Paper by Yury Kryvasheyeu et al: “Could social media data aid in disaster response and damage assessment? Countries face both an increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters due to climate change. And during such events, citizens are turning to social media platforms for disaster-related communication and information. Social media improves situational awareness, facilitates dissemination of emergency information, enables early warning systems, and helps coordinate relief efforts. Additionally, spatiotemporal distribution of disaster-related messages helps with real-time monitoring and assessment of the disaster itself. Here we present a multiscale analysis of Twitter activity before, during, and after Hurricane Sandy. We examine the online response of 50 metropolitan areas of the United States and find a strong relationship between proximity to Sandy’s path and hurricane-related social media activity. We show that real and perceived threats — together with the physical disaster effects — are directly observable through the intensity and composition of Twitter’s message stream. We demonstrate that per-capita Twitter activity strongly correlates with the per-capita economic damage inflicted by the hurricane. Our findings suggest that massive online social networks can be used for rapid assessment (“nowcasting”) of damage caused by a large-scale disaster….(More)”
The road to better data
Johannes Jütting at OECDInsights: Tradition tells us that more than 3,000 years ago, Moses went to the top of Mount Sinai and came back down with 10 commandments. When the world’s presidents and prime ministers go to the top of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) mountain in New York late this summer they will come down with not 10 commandments but 169. Too many?
Some people certainly think so. “Stupid development goals,” The Economist said recently. It argued that the 17 SDGs and roughly 169 targets should “honour Moses and be pruned to ten goals”. Others disagree. In a report for the Overseas Development Institute, May Miller-Dawkins, warned of the dangers of letting practicality “blunt ambition”. She backed SDGs with “high ambition”.
The debate over the “right” number of goals and targets is interesting, important even. But it misses a key point: No matter how many goals and targets are finally agreed, if we can’t measure their real impact on people’s lives, on our societies and on the environment, then they risk becoming irrelevant.
Unfortunately, we already know that many developing countries have problems compiling even basic social and economic statistics, never mind the complex web of data that will be needed to monitor the SDGs. A few examples: In 2013, about 35% of all live births were not officially registered worldwide, rising to two-thirds in developing countries. In Africa, just seven countries have data on their total number of landholders and women landholders, and none have data from before 2004. Last but not least, fast-changing economies and associated measurement challenges mean we are not sure today if we have worldwide a billion people living in extreme poverty, half a billion or more than a billion.
Why does this matter? Without adequate data, we cannot identify the problems that planning and policymaking need to address. We also cannot judge if governments and others are meeting their commitments. As a report from the Centre for Global Development notes, “Data […] serve as a ‘currency’ for accountability among and within governments, citizens, and civil society at large, and they can be used to hold development agencies accountable.”…(More)”
Arnold Foundation Adds Program for Data-Driven Public Policy
Nicole Wallace at the Chronicle of Philanthropy: “The Laura and John Arnold Foundation is starting a new program to encourage government to evaluate programs rigorously and use data to design new programs. The new Evidence-Based Policy and Innovation division will be based in Washington.
“People may disagree about the optimal size of government and the amount of money dedicated to public services,” Denis Calabrese, the foundation’s president, said in a written statement. “However, nearly everyone agrees that whatever funds are spent should be directed toward programs that have a significant impact.”
The new division will have two leaders. Kathy Stack, a longtime official at the Office of Management and Budget, will serve as vice president for evidence-based innovation and focus on efforts to promote the use of data in government decision making.
Jon Baron, the founder of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, will serve as vice president for evidence-based policy, overseeing grant making to support randomized, controlled trials for social programs and the expansion of efforts that show meaningful results. The Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy will close around April 30, and its employees will join Mr. Baron at the foundation….(More)”
The Design Economy primer: how design is revolutionising health, business, cities and government
1. Health
A growing awareness of the social impact of design has led to an increasing number of designers working in health and well-being.
2. Business
Global corporations, following in the tracks of Apple, Philips and IBM, are building design studios and seeking Chief Design Officers to join their boards and orchestrate the transition from marketing-led to design-led businesses.
3. Cities
With a rapidly increasing proportion of the population living in cities, design is being used to tackle the implications of this demographic shift in areas like housing and infrastructure.
4. Government
In the UK, Europe and the US, designers can now be found close to the seat of government, employing design to improve public services and policies.
With design expanding into these important and largely uncharted areas, we urgently need to begin asking informed questions about design and its practical and ethical territory.
