Collection

Getting Smart on Data: Challenges and Opportunities for Transport Authorities from Emerging Data Sources

Curated on December 30, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Urban Transport Group: “Transformative technological changes are shaping the world and unleashing unprecedented volumes of data. Transport is a key generator of emerging data and also stands to be a significant beneficiary of new products, services, insights and ways of working that accompany this. Emerging data will mean transport users will become far more fully informed about their travel choices whilst at the same time transform the ability of transport authorities to plan and manage transport networks and services more efficiently and effectively.The purpose of this report is to outline key challenges and opportunities from the perspective of city region transport authorities, and to articulate a case for action.

Why are we doing this? Emerging data is a rapidly changing area. It is clear from the actions of some early movers that value can be created by using this data (see case studies throughout the report). However, at present, the transport community does not fully understand the challenges and opportunities that emerging data present. Therefore, this report seeks to identify some of these unknowns and communicate the case for action in this area to our member organisations and beyond….(More)”.

Group Privacy in Times of Big Data. A Literature Review

Curated on December 29, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paula Helm at Digital Culture & Society: “New technologies pose new challenges on the protection of privacy and they stimulate new debates on the scope of privacy. Such debates usually concern the individuals’ right to control the flow of his or her personal information. The article however discusses new challenges posed by new technologies in terms of their impact on groups and their privacy. Two main challenges are being identified in this regard, both having to do with the formation of groups through the involvement of algorithms and the lack of civil awareness regarding the consequences of this involvement. On the one hand, there is the phenomenon of groups being created on the basis of big data without the members of such groups being aware of having been assigned and being treated as part of a certain group. Here, the challenge concerns the limits of personal law, manifesting with the disability of individuals to address possible violations of their right to privacy since they are not aware of them. On the other hand, commercially driven Websites influence the way in which groups form, grow and communicate when doing this online and they do this in such subtle way, that members oftentimes do not take into account this influence. This is why one could speak of a kind of domination here, which calls for legal regulation. The article presents different approaches addressing and dealing with those two challenges, discussing their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, a conclusion gathers the insights reached by the different approaches discussed and reflects on future challenges for further research on group privacy in times of big data….(More)”

‘We the People’: Five Years of Online Petitions

Curated on December 29, 2016August 20, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paul Hitlin at Pew Research Center: “Americans are most likely to petition the White House on health care, veterans’ issues, illnesses, immigration, animal rights, holidays and criminal investigations, but the actual impact of petitions was modest and varied…

During President Obama’s first full day in office on Jan. 21, 2009, he issued a statement committing his administration to pursue “an unprecedented level of openness in Government.” His goal was to make the federal government more transparent, participatory and collaborative through the use of new technologies. The broader effort was called the Open Government Initiative, and a key part of it took effect more than two years later when the administration created an online petitioning system called “We the People” in September 2011. The White House promised to use the site to engage with the public and to issue responses to all petitions that reached a given number of signatures within 30 days of creation. The original threshold was set at 5,000 signatures but was increased to 100,000 in later years. As Obama prepares to leave office in early 2017, the site has been active for more than five years and is one of the most prominent legacies of the open government initiative….(More)”

Why We Misjudge the Nudge

Curated on December 29, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Adam Hill: “Critics frequently argue that nudges are more covert, less transparent, and more difficult to monitor than traditional regulatory tools. Edward Glaeser, for example, argues that “[p]ublic monitoring of soft paternalism is much more difficult than public monitoring of hard paternalism.” As one of the leading proponents of soft paternalism, Cass Sunstein, acknowledges, while “[m]andates and commands are highly visible,” soft paternalism, “and some nudges in particular[,] may be invisible.” In response to this challenge, proponents of nudging argue that invisibility for any given individual in a particular choice environment is compatible with “careful public scrutiny” of the nudge. This paper offers first of its kind experimental evidence that tests whether nudges are, in fact, compatible with careful public scrutiny. Using two sets of experiments, the paper argues that, even when made visible, nudges attract less scrutiny than their “hard law” counterparts….(More)”

A Blueprint for Pro-Peace Innovation

Curated on December 28, 2016May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Jason Miklian and Kristian Hoelscher for Harvard International Review (HIR): “Innovators and scholars can meaningfully collaborate to shape peaceful societies. We offer five steps they can take together.

