Stefaan Verhulst

The People’s Verdict: Adding Informed Citizen Voices to Public Decision-Making

Curated on June 1, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Claudia Chwalisz: “In a post-Brexit world with populists on the rise, trust in government and politicians is in short supply. People claim to be tired of ‘experts’ and the divide between facts and opinion has been blurred. The art of offering simple solutions to complex problems is tipping the scale away from nuanced, multifaceted answers founded on compromise.

Within this context, governments nonetheless need to make difficult decisions, whether it is developing budgets, aligning priorities, or designing long-term projects. It is often impossible to make everybody happy, and the messy business of weighing trade-offs takes place.

While sometimes these tricky policy dilemmas are relegated to independent commissions or inquiries, or lately to referendums, a better method exists for solving them. This study of almost 50 long-form deliberative processes in Canada and Australia makes the case that adding informed citizen voices to public decision-making leads to more effective policies. By putting the problem to the people, giving them information, time to discuss the options, to find common ground and to decide what they want, public bodies gain the legitimacy to act on hard choices…(More)”

Permanent Campaigning in Canada

Curated on June 1, 2017August 20, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Alex Marland, Thierry Giasson and Anna Lennox Esselment: “Election campaigning never stops. That is the new reality of politics and government in Canada, where everyone from staffers in the Prime Minister’s Office to backbench MPs practise political marketing and communication as though the official campaign were still underway.

Permanent Campaigning in Canada examines the growth and democratic implications of political parties’ relentless search for votes and popularity and what a constant state of electioneering means for governance. With the emergence of fixed-date elections and digital media, each day is a battle to win mini-contests: the news cycle, public opinion polls, quarterly fundraising results, by-elections, and more. The contributors’ case studies – on political databases, the strategy behind online political communication, the politicization of government advertising, and the role of the PMO and political staff – reveal how political actors are using all available tools at their disposal to secure electoral advantage, including the use of public resources for partisan gain.

This is the first study of a phenomenon that has become embedded in Canadian politics and government. It reveals the extent to which political parties and political staff have embraced non-stop electioneering, and the consequences for our democratic processes and institutions….(More)”

Could Big Data Help End Hunger in Africa?

Curated on May 31, 2017July 19, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Lenny Ruvaga at VOA News: “Computer algorithms power much of modern life from our Facebook feeds to international stock exchanges. Could they help end malnutrition and hunger in Africa? The International Center for Tropical Agriculture thinks so.

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture has spent the past four years developing the Nutrition Early Warning System, or NEWS.

The goal is to catch the subtle signs of a hunger crisis brewing in Africa as much as a year in advance.

CIAT says the system uses machine learning. As more information is fed into the system, the algorithms will get better at identifying patterns and trends. The system will get smarter.

Information Technology expert Andy Jarvis leads the project.

“The cutting edge side of this is really about bringing in streams of information from multiple sources and making sense of it. … But it is a huge volume of information and what it does, the novelty then, is making sense of that using things like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and condensing it into simple messages,” he said.

Other nutrition surveillance systems exist, like FEWSnet, the Famine Early Warning System Network which was created in the mid-1980s.

But CIAT says NEWS will be able to draw insights from a massive amount of diverse data enabling it to identify hunger risks faster than traditional methods.

“What is different about NEWS is that it pays attention to malnutrition, not just drought or famine, but the nutrition outcome that really matters, malnutrition especially in women and children. For the first time, we are saying these are the options way ahead of time. That gives policy makers an opportunity to really do what they intend to do which is make the lives of women and children better in Africa,” said Dr. Mercy Lung’aho, a CIAT nutrition expert.

While food emergencies like famine and drought grab headlines, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture says chronic malnutrition affects one in four people in Africa, taking a serious toll on economic growth and leaving them especially vulnerable in times of crisis….(More)”.

