Andrew R Schrock in New Media and Society: “The civic hacker tends to be described as anachronistic, an ineffective “white hat” compared to more overtly activist cousins. By contrast, I argue that civic hackers’ politics emerged from a distinct historical milieu and include potentially powerful modes of political participation. The progressive roots of civic data hacking can be found in early 20th-century notions of “publicity” and the right to information movement. Successive waves of activists saw the Internet as a tool for transparency. The framing of openness shifted in meaning from information to data, weakening of mechanisms for accountability even as it opened up new forms of political participation. Drawing on a year of interviews and participant observation, I suggest civic data hacking can be framed as a form of data activism and advocacy: requesting, digesting, contributing to, modeling, and contesting data. I conclude civic hackers are utopian realists involved in the crafting of algorithmic power and discussing ethics of technology design. They may be misunderstood because open data remediates previous forms of openness. In the process, civic hackers transgress established boundaries of political participation….(More)”
Our finances are a mess – could behavioral science help clean them up?
Katy Davis at the Conversation: “Typical approaches to solving problematic finances are either to “educate” people about the need to save more or to “incentivize” savings with monetary rewards.
But when we look at traditional financial education and counseling programs, they have had virtually no long-term impact on behavior. Similarly, matched savings programs are expensive and have shown mixed results on savings rates. Furthermore, these approaches often prioritize the need for savings while treating debt repayment as a secondary concern.
Education and incentives haven’t worked because they are based on problematic assumptions about lower-income consumers that turn out to be false….
The good news is that a range of simple, behaviorally informed solutions can easily be deployed to tackle these problems, from policy innovations to product redesign.
For instance, changing the “suggested payoff” in credit card statements for targeted segments (i.e., those who were already paying in full) could help consumers more effectively pay down debt, as could allowing tax refunds to be directly applied toward debt repayment. Well-designed budgeting tools that leverage financial technology could be integrated into government programs. The state of California, for example, is currently exploring ways to implement such technologies across a variety of platforms.
But the public and private sectors both need to play a role for these tools to be effective. Creating an integrated credit-and-saving product, for example, would require buy-in from regulators along with financial providers.
While these banking solutions may not close the economic inequality gap on their own, behaviorally informed design shifts can be the missing piece of the puzzle in these efforts to fix major problems.
Our research indicates that people already want to be doing a better job with their finances; we just need to make it a little less difficult for them….(More)”
Hoaxmap: Debunking false rumours about refugee ‘crimes’
“The stories seemed to be [orchestrated] by far-right parties and organisations and I wanted to try to find some way to help organise this – maybe find patterns and give people a tool to look up these stories [when] they were being confronted with new ones.”
And so she did.
Along with 35-year-old developer Lutz Helm, Schwarz launched last week Hoaxmap, an online platform that allows people to separate fact from fiction by debunking false rumours about supposed crimes committed by refugees.
Using an interactive system of popping dots, the map documents and categorises where those “crimes” allegedly took place. It then counters that false information with official statements from the police and local authorities, as well as news reports in which the allegations have been disproved. The debunked cases marked on the map range from thefts and assaults to manslaughter – but one of the most common topics is rape, Schwarz said….(More)”
How to Hold Governments Accountable for the Algorithms They Use
Nicholas Diakopoulos in Slate: “In 2015 more than 59 million Americans received some form ofbenefit from the Social Security Administration, not just for retirement but also for disability or as a survivor of a deceased worker. It’s a behemoth of a government program, and keeping it solvent has preoccupied the Office of the Chief Actuary of theSocial Security Administration for years. That office makes yearly forecasts of key demographic (such as mortality rates) or economic (for instance, labor forceparticipation) factors that inform how policy can or should change to keep theprogram on sound financial footing. But a recent Harvard University study examinedseveral of these forecasts and found that they were systematically biased—underestimating life expectancy and implying that funds were on firmer financialground than warranted. The procedures and methods that the SSA uses aren’t openfor inspection either, posing challenges to replicating and debugging those predictivealgorithms.
Whether forecasting the solvency of social programs, waging a war, managingnational security, doling out justice and punishment, or educating the populace,government has a lot of decisions to make—and it’s increasingly using algorithms tosystematize and scale that bureaucratic work. In the ideal democratic state, theelectorate chooses a government that provides social goods and exercises itsauthority via regulation. The government is legitimate to the extent that it is heldaccountable to the citizenry. Though as the SSA example shows, tightly heldalgorithms pose issues of accountability that grind at the very legitimacy of thegovernment itself.
