Social Innovation Lab Guide

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Publication by the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience: “The Social Innovation Lab emphasizes not only imagining high potential interventions but also gaining system sight, redefining problems, and identifying opportunities in the broader context with the potential to tip systems in positive directions. It is a three-step process of developing, testing and instigating innovation strategies. It requires the right starting conditions, an investment in research and skilled facilitators. It also makes use of computer modeling to proto-typing interventions in complex systems. Like other processes for convening multi-stakeholder groups working on complex challenges, it is best suited to the early stages of making change.

This guide is offered as a resource to peers, colleagues, practitioners, leaders from all sectors, and concerned citizens – all who have and/or will participate in change-making processes. One hope for this work is that these ideas on Social Innovation and these recommendations for new practice will result in greater sense of agency for those who work on what often seems like impossible aspirations for a different, better world. Probably our greatest hope is that these ideas help to transform the impossible into the possible.

To download a PDF copy of the guide please click here Social Innovation Lab Guide “

Modernizing Informed Consent: Expanding the Boundaries of Materiality

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Nadia N. Sawicki: “Informed consent law’s emphasis on the disclosure of purely medical information – such as diagnosis, prognosis, and the risks and benefits of various treatment alternatives – does not accurately reflect modern understandings of how patients make medical decisions. Existing common law disclosure duties fail to capture a variety of non-medical factors relevant to patients, including information about the physician’s personal characteristics; the cost of treatment; the social implications of various health care interventions; and the legal consequences associated with diagnosis and treatment. Although there is a wealth of literature analyzing the merits of such disclosures in a few narrow contexts, there is little broader discussion and no consensus about whether there the doctrine of informed consent should be expanded to include information that may be relevant to patients but falls outside the traditional scope of medical materiality. This article seeks to fill that gap.
I offer a normative argument for expanding the scope of informed consent disclosure to include non-medical information that is within the physician’s knowledge and expertise, where the information would be material to the reasonable patient and its disclosure does not violate public policy. This proposal would result in a set of disclosure requirements quite different from the ones set by modern common law and legislation. In many ways, the range of required disclosures may become broader, particularly with respect to physician-specific information about qualifications, health status, and financial conflicts of interests. However, some disclosures that are currently required by statute (or have been proposed by commentators) would fall outside the scope of informed consent – most notably, information about support resources available in the abortion context; about the social, ethical, and legal implications of treatment; and about health care costs….(More)”

Researcher uncovers inherent biases of big data collected from social media sites

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Phys.org: “With every click, Facebook, Twitter and other social media users leave behind digital traces of themselves, information that can be used by businesses, government agencies and other groups that rely on “big data.”

But while the information derived from social network sites can shed light on social behavioral traits, some analyses based on this type of data collection are prone to bias from the get-go, according to new research by Northwestern University professor Eszter Hargittai, who heads the Web Use Project.

Since people don’t randomly join Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn—they deliberately choose to engage —the data are potentially biased in terms of demographics, socioeconomic background or Internet skills, according to the research. This has implications for businesses, municipalities and other groups who use because it excludes certain segments of the population and could lead to unwarranted or faulty conclusions, Hargittai said.

The study, “Is Bigger Always Better? Potential Biases of Big Data Derived from Social Network Sites” was published last month in the journal The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and is part of a larger, ongoing study.

The buzzword “big data” refers to automatically generated information about people’s behavior. It’s called “big” because it can easily include millions of observations if not more. In contrast to surveys, which require explicit responses to questions, big data is created when people do things using a service or system.

“The problem is that the only people whose behaviors and opinions are represented are those who decided to join the site in the first place,” said Hargittai, the April McClain-Delaney and John Delaney Professor in the School of Communication. “If people are analyzing big data to answer certain questions, they may be leaving out entire groups of people and their voices.”

For example, a city could use Twitter to collect local opinion regarding how to make the community more “age-friendly” or whether more bike lanes are needed. In those cases, “it’s really important to know that people aren’t on Twitter randomly, and you would only get a certain type of person’s response to the question,” said Hargittai.