Peace and conflict studies knowledge has expanded dramatically over the last 25 years, and we know much more about why conflicts start and how they can be prevented. At the same time, innovation and technology startups have started to try to tackle peace and conflict issues, beginning new efforts to create more peaceful societies. But innovators have thus far had little interaction with peace scholars as they try to build peace, even as many express a deep interest to positively improve the lives of those in fragile and conflict-affected regions across the globe.

While allocating tech billions for future moonshots seems commonplace, it’s much harder to get funding for projects that actively help those suffering from conflict and violence today. We contend that there is untapped value in promoting joint efforts between academics and innovators to build new violence prevention and peacebuilding tools, and being guided by state-of-the-art peace research will maximize their chances for positive societal impact. By integrating researchers’ deep knowledge of the economic, political and spatial dynamics of peace and conflict processes with innovation and entrepreneurship, we can develop new technologies that support human security and peacebuilding around the globe.

In support, we outline here several opportunities for those working in innovation spaces to become peacebuilders, and call to for innovators and scholars to dramatically increase collaboration. Highlighting the state-of-the-art innovations that are trying to build peace today, we examine select challenges that actors in this space currently face, and outline how innovator-academic partnerships can help address some of today’s most intractable global peace and conflict problems. We call for five ways to take peace innovation forward:

Build the scholar–entrepreneur–policy triad of peace innovation
‘Disrupt Conflict’ – but do so with informed purpose
Promote ethical innovation through culturally-sensitive engagement
Make innovations that deliver specific positive impacts in conflict environments
Globalize the peace-innovation playing field…(More)”

Developing transparency through digital means? Examining institutional responses to civic technology in Latin America

Curated on December 26, 2016November 13, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Rebecca Rumbul at Journal of eDemocracy and Open Government: “A number of NGOs across the world currently develop digital tools to increase citizen interaction with official information. The successful operation of such tools depends on the expertise and efficiency of the NGO, and the willingness of institutions to disclose suitable information and data. It is this institutional interaction with civic technology that this study examines. The research explores empirical interview data gathered from government officials, public servants, campaigners and NGO’s involved in the development and implementation of civic technologies in Chile, Argentina and Mexico. The findings identify the impact these technologies have had upon government bureaucracy, and the existing barriers to openness created by institutionalised behaviours and norms. Institutionalised attitudes to information rights and conventions are shown to inform the approach that government bureaucracy takes in the provision of information, and institutionalised procedural behaviour is shown to be a factor in frustrating NGOs attempting to implement civic technology….(More)”.

Pushing the Limits of Collective Intelligence

Curated on December 23, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Stanford Innovation Lab Podcast with Tina Seelig:

“Imagine a collective brain shaped by human insights and powered by technology – that’s crowdsourcing. Michael Bernstein, computer scientist at Stanford University, explores how to harness crowdsourcing to tackle daunting challenges. In this episode of Stanford Innovation Lab, Tina Seelig meets with Michael to discuss examples of successful crowdsourcing, tools to gather collective insights, and the evolving relationship between humans and machines….(More)”

Making Citizen-Generated Data Work

Curated on December 23, 2016August 20, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Danny Lämmerhirt at Open Knowledge: “We are pleased to announce a new research series investigating how citizens and civil society create data to drive sustainable development. The series follows on from earlier papers on Democratising The Data Revolution and how citizen-generated data can change what public institutions measure. The first report “Making Citizen-Generated Data Work” asks what makes citizens and others want to produce and use citizen-generated data. It was written by myself, Shazade Jameson, and Eko Prasetyo.

“The goal of Citizen-Generated Data is to monitor, advocate for, or drive change around an issue important to citizens”

The report demonstrates that citizen-generated data projects are rarely the work of individual citizens. Instead, they often depend on partnerships to thrive and are supported by civil society organisations, community-based organisations, governments, or business. These partners play a necessary role to provide resources, support, and knowledge to citizens. In return, they can harness data created by citizens to support their own mission. Thus, citizens and their partners often gain mutual benefits from citizen-generated data.

