Stefaan Verhulst
New Report by the OECD: “Trust plays a very tangible role in the effectiveness of government. Few perceptions are more palpable than that of trust or its absence. Governments ignore this at their peril. Yet, public trust has been eroding just when policy makers need it most, given persistent unemployment, rising inequality and a variety of global pressures. This report examines the influence of trust on policy making and explores some of the steps governments can take to strengthen public trust…(More)”
Gareth Lloyd at the NCVO: “One of the most important questions for voluntary sector organisations of all sizes is how their work can be supported by technology. We have talked before about how the sector needs to identify technology that is replicable and has low barriers to uptake, but we have also recently carried out a research project with Tata Consultacy Services on this issue, which involved an evidence review, mapping exercise and workshop with voluntary sector experts.
Here’s a brief overview of what we learned, including the different challenges for large and small organisations; as well as those that apply to everyone.
Grand ambitions
First, our work looked at the attraction – and possible dangers of – investing in new and largely unproven technologies. We have seen the voluntary sector undergo fleeting love affairs with new and exciting types of technology, such as big data, crowdfunding and bitcoin; and we go through periods of hearing about technologies that have the potential to change the way that the sector works…..
Defining problems and choosing solutions
For all the challenges mentioned so far, the underlying issue is the same: a mismatch between the problem to be solved and the solution implemented. The answer is to focus on the problem that you’re trying to solve, whether approaching it as a technology issue or not, and then look at the ways that technology can help you. For example, Jointly – the app developed by Carers UK to enable conversation between groups of carers – stands out as a problem that could have been addressed without use of technology, but was eventually enhanced by it.
But organisations also have to ensure that the technology used to solve those problems is cost effective, time effective, and appropriate for them in terms of where they are starting from. If the solution you choose is tying you up in knots, maybe it isn’t a solution at all.
Our research came up with some high level principles that organisations can use to avoid these problems, and try to ensure that adopting technology transforms the day-to-day activities of organisations while minimising disruption…
Think iterations, rather than discrete projects
Participants at our workshop talked about how the discrete project model doesn’t quite work when trying to embed technology at an organisation. That is, rather than these projects having straightforward planning and implementation phases, they need to be introduced iteratively, as an ongoing process of deployment, evaluation and redesign. Introducing technology in this way minimises risk, helps to ensure that the solution fits the problem, and ensures that it is tailored to the needs of the people who will use it on a day to day basis.
If you are interested in this research you can read the executive summary here, the full slide deck here, or find details of the Spark Salon event where it was launched here….(More)”
The handbook is organized into three thematic sections – Contemporary Challenges, Policy and Administration Responses and Forging a Resilient Public Administration – to allow readers to quickly access knowledge and improve their understanding of topics. The opening chapter, introductions to sections and extensive glossary aid readers to most effectively learn from the book. Each chapter provides a balanced overview of current knowledge, identifying issues and discussing relevant debates. The book is written by authors from Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia….(More)’
“Special edition of ITU news magazine (PDF)… about:
- How Artificial Intelligence (AI) can boost sustainable development
- How to prepare for the opportunities and risks of an AI-driven society
- The AI for Good Global Summit that ITU is hosting in June with XP…(More)”
Publish What You Fund has launched a new online tool that allows aid and development finance publishers to independently check the quality of their data before they publish it to IATI. The aim of the Data Quality Tester – currently in Beta – is to indicate when information falls short of the specific data quality tests used to assess donors in the Aid Transparency Index. We expect it to be most useful for donors who are included in the Index to monitor their own progress both during and outside of the Index cycle.
Who is the Data Quality Tester for?
The Data Quality Tester is also suitable for organisations who want to start publishing in the IATI Standard and for those that do not qualify for inclusion in the Index, or that used to be assessed but are not currently. The open source online tool is useful because:
- Both the IATI Standard and the Index tests can at times be complex and the tool allows a quick check against them, so donor agency staff can understand any issues
- It allows publishers to internally and independently check the quality of their information before uploading to the IATI Registry, saving time and making sure that when data is uploaded, it is as good as it can be
- It provides publishers with an opportunity to assess their data against the updated Index methodology and recognise where they need to improve
The tool is now live and available to use at: http://dataqualitytester.publishwhatyoufund.org/…..(More)”
Book edited by Kawash, Jalal, Agarwal, Nitin, Özyer, Tansel: “This book addresses the challenges of social network and social media analysis in terms of prediction and inference. The chapters collected here tackle these issues by proposing new analysis methods and by examining mining methods for the vast amount of social content produced. Social Networks (SNs) have become an integral part of our lives; they are used for leisure, business, government, medical, educational purposes and have attracted billions of users. The challenges that stem from this wide adoption of SNs are vast. These include generating realistic social network topologies, awareness of user activities, topic and trend generation, estimation of user attributes from their social content, and behavior detection. This text has applications to widely used platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and appeals to students, researchers, and professionals in the field….(More)”
Paper by Rehm, Sebastian, Foth, Marcus, & Mitchell, Peta: “The mobile internet provides new and easier ways for people to organise themselves, raise issues, take action, and interact with their city. However, lack of information or motivation often prevents citizens from regularly contributing to the common good. In this paper, we present DoGood, a mobile app that aims at motivating citizens to join civic activities in their local community. Our study asks to what extent gamification can motivate users to participate in civic activities. The term civic activity is not yet well defined, so we collect activities citizens consider to be civic in order to work towards a broadly accepted definition of the term. The DoGood app uses gamified elements that we studied in order to gauge their role in encouraging citizens to submit and promote their civic activities as well as to join the activities of others. DoGood was implemented and deployed to citizens in a five-week-long user study. The app succeeded in motivating most of its users to do more civic activities, and its gamified elements were well received….(More)”.
