Stefaan Verhulst
Research Briefing by Matt Leighninger: “Around the world, people are asking how we can make democracy work in new and better ways. We are frustrated by political systems in which voting is the only legitimate political act, concerned that many republics don’t have the strength or appeal to withstand authoritarian figures, and disillusioned by the inability of many countries to address the fundamental challenges of health, education and economic development.
We can no longer assume that the countries of the global North have ‘advanced’ democracies, and that the nations of the global South simply need to catch up. Citizens of these older democracies have increasingly lost faith in their political institutions; Northerners cherish their human rights and free elections, but are clearly looking for something more. Meanwhile, in the global South, new regimes based on a similar formula of rights and elections have proven fragile and difficult to sustain. And in Brazil, India and other Southern countries, participatory budgeting and other valuable democratic innovations have emerged. The stage is set for a more equitable, global conversation about what we mean by democracy.
How can we adjust our democratic formulas so that they are more sustainable, powerful, fulfilling – and, well, democratic? Some of the parts of this equation may come from the development of online tools and platforms that help people to engage with their governments, with organisations and institutions, and with each other. Often referred to collectively as ‘civic technology’ or ‘civic tech’, these tools can help us map public problems, help citizens generate solutions, gather input for government, coordinate volunteer efforts, and help neighbours remain connected. If we want to create democracies in which citizens have meaningful roles in shaping public decisions and solving public problems, we should be asking a number of questions about civic tech, including:
- How can online tools best support new forms of democracy?
- What are the examples of how this has happened?
- What are some variables to consider in comparing these examples?
- How can we learn from each other as we move forward?
This background note has been developed to help democratic innovators explore these questions and examine how their work can provide answers….(More)”
Book by Sally Engle Merry: “We live in a world where seemingly everything can be measured. We rely on indicators to translate social phenomena into simple, quantified terms, which in turn can be used to guide individuals, organizations, and governments in establishing policy. Yet counting things requires finding a way to make them comparable. And in the process of translating the confusion of social life into neat categories, we inevitably strip it of context and meaning—and risk hiding or distorting as much as we reveal.
With The Seductions of Quantification, leading legal anthropologist Sally Engle Merry investigates the techniques by which information is gathered and analyzed in the production of global indicators on human rights, gender violence, and sex trafficking. Although such numbers convey an aura of objective truth and scientific validity, Merry argues persuasively that measurement systems constitute a form of power by incorporating theories about social change in their design but rarely explicitly acknowledging them. For instance, the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report, which ranks countries in terms of their compliance with antitrafficking activities, assumes that prosecuting traffickers as criminals is an effective corrective strategy—overlooking cultures where women and children are frequently sold by their own families. As Merry shows, indicators are indeed seductive in their promise of providing concrete knowledge about how the world works, but they are implemented most successfully when paired with context-rich qualitative accounts grounded in local knowledge….(More)”.
Stacy Donohue at Omidyar Network: “…In order to spur creative thinking about how the civic tech sector could be accelerated and expanded, we looked to Purpose, a public benefit corporation that works with NGOs, philanthropies, and brands on movement building strategies. We wanted to explore what we might learn from taking the work that Purpose has done mapping the progress of of 21st century social movements and applying its methodology to civic tech.
So why consider viewing civic tech using the lens of 21st century movements? Movements are engines of change in society that enable citizens to create new and better paths to engage with government and to seek recourse on issues that matter to millions of people. At first glance, civic tech doesn’t appear to be a movement in the purest sense of the term, but on closer inspection, it does share some fundamental characteristics. Like a movement, civic tech is mission driven, is focused on making change that benefits the public, and in most cases enables better public input into decision making.
We believe that better understanding the essential components of movements, and observing the ways in which civic tech does or does not behave like one, can yield insights on how we as a civic tech community can collectively drive the sector forward….
report Engines of Change: What Civic Tech Can Learn From Social Movements….provides a lot of rich insight and detail which we invite everyone to explore. Meanwhile, we have summarized five key findings:
- Grassroots activity is expanding across the US – Activity is no longer centralized around San Francisco and New York; it’s rapidly growing and spreading across the US – in fact, there was an 81% increase in the number of cities hosting civic tech MeetUps from 2013 to 2015, and 45 of 50 states had at least one MeetUp on civic tech in 2015.
