Stefaan Verhulst

The government technology pitch

Curated on September 18, 2016August 20, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Luke Fretwell at TechCrunch: “Crisis has a history of dictating government technology disruption. We’ve seen this with the anticipation of Soviet Union aerospace and military dominance that sparked the emergence of DARPA, as well as with the response to 9/11 and subsequent establishment of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

And, of course, there’s the ongoing, seemingly invisible crisis around security that’s expediting an infusion of public sector funding, particularly in the wake of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management breach that exposed the personal records of millions of federal employees and government contractors.

The Healthcare.gov launch debacle is the most recent and referenced example of crisis spawning government technology progress. The federal government woke to the issues surrounding outdated digital practices — from procurement to technical — and quickly launched two startups of its own: 18F and the U.S. Digital Service (USDS).

The failings of Healthcare.gov and subsequent creation of 18F and USDS has inspired others — such as the state of California, large cities and local governments — to fund a surge in attention to digital — from web to data to security — to address outdated technologies powering the technological infrastructure that runs our governments.

But innovators don’t wait for crises.

They imagine a different path, whether it’s a new approach to solving an old problem or a moonshot that leapfrogs business as usual. They observe the world, realize potential and fund and build engines of change — and forward-thinking, optimistic entrepreneurs and investors are starting to do this with government technology….(More)”

Bouchra Khalili: The Mapping Journey Project

Curated on September 18, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

MOMA (NYC): “This exhibition presents, in its entirety, Bouchra Khalili’s The Mapping Journey Project (2008–11), a series of videos that details the stories of eight individuals who have been forced by political and economic circumstances to travel illegally and whose covert journeys have taken them throughout the Mediterranean basin. Khalili (Moroccan-French, born 1975) encountered her subjects by chance in transit hubs across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Following an initial meeting, the artist invited each person to narrate his or her journey and trace it in thick permanent marker on a geopolitical map of the region. The videos feature the subjects’ voices and their hands sketching their trajectories across the map, while their faces remain unseen.

The stories are presented on individual screens positioned throughout MoMA’s Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium. In this way, a complex network of migration is narrated by those who have experienced it, refusing the forms of representation and visibility demanded by systems of surveillance, international border control, and the news media. Shown together, the videos function as an alternative geopolitical map defined by the precarious lives of stateless people. Khalili’s work takes on the challenge of developing critical and ethical approaches to questions of citizenship, community, and political agency….(More)”

Civic political engagement and social change in the new digital age

Curated on September 18, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Koc-Michalska, K. and Vedel, T. in new media & society: “Over recent decades, research on the Internet and political participation has substantially developed, from speculative studies on possible impacts in social and economic life to detailed analyses of organizational usage. In the field of politics, focus is increasingly shifting from understanding organizational, or supply side, to the usage and dimension of citizen engagement. Citizens have various ways to engage in civic political life, with many new forms of engagement facilitated by digital technologies. The question is to what extent these forms of engagement have any impact on society and the way society is governed. More particularly, what forms of engagement have impact, what type of impact is evidenced, is that impact positive or negative, in what ways, and for whom? Phrasing the question in this way recognizes that citizen engagement can have a range of differing impacts, in multifaceted forms, and these impacts may not always be positive for broader society.

Civic political engagement is at the center of political science research, especially concentrating on voting behavior and what are described as traditional forms of political participation: demonstrating, contacting elected representatives, or joining political organizations. While these remain core to democratic society, debates are emerging surrounding new forms of participation offered by new digital wave era technologies. In particular, should we recognize actions facilitated by the participatory opportunities offered by new communication platforms (such as social networks and microblogs) as forms of political participation? The US election campaigns of 2008 and 2012, and Barack Obama’s engagement with interactive communication and empowerment of citizens through his campaigning strategy, has led to new thinking around how political communication can be performed. Obama’s campaign happened against a backdrop of activism among those Karpf (2012) describes as “Internet-mediated issue generalists”: citizens who populate forums, contribute to blogs, and initiate petitions. Data suggest that the mechanisms for facilitating political participation are evolving alongside technological innovations….(More)”

How to advance open data research: Towards an understanding of demand, users, and key data

Curated on September 15, 2016August 20, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Danny Lämmerhirt and Stefaan Verhulst at IODC blog: “…Lord Kelvin’s famous quote “If you can not measure it, you can not improve it” equally applies to open data. Without more evidence of how open data contributes to meeting users’ needs and addressing societal challenges, efforts and policies toward releasing and using more data may be misinformed and based upon untested assumptions.