Digital footprint helps refugees get a bank account

Curated on May 31, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “An innovative banking solution from Taqanu uses customers’ digital history to allow them to prove their identity rather than traditional paperwork. The application, which will be globally available once it launches, means those that find it difficult to gain access to the necessary paperwork to do things like set up a bank account or rent accommodation, may now be able to using their mobile phones.

Earlier this year Taqanu was presented and discussed at the G20 High Level Forum for Forcibly Displaced Persons(FDPs), an event leading up to the Final G20 meeting in July 2017. The event brought together a diverse range of stakeholders including financial regulators and policymakers. The new banking solution faces huge regulation obstacles, but if approved it would be a big breakthrough in places like Germany, where you are required to have a bank account in order to take out any type of tenancy agreement.

It could be a major turning point for disenfranchised communities and refugees who often flea their homes with nothing, and are then faced with obstacles in settling in a new country. Taqanu’s founder Balázs Némethi, drew from his own experiences attempting to apply for bank accounts in foreign countries and wanted to make the process easier for people likely to have limited access to documentation.

The app has already attracted attention from some major players in the tech world, including Microsoft who are particularly interested in the company’s humanitarian values. It joins a whole host of other digital solutions including the mobile banking app which helps low-income migrant workers in the Middle East and the Dutch business incubator helping refugees to integrate through educational and entrepreneurial activities…(More)”

The Way Ahead

Curated on May 31, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Transcript of lecture delivered by Stephen Fry on the 28th May 2017 • Hay Festival, Hay-on-Wye: “Peter Florence, the supremo of this great literary festival, asked me some months ago if I might, as part of Hay’s celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther’s kickstarting of the reformation, suggest a reform of the internet…

You will be relieved to know, that unlike Martin Luther, I do not have a full 95 theses to nail to the door, or in Hay’s case, to the tent flap. It might be worth reminding ourselves perhaps, however, of the great excitements of the early 16th century. I do not think it is a coincidence that Luther grew up as one of the very first generation to have access to printed books, much as some of you may have children who were the first to grow up with access to e-books, to iPads and to the internet….

The next big step for AI is the inevitable achievement of Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, sometimes called ‘full artificial intelligence’ the point at which machines really do think like humans. In 2013, hundreds of experts were asked when they thought AGI may arise and the median prediction was they year 2040. After that the probability, most would say certain, is artificial super-intelligence and the possibility of reaching what is called the Technological Singularity – what computer pioneer John van Neumann described as the point “…beyond which humans affairs, as we know them, could not continue.” I don’t think I have to worry about that. Plenty of you in this tent have cause to, and your children beyond question will certainly know all about it. Unless of course the climate causes such havoc that we reach a Meteorological Singularity. Or the nuclear codes are penetrated by a self-teaching algorithm whose only purpose is to find a way to launch…

It’s clear that, while it is hard to calculate the cascade upon cascade of new developments and their positive effects, we already know the dire consequences and frightening scenarios that threaten to engulf us. We know them because science fiction writers and dystopians in all media have got there before us and laid the nightmare visions out. Their imaginations have seen it all coming. So whether you believe Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Isaac Asimov, Margaret Atwood, Ridley Scott, Anthony Burgess, H. G. Wells, Stanley Kubrick, Kazuo Ishiguro, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, John Wyndham, James Cameron, the Wachowski’s or the scores and scores of other authors and film-makers who have painted scenarios of chaos and doom, you can certainly believe that a great transformation of human society is under way, greater than Gutenberg’s revolution – greater I would submit than the Industrial Revolution (though clearly dependent on it) – the greatest change to our ways of living since we moved from hunting and gathering to settling down in farms, villages and seaports and started to trade and form civilisations. Whether it will alter the behaviour, cognition and identity of the individual in the same way it is certain to alter the behaviour, cognition and identity of the group, well that is a hard question to answer.