“You could be missing half the population, if not more. The same holds true for companies who only use Twitter and Facebook and are looking for feedback about their products,” she said. “It really has implications for every kind of group.”…

More information: “Is Bigger Always Better? Potential Biases of Big Data Derived from Social Network Sites” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science May 2015 659: 63-76, DOI: 10.1177/0002716215570866

Open Innovation, Open Science, Open to the World

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Speech by Carlos Moedas, EU Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation: “On 25 April this year, an earthquake of magnitude 7.3 hit Nepal. To get real-time geographical information, the response teams used an online mapping tool called Open Street Map. Open Street Map has created an entire online map of the world using local knowledge, GPS tracks and donated sources, all provided on a voluntary basis. It is open license for any use.

Open Street Map was created by a 24 year-old computer science student at University College London in 2004, has today 2 million users and has been used for many digital humanitarian and commercial purposes: From the earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

This story is one of many that demonstrate that we are moving into a world of open innovation and user innovation. A world where the digital and physical are coming together. A world where new knowledge is created through global collaborations involving thousands of people from across the world and from all walks of life.

Ladies and gentlemen, over the next two days I would like us to chart a new path for European research and innovation policy. A new strategy that is fit for purpose for a world that is open, digital and global. And I would like to set out at the start of this important conference my own ambitions for the coming years….

Open innovation is about involving far more actors in the innovation process, from researchers, to entrepreneurs, to users, to governments and civil society. We need open innovation to capitalise on the results of European research and innovation. This means creating the right ecosystems, increasing investment, and bringing more companies and regions into the knowledge economy. I would like to go further and faster towards open innovation….

I am convinced that excellent science is the foundation of future prosperity, and that openness is the key to excellence. We are often told that it takes many decades for scientific breakthroughs to find commercial application.

Let me tell you a story which shows the opposite. Graphene was first isolated in the laboratory by Profs. Geim and Novoselov at the University of Manchester in 2003 (Nobel Prizes 2010). The development of graphene has since benefitted from major EU support, including ERC grants for Profs. Geim and Novoselov. So I am proud to show you one of the new graphene products that will soon be available on the market.

This light bulb uses the unique thermal dissipation properties of graphene to achieve greater energy efficiencies and a longer lifetime that LED bulbs. It was developed by a spin out company from the University of Manchester, called Graphene Lighting, as is expected to go on sale by the end of the year.

But we must not be complacent. If we look at indicators of the most excellent science, we find that Europe is not top of the rankings in certain areas. Our ultimate goal should always be to promote excellence not only through ERC and Marie Skłodowska-Curie but throughout the entire H2020.

For such an objective we have to move forward on two fronts:

First, we are preparing a call for European Science Cloud Project in order to identify the possibility of creating a cloud for our scientists. We need more open access to research results and the underlying data. Open access publication is already a requirement under Horizon 2020, but we now need to look seriously at open data…

When innovators like LEGO start fusing real bricks with digital magic, when citizens conduct their own R&D through online community projects, when doctors start printing live tissues for patients … Policymakers must follow suit…(More)”

In Brazil, missing persons posters automatically print in nearby homes

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “In Brazil, 200,000 people go missing each year and posters are still one of the most effective ways of locating them. Now, Mães da Sé NGO — the nonprofit dedicated to helping families find missing people — has partnered with HP for the Print for Help campaign. Using HP’s ePrint technology, which facilitates mobile and email printing, the campaign will help spread the word about missing individuals by automatically producing posters through nearby homes printers.

By registering printers with citizens’ email addresses and zip codes, Mães da Sé is able to email and automatically print posters in the area where a person went missing. Citizens can then assist with the search effort by displaying the poster in busy areas in their neighborhood, and create a network of helpers. By streamlining and speeding up the process of poster printing, the efforts in the first few hours, which are crucial in a search, can be maximized….(More)”.

Transforming Government Information

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Sharyn Clarkson at the (Interim) Digital Transformation Office (Australia): “Our challenge: How do we get the right information and services to people when and where they need it?

The public relies on Government for a broad range of information – advice for individuals and businesses, what services are available and how to access them, and how various rules and laws impact our lives.

The government’s digital environment has grown organically over the last couple of decades. At the moment, information is largely created and managed within agencies and published across more than 1200 disparate gov.au websites, plus a range of social media accounts, apps and other digital formats.

