Stefaan Verhulst

MetroLab Network: “Predictive analytical tools are already being put to work within human service agencies to help make vital decisions about when and how to intervene in the lives of families and communities. The sector may not be entirely comfortable with this trend, but it should not be surprised. Predictive models are in wide use within the justice and education sectors and, more to the point, they work: risk assessment is fundamental to what social services do, and these tools can help agencies respond more quickly to prevent harm, to create more personalized interventions, and allocate scarce public resources to where they can do the most good.

There is also a strong case that predictive risk models (PRM) can reduce bias in decision-making. Designing a predictive model forces more explicit conversations about how agencies think about different risk factors and how they propose to guard against disadvantaging certain demographic or socioeconomic groups. And the standard that agencies are trying to improve upon is not perfect equity—it is the status quo, which is neither transparent nor uniformly fair. Risk scores do not eliminate the possibility of personal or institutional prejudice but they can make it more apparent by providing a common reference point.

That the use of predictive analytics in social services can reduce bias is not to say that it will. Careless or unskilled development of these predictive tools could worsen disparities among clients receiving social services. Child and civil rights advocates rightly worry about the potential for “net widening”—drawing more people in for unnecessary scrutiny by the government. They worry that rather than improving services for vulnerable clients, these models will replicate the biases in existing public data sources and expose them to greater trauma. Bad models scale just as quickly as good ones, and even the best of them can be misused.

The stakes here are real: for children and families that interact with these social systems and for the reputation of the agencies that turn to these tools. What, then, should a public leader know about risk modeling, and what lessons does it offer about how to think about data science, data stewardship, and the public interest?…(More)”.

Rohan Venkataramakrishnan at the Centre for Communication Governance: “Can a country’s democratic record indicate whether it is likely to mandate a national biometric identity? Research by scholars at the National Law University, Delhi suggests there may be some correlation, at least to indicate that robust democracies have been more cautious about adopting biometric identity systems.

The Supreme Court’s decision last month upholding a fundamental Right to Privacy for all Indians has put a renewed focus on Aadhaar, India’s 12-digit biometric identity programme that has been criticised for not only violating privacy but also lacking sufficient data protection safeguards. Challenges to the Aadhaar project, in fact, prompted the Supreme Court to take up the question of a Right to Privacy, and the apex court will hear petitions against the unique identity initiative later this year.

Ahead of those hearings, researchers from the Centre for Communication Governance at the National Law University, Delhi sought to look at the adoption of biometric identity systems by countries across the world. While examining whether countries were instituting these Aadhaar-like systems, researchers from the Centre noticed a trend wherein nations with strong biometric identity systems were less likely to have robust democratic governments.

“As we gathered and analysed the data, we noticed an interesting trend where many countries that had strong biometric ID systems, also did not have strong democratic governments,” the researchers said.

So they sought to map out their research, based on data collected primarily from countries within the Commonwealth, measured against their positions on Freedom House’s Freedom in the World index and the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy index. The results show a cluster of nations with less freedoms also instituting a biometric system, while others higher up the democracy index do not have similar identity programmes….(More)”.

Paper by Gianluca Sgueo: “The use of game-design elements – a phenomenon known as ‘gamification’ – features prominently within on-going processes of innovation of governance. According to the research and advisory firm Gartner, 2,000 of the top public organizations worldwide have at least one gamified application and/or process in place. Examples of gamification in public governance include “Run that town” (ideated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to raise citizens’ awareness of the national census), the “Red Balloon Challenge” (initiated by the United States’ Defence Advanced Research Project Agency to test systems for improving cooperation among soldiers, experts and diplomatic officers overseas), and “Manor Labs” (a web platform that awarded “Innobucks”, a type of virtual commodity, to residents of the City of Manor, in Texas, for proposing ideas related with urban development).
The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to determine who is actually participating in public policy processes via gamification; second, to weigh the impact that the public(s) engaged by gamification has on democratic governance; third, to assess the societal environment within which gamification might flourish or establish plausibly….(More)”.

New report by Stefaan G. Verhulst and Andrew Young: “The twenty-first century will be challenging on many fronts. From historically catastrophic natural disasters resulting from climate change to inequality to refugee and terrorism crises, it is clear that we need not only new solutions, but new insights and methods of arriving at solutions. Data, and the intelligence gained from it through advances in data science, is increasingly being seen as part of the answer. This report explores the premise that data—and in particular the vast stores of data and the unique analytical expertise held by social media companies—may indeed provide for a new type of intelligence that could help develop solutions to today’s challenges.

