Can This Data-Driven Organization Help Those Most Desperate Escape Life on the Streets?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

NationSwell: “…Community Solutions works in neighborhoods around the country to provide practical, data-driven solutions to the complicated problems involved in homelessness. The organization has already achieved great success: its 100,000 Homes campaign, which ran from 2010 to 2014, helped 186 participating communities house more than 105,000 homeless Americans across the country.” (Chronically homeless individuals make up 15 percent of the total homeless population, yet they utilize the majority of social services devoted towards helping them, including drop-in shelters.) To do this, it challenged the traditional approach of ending homelessness: requiring those living on the streets to demonstrate sobriety, steady income or mental health treatment, for example. Instead, it housed people first, an approach that has demonstrated overwhelming success: research finds that more than 85 percent of chronically homeless people housed through “Housing First” programs are still in homes two years later and unlikely to become homeless again.

“Technology played a critical role in the success of the 100,000 Homes campaign because it enabled multiple agencies to share and use the same data,” says Erin Connor, portfolio manager with the Cisco Foundation, which has supported Community Solutions’ technology-based initiatives. “By rigorously tracking, reporting and making decisions based on shared data, participating communities could track and monitor their progress against targets and contribute to achieving the collective goal.” As a result of this campaign, the estimated taxpayer savings was an astonishing $1.3 billion. Building on this achievement, its current Zero 2016 campaign works in 75 communities to sustainably end chronic and veteran homelessness altogether.

Technology and data gathering is critical for local and nationwide campaigns since homelessness is intimately connected to other social problems, like unemployment and poverty. One example of the local impact Community Solutions has had is in Brownsville (a neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y., that’s dominated by multiple public housing projects) via the Brownsville Partnership, which is demonstrating that these problems can be solved — to create “the endgame of homelessness,” as Haggerty puts it.

In Brownsville, the official unemployment rate is 16 percent, “about double that of Brooklyn” as a whole, Haggerty says, noting that the statistic excludes those not currently looking for work. In response, the organization works with existing job training programs, digging into their data and analyzing it to improve effectiveness and achieve success.

“Data is at the heart of everything we do, as far as understanding where to focus our efforts and how to improve our collective performance,” Haggerty explains. Analyzing usage data, Community Solutions works with health care providers, nonprofits, and city and state governments to figure out where the most vulnerable populations live, what systems they interact with and what help they need….(More)”

Collective intelligence and international development

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Gina Lucarelli, Tom Saunders and Eddie Copeland at Nesta: “The mountain kingdom of Lesotho, a small landlocked country in Sub-Saharan Africa, is an unlikely place to look for healthcare innovation. Yet in 2016, it became the first country in Africa to deploy the test and treat strategy for treating people with HIV. Rather than waiting for white blood cell counts to drop, patients begin treatment as soon as they are diagnosed. This strategy is backed by the WHO as it has the potential to increase the number of people who are able to access treatment, consequently reducing transmisssion and keeping people with HIV healthy and alive for longer.

While lots of good work is underway in Lesotho, and billions have been spent on HIV programmes in the country, the percentage of the population infected with HIV has remained steady and is now almost 23%. Challenges of this scale need new ideas and better ways to adopt them.

On a recent trip to Lesotho as part of a project with the United Nations Development Group, we met various UN agencies, the World Bank, government leaders, civil society actors and local businesses, to learn about the key development issues in Lesotho and to discuss the role that ‘collective intelligence’ might play in creating better country development plans. The key question Nesta and the UN are working on is: how can we increase the impact of the UN’s work by tapping into the ideas, information and possible solutions which are distributed among many partners, the private sector, and the 2 million people of Lesotho?

…our framework of collective intelligence, a set of iterative stages which can help organisations like the UN tap into the ideas, information and possible solutions of groups and individuals which are not normally involved included in the problem solving process. For each stage, we also presented a number of examples of how this works in practice.