One of the immensely useful abilities of algorithms is to rank and prioritize hugeamounts of data, turning a messy pile of items into a neat and orderly list. In 2013 theObama administration announced that it would be getting into the business ofranking colleges, helping the citizens of the land identify and evaluate the “best”educational opportunities. But two years later, the idea of ranking colleges had beenneutered, traded in for what amounts to a data dump of educational statistics calledthe College Scorecard. The human influences, subjective factors, and methodologicalpitfalls involved in quantifying education into rankings would be numerous. Perhapsthe government sensed that any ranking would be dubious—that it would be riddledwith questions of what data was used and how various statistical factors wereweighted. How could the government make such a ranking legitimate in the eyes ofthe public and of the industry that it seeks to hold accountable?
That’s a complicated question that goes far beyond college rankings. But whatever theend goal, government needs to develop protocols for opening up algorithmic blackboxes to democratic processes.
Transparency offers one promising path forward. Let’s consider the new risk-assessment algorithm that the state of Pennsylvania is developing to help make criminal sentencing decisions. Unlike some other states that are pursuing algorithmiccriminal justice using proprietary systems, the level of transparency around thePennsylvania Risk Assessment Project is laudable, with several publicly available in-depth reports on the development of the system….(More)’
Data Could Help Scholars Persuade, If Only They Were Willing to Use It
Paul Basken at the Chronicle of Higher Education: “Thanks to what they’ve learned from university research, consultants like Matthew Kalmans have become experts in modern political persuasion. A co-founder of Applecart, a New York data firm, Mr. Kalmans specializes in shaping societal attitudes by using advanced analytical techniques to discover and exploit personal connections and friendships. His is one of a fast-growing collection of similar companies now raising millions of dollars, fattening businesses, and aiding political campaigns with computerized records of Facebook exchanges, high-school yearbooks, even neighborhood gossip.
Applecart uses that data to try to persuade people on a range of topics by finding voices they trust to deliver endorsements. “You can use this sort of technology to get people to purchase insurance at higher rates, get people to purchase a product, get people to do all sorts of other things that they might otherwise not be inclined to do,” said Mr. Kalmans, a 2014 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. And in building such a valuable service, he’s found that the intellectual underpinnings are often free. “We are constantly reading academic papers to get ideas on how to do things better,” Mr. Kalmans said. That’s because scholars conduct the field experiments and subsequent tests that Mr. Kalmans needs to build and refine his models. “They do a lot of the infrastructural work that, frankly, a lot of commercial companies don’t have the in-house expertise to do,” he said of university researchers. Yet the story of Applecart stands in contrast to the dominant attitude and approach among university researchers themselves. Universities are full of researchers who intensively study major global problems such as environmental destruction and societal violence, then stop short when their conclusions point to the need for significant change in public behavior.
Some in academe consider that boundary a matter of principle rather than a systematic failure or oversight. “The one thing that we have to do is not be political,” Michael M. Crow, the usually paradigm-breaking president of Arizona State University, said this summer at a conference on academic engagement in public discourse. “Politics is a process that we are informing. We don’t have to be political to inform politicians or political actors.” But other academics contemplate that stance and see a missed opportunity to help convert the millions of taxpayer dollars spent on research into meaningful societal benefit. They include Dan M. Kahan, a professor of law and of psychology at Yale University who has been trying to help Florida officials cope with climate change. Mr. Kahan works with the four-county Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, which wants to redesign roads, expand public transit, and build pumping stations to prepare for harsher weather. But Mr. Kahan says he and his Florida partners have had trouble getting enough
But Mr. Kahan says he and his Florida partners have had trouble getting enough policy makers to seriously consider the scale of the problem and the necessary solutions. It’s frustrating, Mr. Kahan said, to see so much university research devoted to work inside laboratories on problems like climate, and comparatively little spent on real-world needs such as sophisticated messaging strategies. “There really is a kind of deficit in the research relating to actually operationalizing the kinds of insights that people have developed from research,” he said. That deficit appears to stem from academic culture, said Utpal M. Dholakia, a professor of marketing at Rice University whose work involves testing people’s self-control in areas such as eating and shopping. He then draws conclusions about whether regulations or taxes aimed at changing behaviors will be effective. Companies find advanced personal behavioral data highly useful, said Mr. Dholakia, who works on the side to help retailers devise sales strategies. But his university, he said, appears more interested in seeing him publish his findings than take the time to help policy makers make real-world use of them. “My dean gets very worried if I don’t publish a lot.” Because universities h