In this report, developed with support from Facebook, we focus on an approach to extract public value from social media data that we believe holds the greatest potential: data collaboratives. Data collaboratives are an emerging form of public-private partnership in which actors from different sectors exchange information to create new public value. Such collaborative arrangements, for example between social media companies and humanitarian organizations or civil society actors, can be seen as possible templates for leveraging privately held data towards the attainment of public goals….(More)”

Zosia Wasik in the Financial Times: “Opponents of the Polish government have mounted a series of protests on issues ranging from reform of the judiciary to an attempt to ban abortion. In February, they staged yet another, less public but intensely emotive, battle — to save the country’s trees.

At the beginning of the year, a new law allowed property owners to cut trees on their land without official permission. As a result, hundreds of trees disappeared from the centres of Polish cities as more valuable treeless plots were sold off to developers. In parallel, the government authorised extensive logging of the ancient forest in Bialowieza, a Unesco world heritage site.

“People reacted very emotionally to these practices,” says Wojciech Sanko, a co-ordinator at Code for Poland, a programme run by ePanstwo (eState), the country’s biggest non-governmental organisation in this field.

The group aims to deploy new technology tools designed to explain local and national policies, and to make it easier for citizens to take part in public life. As no one controlled the tree-cutting, for example, Mr Sanko thought technology could at least help to monitor it. First, he wanted to set up a simple digital map of trees cut in Warsaw. But as the controversial liberalisation of tree-cutting was reversed, the NGO together with local activists decided to work on another project — to map trees still standing, along with data about species and their absorption of carbon dioxide associated with climate change.

The group has also started to create an app for activists in Bialowieza forest: an open-source map that will gather all documentation from civic patrols monitoring the site, and will indicate the exact places of logging.

A trend towards recruiting technology for civic projects has been slowly gathering pace in a country that is hard to describe as socially-engaged: only 59 per cent of Poles say they have done volunteer work for the community, according to a 2016 survey by the Centre of Public Opinion Research.

Election turnout barely surpasses 50 per cent. Yet since the election of the rightwing Law and Justice government in 2015, which has introduced rapid and controversial reforms across all domains of public life, citizens have started to take a closer look at politicians and their actions.

In addition to the tree map, Code for Poland has developed a website that aggregates public data, such as tax spending or air pollution.

Mr Sanko underlines, however, that Code for Poland is much more about local communities than national politics. Many of the group’s projects are small scale, ranging from a mobile app for an animal shelter in Gdansk and a tool that shows people where they can take their garbage.

Piotr Micula, board member of Miasto Jest Nasze (The City is Ours), an urban movement in Warsaw, says that increasing access to data is fuelling the development of civic tech. “Even as a small organisation, we try to use big data and visualise it,” he says….(More)”.

Vinayak Dalmia at Swarajya: “In September last year, a news release stated that NITI Aayog, in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will help set up a “nudge unit”. The stated aim is to deepen the reach of certain flagship programmes including Swachh Bharat, Jan Dhan Yojana and Skill Development.

Mainstream publications have also begun to argue for the same. Since a lot of India’s social problems are behavioural in nature, subtle, inexpensive changes in the “environment” prove more effective than elaborate laws or policies. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself hinted at the psychological nature of ills such as gender violence and sanitation. Pratap Bhanu Mehta states – “social failure is as serious a matter as market failure”. The Prime Minister has started with moral persuasion on issues of cleanliness or giving up LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) subsidies. A formal and rigorous approach to some of these problems should be the next logical step.

Government and/or policymakers are in many ways architects designing “choices” and social environments we live in. As designers, they must leverage the fundamental truth that all actors and agents are psychological beings having less-than-perfect rationality. So, while behavioural science operates on the premise that the brain is prone to making mistakes, psychology can address the flaws and design smarter policies.

For example, open defecation is a big problem in India. It stands tangential to the Prime Minister’s Swachh Bharat dream. In spite of building toilets, in some cases, the usage rates are no more than 50 per cent. World Bank economist Nidhi Khurana has proposed communicating the harms of this behaviour as opposed to the benefits of using a toilet. In effect, she is suggesting the use of the theory of “loss aversion” which states that people value potential losses more than potential gains (on average, twice as much). Studies have also found that subtle changes in the sense of ownership bring significant improvements.

Noteworthy is the immunisation rate in Rajasthan. It increased after free lentils were given to women who brought their children to dispensaries. Colour-coded footprints in the Delhi Metro is borrowed from Copenhagen in order to institute better civic sense. In Kenya, weekly text reminders help ensure HIV patients adhere to medication schedules….(More)”.