But believe me when I say that it is happening. To be frank it has happened. The unimaginably colossal sums of money that have flowed to the first two generations of Silicon Valley pioneers have filled their coffers, their war chests, and they are all investing in autonomous cars, biotech, the IoT, robotics Artificial Intelligence and their convergence. None more so than the outlier, the front-runner Mr Elon Musk whose neural link system is well worth your reading about online on the great waitbutwhy.com website. Its author Tim Urban is a paid consultant of Elon Musk’s so he has the advantage of knowing what he is writing about but the potential disadvantage of being parti pri and lacking in objectivity. Elon Musk made enough money from his part in the founding and running of PayPal to fund his manifold exploits. The Neuralink project joins his Tesla automobile company and subsidiary battery and solar power businesses, his Space X reusable spacecraft group, his OpenAI initiative and Hyperloop transport system. The 1950s and 60s Space Race was funded by sovereign governments, this race is funded by private equity, by the original investors in Google, Apple, Facebook and so on. Nation states and their agencies are not major players in this game, least of all poor old Britain. Even if our politicians were across this issue, and they absolutely are not, our votes would still be an irrelevance….

So one thesis I would have to nail up to the tent is to clamour for government to bring all this deeper into schools and colleges. The subject of the next technological wave, I mean, not pornography and prostitution. Get people working at the leading edge of AI and robotics to come into the classrooms. But more importantly listen to them – even if what they say is unpalatable, our masters must have the intellectual courage and honesty to say if they don’t understand and ask for repetition and clarification. This time, in other words, we mustn’t let the wave engulf us, we must ride its crest. It’s not quite too late to re-gear governmental and educational planning and thinking….

The witlessness of our leaders and of ourselves is indeed a problem. The real danger surely is not technology but technophobic Canute-ism, a belief that we can control, change or stem the technological tide instead of understanding that we need to learn how to harness it. Driving cars is dangerous, but we developed driving lesson requirements, traffic controls, seat-belts, maintenance protocols, proximity sensors, emission standards – all kinds of ways of mitigating the danger so as not to deny ourselves the life-changing benefits of motoring.

We understand why angry Ned Ludd destroyed the weaving machines that were threatening his occupation (Luddites were prophetic in their way, it was weaving machines that first used the punched cards on which computers relied right up to the 1970s). We understand too why French workers took their clogs, their sabots as they were called, and threw them into the machinery to jam it up, giving us the word sabotage. But we know that they were in the end, if you’ll pardon the phrase, pissing into the wind. No technology has ever been stopped.

So what is the thesis I am nailing up? Well, there is no authority for me to protest to, no equivalent of Pope Leo X for it to be delivered to, and I am certainly no Martin Luther. The only thesis I can think worth nailing up is absurdly simple. It is a cry as much from the heart as from the head and it is just one word – Prepare. We have an advantage over our hunter gatherer and farming ancestors, for whether it is Winter that is coming, or a new Spring, is entirely in our hands, so long as we prepare….(More)”.

Our path to better science in less time using open data science tools

Curated on May 31, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Julia S. Stewart Lowndes et al in Nature: “Reproducibility has long been a tenet of science but has been challenging to achieve—we learned this the hard way when our old approaches proved inadequate to efficiently reproduce our own work. Here we describe how several free software tools have fundamentally upgraded our approach to collaborative research, making our entire workflow more transparent and streamlined. By describing specific tools and how we incrementally began using them for the Ocean Health Index project, we hope to encourage others in the scientific community to do the same—so we can all produce better science in less time.

**Figure 1: Better science in less time, illustrated by the Ocean Health Index project.**

Citizen Science and Alien Species in Europe

Curated on May 30, 2017May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

European Commission: “Citizen Science programs aim at creating a bridge between science and the general public, actively involving citizens in research projects. In this way, citizen scientists can work side by side with experts, contributing to the increase of scientific knowledge, addressing local, national and international issues that need scientific support and having the potential to influence policy-making.