John Mathers, Chief Executive of the Design Council, asks us to pause for a moment to consider, “How has design, which many still associate largely with style and consumerism, come to be something one might look to for solutions to the most complex and challenging problems facing humanity today – problems requiring not just local fixes using clever design objects, but solutions that reimagine systems themselves? Are we, at this point, really even still talking about the same discipline?”
The questions, perhaps, boil down to one: ‘What should design do?’ …(More)”
How Google and Facebook are finding victims of the Nepal earthquake
Caitlin Dewey in the Washington Post: “As the death toll from Saturday’s 7.8-magnitude Nepalese earthquake inches higher, help in finding and identifying missing persons has come from an unusual source: Silicon Valley tech giants.
Both Google and Facebook deployed collaborative, cellphone-based tools over the weekend to help track victims of the earthquake. In the midst of both company’s big push to bring Internet to the developing world, it’s an important illustration of exactly how powerful that connectivity could be. And yet, in a country like Nepal — where there are only 77 cellphone subscriptions per 100 people versus 96 in the U.S. and 125 in the U.K. — it’s also a reminder of how very far that effort still has to go.
Facebook Safety Check
Facebook’s Safety Check essentially lets users do two things, depending on where they are. Users in an area impacted by a natural disaster can log onto the site and mark themselves as “safe.” Meanwhile, users around the world can log into the site and check if any of their friends are in the impacted area. The tool was built by Japanese engineers in response to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated coastal Japan.
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Facebook hasn’t publicized how many people have used the tool, though the network only has 4.4 million users in the country based on estimates by its ad platform. Notably, you must also a smartphone running the Facebook app to use this feature — and smartphone penetration in Nepal is quite low.
Google Person Finder
Like Safety Check, Google Person Finder is intended to connect people in a disaster area with friends and family around the world. Google’s five-year-old project also operates on a larger scale, however: It basically provides a massive, open platform to collaboratively track missing persons’ reports. Previously, Google’s deployed the tool to help victims in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan and the Boston bombing.
Domestic Drones and Privacy: A Primer
Richard M. Thompson for the Congressional Research Service: “There are two overarching privacy issues implicated by domestic drone use. The first is defining what “privacy” means in the context of aerial surveillance. Privacy is an ambiguous term that can mean different things in different contexts. This becomes readily apparent when attempting to apply traditional privacy concepts such as personal control and secrecy to drone surveillance. Other, more nuanced privacy theories such as personal autonomy and anonymity must be explored to get a fuller understanding of the privacy risks posed by drone surveillance. Moreover, with ever-increasing advances in data storage and manipulation, the subsequent aggregation, use, and retention of drone-obtained data may warrant an additional privacy impact analysis.
The second predominant issue is which entity should be responsible for regulating drones and privacy. As the final arbiter of the Constitution, the courts are naturally looked upon to provide at least the floor of privacy protection from UAS surveillance, but as will be discussed in this report, under current law, this protection may be minimal….(More)”
Health Big Data in the Commercial Context
CDT Press Release: “This paper is the third in a series of three, each of which explores health big data in a different context. The first — on health big data in the government context — is available here, and the second — on health big data in the clinical context — is available here.
Consumers are increasingly using mobile phone apps and wearable devices to generate and share data on health and wellness. They are using personal health record tools to access and copy health records and move them to third party platforms. They are sharing health information on social networking sites. They leave digital health footprints when they conduct online searches for health information. The health data created, accessed, and shared by consumers using these and many other tools can range from detailed clinical information, such as downloads from an implantable device and details about medication regimens, to data about weight, caloric intake, and exercise logged with a smart phone app.
These developments offer a wealth of opportunities for health care and personal wellness. However, privacy questions arise due to the volume and sensitivity of health data generated by consumer-focused apps, devices, and platforms, including the potential analytics uses that can be made of such data.
Many of the privacy issues that face traditional health care entities in the big data era also apply to app developers, wearable device manufacturers, and other entities not part of the traditional health care ecosystem. These include questions of data minimization, retention, and secondary use. Notice and consent pose challenges, especially given the limits of presenting notices on mobile device screens, and the fact that consumer devices may be bought and used without consultation with a health care professional. Security is a critical issue as well.
However, the privacy and security provisions of the Heath Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) do not apply to most app developers, device manufacturers or others in the consumer health space. This has benefits to innovation, as innovators would otherwise have to struggle with the complicated HIPAA rules. However, the current vacuum also leaves innovators without clear guidance on how to appropriately and effectively protect consumers’ health data. Given the promise of health apps, consumer devices, and consumer-facing services, and given the sensitivity of the data that they collect and share, it is important to provide such guidance….