This creates some difficulties for people looking for government information. By publishing within agency silos we are presenting people with an agency-centric view of government information. This is a problem because people largely don’t understand or care about how government organises itself and the structure of government does not map to the needs of people. Having a baby or travelling overseas? Up to a dozen government agencies may have information relevant to you. And as people’s needs span more than one agency, they end up with a disjointed and confusing user experience as they have to navigate across disparate government sites. And even if you begin at your favourite search engine how do you know which of the many government search results is the right place to start?

There are two government entry points already in place to help users – Australia.gov.au and business.gov.au – but they largely act as an umbrella across the 1200+ sites and currently only provide a very thin layer of whole of government information and mainly refer people off to other websites.

The establishment of the DTO has provided the first opportunity for people to come together and better understand how our underlying structural landscape is impacting people’s experience with government. It’s also given us an opportunity to take a step back and ask some of the big questions about how we manage information and what problems can only really be solved through whole of government transformation.

How do we make information and services easier to find? How do we make sure we provide information that people can trust and rely upon at times of need? How should the gov.au landscape be organised to make it easier for us to meet user’s needs and expectations? How many websites should we have – assuming 1200 is too many? What makes up a better user experience – does it mean all sites should look and feel the same? How can we provide government information at the places people naturally go looking for assistance – even if these are not government sites?

As we asked these questions we started to come across some central ideas:

  • What if we could decouple the authoring and management of information from the publishing process, so the subject experts in government still manage their content but we have flexibility to present it in more user-centric ways?
  • What if we unleashed government information? Making it possible for state and local governments, non-profit groups and businesses to deliver content and services alongside their own information to give better value users.
  • Should we move the bureaucratic content (information about agencies and how they are managed such as annual reports, budget statements and operating rules) out of the way of core content and services for people? Can we simplify our environment and base it around topics and life events instead of agencies? What if we had people in government responsible for curating these topics and life events across agencies and creating simpler pathways for users?…(More)”

Improving Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science as a Policy Mechanism for NASA

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Balcom Brittany: “This article examines citizen science projects, defined as “a form of open collaboration where members of the public participate in the scientific process, including identifying research questions, collecting and analyzing the data, interpreting the results, and problem solving,” as an effective and innovative tool for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) science in line with the Obama Administration’s Open Government Directive. Citizen science projects allow volunteers with no technical training to participate in analysis of large sets of data that would otherwise constitute prohibitively tedious and lengthy work for research scientists. Zooniverse.com hosts a multitude of popular space-focused citizen science projects, many of which have been extraordinarily successful and have enabled new research publications and major discoveries. This article takes a multifaceted look at such projects by examining the benefits of citizen science, effective game design, and current desktop computer and mobile device usage trends. It offers suggestions of potential research topics to be studied with emerging technologies, policy considerations, and opportunities for outreach. This analysis includes an overview of other crowdsourced research methods such as distributed computing and contests. New research and data analysis of mobile phone usage, scientific curiosity, and political engagement among Zooniverse.com project participants has been conducted for this study…(More)”

When America Says Yes to Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Cass Sunstein in the New York Times: “In recent years, the federal government has adopted a large number of soft interventions that are meant to change behavior without mandates and bans. Among them: disclosure of information, such as calorie labels at chain restaurants; graphic warnings against, for example, distracted driving; and automatic enrollment in programs designed to benefit employees, like pension plans.

Informed by behavioral science, such reforms can have large effects while preserving freedom of choice. But skeptics deride these soft interventions as unjustified paternalism, an insult to dignity and a contemporary version of the nanny state. Some people fear that uses of behavioral science will turn out to be manipulative. They don’t want to be nudged.

But what do Americans actually think about soft interventions? I recently conducted a nationally representative survey of 563 people. Small though that number may seem, it gives a reasonable picture of what Americans think, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

The remarkable finding is that most Americans approve of these reforms and want a lot more of them — and their approval generally cuts across partisan lines….(More)

Rethinking Smart Cities From The Ground Up

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New report byTom Saunders and Peter Baeck (NESTA): “This report tells the stories of cities around the world – from Beijing to Amsterdam, and from London to Jakarta – that are addressing urban challenges by using digital technologies to engage and enable citizens.