The EU Regulation 1143/2014 on Invasive Alien Species (IAS) acknowledges the important role public awareness and active involvement of the citizens have for the successful implementation of the Regulation. Thus, Citizen Science could bring an important contribution to the early detection and monitoring of invasive alien species, as, in order to adopt efficient control measures, it is necessary to know the presence and distribution of these species as soon as possible.

With the new website section we want to disseminate information about how citizens can be involved in activities aimed at protecting European biodiversity, awareness raising, sharing news, examples and developments from the emerging field of Citizen Science.

If you are interested in becoming a citizen scientist and want to help monitor invasive alien species (IAS) in your region, you can use our App “Invasive Alien Species Europe” to report the 37 IAS of Union Concern.

Furthermore, we have compiled a list of European Citizen Science projects dealing with alien species. The list is not exhaustive and is open for improvement …(More)”.

Information for the People: Tunisia Embraces Open Government, 2011–2016

Curated on May 30, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Case study by Tristan Dreisback at Innovations for Successful Societies: “In January 2011, mass demonstrations in Tunisia ousted a regime that had tolerated little popular participation, opening the door to a new era of transparency. The protesters demanded an end to the secrecy that had protected elite privilege. Five months later, the president issued a decree that increased citizen access to government data and formed a steering committee to guide changes in information practices, building on small projects already in development. Advocates in the legislature and the public service joined with civil society leaders to support a strong access-to-information policy, to change the culture of public administration, and to secure the necessary financial and technical resources to publish large quantities of data online in user-friendly formats. Several government agencies launched their own open-data websites. External pressure, coupled with growing interest from civil society and legislators, helped keep transparency reforms on the cabinet office agenda despite frequent changes in top leadership. In 2016, Tunisia adopted one of the world’s strongest laws regarding access to information. Although members of the public did not put all of the resources to use immediately, the country moved much closer to having the data needed to improve access to services, enhance government performance, and support the evidence-based deliberation on which a healthy democracy depended…(More)”

Citizenship office wants ‘Emma’ to help you

Curated on May 29, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Ryan Johnston at FedScoop: “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services unveiled a new virtual assistant live-chat service, known as “Emma,” to assist customers and website visitors in finding information and answering questions in a timely and efficient fashion.

The agency told FedScoop that it built the chatbot with the help of Verizon and artificial intelligence interface company Next IT. The goal is “to address the growing need for customers to obtain information quicker and through multiple access points, USCIS broadened the traditional call center business model to include web-based self-help tools,” the agency says.

USCIS, a component agency of the Department of Homeland Security, says it receives nearly 14 million calls relating to immigration every year. The virtual assistant and live-chat services are aimed at becoming the first line of help available to users of USCIS.gov who might have trouble finding answers by themselves.

The bot greets customers when they enter the website, answers basic questions via live chat and supplies additional information in both English and Spanish. As a result, the amount of time customers spend searching for information on the website is greatly reduced, according to USCIS. Because the virtual assistant is embedded within the website, it can rapidly provide relevant information that may have been difficult to access manually.

The nature of the bot lends itself to potential encounters with personally identifiable information (PII), or PII, of the customers it interacts with. Because of this, USCIS recently conducted a privacy impact assessment (PIA).

Much of the assessment revolved around accuracy and the security of information that Emma could potentially encounter in a customer interaction. For the most part, the chat bot doesn’t require customers to submit personal information. Instead, it draws its responses from content already available on USCIS.gov, relative to the amount of information that users choose to provide. Answers are, according to the PIA, verified by thorough and frequent examination of all content posted to the site.

According to USCIS, the Emma will delete all chat logs — and therefore all PII — immediately after the customer ends the chat session. Should a customer reach a question that it can’t answer effectively and choose to continue the session with an agent in a live chat, the bot will ask for the preferred language (English or Spanish), the general topic of conversation, short comments on why the customer wishes to speak with a live agent, and the case on file and receipt number.

This information would then be transferred to the live agent. All other sensitive information entered, such as Social Security numbers or receipt numbers, would then be automatically masked in the subsequent transfer to the live agent…(More)”