Collective intelligence framework – stages and examples

  1. Better understanding the facts, data and experiences: New tools, from smartphones to online communities enable researchers, practitioners and policymakers to collect much larger amounts of data much more quickly. Organisations can use this data to target their resources at the most critical issues as well as feed into the development of products and services that more accurately meet the needs of citizens. Examples include mPower, a clinical study which used an app to collect data about people with Parkinsons disease via surveys and smartphone sensors.

  2. Better development of options and ideas: Beyond data collection, organisations can use digital tools to tap into the collective brainpower of citizens to come up with better ideas and options for action. Examples include participatory budgeting platforms like “Madame Mayor, I have an idea” and challenge prizes, such as USAID’s Ebola grand challenge.

  3. Better, more inclusive decision making: Decision making and problem solving are usually left to experts, yet citizens are often best placed to make the decisions that will affect them. New digital tools make it easier than ever for governments to involve citizens in policymaking, planning and budgeting. Our D-CENT tools enable citizen involvement in decision making in a number of fields. Another example is the Open Medicine Project, which designs digital tools for healthcare in consultation with both practitioners and patients.

  4. Better oversight and improvement of what is done: From monitoring corruption to scrutinising budgets, a number of tools allow broad involvement in the oversight of public sector activity, potentially increasing accountability and transparency. The Family and Friends Test is a tool that allows NHS users in the UK to submit feedback on services they have experienced. So far, 25 million pieces of feedback have been submitted. This feedback can be used to stimulate local improvement and empower staff to carry out changes… (More)”

Bringing together the United States of data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

“The U.S. Data Federation will support government-wide data standardization and data federation initiatives across both Federal agencies and local governments. This is intended to be a fundamental coordinating mechanism for a more open and interconnected digital government by profiling and supporting use-cases that demonstrate unified and coherent data architectures across disparate government agencies. These examples will highlight emerging data standards and API initiatives across all levels of government, convey the level of maturity for each effort, and facilitate greater participation by government agencies. Initiatives that may be profiled within the U.S. Data Federation include Open311, DOT’s National Transit Map, the Project Open Data metadata schema, Contact USA, and the Police Data Initiative. As part of the U.S. Data Federation, GSA will also pilot the development of reusable components needed for a successful data federation strategy including schema documentation tools, schema validation tools, and automated data aggregation and normalization capabilities. The U.S. Data Federation will provide more sophisticated and seamless opportunities on the foundation of U.S. open data initiatives by allowing the public to more easily do comparative data analysis across government bodies and create applications that work across multiple government agencies….(More)”

Crowdsourcing Tolstoy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 at the NewYorker: “When Leo Tolstoy’s great-great-granddaughter, the journalist Fyokla Tolstaya, announced that the Leo Tolstoy State Museum was looking for volunteers to proofread some forty-six thousand eight hundred pages of her relative’s writings, she hoped to generate enough interest to get the first round of corrections done in six months.

Within days, some three thousand Russians—engineers, I.T. workers, schoolteachers, retirees, a student pilot, a twenty-year-old waitress—signed on. “We were so happy and so surprised,” said Tolstaya. “They finished in fourteen days.”

Now, thanks largely to the efforts of these volunteers, nearly all of the great Russian writer’s massive body of work, including novels, diaries, letters, religious tracts, philosophical treatises, travelogues, and childhood memories, will soon be available online, in a form that can be easily downloaded, free of charge. “Of course we realized there are some novels on the Internet,” Tolstaya said. “But most [writings] are not. We in the museum decided this is not good.”…

The definitive, ninety-volume jubilee edition of Tolstoy’s works, compiled and published in Russia from the nineteen-twenties to the nineteen-fifties, had already been scanned by the Russian State Library. However, converting the PDFs into an easy-to-use digital format posed a challenge. For one thing, even after ABBYY, a company that specializes in translating printed documents into digital records, offered their services for free, proofreading costs were likely to be prohibitive. Charging readers to download the works was not an option. “At the end of his life, Tolstoy said, ‘I don’t need any money for my work. I want to give my work to the people,’ “ said Tolstaya. “It was important for us to make it free for everyone. It is his will.”

