New book edited by Marcus Foth, Martin Brynskov, and Timo Ojala “…this book brings together case studies and examples from around the world to discuss the role that urban interfaces, citizen action, and city making play in the quest to create and maintain not only secure and resilient, but productive, sustainable and viable urban environments. The book debates the impact of these trends on theory, policy and practice. The individual chapters are based on blind peer reviewed contributions by leading researchers working at the intersection of the social / cultural, technical / digital, and physical / spatial domains of urbanism scholarship. The book will appeal not only to researchers and students, but also to a vast number of practitioners in the private and public sector interested in accessible content that clearly and rigorously analyses the potential offered by urban interfaces, mobile technology, and location-based services in the context of engaging people with open, smart and participatory urban environments….(More)”
The Power of the Nudge to Change Our Energy Future
Sebastian Berger in the Scientific American: “More than ever, psychology has become influential not only in explaining human behavior, but also as a resource for policy makers to achieve goals related to health, well-being, or sustainability. For example, President Obama signed an executive order directing the government to systematically use behavioral science insights to “better serve the American people.” Not alone in this endeavor, many governments – including the UK, Germany, Denmark, or Australia – are turning to the insights that most frequently stem from psychological researchers, but also include insights from behavioral economics, sociology, or anthropology.
Particularly relevant are the analysis and the setting of “default-options.” A default is the option that a decision maker receives if he or she does not specifically state otherwise. Are we automatically enrolled in a 401(k), are we organ donors by default, or is the flu-shot a standard that is routinely given to all citizens? Research has given us many examples of how and when defaults can promote public safety or wealth.
One of the most important questions facing the planet, however, is how to manage the transition into a carbon-free economy. In a recent paper, Felix Ebeling of the University of Cologne and I tested whether defaults could nudge consumers into choosing a green energy contract over one that relies on conventional energy. The results were striking: setting the default to green energy increased participation nearly tenfold. This is an important result because it tells us that subtle, non-coercive changes in the decision making environment are enough to show substantial differences in consumers’ preferences in the domain of clean energy. It changes green energy participation from “hardly anyone” to “almost everyone”. Merely within the domain of energy behavior, one can think of many applications where this finding can be applied: For instance, default engines of new cars could be set to hybrid and customers would need to actively switch to standard options. Standard temperatures of washing machines could be low, etc….(More)”
Democracy Reinvented: Participatory Budgeting and Civic Innovation in America
Book by Hollie Russon Gilman: “Democracy Reinvented is the first comprehensive academic treatment of participatory budgeting in the United States, situating it within a broader trend of civic technology and innovation. This global phenomenon, which has been called “revolutionary civics in action” by the New York Times, started in Brazil in 1989 but came to America only in 2009. Participatory budgeting empowers citizens to identify community needs, work with elected officials to craft budget proposals, and vote on how to spend public funds.
Democracy Reinvented places participatory budgeting within the larger discussion of the health of U.S. democracy and focuses on the enabling political and institutional conditions. Author and former White House policy adviser Hollie Russon Gilman presents theoretical insights, in-depth case studies, and interviews to offer a compelling alternative to the current citizen disaffection and mistrust of government. She offers policy recommendations on how to tap online tools and other technological and civic innovations to promote more inclusive governance.
While most literature tends to focus on institutional changes without solutions, this book suggests practical ways to empower citizens to become change agents. Democracy Reinvented also includes a discussion on the challenges and opportunities that come with using digital tools to re-engage citizens in governance….(More)”
We Feel: Taking the emotional pulse of the world.
“We Feel is a project that explores whether social media – specifically Twitter – can provide an accurate, real-time signal of the world’s emotional state….Hundreds of millions of tweets are posted every day. A huge topic of conversation is, of course, the authors; what they are up to, what they have encountered, and how they feel about it.
We Feel is about tapping that signal to better understand the prevalence and drivers of emotions. We hope it can uncover, for example, where people are most at risk of depression and how the mood and emotions of an area/region fluctuate over time. It could also help understand questions such as how strongly our emotions depend on social, economic and environmental factors such as the weather, time of day, day of the week, news of a major disaster or a downturn in the economy.
Whilst there is already a wealth of academic research on mental health and wellbeing, such as the Black Dog Index, this information is traditionally gathered by surveys and isn’t a real-time indication of what’s happening day to day. The traditional approach is time consuming and expensive. Twitter offers a large and fast sample of information that could hold the key to a real-time view of our emotions….