When done well, assessments, metrics, and audits can guide both (local) data providers and users to understand, reflect upon, and change how open data is designed. What we measure and how we measure is therefore decisive to advance open data.

Back in 2014, the Web Foundation and the GovLab at NYU brought together open data assessment experts from Open Knowledge, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, United Nations, Canada’s International Development Research Centre, and elsewhere to explore the development of common methods and frameworks for the study of open data. It resulted in a draft template or framework for measuring open data. Despite the increased awareness for more evidence-based open data approaches, since 2014 open data assessment methods have only advanced slowly. At the same time, governments publish more of their data openly, and more civil society groups, civil servants, and entrepreneurs employ open data to manifold ends: the broader public may detect environmental issues and advocate for policy changes, neighbourhood projects employ data to enable marginalized communities to participate in urban planning, public institutions may enhance their information exchange, and entrepreneurs embed open data in new business models.

In 2015, the International Open Data Conference roadmap made the following recommendations on how to improve the way we assess and measure open data.

Reviewing and refining the Common Assessment Methods for Open Data framework. This framework lays out four areas of inquiry: context of open data, the data published, use practices and users, as well as the impact of opening data.
Developing a catalogue of assessment methods to monitor progress against the International Open Data Charter (based on the Common Assessment Methods for Open Data).
Networking researchers to exchange common methods and metrics. This helps to build methodologies that are reproducible and increase credibility and impact of research.
Developing sectoral assessments.

In short, the IODC called for refining our assessment criteria and metrics by connecting researchers, and applying the assessments to specific areas. It is hard to tell how much progress has been made in answering these recommendations, but there is a sense among researchers and practitioners that the first two goals are yet to be fully addressed.

Instead we have seen various disparate, yet well meaning, efforts to enhance the understanding of the release and impact of open data. A working group was created to measure progress on the International Open Data Charter, which provides governments with principles for implementing open data policies. While this working group compiled a list of studies and their methodologies, it did not (yet) deepen the common framework of definitions and criteria to assess and measure the implementation of the Charter.

In addition, there is an increase of sector- and case-specific studies that are often more descriptive and context specific in nature, yet do contribute to the need for examples that illustrate the value proposition for open data.

As such, there seems to be a disconnect between top-level frameworks and on-the-ground research, preventing the sharing of common methods and distilling replicable experiences about what works and what does not….(More)”

Crowdsourcing: It Matters Who the Crowd Are

Curated on September 15, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Alexis Comber, Peter Mooney, Ross S. Purves, Duccio Rocchini, and Ariane Walz: “Volunteered geographical information (VGI) and citizen science have become important sources data for much scientific research. In the domain of land cover, crowdsourcing can provide a high temporal resolution data to support different analyses of landscape processes. However, the scientists may have little control over what gets recorded by the crowd, providing a potential source of error and uncertainty. This study compared analyses of crowdsourced land cover data that were contributed by different groups, based on nationality (labelled Gondor and Non-Gondor) and on domain experience (labelled Expert and Non-Expert). The analyses used a geographically weighted model to generate maps of land cover and compared the maps generated by the different groups. The results highlight the differences between the maps how specific land cover classes were under- and over-estimated. As crowdsourced data and citizen science are increasingly used to replace data collected under the designed experiment, this paper highlights the importance of considering between group variations and their impacts on the results of analyses. Critically, differences in the way that landscape features are conceptualised by different groups of contributors need to be considered when using crowdsourced data in formal scientific analyses. The discussion considers the potential for variation in crowdsourced data, the relativist nature of land cover and suggests a number of areas for future research. The key finding is that the veracity of citizen science data is not the critical issue per se. Rather, it is important to consider the impacts of differences in the semantics, affordances and functions associated with landscape features held by different groups of crowdsourced data contributors….(More)”

Research Handbook on Digital Transformations

Curated on September 15, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by F. Xavier Olleros and Majlinda Zhegu: “The digital transition of the world economy is now entering a phase of broad and deep societal impact. While there is one overall transition, there are many different sectoral transformations, from health and legal services to tax reports and taxi rides, as well as a rising number of transversal trends and policy issues, from widespread precarious employment and privacy concerns to market monopoly and cybercrime. This Research Handbook offers a rich and interdisciplinary synthesis of some of the recent research on the digital transformations currently under way.