But if CGD projects rely on partnerships, who has to be engaged, and through which incentives, to enable CGD projects to achieve their goals? How are such multi-stakeholder projects organised, and which resources and expertise do partners bring into a project? What can other projects do to support and benefit their own citizen-generated data initiatives? This report offers recommendations to citizens, civil society organisations, policy-makers, donors, and others on how to foster stronger collaborations….(Read the full report here).

Open eGovernment practices in all EU Member States make public services more collaborative, efficient and inclusive

Curated on December 22, 2016May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

European Commission: “In a digital single market, public services should be digital, open and cross-border by design. As part of the eGovernment Action Plan, public administrations and public institutions should be providing borderless user-friendly and end-to-end digital public services to all citizens and businesses by 2020. Two Commission studies highlight how collaborative and digitally-based Open eGovernment Services (OGS) can enhance transparency and responsiveness in citizens’ dealings with administration, build trust across sectors and provide better public services.

The studies provide a valuable information base and could inspire current and future activities under the European Commission e-Government Action Plan 2016-2020, in particular those related to facilitating digital interaction between administrations and citizens/businesses.

The emergence of Open Government in Member States

The study “Towards faster implementation and uptake of open government” maps 395 inspiring examples of Open eGovernment Services across Europe. This wealth of data and practices, is proof of successful cooperation between public administrations, companies, organizations and citizens. It demonstrates how the process of digitalisation can create better opportunities for everyone and shows concretely how to make it happen. The European Commission will give visibility to these best practices, support the policy processes and invest in digital innovation in the public sector.

Openness between public administrations

This is mostly driven by administrations seeking better efficiency and cost reduction. For example, applying once-only principle – under which people and businesses provide information only once to public authorities – may result in increasingly automated exchanges. For example,

By applying the once-only principle, the Spanish government saved € 2.8 million (costs of exchange of paper documents between administrations) by introducing SIR (System of Interconnection of Registers).
In the Netherlands, public administrations share among them the data hosted in 12 existing base registers., This helps to speed up administrative processes and citizens or companies no longer need to provide the same information time and again.
Agiv, the agency for geographical information in Flanders (Belgium) has a central platform KLIP where administrations share the location of underground cables and pipes, helping thus companies to plan construction works. Its services were requested 100.000 times during the first six months after its launch.

Openness towards third parties

Openess towards third parties aims at increasing transparency and responsiveness and even participation in decision-making, for instance,

Greek citizens use the Vouliwatch platform to publicly question government officials and share their own expertise;
More and more cities foresee that citizens can have a say about how their money gets spent. The residents of Madrid vote online on 2% of city budget and those of Paris even on 5% of municipal expenses and can suggest projects within these financial limits; the inhabitants of Southern Italy submit formal web-based evaluations of public services and infrastructure thanks to cooperation of administration with the third sector.
OpenSpending, an initiative by the Open Knowledge Foundation, contains datasets on public administrations expenditure in 76 countries so that citizens can see how authorities spend taxpayers’ money. Moreover, it allowed the UK government to save £ 4 million in only 15 minutes by simply comparing markets for different services.

Open government can also unlock economic potential for growth and jobs, for example,

The Belgian Mercurius e-invoicing and e-procurement platform which allows all levels of administrations and businesses to cooperate and reduces the costs of invoices for companies by 62% (with expected 4,5 M € of savings per year)
The Dutch Base Register Topography works as open data for anyone interested and has developed TopoGPS , a GPS application, based on data from the base registry, with an economic effect estimated at €9 million.
The British NHS Job Platform, now used by 500 NHS employers, is a focal point for job seekers in the medical sector. Also in the UK, TransportAPI aggregates and analyses public transport data, allowing users and developers to access the transport data opened up by public transportation bodies and to work on their own applications.

Numerous initiatives also support inclusion:

Konto Bariery uses accessibility data for an app-based map of buildings accessible to disabled people in Czech Republic and the non-profit
Techfugees is an initiative organised by tech professionals that makes engineers, entrepreneurs, NGOs, public administrations collaborate in order to provide innovative technology solutions to help refugees….(More)