Nora Ni Loideain at the Journal of International Data Privacy Law: “Promises abound that ‘smart city’ technologies could play a major role in developing safer, more sustainable, and equitable cities, creating paragons of democracy. However, there are concerns that governance led by ‘Big Data’ processes marks the beginning of a trend of encroachment on the individual’s liberty and privacy, even if such technologies are employed legitimately for the public’s safety and security. There are many ways in which personal data processing for law enforcement and public safety purposes may pose a threat to the privacy and data protection rights of individuals. Furthermore, the risk of such powers being misused is increased by the covert nature of the processing, and the ever-increasing capacity, and pervasiveness, of the retention, sharing, and monitoring of personal data by public authorities and business. The focus of this article concerns the use of these smart city technologies for the purposes of countering crime and ensuring public safety. Specifically, this research examines these policy-making developments, and the key initiatives to date, undertaken by the municipal authorities within the city of Cape Town. Subsequently, the examination then explores the implications of these policies and initiatives for governance, and compliance with the right to data privacy, as guaranteed under international human rights law, the Constitution of South Africa, and the national statutory framework governing data protection. In conclusion, the discussion provides reflections on the findings from this analysis, including some policy recommendations….(More)”.

Paper by Felix Ritchie: “The ‘Five Safes’ is a popular way to structure thinking about data access solutions. Originally used mainly by statistical agencies and social science academics, in recent years it has been adopted more widely across government, health organisations and private sector bodies. This paper explains the Five Safes, how the concept is used to organise and simplify decision-making, and how it helps to address concerns of different constituencies. We show how it aligns to recent regulation, anticipating the shift towards multi-dimensional data management strategies. We provide a number of practical examples as case studies for further information. We also briefly consider what issues the Five Safes does not address, and how the framework sits within a wider body of work on data access which challenges traditional data access models…(More)”.

Naveen Rajdev at Quartz:” …You don’t want your smart city’s proverbial slip to show, and you don’t want to overwhelm your citizens with too much tech. So what’s the plan?

1. Start making technology invisible

Being able to “see” technology creates interaction, and interaction creates distraction.

To illustrate: Assuming your car and smartphone are connected, your phone should be able to notify someone—someone texting you, for example—that you’re driving and can’t respond. You don’t want to take your hands off the wheel, so your phone should instead be able to send an automatic response to the text sender: “I’m driving right now, but I’ll get back to you later.” It keeps you and others safe on the road, and it doesn’t force you to respond….

Detroit, for instance, is already investigating the idea of “invisible” technology, particularly when it comes to residents’ safety. Last fall, Detroit’s city officials partnered with Comcast to expand the area’s Project Green Light program, which allows businesses to install cameras police can use to monitor crimes (and solve them) in real time.

The program’s expansion led to a 50% drop in violent crime at convenience stores and gas stations. Thanks to the technology—which was by no means a distraction to Detroit’s residents—the city is safer, and business is better.

While Detroit excels at making tech inconspicuous, most of the country is doing what it can to be more on-the-grid than ever before, completely ignoring (or altogether missing) the subtleties “invisible” tech offers. Last fall, New York City officials introduced LinkNYC, a free Wi-Fi service throughout Manhattan in the form of 500 touch-screen kiosks available for public use.

As the adage suggests, sometimes there can be too much of a good thing. With the kiosks being essentially too visible in Manhattan’s streets, problems arose: The city’s homeless population began misusing them, and certain groups started insisting the kiosks help officials “spy” on its residents….

2. Your city must be conscious of digital overload

In a world where technology rules, it’s imperative we find time to think, breathe, and unplug, so city leaders must carefully marry tech and mindfulness. Otherwise, they face the consequences of information overload: weakened decision-making and the feeling of being overwhelmed, among others. A city’s occasional digital detox is crucial.

Why? Studies have shown that smartphones could be causing insomnia, social media may be spawning narcissism, and computer screens might be making our kids less empathetic. At some point, a line must be drawn.

Luckily, certain cities are starting to draw it. Late last year, Miami’s development authority department proposed turning lanes clogged with traffic on Biscayne Boulevard into a spacious greenway that welcomed both pedestrians and bicyclists. Beyond that, walking trails are growing along the river and bay, and another trail is in the works. City developers have also approved smaller residential projects in areas that public transit serves….

Even a simple art exhibit can be marred by too much tech. …Other gallery curators aren’t loving the marriage of art and tech. Connie Wolf, Stanford University’s director of the Cantor Arts Center, is particularly cautious. “In our busy lives, in our crazy lives, we’re always connected to technology,” she said. “People want to come into museums and put that technology aside for a moment.”

Bottom line: Being connected is great, but being conscious is better. City leaders would do well to remember this….(More)”.