Stefaan Verhulst

Facebook introduces a way to help your neighbors after a disaster

Curated on February 8, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Casey Newton at the Verge: “Last year Facebook announced Community Help, a new part of its Safety Check feature designed to connect disaster victims with Facebook users in the area who are offering their help. Now whenever Safety Check is activated, Community Help will let users find or offer food, shelter, transportation, and other forms of assistance. After testing the feature in December, Facebook is beginning to roll it out today in the United States, Canada, India, Saudi Arabia, Australia, and New Zealand.

Facebook says Community Help represents a logical next step for Safety Check, which was first announced in November 2014. Initially, each Safety Check was essentially created manually by Facebook’s team.

In November, the company announced that Safety Check would become more automated. Global crisis reporting agencies send Facebook alerts, which it then attempts to match to user posts in a geographic area. When it finds a spike in user posts, coupled with the alert, Facebook activates Safety Check. The company says employees oversee the process to prevent false positives — something it hasn’t always succeeded at doing.

In discussions with relief agencies, Facebook says it found that disaster victims were often coming to Facebook in search of help — or to offer some. In some cases, product designer Preethi Chethan says, they were pasting Facebook posts into spreadsheets to help sort them.

Community Help is designed to make post-disaster matchmaking easier. You’ll find it inside Safety Check — go there in the wake of a calamity, and after marking yourself safe you can create a post seeking or offering help. For starters, Community Help will only be available after natural disasters and accidents….(More)”.

Big data is adding a whole new dimension to public spaces – here’s how

Curated on February 8, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Silvio Carta at the Conversation: “Most of us encounter public spaces in our daily lives: whether it’s physical space (a sidewalk, a bench, or a road), a visual element (a panorama, a cityscape) or a mode of transport (bus, train or bike share). But over the past two decades, digital technologies such as smart phones and the internet of things are adding extra layers of information to our public spaces, and transforming the urban environment.

Traditionally, public spaces have been carefully designed by urban planners and architects, and managed by private companies or public bodies. The theory goes that people’s attention and behaviour in public spaces can be guided by the way that architects plan the built environment. Take, for example, Leicester Square in London: the layout of green areas, pathways and benches makes it clear where people are supposed to walk, sit down and look at the natural elements. The public space is a given, which people receive and use within the terms and guidelines provided.

While these ideas are still relevant today, information is now another key material in public spaces. It changes the way that people experience the city. Uber shows us the position of its closest drivers, even when they’re out of sight; route-finding apps such as Google Maps helps us to navigate through unfamiliar territory; Pokemon Go places otherworldly creatures on the pavement right before our eyes.

But we’re not just receiving information – we’re also generating it. Whether you’re “liking” something on Facebook, searching Google, shopping online, or even exchanging an email address for Wi-Fi access; all of the data created by these actions are collected, stored, managed, analysed and brokered to generate monetary value.

Data deluge

But as well as creating profits for private companies, these data provide accurate and continuous updates of how society is evolving, which can be used by governments and designers to manage and design public spaces.

Before big data, the architects designed spaces based on mere assumptions about how people were likely to use them. Success was measured by “small”, localised data methods, such as post-occupancy evaluations, where built projects are observed during their use and assessed against the designers’ original intentions, as well as fitness for purpose and performance. For the most part, the people who used public spaces did not have a say in how they were designed or managed….(More)”

Beyond prediction: Using big data for policy problems

Curated on February 7, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Susan Athey at Science: “Machine-learning prediction methods have been extremely productive in applications ranging from medicine to allocating fire and health inspectors in cities. However, there are a number of gaps between making a prediction and making a decision, and underlying assumptions need to be understood in order to optimize data-driven decision-making…(More)”

The dark side of e-petitions? Exploring anonymous signatures

Curated on February 7, 2017October 23, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Janne Berg at First Monday: “This paper analyzes anonymous political participation in the form of e-petition signing. The purpose of this study is to increase knowledge about patterns behind anonymous e-petition signing. Since online political participation evokes an important discussion about the balance between the need for transparency on the one hand, and the right for anonymity on the other hand, it is crucial to increase our knowledge of the factors affecting citizens’ choices to remain anonymous. Using quantitative content analysis of 220 informal e-petitions on the site adressit.com in Finland, this study seeks to find possible determinants for the share of anonymous signatures. Findings indicate that the type of demand presented in the e-petition is a key factor predicting the share of anonymous signatures…(More)”

Data ideologies of an interested public: A study of grassroots open government data intermediaries

Curated on February 7, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Andrew Schrock and Gwen Shaffer in Big Data & Society: “Government officials claim open data can improve internal and external communication and collaboration. These promises hinge on “data intermediaries”: extra-institutional actors that obtain, use, and translate data for the public. However, we know little about why these individuals might regard open data as a site of civic participation. In response, we draw on Ilana Gershon to conceptualize culturally situated and socially constructed perspectives on data, or “data ideologies.” This study employs mixed methodologies to examine why members of the public hold particular data ideologies and how they vary. In late 2015 the authors engaged the public through a commission in a diverse city of approximately 500,000. Qualitative data was collected from three public focus groups with residents. Simultaneously, we obtained quantitative data from surveys. Participants’ data ideologies varied based on how they perceived data to be useful for collaboration, tasks, and translations. Bucking the “geek” stereotype, only a minority of those surveyed (20%) were professional software developers or engineers. Although only a nascent movement, we argue open data intermediaries have important roles to play in a new political landscape….(More)”

Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action

Curated on February 7, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock: “Governments play a major role in the development process, constantly introducing reforms and policies to achieve developmental objectives. Many of these interventions have limited impact, however; schools get built but children don’t learn, IT systems are introduced but not used, plans are written but not implemented. These achievement deficiencies reveal gaps in capabilities, and weaknesses in the process of building state capability.