This comprehensive study contains chapters covering sectoral and transversal analyses, all of which are specially commissioned and include cutting-edge research. The contributions featured are global, spanning four continents and seven different countries, as well as interdisciplinary, including experts in economics, sociology, law, finance, urban planning and innovation management. The digital transformations discussed are fertile ground for researchers, as established laws and regulations, organizational structures, business models, value networks and workflow routines are contested and displaced by newer alternatives….(More)”

World leaders must invest in better data on children

Curated on September 15, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “UNICEF is calling on world leaders to invest in better data on children, warning in a new analysis that sufficient data is available only for half of the child-related Sustainable Development Goals indicators.

The UNICEF analysis shows that child-related data, including measures on poverty and violence that can be compared, are either too limited or of poor quality, leaving governments without the information they need to accurately address challenges facing millions of children, or to track progress towards achieving the Goals….

Examples of missing data:

• Around one in three countries does not have comparable measures on child poverty.

• Around 120 million girls under the age of 20 have been subjected to forced sexual intercourse or other forced sexual acts. Boys are also at risk, but almost no data is available.

• There is a shortage of accurate and comparable data on the number of children with disabilities in almost all countries.

• Universal access to safe drinking water is a fundamental need and human right. We have data about where drinking water comes from, but we often don’t know how safe it is.

• Nine out of 10 children are in primary school, yet crucial data about how many are learning is missing.

• Every day 830 mothers die as a result of complications related to childbirth. Most of these deaths are preventable, yet there are critical data gaps about the quality of maternal care.

• Stunting denies children a fair chance of survival, growth and development. Yet 105 out of 197 countries do not have recent data on stunting.

• One in two countries around the world lack recent data on overweight children.

…UNICEF is calling for governments to invest in disaggregated, comparable and quality data for children, to adequately address issues including intergenerational cycles of poverty, preventable deaths, and violence against children….(More)”

Data Love: The Seduction and Betrayal of Digital Technologies

Curated on September 14, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Roberto Simanowski: “Intelligence services, government administrations, businesses, and a growing majority of the population are hooked on the idea that big data can reveal patterns and correlations in everyday life. Initiated by software engineers and carried out through algorithms, the mining of big data has sparked a silent revolution. But algorithmic analysis and data mining are not simply byproducts of media development or the logical consequences of computation. They are the radicalization of the Enlightenment’s quest for knowledge and progress. Data Love argues that the “cold civil war” of big data is taking place not among citizens or between the citizen and government but within each of us.

Roberto Simanowski elaborates on the changes data love has brought to the human condition while exploring the entanglements of those who―out of stinginess, convenience, ignorance, narcissism, or passion―contribute to the amassing of ever more data about their lives, leading to the statistical evaluation and individual profiling of their selves. Writing from a philosophical standpoint, Simanowski illustrates the social implications of technological development and retrieves the concepts, events, and cultural artifacts of past centuries to help decode the programming of our present….(More)”

Putting the brakes on traffic violations in China

Curated on September 14, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “When it comes to public awareness and behavior change campaigns, it’s always interesting to see how organizations effect change. Last year, we covered a Russian nonprofit which uses hologram projections of disabled drivers to ward off those tempted to take disabled parking spaces. Road deaths in China have long been a cause for concern with the WHO estimating that 250,000 people were killed on China’s roads, amongst them over 10,000 children. This figure is disputed by Chinese authorities, who put the figure around 60,000, but it is clearly a serious problem. The latest rising death toll comes from non-motorized vehicles, in particular e-bikes. Some estimates put the number of e-bikes in use in China at over 200 million. ….

In response to this alarming figure, Chinese traffic police have been trialling two interesting strategies to improve road safety, focussing in on non-motorized vehicles. The more traditional of the strategies was an online radio broadcast earlier on this month which detailed the various aspects of their law enforcement process. 210,000 people tuned in for the one hour broadcast.

The second, earlier this year, was a novel approach that – to some extent – gamified traffic regulation. Officials handed out 15,000, ’50 percent discount coupons’ to people breaking traffic rules incurring a fine. The coupons had the highway code printed on the reverse. Rule-breakers were asked ‘on the spot’ questions about the highway code which, if answered correctly, resulted in the fine being lifted altogether. ‘Contestants’ were even allowed to phone a friend. Not quite a “get out jail free card” but a good incentive for learning the highway code….(More)”