That was when they hit on the idea of crowdsourcing, Tolstaya said. “It’s according to Leo Tolstoy’s ideas, to do it with the help of all people around the world—vsem mirom—even the world’s hardest task can be done with the help of everyone.”…(More)”

Data governance: a Royal Society and British Academy project

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Call for Evidence from The British Academy and the Royal Society: “…The project seeks to make recommendations for cross-sectoral governance arrangements that can ensure the UK remains a world leader in this area. The project will draw on scholars and scientists from across disciplines and will look at current and historical case studies of data governance, and of broader technology governance, from a range of countries and sectors. It will seek to enable connected debate by creating common frameworks to move debates on data governance forward.

Background

It is essential to get the best possible environment for the safe and rapid use of data in order to enhance UK’s wellbeing, security and economic growth. The UK has world class academic expertise in data science, in ethics and aspects other of governance; and it has a rapidly growing tech sector and there is a real opportunity for the UK to lead internationally in creating insights and mechanisms for enabling the new data sciences to benefit society.

While there are substantial arrangements in place for the safe use of data in the UK, these inevitably were designed early in the days of information technology and tend to rest on outdated notions of privacy and consent. In addition, newer considerations such as statistical stereotyping and bias in datasets, and implications for the freedom of choice, autonomy and equality of opportunity of individuals, come to the fore in this new technological context, as do transparency, accountability and openness of decision making.

Terms of Reference

The project seeks to:

  • Identify the communities with interests in the governance of data and its uses, but which may be considering these issues in different contexts and with varied aims and assumptions, in order to facilitate dialogue between these communities. These include academia, industry and the public sector.
  • Clarify where there are connections between different debates, identifying shared issues and common questions, and help to develop a common framework and shared language for debate.
  • Identify which social, ethical and governance challenges arise in the context of developments in data use.
  • Set out the public interests at stake in governance of data and its uses, and the relationships between them, and how the principles of responsible research and innovation (RRI) apply in the context of data use.
  • Make proposals for the UK to establish a sustained and flexible platform for debating issues of data governance, developing consensus about future legal and technical frameworks, and ensuring that learning and good practice spreads as fast as possible….(More)”

Innovations in Open Grantmaking

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New Report by Andrew Young, Andrew Miller and Beth Simone Noveck at GrantCraft: “Of its $4.1 trillion fiscal year 2016 budget, the U.S. federal government and its grantmaking agencies will give out billions of dollars in the form of grants to states, localities, and individuals, supporting a dizzying array of activities, from scientific research and economic development to arts, culture, and education.

Grantmaking, in short, plays a vital role in helping our government, our researchers, and our communities confront 21st-century challenges. Despite grantmaking’s importance, we have a decidedly 20th-century system in place for deciding how we make these billions of dollars of crucial public investments. To make the most of limited funding—and help build confidence in the ability of public investments to make a positive difference—it is essential for our government agencies to try more innovative approaches to designing, awarding, and measuring their grantmaking activities.

Innovations in Open Grantmaking seeks to provide inspiration and early proof of concept regarding innovative practices at every stage of the grantmaking process. The examples and lessons included can act as suggested guidelines for future research and experimentation around more openly and effectively providing access to public money…(More)”

Facebook, World Bank and OECD Link Up to Gather Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paul Hannon in the Wall Street Journal: “Social media potentially offers cheaper and more timely way to survey firms and gauge the economy…Facebook has teamed up with the World Bank and the OECD to launch a new measure of business sentiment based on questioning companies that use their Facebook pages to connect with customers.

The three partners on Wednesday launched a new measure of business sentiment based on questioning companies that use their Facebook pages to connect with customers. Known as the Future of Business Survey, the report has been in testing since February and received responses to 15 queries from a total of 90,000 small and midsize firms across 22 countries.

Its first public release shows that those businesses are more optimistic about their prospects than other companies surveyed by more traditional means.

But the real interest for the three partners is the potential to drill down into the factors that affect the growth of small businesses, a process that until now has involved great expense and time, since it involves face-to-face interviews by polling professionals that are carried out over many months and are infrequently updated. “What I feel is appealing about this particular survey is that it’s potentially a more powerful tool for getting information more quickly and at a fraction of the cost,” said Augusto Lopez-Claros, director of the Global Indicators Group at the World Bank.