- Talk is turning to action – We are walking the talk. One way we can see this is that growth in civic tech Twitter discussion is highly correlated with the growth in GitHub contributions to civic tech projects and related Meetup events. Between 2013-2015, over 8,500 people contributed code to GitHub civic tech projects and there were over 76,000 MeetUps for civic tech events.
- There is an engaged core, but it is very small in number – As with most social movements, civic tech has a definite core of highly engaged evangelists, advocates and entrepreneurs that are driving conversations, activity, and events and this is growing. The number of Meetup groups holding multiple events a quarter grew by 136% between 2013 to 2015. And likewise there was a 60% growth in Engaged Tweeters in during this time period. However, this level of activity is dwarfed by other movements such as climate action.
- Civic tech is growing but still lacking scale – There are many positive indications of growth in civic tech; for example, the combination of nonprofit and for-profit funding to the sector increased by almost 120% over the period. But while growth compares favorably to other movements, again the scale just isn’t there.
- Common themes, but no shared vision or identity – Purpose examined the extent to which civic tech exhibits and articulates a shared vision or identity around which members of a movement can rally. What they found is that many fewer people are discussing the same shared set of themes. Two themes – Open Data and Government Transparency – are resonating and gaining traction across the sector and could therefore form the basis of common identity for civic tech.
While each of these insights is important in its own right and requires action to move the sector forward, the main thing that strikes us is the need for a coherent and clearly articulated vision and sense of shared identity for civic tech…
Read the full report: Engines of Change: What Civic Tech Can Learn From Social Movements
Peter Olsen-Phillips in the Chronicle of Philanthropy: “The Internal Revenue Service opened a gusher of information on nonprofits Wednesday by making electronically filed Form 990s available in bulk and in a machine-friendly format.
The material will be available through the Public Data Sets area of Amazon Web Services. It will also include information from digital versions of the 990-EZ form filed by smaller nonprofits and form 990-PFs filed by private foundations.
The change means the public will have quicker and more in-depth access to the 990, the primary disclosure document for and main source of information on tax-exempt organizations. The form includes data on groups’ finances, board members, executive pay, fundraising expenses, and other aspects of their operations.
The filings were previously made public as PDF documents, requiring costly manual entry or imprecise character-recognition technology to extract the data in bulk and make it searchable. Now the information can be downloaded and parsed for free by anyone with a computer.
“With e-file data, you can easily and precisely extract individual items on the form,” Carl Malamud, an open-government advocate and the president of Public.Resource.org, wrote in an email. The nonprofit works to make public information more accessible, and Mr. Malamud has been at the forefront of efforts to liberate data on the nonprofit sector.
…Despite the enhanced transparency, much nonprofit data will remain hard to find and laborious to analyze, as nearly a third of all 990s were filed on paper in 2015.
Mr. McLean said it’s mainly smaller nonprofits that opt to file a paper 990 with the IRS, adding that he hopes recent legislative efforts to require mandatory electronic filing gain traction….(More)”.
Sarah Wray at TMForum: “The City of Copenhagen has launched its City Data Exchange to make public and private data accessible to power innovation.
The City Data Exchange is a new service to create a ‘marketplace for data’ from public and private data providers and allow monetization. The platform has been developed by Hitachi Insight Group.
“Data is the fuel powering our digital world, but in most cities it is unused,” said Hans Lindeman, Senior Vice President, Hitachi Insight Group, EMEA. “Even where data sits in public, freely accessible databases, the cost of extracting and processing it can easily outweigh the benefits.”
The City of Copenhagen is using guidelines for a data format that is safe, secure, ensures privacy and makes data easy to use. The City Data Exchange will only accept data that has been fully anonymized by the data supplier, for example.
According to Hitachi Insight Group, “All of this spares organizations the trouble and cost of extracting and processing data from multiple sources. At the same time, proprietary data can now become a business resource that can be monetized outside an organization.”
As a way to demonstrate how data from the City Data Exchange could be used in applications, Hitachi Insight Group is developing two applications:
- Journey Insight, which helps citizens in the region to track their transportation usage over time and understand the carbon footprint of their travel
- Energy Insight, which allows both households and businesses to see how much energy they use.
Both are set for public launch later this year.
Another example of how data marketplaces can enable innovation is the Mind My Business mobile app, developed by Vizalytics. It brings together all the data that can affect a retailer — from real-time information on how construction or traffic issues can hurt the footfall of a business, to timely reminders about taxes to pay or new regulations to meet. The “survival app for shopkeepers” makes full use of all the relevant data sources brought together by the City Data Exchange.