See also: Milne, D., Paris, C., Christensen, H., Batterham, P. and O’Dea, B. (2015) We Feel: Taking the emotional pulse of the world. In the Proceedings of the 19th Triennial Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2015), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, August 2015.”
Swipe right to fix the world: can Tinder-like tech match solutions to problems?
Beth Noveck in The Guardian: “Increasingly, these technologies of expertise are making it possible for the individual to make searchable lived experience. The New York police department, for example, maintains a database of employee skills. As the social service agency of last resort, the department needs to be able to pinpoint quickly who within the organization has the know how to wrangle a runaway beehive in Brooklyn or sing the national anthem in Queens in Chinese.
In public institutions, especially, it is all too common for individual knowhow to be masked by vague titles like “manager” and “director”. Using software to give organizations insights about the aptitude of employees has the potential to improve effectiveness and efficiency for public good.
Already an accelerating practice in the private sector, where managers want granular evidence of hard skills not readily apparent from transcripts, this year the World Bank created its own expert network called SkillFinder to index the talents of its 27,000 employees, consultants and alumni. With the launch of SkillFinder, the bank is just beginning to explore how to use the tool to better organize its human capital to achieve the bank’s mission of eradicating poverty.
Giving people outside as well as inside institutions opportunities to share their knowledge could save time, financial resources and even lives. Take the example of PulsePoint, a smartphone app created by the fire department of San Ramon, California. Now used by 1400 communities across the United States, PulsePoint matches those with a specific skill, namely CPR training, with dramatic results.
By tapping into a feed of the 911 calls, PulsePoint sends a text message “CPR Needed!” to those registered members of the public – off-duty doctors, nurses, police and trained amateurs – near the victim. Effective bystander CPR immediately administered can potentially double or triple the victim’s chance of survival. By augmenting traditional government first response, Pulsepoint’s matching has already helped over 7,000 victims.
Employers can accelerate this process by going beyond merely asking employees for HR information and, instead, begin to catalog systematically the unique skills of the individuals within their organization. Many employers are anyway turning to new technology to match employees (and would-be employees) with the right skills to available jobs. How easily they could develop and share databases with public information about who has what experience while at the same time protecting the privacy of personal information….(More)”
This Is How Visualizing Open Data Can Help Save Lives
Alexander Howard at the Huffington Post: “Cities are increasingly releasing data that they can use to make life better for their residents online — enabling journalists and researchers to better inform the public.
Los Angeles, for example, has analyzed data about injuries and deaths on its streets and published it online. Now people can check its conclusions and understand why LA’s public department prioritizes certain intersections.
The impact from these kinds of investments can lead directly to saving lives and preventing injuries. The work is part of a broader effort around the world to make cities safer.
Like New York City, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, Los Angeles has adopted Sweden’s “Vision Zero” program as part of its strategy for eliminating traffic deaths. California led the nation in bicycle deaths in 2014.
At visionzero.lacity.org, you can see that the City of Los Angeles is using data visualization to identify the locations of “high injury networks,” or the 6 percent of intersections that account for 65 percent of the severe injuries in the area.
The work is the result of LA’s partnership with University of South California graduate students. As a result of these analyses, the Los Angeles Police Department has been cracking down on jaywalking near the University of Southern California.
Abhi Nemani, the former chief data officer for LA, explained why the city needed to “go back to school” for help.
“In resource-constrained environments — the environment most cities find themselves in these days — you often have to beg, borrow, and steal innovation; particularly so, when it comes to in-demand resources such as data science expertise,” he told the Huffington Post.
“That’s why in Los Angeles, we opted to lean on the community for support: both the growing local tech sector and the expansive academic base. The academic community, in particular, was eager to collaborate with the city. In fact, most — if not all — local institutions reached out to me at some point asking to partner on a data science project with their graduate students.”
The City of Los Angeles is now working with another member of its tech sector toeliminate traffic deaths. DataScience, based in Culver City, California, received $22 million dollars in funding in December to make predictive insights for customers.
“The City of Los Angeles is very data-driven,” DataScience CEO Ian Swanson told HuffPost. “I commend Mayor Eric Garcetti and the City of Los Angeles on the openness, transparency, and availability of city data initiatives, like Vision Zero, put the City of Los Angeles‘ data into action and improve life in this great city.”