Even in developed countries with well funded and equipped statistics offices, timely information on very small businesses is hard to come by. In developing countries, that scarcity can be more acute. The ability to connect with business owners via Facebook or other social-media platforms could make it possible to gather such information, and acquire a more complete picture of what is happening in those economies.

The new approach to data gathering could even enable some smaller developing countries to skip the process of enlarging their statistics agencies. That is an opportunity Mr. Lopez Claros compares to the advent of mobile telephones, which enabled many African countries to skip the construction of expensive fixed-line infrastructure and improve communications at a fraction of that cost….(More)

See also Entrepreneurship at a Glance 2016 (OECD).

Privacy and Open Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

A Research Briefing by Wood, Alexandra and O’Brien, David and Gasser, Urs: “Political leaders and civic advocates are increasingly recommending that open access be the “default state” for much of the information held by government agencies. Over the past several years, they have driven the launch of open data initiatives across hundreds of national, state, and local governments. These initiatives are founded on a presumption of openness for government data and have led to the public release of large quantities data through a variety of channels. At the same time, much of the data that have been released, or are being considered for release, pertain to the behavior and characteristics of individual citizens, highlighting tensions between open data and privacy. This research briefing offers a snapshot of recent developments in the open data and privacy landscape, outlines an action map of various governance approaches to protecting privacy when releasing open data, and identifies key opportunities for decision-makers seeking to respond to challenges in this space….(More)”

The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-first Century

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Ryan Avent: “None of us has ever lived through a genuine industrial revolution. Until now.

Digital technology is transforming every corner of the economy, fundamentally altering the way things are done, who does them, and what they earn for their efforts. In The Wealth of Humans, Economist editor Ryan Avent brings up-to-the-minute research and reporting to bear on the major economic question of our time: can the modern world manage technological changes every bit as disruptive as those that shook the socioeconomic landscape of the 19th century?

Traveling from Shenzhen, to Gothenburg, to Mumbai, to Silicon Valley, Avent investigates the meaning of work in the twenty-first century: how technology is upending time-tested business models and thrusting workers of all kinds into a world wholly unlike that of a generation ago. It’s a world in which the relationships between capital and labor and between rich and poor have been overturned.

Past revolutions required rewriting the social contract: this one is unlikely to demand anything less. Avent looks to the history of the Industrial Revolution and the work of numerous experts for lessons in reordering society. The future needn’t be bleak, but as The Wealth of Humans explains, we can’t expect to restructure the world without a wrenching rethinking of what an economy should be….(More)”

Measuring Scientific Impact Beyond Citation Counts

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Robert M. Patton, Christopher G. Stahl and Jack C. Wells at DLib Magazine: “Measuring scientific progress remains elusive. There is an intuitive understanding that, in general, science is progressing forward. New ideas and theories are formed, older ideas and theories are confirmed, rejected, or modified. Progress is made. But, questions such as how is it made, by whom, how broadly, or how quickly present significant challenges. Historically, scientific publications reference other publications if the former publication in some way shaped the work that was performed. In other words, one publication “impacted” a latter one. The implication of this impact revolves around the intellectual content of the idea, theory, or conclusion that was formed. Several metrics such as h-index or journal impact factor (JIF) are often used as a means to assess whether an author, article, or journal creates an “impact” on science. The implied statement behind high values for such metrics is that the work must somehow be valuable to the community, which in turn implies that the author, article, or journal somehow has influenced the direction, development, or progress of what others in that field do. Unfortunately, the drive for increased publication revenue, research funding, or global recognition has lead to a variety of external factors completely unrelated to the quality of the work that can be used to manipulate key metric values. In addition, advancements in computing and data sciences field have further altered the meaning of impact on science.

The remainder of this paper will highlight recent advancements in both cultural and technological factors that now influence scientific impact as well as suggest new factors to be leveraged through full content analysis of publications….(More)”