The platform will offer data in different categories such as: city life, infrastructure, climate and environment, business data and economy, demographics, housing and buildings, and utilities usage. It aims to meet the needs of local government, city planners, architects, retailers, telecoms networks, utilities, and all other companies and organizations who want to understand what makes Copenhagen, its businesses and its citizens tick.
“Smart cities need smart insights, and that’s only possible if everybody has all the facts at their disposal. The City Data Exchange makes that possible; it’s the solution that will help us all to create better public spaces and — for companies in Copenhagen — to offer better services and create jobs,” said Frank Jensen, the Lord Mayor of Copenhagen.
The City Data Exchange is currently offering raw data to its customers, and later this year will add analytical tools. The cost of gathering and processing the data will be recovered through subscription and service fees, which are expected to be much lower than the cost any company or city would face in performing the work of extracting, collecting and integrating the data by themselves….(More)”
Molly Jackman & Lauri Kanerva at Wash. & Lee L. Rev. Online : “Increasingly, companies are conducting research so that they can make informed decisions about what products to build and what features to change.These data-driven insights enable companies to make responsible decisions that will improve peoples’ experiences with their products. Importantly, companies must also be responsible in how they conduct research. Existing ethical guidelines for research do not always robustly address the considerations that industry researchers face. For this reason, companies should develop principles and practices around research that are appropriate to the environments in which they operate,taking into account the values set out in law and ethics. This paper describes the research review process designed and implemented at Facebook, including the training employees receive, and the steps involved in evaluating proposed research. We emphasize that there is no one-size-fits-all model of research review that can be applied across companies, and that processes should be designed to fit the contexts in which the research is taking place. However, we hope that general principles can be extracted from Facebook’s process that will inform other companies as they develop frameworks for research review that serve their needs….(More)”.
Lauren Woodman of Nethope:” Data: Everyone’s talking about it, everyone wants more of it….
Still, I’d posit that we’re too obsessed with data. Not just us in the humanitarian space, of course, but everyone. How many likes did that Facebook post get? How many airline miles did I fly last year? How many hours of sleep did I get last week?…
The problem is that data by itself isn’t that helpful: information is.
We need to develop a new obsession, around making sure that data is actionable, that it is relevant in the context in which we work, and on making sure that we’re using the data as effectively as we are collecting it.
In my talk at ICT4D, I referenced the example of 7-Eleven in Japan. In the 1970s, 7-Eleven in Japan became independent from its parent, Southland Corporation. The CEO had to build a viable business in a tough economy. Every month, each store manager would receive reams of data, but it wasn’t effective until the CEO stripped out the noise and provided just four critical data points that had the greatest relevance to drive the local purchasing that each store was empowered to do on their own.
Those points – what sold the day before, what sold the same day a year ago, what sold the last time the weather was the same, and what other stores sold the day before – were transformative. Within a year, 7-Eleven had turned a corner, and for 30 years, remained the most profitable retailer in Japan. It wasn’t about the Big Data; it was figuring out what data was relevant, actionable and empowered local managers to make nimble decisions.
For our sector to get there, we need to do the front-end work that transforms our data into information that we can use. That, after all, is where the magic happens.
A few examples provide more clarity as to why this is so critical.
We know that adaptive decision-making requires access to real-time data. By knowing what is happening in real-time, or near-real-time, we can adjust our approaches and interventions to be most impactful. But to do so, our data has to be accessible to those that are empowered to make decisions. To achieve that, we have to make investments in training, infrastructure, and capacity-building at the organizational level. But in the nonprofit sector, such investments are rarely supported by donors and beyond the limited unrestricted funding available to most most organizations. As a result, the sector has, so far, been able to take only limited steps towards effective data usage, hampering our ability to transform the massive amounts of data we have into useful information.
Another big question about data, and particularly in the humanitarian space, is whether it should be open, closed or somewhere in between. Privacy is certainly paramount, and for types of data, the need for close protection is very clear. For many other data, however, the rules are far less clear. Every country has its own rules about how data can and cannot be used or shared, and more work is needed to provide clarity and predictability so that appropriate data-sharing can evolve.
And perhaps more importantly, we need to think about not just the data, but the use cases. Most of us would agree, for example, that sharing information during a crisis situation can be hugely beneficial to the people and the communities we serve – but in a world where rules are unclear, that ambiguity limits what we can do with the data we have. Here again, the context in which data will be used is critically important.