As the source of privacy guidelines, we look to the framework provided by the Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs) and explore how it could be applied in an age of big data to patient-generated data. The FIPPs have influenced to varying degrees most modern data privacy regimes. While some have questioned the continued validity of the FIPPs in the current era of mass data collection and analysis, we consider here how the flexibility and rigor of the FIPPs provide an organizing framework for responsible data governance, promoting innovation, efficiency, and knowledge production while also protecting privacy. Rather than proposing an entirely new framework for big data, which could be years in the making at best, using the FIPPs would seem the best approach in promoting responsible big data practices. Applying the FIPPs could also help synchronize practices between the traditional health sector and emerging consumer products….(More)”
What makes some federal agencies better than others at innovation
Tom Fox at the Washington Post: “Given the complexity and difficulty of the challenges that government leaders face, encouraging innovation among their workers can pay dividends. Government-wide employee survey data, however, suggest that much more needs to be done to foster this type of culture at many federal organizations.
According to that data, nearly 90 percent of federal employees are looking for ways to be more innovative and effective, but only 54 percent feel encouraged by their leaders to come up with new ways of doing work. To make matters worse, fewer than a third say they believe creativity and innovation are rewarded in their agencies.
It’s worth pausing to examine what sets apart those agencies that do. They tend to have developed innovative cultures by providing forums for employees to share and test new ideas, by encouraging responsible risk-taking, and by occasionally bringing in outside talent for rotational assignments to infuse new thinking into the workplace.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is one example of an agency working at this. In 2010 it created the Idea Lab, with the goal to “remove barriers HHS employees face and promote better ways of working in government.”
It launched an awards program as part of Idea Lab called HHS Innovates to identify promising, new ideas likely to improve effectiveness. And to directly support implementing these ideas, the lab launched HHS Ignites, which provides teams with seed funding of $5,000 and a three-month timeframe to work on approved action plans. When the agency needs a shot of outside inspiration, it has its Entrepreneurs-in-Residence program, which enlists experts from the private and nonprofit sectors to join HHS for one or two years to develop new approaches and improve practices….
While the HHS Idea Lab program is a good concept, it’s the agency’s implementation that distinguishes it from other government efforts. Federal leaders elsewhere would be wise to borrow a few of their tactics.
As a starting point, federal leaders should issue a clear call for innovation that demands a measurable result. Too often, leaders ask for changes without any specificity as to the result they are looking to achieve. If you want your employees to be more innovative, you need to set a concrete, data-driven goal — whether that’s to reduce process steps or process times, improve customer satisfaction or reduce costs.
Secondly, you should help your employees take their ideas to implementation by playing equal parts cheerleader and drill sergeant. That is, you need to boost their confidence while at the same time pushing them to develop concrete action plans, experiments and measurements to show their ideas deliver results….(More)”
Does Twitter Increase Perceived Police Legitimacy?
Paper by Stephan G. Grimmelikhuijsen and Albert J. Meijer in Public Administration Review: “Social media use has become increasingly popular among police forces. The literature suggests that social media use can increase perceived police legitimacy by enabling transparency and participation. Employing data from a large and representative survey of Dutch citizens (N = 4,492), this article tests whether and how social media use affects perceived legitimacy for a major social media platform, Twitter. A negligible number of citizens engage online with the police, and thus the findings reveal no positive relationship between participation and perceived legitimacy. The article shows that by enhancing transparency, Twitter does increase perceived police legitimacy, albeit to a limited extent. Subsequent analysis of the mechanism shows both an affective and a cognitive path from social media use to legitimacy. Overall, the findings suggest that establishing a direct channel with citizens and using it to communicate successes does help the police strengthen their legitimacy, but only slightly and for a small group of interested citizens….(More)”
Transparency in search of a theory
Paper by Mark Fenster in the European Journal of Social Theory: “Transparency’s importance as an administrative norm seems self-evident. Prevailing ideals of political theory stipulate that the more visible government is, the more democratic, accountable, and legitimate it appears. The disclosure of state information consistently disappoints, however: there is never enough of it, while it often seems not to produce a truer democracy, a more accountable state, better policies, and a more contented populace. This gap between theory and practice suggests that the theoretical assumptions that provide the basis for transparency are wrong. This article argues that transparency is best understood as a theory of communication that excessively simplifies and thus is blind to the complexities of the contemporary state, government information, and the public. Taking them fully into account, the article argues, should lead us to question the state’s ability to control information, which in turn should make us question not only the improbability of the state making itself visible, but also the improbability of the state keeping itself secret…(More)”