBI’s rigorous approach to data sharing maintains the accessibility of research data for big discoveries without compromising privacy and security. Taking a Privacy by Design approach to both data sharing and development of the platform has allowed OBI to establish some best practices related to large scale data sharing within Canada. The aim of this report is to highlight these best practices and develop a key open resource which may be referenced during the development of similar open science initiatives….(More)”.

Paper by Ayinde Lateef, Funmilola Olubunmi Omotayo: “This article considers information as a strategic asset in the organization just as land, labour and capital. It elaborates how information assets help organizations to meet its organizational objectives and also examine issues that led to the proliferation of information assets; because of the proliferation of data and information, it becomes difficult for organization to make effective use of these information assets to meets its objectives. This leads to management of information assets and management of information risk. These two areas are critical to organization. It was concluded that information audit is the effective tool that could be used to manage the information asset and information risk. Also that information policy should be drawn; information professional should be among those handling information-related issues….(More)”.

Chapter by Cécile Doustaly in The Rise of Progressive Cities East and West: “Cities around the world have taken the process of local politics outside the field of professional expertise and legitimate culture to allow for greater local participation. In the context of increased urban change, funding cuts and administrative reforms but also citizen’s political disaffection, methodologies to engage inhabitants with their neighbourhoods have been developed in France and Britain over the last 15 years. This chapter focuses on one of the most efficient and popular of such schemes worldwide, participatory budgeting, which chimes surprisingly well with New Public Management practices.

The untapped field of research enquiry lies in understanding developments in participatory budgeting in London and Paris, with an attention to the wider context and scale (from global to national, city, districts and neighbourhoods levels). Conclusions highlight that participatory budgeting needs clear political insight, willpower, funding and local tailoring to be successfully implemented and questions its capacity to outlive change in political parties and leaders. The chapter then identifies the conditions and variables for such programmes to encourage progressive cities characterized by more conviviality, inclusion, distributive justice and environmental sustainability.

The chapter isolates elements of progressivism in PB in London and Paris whose models grew further apart in the period until 2016. While Paris has refined its practice year on, London boroughs community budgets have become scarce, as a result of lack of public funding and democratic empowerment, confirming the view that “economic growth [is] a failing and insufficient criteria to create good governance and liveable cities, as opposed to civic involvement” (Cho and Douglass, Introduction). Participatory budgeting is therefore a flexible instrument which can wave without having left much trace or trigger more wide-ranging improvements and further democratic rights….(More)”.

Paper by Francesca De Filippi, Cristina Coscia and Roberta Guido: “Nowadays, through ICT supports and their applications, the concept of smart cities has evolved into smart communities, where the collaborative relationship between citizens and public administration generates multi-dimensional impacts: urban sites are living labs and agents of innovation and inclusion. As a first step, this article aims to critically review the state of the art of the assessment methods of these impacts through a set of synthetic indicators; the second step is to elaborate a specific framework to evaluate quality of life through a set of impact indicators for smart communities and inclusive urban processes. According to some referenced authors, cities and communities are smart if they perform well in six smart categories: smart economy; smart people; smart governance; smart mobility; smart environment; and smart living. Considering a recent experiment carried out in Turin (Italy), the authors propose a methodology, whose trial is ongoing, based on a hierarchical multiscale framework defining a set of smart community indicators….(More)”.

Paper by Malkiat Thiarai, Sarunkorn Chotvijit and Stephen Jarvis: “There is significant national interest in tackling issues surrounding the needs of vulnerable children and adults. This paper aims to argue that much value can be gained from the application of new data-analytic approaches to assist with the care provided to vulnerable children. This paper highlights the ethical and information governance issues raised in the development of a research project that sought to access and analyse children’s social care data.

The paper documents the process involved in identifying, accessing and using data held in Birmingham City Council’s social care system for collaborative research with a partner organisation. This includes identifying the data, its structure and format; understanding the Data Protection Act 1998 and 2018 (DPA) exemptions that are relevant to ensure that legal obligations are met; data security and access management; the ethical and governance approval process.

The findings will include approaches to understanding the data, its structure and accessibility tasks involved in addressing ethical and legal obligations and requirements of the ethical and governance processes….(More)”.

Report by Giulio Coppi and Larissa Fast at ODI (Overseas Development Institute): “Blockchain and the wider category of distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) promise a more transparent, accountable, efficient and secure way of exchanging decentralised stores of information that are independently updated, automatically replicated and immutable. The key components of DLTs include shared recordkeeping, multi-party consensus, independent validation, tamper evidence and tamper resistance.

Building on these claims, proponents suggest DLTs can address common problems of non-profit organisations and NGOs, such as transparency, efficiency, scale and sustainability. Current humanitarian uses of DLT, illustrated in this report, include financial inclusion, land titling, remittances, improving the transparency of donations, reducing fraud, tracking support to beneficiaries from multiple sources, transforming governance systems, micro-insurance, cross-border transfers, cash programming, grant management and organisational governance.

This report, commissioned by the Global Alliance for Humanitarian Innovation (GAHI), examines current DLT uses by the humanitarian sector to outline lessons for the project, policy and system levels. It offers recommendations to address the challenges that must be overcome before DLTs can be ethically, safely, appropriately and effectively scaled in humanitarian contexts….(More)”.