Finally, all of in the sector have to realize that the journey to transforming data into information is one we’re on together. We have to be willing to give and take. Having data is great; sharing information is better. Sometimes, we have to co-create that basis to ensure we all benefit….(More)”
For many, citizen science is exciting because of the possibility for more diverse, equitable partnerships in scientific research with outcomes considered meaningful and useful by all, including public participants. This was the focus of a symposium we organized at the 2015 conference of the Citizen Science Association. Here we synthesize points made by symposium participants and our own reflections.
Professional science has a participation problem that is part of a larger equity problem in society. Inequity in science has negative consequences including a failure to address the needs and goals arising from diverse human and social experiences, for example, lack of attention to issues such as environmental contamination that disproportionately impact under-represented populations, and a failure to recognize the pervasive effects of structural racism. Inequity also encourages mistrust of science and scientists. A perception that science is practiced for the sole benefit of dominant social groups is reinforced when investigations of urgent community concerns such as hydraulic fracturing are questioned as being biased endeavors.
Defined broadly, citizen science can challenge and change this inequity and mistrust, but only if it reflects the diversity of publics, and if it doesn’t reinforce existing inequities in science and society. Key will be the way that science is portrayed: Acknowledging the presence of bias in all scientific research and the tools available for minimizing this, and demonstrating the utility of science for local problem solving and policy change. Symposium participants called for reflexive research, mutual learning, and other methods for supporting more equitable engagement in practice and in the activities of the Citizen Science Association…(More)”.
IBM Center for the Business of Government: “In this report, Professor Greenberg examines a dozen cities across the United States that have award-winning reputations for using innovation and technology to improve the services they provide to their residents. She explores a variety of success factors associated with effective service delivery at the local level, including:
- The policies, platforms, and applications that cities use for different purposes, such as public engagement, streamlining the issuance of permits, and emergency response
- How cities can successfully partner with third parties, such as nonprofits, foundations, universities, and private businesses to improve service delivery using technology
- The types of business cases that can be presented to mayors and city councils to support various changes proposed by innovators in city government
Professor Greenberg identifies a series of trends that drive cities to undertake innovations, such as the increased use of mobile devices by residents. Based on cities’ responses to these trends, she offers a set of findings and specific actions that city officials can act upon to create innovation agendas for their communities. Her report also presents case studies for each of the dozen cities in her review. These cases provide a real-world context, which will allow interested leaders in other cities to see how their own communities might approach similar innovation initiatives.
This report builds on two other IBM Center reports: A Guide for Making Innovation Offices Work, by Rachel Burstein and Alissa Black, and The Persistence of Innovation in Government: A Guide for Public Servants, by Sandford Borins, which examines the use of awards to stimulate innovation in government.
We hope that government leaders who are interested in innovations using technology to improve services will benefit from the governance models and tools described in this report, as they consider how best to leverage innovation and technology initiatives to serve residents more effectively and efficiently….(More)”
Paper by Paulina Guerrero, Maja Steen Møller, Anton Stahl Olafsson, and Bernhard Snizek on “The Potential of Social Media Volunteered Geographic Information for Urban Green Infrastructure Planning and Governance”: “With the prevalence of smartphones, new ways of engaging citizens and stakeholders in urban planning and governance are emerging. The technologies in smartphones allow citizens to act as sensors of their environment, producing and sharing rich spatial data useful for new types of collaborative governance set-ups. Data derived from Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) can support accessible, transparent, democratic, inclusive, and locally-based governance situations of interest to planners, citizens, politicians, and scientists. However, there are still uncertainties about how to actually conduct this in practice. This study explores how social media VGI can be used to document spatial tendencies regarding citizens’ uses and perceptions of urban nature with relevance for urban green space governance. Via the hashtag #sharingcph, created by the City of Copenhagen in 2014, VGI data consisting of geo-referenced images were collected from Instagram, categorised according to their content and analysed according to their spatial distribution patterns. The results show specific spatial distributions of the images and main hotspots. Many possibilities and much potential of using VGI for generating, sharing, visualising and communicating knowledge about citizens’ spatial uses and preferences exist, but as a tool to support scientific and democratic interaction, VGI data is challenged by practical, technical and ethical concerns. More research is needed in order to better understand the usefulness and application of this rich data source to governance….(More)”