Key findings

  • Many ‘top down’ smart city ideas have failed to deliver on their promise, combining high costs and low returns.
  • ‘Collaborative technologies’ offer cities another way to make smarter use of resources, smarter ways of collecting data and smarter ways to make decisions.
  • Collaborative technologies can also help citizens themselves shape the future of their cities.
  • We have created five recommendations for city government who want to make their cities smarter.

As cities bring people together to live, work and play, they amplify their ability to create wealth and ideas. But scale and density also bring acute challenges: how to move around people and things; how to provide energy; how to keep people safe.

‘Smart cities’ offer sensors, ‘big data’ and advanced computing as answers to these challenges, but they have often faced criticism for being too concerned with hardware rather than with people.

In this report we argue that successful smart cities of the future will combine the best aspects of technology infrastructure while making the most of the growing potential of ‘collaborative technologies’, technologies that enable greater collaboration between urban communities and between citizens and city governments.

How will this work in practice? Drawing on examples from all around the world we investigate four emerging methods which are helping city governments engage and enable citizens: the collaborative economy, crowdsourcing data, collective intelligence and crowdfunding.

Policy recommendations

  1. Set up a civic innovation lab to drive innovation in collaborative technologies.
  2. Use open data and open platforms to mobilise collective knowledge.
  3. Take human behaviour as seriously as technology.
  4. Invest in smart people, not just smart technology.
  5. Spread the potential of collaborative technologies to all parts of society….(More)”

Please, Corporations, Experiment on Us

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Michelle N. Meyer and Christopher Chabris in the New York Times: ” Can it ever be ethical for companies or governments to experiment on their employees, customers or citizens without their consent?

The conventional answer — of course not! — animated public outrage last year after Facebook published a study in which it manipulated how much emotional content more than half a million of its users saw. Similar indignation followed the revelation by the dating site OkCupid that, as an experiment, it briefly told some pairs of users that they were good matches when its algorithm had predicted otherwise.

But this outrage is misguided. Indeed, we believe that it is based on a kind of moral illusion.

Companies — and other powerful actors, including lawmakers, educators and doctors — “experiment” on us without our consent every time they implement a new policy, practice or product without knowing its consequences. When Facebook started, it created a radical new way for people to share emotionally laden information, with unknown effects on their moods. And when OkCupid started, it advised users to go on dates based on an algorithm without knowing whether it worked.

Why does one “experiment” (i.e., introducing a new product) fail to raise ethical concerns, whereas a true scientific experiment (i.e., introducing a variation of the product to determine the comparative safety or efficacy of the original) sets off ethical alarms?

In a forthcoming article in the Colorado Technology Law Journal, one of us (Professor Meyer) calls this the “A/B illusion” — the human tendency to focus on the risk, uncertainty and power asymmetries of running a test that compares A to B, while ignoring those factors when A is simply imposed by itself.

Consider a hypothetical example. A chief executive is concerned that her employees are taking insufficient advantage of the company’s policy of matching contributions to retirement savings accounts. She suspects that telling her workers how many others their age are making the maximum contribution would nudge them to save more, so she includes this information in personalized letters to them.

If contributions go up, maybe the new policy worked. But perhaps contributions would have gone up anyhow (say, because of an improving economy). If contributions go down, it might be because the policy failed. Or perhaps a declining economy is to blame, and contributions would have gone down even more without the letter.

You can’t answer these questions without doing a true scientific experiment — in technology jargon, an “A/B test.” The company could randomly assign its employees to receive either the old enrollment packet or the new one that includes the peer contribution information, and then statistically compare the two groups of employees to see which saved more.

Let’s be clear: This is experimenting on people without their consent, and the absence of consent is essential to the validity of the entire endeavor. If the C.E.O. were to tell the workers that they had been randomly assigned to receive one of two different letters, and why, that information would be likely to distort their choices.

Our chief executive isn’t so hypothetical. Economists do help corporations run such experiments, but many managers chafe at debriefing their employees afterward, fearing that they will be outraged that they were experimented on without their consent. A company’s unwillingness to debrief, in turn, can be a deal-breaker for the ethics boards that authorize research. So those C.E.O.s do what powerful people usually do: Pick the policy that their intuition tells them will work best, and apply it to everyone….(More)”