Targeting Transparency

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New paper by David Weil, Mary Graham, and Archon Fung in Science Magazine: “When rules, taxes, or subsidies prove impractical as policy tools, governments increasingly employ “targeted transparency,” compelling disclosure of information as an alternative means of achieving specific objectives. For example, the U.S. Affordable Care Act of 2010 requires calories be posted on menus to enlist both restaurants and patrons in the effort to reduce obesity. It is crucial to understand when and how such targeted transparency works, as well as when it is inappropriate. Research about its use and effectiveness has begun to take shape, drawing on social and behavioral scientists, economists, and legal scholars. We explore questions central to the performance of targeted transparency policies.

Targeted transparency differs from broader “right-to-know” and “open-government” policies that span from the 1966 Freedom of Information Act to the Obama Administration’s “open-government” initiative encouraging officials to make existing data sets readily available and easy to parse as an end in itself (1, 2). Targeted transparency offers a more focused approach often used to introduce new scientific evidence of public risks into market choices. Government compels companies or agencies to disclose information in standardized formats to reduce specific risks, to ameliorate externalities arising from a failure of consumers or producers to fully consider social costs associated with a product, or to improve provision of public goods and services. Such policies are more light-handed than conventional regulation, relying on the power of information rather than on enforcement of rules and standards or financial inducements….”

See also the Transparency Policy Project at http://transparencypolicy.net/

Visualizing 3 Billion Tweets

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

9080460045_cb6c84283e_bEric Gundersen from Mapbox: “This is a look at 3 billion tweets – every geotagged tweet since September 2011, mapped, showing facets of Twitter’s ecosystem and userbase in incredible new detail, revealing demographic, cultural, and social patterns down to city level detail, across the entire world. We were brought in by the data team at Gnip, who have awesome APIs and raw access to the Twitter firehose, and together Tom and data artist Eric Fischer used our open source tools to visualize the data and build interfaces that let you explore the stories of space, language, and access to technology.
This is big data, and there’s a significant level of geographic overlap between tweets, so Eric wrote an open-source tool that de-duplicated 2.7 billion overlapping datapoints, leaving 280 million unique locations…”
 

Visualizing the Stunning Growth of 8 Years of OpenStreetMap

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

new yorkEmily Badger in Atlantic Cities: “The U.S. OpenStreetMap community gathered in San Francisco over the weekend for its annual conference, the State of the Map. The loose citizen-cartography collective has now been incrementally mapping the world since 2004. While they were taking stock, it turns out the global open mapping effort has now mapped data on more than 78 million buildings and 21 million miles of road (if you wanted to drive all those roads at, say, 60 miles an hour, it would take you some 40 years to do it).
And more than a million people have chipped away at this in an impressively democratic manner: 83.6 percent of the changes in the whole database have been made by 99.9 percent of contributors.
These numbers come from the OpenStreetMap 2013 Data Report, which also contains, of course, more maps. The report, created by MapBox, includes a beautiful worldwide visualization of all the road updates made as OpenStreetMap has grown, with some of the earliest imports of data shown in green and blue, and more recent ones in white. You can navigate the full map here (scroll down), but we’ve grabbed a couple of snapshots for you as well.”

Software Takes Command

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

software_takes_commandA new book by Lev Manovich: “This new book from the celebrated author of The Language of New Media is the first to offer a rigorous theory of the technology we all use daily – software for media authoring, access, and sharing.
What motivated developers in the 1960s and ‘70s to create the concepts and techniques that now underlie contemporary applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Final Cut?
How do these tools shape the visual aesthetics of contemporary media and design? What happens to the idea of a “medium” after previously media-specific tools have been simulated and extended into software?
Lev Manovich answers these questions through detailed analysis of key media applications such as Photoshop and After Effects, popular web services such as Google Earth, and milestone projects in design, motion graphics, and interactive environments.
Software Takes Command is a must for scholars, designers, technologists, and artists concerned with contemporary media and digital culture.”

Social Media Boosted Organ Donor Registrations 2000%

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The Social Graf (Media Post Blog): “One of the common criticisms of social media activism is that it people’s interest in causes is transient and superficial, lasting the few moments it takes to click “Like” before moving on and forgetting about it entirely. And it may be true that the period of active engagement is fleeting — but that can still produce significant results, as demonstrated by a social media campaign to sign up new organ donors beginning in May 2012.
The organ donor initiative, described in an article in the American Journal of Transplantation, encouraged Facebook users to publicize their own organ donor status on their timelines, and share links that made it easy to change their organ donor status, which in turn encouraged even more people to register, and so on. According to the authors, the Facebook push produced a rather mind-boggling 21-fold increase in organ donor registrations on the first day of the campaign, with 13,012 people signing up to become organ donors, compared to the usual daily average of 616.
The example of the social media organ donor registration drive is both encouraging and cautionary. On the positive side, it showed that (for certain causes, at least) the combination of peer examples and ease of engagement can prompt large numbers of people to make a significant commitment.
Less encouraging (but not surprising) is the fact that after the initial period of “viral” success, fueled in part by the novelty of the timeline feature showing organ donor status, the organ donor registration rates apparently fell back to “just” twice the normal rate several weeks later.”
 