DataScience created an interactive online map showing the locations of collisions involving bicycles across the city….(More)”
Digital Weberianism: Towards a reconceptualization of bureaucratic social order in the digital age
Working Paper by Chris Muellerleile & Susan Robertson: “The social infrastructures that the global economy relies upon are becoming dependent on digital code, big data, and algorithms. At the same time the digital is also changing the very nature of economic and social institutions. In this paper we attempt to make sense of the relationships between the emergence of digitalism, and transformations in both capitalism, and the ways that capitalism is regulated by digitized social relations. We speculate that the logic, rationalities, and techniques of Max Weber’s bureau, a foundational concept in his theory of modernity, helps explain the purported efficiency, objectivity, and rationality of digital technologies. We argue that digital rationality constitutes a common thread of social infrastructure that is increasingly overdetermining the nature of sociality. We employ the example of the smart city and the digitizing university to expose some of the contradictions of digital order, and we end by questioning what digital order might mean after the end of modernity….(More)”
50 states, 50 public records stories
Kelly Hinchcliffe at Poynter: “I try to feature journalists who are telling important stories using public records. For my final column of 2015, I wanted to do something big and decided to find public records stories from all 50 states (plus, a bonus: Washington, D.C.).
This is not meant to be a “best of” list. It’s simply a collection of public records stories from the past year that intrigued me. I found many of the stories by searching the National Freedom of Information Coalition’s website, as well as Investigative Reporters & Editors.…check out my list of public records stories from around the country and see what records journalists are requesting. It’s full of great story ideas:
Alabama
Auburn spent $1.67 million on Outback Bowl trip
(Montgomery Advertiser)
Auburn spent more than $1.6 million on its Outback Bowl trip, according to the Institutional Bowl Expense report summary submitted to the NCAA and released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
Alaska
KMXT sues Kodiak City for documents in police brutality case
(KMXT)
The public radio station filed suit against the City of Kodiak to get records from police after three officers handcuffed and pepper-sprayed a man with autism.
Arizona
Legislature redacts, delays and denies access to messages
(Arizona Capitol Times)
The newspaper requested electronic messages sent among top state elected officials of both parties and their top staff. But getting access to those messages was difficult.
Arkansas
Some question email deletion policies
(Arkansas News)
After the state treasurer’s office instituted a policy requiring employees to delete all emails after 30 days, critics questioned whether it was necessary and whether it was consistent with the spirit of open government.
California
Collapsed I-10 bridge given an A rating just last year
(The Desert Sun)
After a bridge collapsed on Interstate 10, the newspaper reviewed Federal Highway Administration data and found that the bridge had been given an “A” rating and one of the highest possible flood safety ratings.
Colorado
Students accuse CU-Boulder of delaying release of debate documents
(Daily Camera)
University of Colorado students accused administrators of dragging their feet on an open records request the students filed to get letters, emails and documents related to the Republican presidential debate held on campus….(More)”
Big Data Analysis: New Algorithms for a New Society
Book edited by Nathalie Japkowicz and Jerzy Stefanowski: “This edited volume is devoted to Big Data Analysis from a Machine Learning standpoint as presented by some of the most eminent researchers in this area.
It demonstrates that Big Data Analysis opens up new research problems which were either never considered before, or were only considered within a limited range. In addition to providing methodological discussions on the principles of mining Big Data and the difference between traditional statistical data analysis and newer computing frameworks, this book presents recently developed algorithms affecting such areas as business, financial forecasting, human mobility, the Internet of Things, information networks, bioinformatics, medical systems and life science. It explores, through a number of specific examples, how the study of Big Data Analysis has evolved and how it has started and will most likely continue to affect society. While the benefits brought upon by Big Data Analysis are underlined, the book also discusses some of the warnings that have been issued concerning the potential dangers of Big Data Analysis along with its pitfalls and challenges….(More)”
DemTools: Cultivating Democracy
DemTools by NDI Tech: “Democratic activists and human rights organizers aren’t computer geeks.And they don’t have to be.
The internet is changing the relationships between citizens and governments around the world — but many political institutions are hobbled by a lack of access to empowering web technologies.
DemTools harnesses the power of free, open-source software to provide civic organizations, legislatures, and political parties with the capabilities to effectively engage 21st century citizens and build better democracies.
Download the DemTools Guide Book…
Meet DemTools:
Civi: Powerful, flexible contact management and citizen engagement
DKAN: Organize, Store, Graph, Map and Share Your Data
Elections: Robust Data Collection and Analysis to Document Political Processes
Fix My Community: Report Issues to Build a Better Community
Issues: Powering Voter Engagement with Candidates on the Topics That Matter