That deficit appears to stem from academic culture, said Utpal M. Dholakia, a professor of marketing at Rice University whose work involves testing people’s self-control in areas such as eating and shopping. He then draws conclusions about whether regulations or taxes aimed at changing behaviors will be effective. Companies find advanced personal behavioral data highly useful, said Mr. Dholakia, who works on the side to help retailers devise sales strategies. But his university, he said, appears more interested in seeing him publish his findings than take the time to help policy makers make real-world use of them. “My dean gets very worried if I don’t publish a lot.” …(More)
The Value of Open Governance: Adaptive Learning and Development
Alan Hudson at Global Policy: “Open governance is governance that puts into practice principles of transparency, participation and accountability. Proponents of open governance tend to make their case on the basis of two sets of arguments. Normative, or intrinsic value, arguments hold that open governance is a good thing in itself. The idea here is that people have a right to open governance, regardless of its outcomes. Instrumental, or extrinsic value, arguments make the case that open governance is important because it contributes to better outcomes; less corruption, lower poverty, greater prosperity, for instance.
Both sets of arguments have their weaknesses. My aim in this post is to outline these vulnerabilities and then to suggest an alternative way of thinking about the value of open governance, a conceptual framework that has practical implications for those of us working to harness the potential of open governance.
On the intrinsic side, the idea that open governance, or rights, are good things in themselves is questionable. Normative arguments can be useful, but not everyone thinks that the same things are “good” (see my post on moving “beyond the Good Governance mantra” for more). This is particularly problematic when normative arguments are made about the form that governance should take, rather than the functions that it should enable (see Matt Andrews on “hippos in the Sahara”). On the extrinsic side, the evidence about whether more open governance leads to better development outcomes remains decidedly patchy, despite substantial investments in exploring “what works”. We need, I would argue, to think not just harder, but also differently, about the ways in which open processes of governance can make a difference.
In some cases, organizations (including Global Integrity at times) hedge their bets, asserting both that citizens have a right to open governance and that open governance can lead to better development outcomes. This can be a reasonable argument to make, and may have some pragmatic benefits, but it has led to a situation where the theory of change about how open governance can contribute to better development outcomes remains unclear and under-examined. This has contributed to unrealistic expectations being placed on the open governance agenda, and complicates the task of marshaling the evidence to assess what works in order to inform more effective action. On the ground this can mean that investments in supporting the open governance agenda are misdirected and fail to deliver the expected benefits….
Open governance matters, not because it is a good thing in itself, or because it leads directly to better development outcomes (it rarely does). Instead, open governance matters because it enhances the ability of communities, to try, learn and adapt their way towards better development outcomes. This, it should be noted, is always about using evidence to navigate and engage with the prevailing political dynamics….(More)”
Linked Open Economy: Take Full Advantage of Economic Data
Paper by Michalis N. Vafopoulos et al: “For decades, information related to public finances was out of reach for most of the people. Gradually, public budgets and tenders are becoming openly available and global initiatives promote fiscal transparency and open product and price data. But, the poor quality of economic open data undermines their potential to answer interesting questions (e.g. efficiency of public funds and market processes). Linked Open Economy (LOE) has been developed as a top-level conceptualization that interlinks the publicly available economic open data by modelling the flows incorporated in public procurement together with the market process to address complex policy issues. LOE approach is extensively used to enrich open economic data ranging from budgets and spending to prices. Developers, professionals, public administrations and any other interested party use and customize LOE model to develop new systems, to enable information exchange between systems, to integrate data from heterogeneous sources and to publish open data related to economic activities….(More)”
The Populist Signal
Book by Claudia Chwalisz: “The book is about the turbulent political scene unfolding in Britain and across western Europe. It focuses on why large swathes of voters feel that politics does not work, how this fuels support for insurgent parties and actors, and it investigates the power of democratic innovations….