G8 Open Data Charter: "Open Data by Default" will "fuel innovation"

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

G8 Open Data Charter, June 2013: “Principle 1: Open Data by Default
13. We recognise that free access to, and subsequent re-use of, open data are of significant value to society and the economy.
14. We agree to orient our governments towards open data by default.
15. We recognise that the term government data is meant in the widest sense possible. This could apply to data owned by national, federal, local, or international government bodies, or by the wider public sector.
16. We recognise that there is national and international legislation, in particular pertaining to intellectual property, personally-identifiable and sensitive information, which must be observed.
17. We will: establish an expectation that all government data be published openly by default , as outlined in this Charter, while recognising that there are legitimate reasons why some data cannot be released….
Principle 4: Releasing Data for Improved Governance
25. We recognise that the release of open data strengthens our democratic institutions and encourages better policy-making to meets the needs of our citizens. This is true not only in our own countries but across the world.
26. We also recognise that interest in open data is growing in other multilateral organisations and initiatives.
27. We will: share technical expertise and experience with each other and with other countries across the world so that everyone can reap the benefits of open data; and be transparent about our own data collection, standards, and publishing processes , by documenting all of these related processes online.
Principle 5: Releasing Data for Innovation
28. Recognising the importance of diversity in stimulating creativity and innovation, we agree that the more people and or ganisations that use our data, the greater the social and economic benefits that will be generated. This is true for both commercial and non-commercial uses .
29. We will: work to increase open data literacy and encourage people, such as developers of applications and civil society organisations that work in the field of open data promotion, to unlock the value of open data ; empower a future generation of data innovators by providing data in machine-readable formats.”
See also:
Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Chairman and Co-Founder, Open Data Institute on G8 Open Data Charter: why it matters
Nick Sinai and Marina Martin from the White House on Open Data Going Global

Does transparency lead to trust? Some evidence on the subject.

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Tiago Peixoto at DemocracySpot: “As open government gains traction in the international agenda, it is increasingly common to come across statements that assume a causal relationship in which transparency leads to trust in government. But to what extent are claims that transparency leads to trust backed up by evidence?
Judging from some recent publications on the subject, such a relationship is not as straightforward as sadvocates would like. In fact, in a number of cases, the evidence points in another direction: that is, transparency may ultimately decrease trust.
Below is a brief overview of research that has been carried out on the subject…
Surely, transparency remains an essential – although quite insufficient – ingredient of accountability. On the trust issue, one could easily think of a number of scenarios in which it is actually better that citizens do not trust their governments. In fact, systems of checks and balances and oversight institutions are not specifically conceived under the logic of trust. Quite on the contrary, such institutional designs assume some level of suspicion vis-à-vis governments: as put in the Federalist Paper No. 51, “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”
Granted, in some cases a perfect world in which citizens trust their governments may well be desirable. It may even be that transparency leads – in the long run – to increased trust: a great way to sell transparency to governments. But if we want to walk the talk of evidence-based policymaking, we may consider dropping the trust rhetoric. At least for now.”

Innovating at the Point of Citizen Engagement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

GovLoop: “In this guide, we share 7 examples where government is improving access to services and information along the spectrum of citizen engagement: ‘must do’, ‘should do’ and ‘can do’ moments.…
“Must Do” Moments: These are the compulsory points of engagement. How do we leverage these “forced” moments to inform and invite citizens to other opportunities for engagement? We share two innovative examples in this section:

  • Retooling Tax Time: How the IRS Educates and Engages Taxpayers on the Go
  • Rejuvenating Jury Duty: How a “Captive” Audience Can Become a Catalyst for Action

“Should Do” Moments: These are the points of engagement when citizens aren’t required to participate, but it behooves them to do so. How does government make it easier to take advantage of these opportunities? This section covers case studies where government has effectively facilitated a connection:

  • Helping the Hard to Reach: How Savvy Social Workers Build Digital Bridges
  • Transforming Town Hall: How Takoma Park’s Co-Located Community Center

“Can Do” Moments: Sometimes citizens create their own rallying point. How does government most effectively come alongside these initiatives to appropriately fuel the positive, collective energy of a committed group of citizens? This section shares case studies of citizen-led, government-supported partnership.

  • Enabling Citizen Energy: How Raleigh Opens Up Opportunities for Innovation
  • Mobilizing a Movement: How Online Community Connects Neighbors in Need
  • Overcoming Budget Constraints: How Crowdfunding Supplements Tight Budgets”

Weather Could Be Next On The Auction Block For Crowdsourced Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Darrell Etherington in TechCrunch: “Waze’s big exit to Google proved one thing: if companies can harness the power of the crowd to deliver real-time, granular data, big tech corporations will be watching them closely as potential acquisition targets. There’s another category ripe for the picking, even if the problem being solved isn’t as apparent or immediately useful as traffic and navigation data: weather. A few apps are trying to harness the crowd to provide accurate, ground-level forecasts and conditions, and they’re catching on with consumers, too.
Montreal-based startup SkyMotion is one such firm, and it recently launched its 4.0 update, which not only harnesses crowdsourced weather reports, but also allows other businesses to plug into that data using a public API, to integrate real-time reporting data from SkyMotion’s users into their own products. That provides an up-to-the-minute forecast, one that probably won’t show you weather conditions completely dissimilar from the ones you’re actually feeling outside at any given moment, as can still be the case with apps that pull weather data only from specific weather monitoring stations….
SkyMotion isn’t alone in crowdsourcing weather data. There’s also Weddar, the “people-powered” weather service and mobile app that encourages location-based reporting with a very human element, since it asks people how conditions generally feel on the ground, instead of seeking out specifics…”