Steve Schwartz at Tableau: “For most people, asking about the price of a bag of rice is inconsequential. For Moustapha Toure, it is a question of life and death for thousands.
A Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (VAM) Officer with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Maiduguri, Nigeria, Moustapha and his team are currently collecting price data and assessing food security in a corner of the country wracked by the effects of the Boko Haram insurgency.
When the conflict broke out in 2009, the threat of violence made it difficult for humanitarian workers like Moustapha to access the communities they serve.
“The security situation made it impossible for the team to go to local markets, talk to vendors, or even chat with people in their homes—all the things they usually do to gather data on local food prices,” said the WFP Nigeria Country Director, Ronald Sibanda.
To overcome this challenge, WFP, in collaboration with the Nigerian National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), turned to an innovative new approach for collecting data via mobile phones, known as mobile Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (mVAM). Using mVAM, WFP and its partners can remotely collect food security and price data. Not only does this approach provide a way to hear from people in inaccessible areas, but it also makes near real-time reporting to local decision-makers possible. That means WFP staff like Moustapha are able to make reliable, data-informed decisions that may impact the lives of more than one million people across the affected Nigerian states.
A Vital Lifeline for a Looming Famine
The mVAM team could be in demand now more than ever. Along with Yemen, Somalia, and South Sudan, Nigeria is one of the four countries at risk of famine. Stephen O’Brien, the United Nation’s Emergency Relief Coordinator, recently described this global food security emergency as the most serious humanitarian crisis since the Second World War.
For seven years, the Boko Haram conflict has affected communities in north-eastern Nigeria, leaving some 5.1 million people food insecure in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states and forcing an estimated 1.9 million people to leave behind their homes, land, and livelihoods.
Without this remotely-collected information, little would be known about these areas and how the conflict is affecting food security. However, this data—collected on a regular basis—actually presents a unique opportunity. In the new system, WFP’s VAM team can take a leap forward from traditional PDF reports which take at least a few weeks, to produce a near real-time look at the situation on the ground…(More)”.
Paper by Karen E. C. Levy: “…critiques blockchain-based “smart contracts,” which aim to automatically and securely execute obligations without reliance on a centralized enforcement authority. Though smart contracts do have some features that might serve the goals of social justice and fairness, I suggest that they are based on a thin conception of what law does, and how it does it. Smart contracts focus on the technical form of contract to the exclusion of the social contexts within which contracts operate, and the complex ways in which people use them. In the real world, contractual obligations are enforced through all kinds of social mechanisms other than formal adjudication—and contracts serve many functions that are not explicitly legal in nature, or even designed to be formally enforced. I describe three categories of contracting practices in which people engage (the inclusion of facially unenforceable terms, the inclusion of purposefully underspecified terms, and willful nonenforcement of enforceable terms) to illustrate how contracts actually “work.” The technology of smart contracts neglects the fact that people use contracts as social resources to manage their relations. The inflexibility that they introduce, by design, might short-circuit a number of social uses to which law is routinely put. Therefore, I suggest that attention to the social and relational contexts of contracting are essential considerations for the discussion, development, and deployment of smart contracts….(More)”
iNaturalist: “…is a place where you can record what you see in nature, meet other nature lovers, and learn about the natural world.
From hikers to hunters, birders to beach-combers, the world is filled with naturalists, and many of us record what we find. What if all those observations could be shared online? You might discover someone who finds beautiful wildflowers at your favorite birding spot, or learn about the birds you see on the way to work. If enough people recorded their observations, it would be like a living record of life on Earth that scientists and land managers could use to monitor changes in biodiversity, and that anyone could use to learn more about nature…
We wouldn’t be able to make iNaturalist without many, many wonderful open source projects, open datasets, and public APIs, including (in no particular order): Catalogue of Life, uBio,Ruby on Rails, jQuery, Google Maps, Mark James’ Silk Icons, and many more we’re probably forgetting…(More)”