Kristen French at BackChannel: “…Today, Second Life is mostly forgotten by the broader public. An estimated 800,000 users are active on a monthly basis, according to Second Life parent company Linden Lab. That’s tiny compared to the 1.86 billion users who are active on Facebook each month. Yet some communities have quietly continued to thrive in the virtual world. One of these is the disability community, a sundry group whose members include people who are blind or deaf, people with emotional handicaps such as autism and PTSD, and people with conditions that limit their mobility, such as Parkinson’s, cerebral... (More >)
Organizational crowdsourcing
Jeremy Morgan at Lippincott: “One of the most consequential insights from the study of organizational culture happens to have an almost irresistible grounding in basic common sense. When attempting to solve the challenges of today’s businesses, inviting a broad slice of an employee population yields more creative, actionable solutions than restricting the conversation to a small strategy or leadership team. This recognition, that in order to uncover new business ideas and innovations, organizations must foster listening cultures and a meritocracy of best thinking, is fueling interest in organizational crowdsourcing — a discipline focused on employee connection, collaboration and ideation.... (More >)
DataRefuge
“DataRefuge is a public, collaborative project designed to address the following concerns about federal climate and environmental data: What are the best ways to safeguard data? How do federal agencies play crucial roles in data collection, management, and distribution? How do government priorities impact data’s accessibility? Which projects and research fields depend on federal data? Which data sets are of value to research and local communities, and why? DataRefuge is also an initiative committed to identifying, assessing, prioritizing, securing, and distributing reliable copies of federal climate and environmental data so that it remains available to researchers. Data collected as... (More >)
The light and the dark side of the use of EU funding: the results of Monithon’s civic monitoring
Report by Luigi Reggi at Monithon (Monitoring Marathon): “…All in all, this small journey in Monithon’s civic monitoring proves at least two things. The first is that using public data for a real accountability action is a huge effort, as well as an amusement. The data, despite being open, does not answer the universe of questions for responsible administrations, but on the contrary raises more. The novelty is that the funds we explored have reached that critical mass of transparency that allows anyone, as long as he or she is well organized and willing to study (that’s right, to... (More >)
How a Political Scientist Knows What Our Enemies Will Do (Often Before They Do)
Article by the National Academy of Sciences, part of a series, From Research to Reward, seeking to demonstrate how advances in our understanding of natural processes often lead to surprising and remarkable benefits for society: “…From the time of quills and cannons to our era of cyber-attacks and drone warfare, mathematics has been crucial to national security. Equations ensure missiles land on the right target, combat materials hold up on the battlefield, and secrets stay locked in code. But when it comes to the human side of conflict—decisions people make about when, how, and why to use these tools—professionals... (More >)
Mapping open data governance models: Who makes decisions about government data and how?
Ana Brandusescu, Danny Lämmerhirt and Stefaan Verhulst call for a systematic and comparative investigation of the different governance models for open data policy and publication…. “An important value proposition behind open data involves increased transparency and accountability of governance. Yet little is known about how open data itself is governed. Who decides and how? How accountable are data holders to both the demand side and policy makers? How do data producers and actors assure the quality of government data? Who, if any, are data stewards within government tasked to make its data open? Getting a better understanding of open... (More >)
Corporate Social Responsibility for a Data Age
Stefaan G. Verhulst in the Stanford Social Innovation Review: “Proprietary data can help improve and save lives, but fully harnessing its potential will require a cultural transformation in the way companies, governments, and other organizations treat and act on data…. We live, as it is now common to point out, in an era of big data. The proliferation of apps, social media, and e-commerce platforms, as well as sensor-rich consumer devices like mobile phones, wearable devices, commercial cameras, and even cars generate zettabytes of data about the environment and about us. Yet much of the most valuable data resides... (More >)
Dumpster diving made easier with food donation points
Springwise: “With food waste a substantial contributor to both environmental and social problems, communities around the world are trying to find ways to make better use of leftovers as well as reduce the overall production of unused foodstuffs. One of the biggest challenges in getting leftovers to the people who need them is the logistics of finding and connecting the relevant groups and transporting the food. Several on-demand apps, like this one that matches homeless shelters with companies that have leftover food, are taking the guesswork out of what to do with available food. And retailers are getting smarter,... (More >)
Understanding Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy
Video on “The Actionable Intelligence (AI) model is a new approach to policy development. The AI approach is supported by Integrated Data Systems (IDS) which link administrative records from multiple agencies to give a broader view of social problems and policy solutions. The use of linked administrative data allows policy analysts, program evaluators and social innovators to test new social program ideas at a much lower cost and higher speed. AI uses these IDS to create a newly informed dialogue among executive leaders, stakeholders and researchers regarding what works best, for whom and in the most cost effective way….(More... (More >)
Recovering from disasters: Social networks matter more than bottled water and batteries
Daniel P. Aldrich at The Conversation: “Almost six years ago, Japan faced a paralyzing triple disaster: a massive earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns that forced 470,000 people to evacuate from more than 80 towns, villages and cities. My colleagues and I investigated how communities in the hardest-hit areas reacted to these shocks, and found that social networks – the horizontal and vertical ties that connect us to others – are our most important defense against disasters…. We studied more than 130 cities, towns and villages in Tohoku, looking at factors such as exposure to the ocean, seawall height, tsunami... (More >)