Examples include:
– The Melbourne People’s panel, where 43 randomly selected citizens presented the City council with a 10 year, $4bn plan for Melbourne
– The Flemish minister of culture’s citizens’ cabinet, which advised him on his upcoming legislation before he presented it to parliament
– The G1000 local citizens’ assemblies in the Netherlands, which bring randomly selected members of the community together to deliberate on collective solutions to the challenges being faced
– The Grandview-Woodlands citizens’ assembly on town planning in Vancouver, Canada…(More)
6 lessons from sharing humanitarian data
Francis Irving at LLRX: “The Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) is an unusual data hub. It’s made by the UN, and is successfully used by agencies, NGOs, companies, Governments and academics to share data.
They’re doing this during crises such as the Ebola epidemic and the Nepal earthquakes, and every day to build up information in between crises.
There are lots of data hubs which are used by one organisation to publish data, far fewer which are used by lots of organisations to share data. The HDX project did a bunch of things right. What were they?
Here are six lessons…
1) Do good design
HDX started with user needs research. This was expensive, and was immediately worth it because it stopped a large part of the project which wasn’t needed.
The user needs led to design work which has made the website seem simple and beautiful – particularly unusual for something from a large bureaucracy like the UN.
2) Build on existing software
When making a hub for sharing data, there’s no need to make something from scratch. Open Knowledge’s CKANsoftware is open source, this stuff is a commodity. HDX has developers who modify and improve it for the specific needs of humanitarian data.
3) Use experts
HDX is a great international team – the leader is in New York, most of the developers are in Romania, there’s a data lab in Nairobi. Crucially, they bring in specific outside expertise: frog design do the user research and design work;ScraperWiki, experts in data collaboration, provide operational management.
4) Measure the right things
HDX’s metrics are about both sides of its two sided network. Are users who visit the site actually finding and downloading data they want? Are new organisations joining to share data? They’re avoiding “vanity metrics”, taking inspiration from tech startup concepts like “pirate metrics“.
5) Add features specific to your community
There are endless features you can add to data hubs – most add no value, and end up a cost to maintain. HDX add specific things valuable to its community.
For example, much humanitarian data is in “shape files”, a standard for geographical information. HDX automatically renders a beautiful map of these – essential for users who don’t have ArcGIS, and a good check for those that do.
6) Trust in the data
The early user research showed that trust in the data was vital. For this reason, anyone can’t just come along and add data to it. New organisations have to apply – proving either that they’re known in humanitarian circles, or have quality data to share. Applications are checked by hand. It’s important to get this kind of balance right – being too ideologically open or closed doesn’t work.
Conclusion
The detail of how a data sharing project is run really matters….(More)”
Global fact-checking up 50% in past year
Mark Stencel at Duke Reporters’ Lab: “The high volume of political truth-twisting is driving demand for political fact-checkers around the world, with the number of fact-checking sites up 50 percent since last year.
The Duke Reporters’ Lab annual census of international fact-checking currently counts 96 active projects in 37 countries. That’s up from 64 active fact-checkers in the 2015 count. (Map and List)
A bumper crop of new fact-checkers across the Western Hemisphere helped increase the ranks of journalists and government watchdogs who verify the accuracy of public statements and track political promises. The new sites include 14 in the United States, two in Canada as well as seven additional fact-checkers in Latin America.There also were new projects in 10 other countries, from North Africa to Central Europe to East Asia…..
The growing numbers have even spawned a new global association, the International Fact-Checking Network hosted by the Poynter Institute, a media training center in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Promises, Promises
Some of the growth has come in the form of promise-tracking. Since January 2015, fact-checkers launched six sites in five countries devoted to tracking the status of pledges candidates and party leaders made in political campaigns. In Tunisia, there are two new sites dedicated to promise-tracking — one devoted to the country’s president and the other to its prime minister.
There are another 20 active fact-checkers elsewhere that track promises,…
Nearly two-thirds of the active fact-checkers (61 of 96, or 64 percent) are directly affiliated with a new organization. However this breakdown reflects the dominant business structure in the United States, where 90 percent of fact-checkers are part of a news organization. That includes nine of 11 national projects and 28 of 30 state/local fact-checkers…The story is different outside the United States, where less than half of the active fact-checking projects (24 of 55, or 44 percent) are affiliated with news organizations.
The other fact-checkers are typically associated with non-governmental, non-profit and activist groups focused on civic engagement, government transparency and accountability. A handful are partisan, especially in conflict zones and in countries where the lines between independent media, activists and opposition parties are often blurry and where those groups are aligned against state-controlled media or other governmental and partisan entities….(More)“