This book addresses these weaknesses and gaps. It provides evidence of the capability shortfalls that currently exist in many countries, analyses this evidence and identifies capability traps that hold many governments back—particularly related to isomorphic mimicry and premature load-bearing. The book then describes a process that governments can use to escape these capability traps. Called PDIA (Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation), this process empowers people working in governments to find and fit solutions to the problems they face. This process is explained in a practical manner so that readers can actually apply tools and ideas to the capability challenges they face in their own contexts. These applications will help readers implement policies and reforms that have more impact than those of the past….(More)”

‘Collective intelligence’ is not necessarily present in virtual groups

Curated on February 6, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Jordan B. Barlow and Alan R. Dennis at LSE: “Do groups of smart people perform better than groups of less intelligent people?

Research published in Science magazine in 2010 reported that groups, like individuals, have a certain level of “collective intelligence,” such that some groups perform consistently well across many different types of tasks, while other groups perform consistently poorly. Collective intelligence is similar to individual intelligence, but at the group level.

Interestingly, the Science study found that collective intelligence was not related to the individual intelligence of group members; groups of people with higher intelligence did not perform better than groups with lower intelligence. Instead, the study found that high performing teams had members with higher social sensitivity – the ability to read the emotions of others using visual facial cues.

Social sensitivity is important when we sit across a table from each other. But what about online, when we exchange emails or text messages? Does social sensitivity matter when I can’t see your face?

We examined the collective intelligence in an online environment in which groups used text-based computer-mediated communication. We followed the same procedures as the original Science study, which used the approach typically used to measure individual intelligence. In individual intelligence tests, a person completes several small “tasks” or problems. An analysis of task scores typically demonstrates that task scores are correlated, meaning that if a person does well on one problem, it is likely that they did well on other problems….

The results were not what we expected. The correlations between our groups’ performance scores were either not statistically significant or significantly negative, as shown in Table 1. The average correlation between any two tasks was -0.05, indicating that performance on one task was not correlated with performance on other tasks. In other words, groups who performed well on one of the tasks were unlikely to perform well on the other tasks…

Our findings challenge the conclusion reported in Science that groups have a general collective intelligence analogous to individual intelligence. Our study shows that no collective intelligence factor emerged when groups used a popular commercial text-based online tool. That is, when using tools with limited visual cues, groups that performed well on one task were no more likely to perform well on a different task. Thus the “collective intelligence” factor related to social sensitivity that was reported in Science is not collective intelligence; it is instead a factor associated with the ability to work well using face-to-face communication, and does not transcend media….(More)”

Making the Case for Open Contracting in Healthcare Procurement

Curated on February 6, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Transparency International “…new report “Making the Case for Open Contracting in Healthcare Procurement” examines the utility of open contracting in healthcare procurement. The process relies on governments to disclose procurement information to businesses and civil society improves stakeholders’ understanding of procurement processes increasing the integrity, fairness and efficiency of public contracting.

In several countries, including Honduras, Ukraine and Nigeria, corruption was significantly reduced throughout the healthcare procurement process following the implementation of open contracting, according to the report. Click here to download the report”

Governance and the Law

Curated on February 6, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

World Development Report 2017: “Why are carefully designed, sensible policies too often not adopted or implemented? When they are, why do they often fail to generate development outcomes such as security, growth, and equity? And why do some bad policies endure? This World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law addresses these fundamental questions, which are at the heart of development. Policy making and policy implementation do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they take place in complex political and social settings, in which individuals and groups with unequal power interact within changing rules as they pursue conflicting interests. The process of these interactions is what this Report calls governance, and the space in which these interactions take place, the policy arena. The capacity of actors to commit and their willingness to cooperate and coordinate to achieve socially desirable goals are what matter for effectiveness. However, who bargains, who is excluded, and what barriers block entry to the policy arena determine the selection and implementation of policies and, consequently, their impact on development outcomes. Exclusion, capture, and clientelism are manifestations of power asymmetries that lead to failures to achieve security, growth, and equity. The distribution of power in society is partly determined by history. Yet, there is room for positive change. This Report reveals that governance can mitigate, even overcome, power asymmetries to bring about more effective policy interventions that achieve sustainable improvements in security, growth, and equity. This happens by shifting the incentives of those with power, reshaping their preferences in favor of good outcomes, and taking into account the interests of previously excluded participants. These changes can come about through bargains among elites and greater citizen engagement, as well as by international actors supporting rules that strengthen coalitions for reform….(More)”.