Behavioral Political Economy: A Survey


Paper by Jan Schnellenbach and Christian Schubert: “Explaining individual behavior in politics should rely on the same motivational assumptions as explaining behavior in the market: That’s what Political Economy, understood as the application of economics to the study of political processes, is all about. In its standard variant, those who played the game of politics should also be considered rational and self-interested, unlike the benevolent despot of earlier models. History repeats itself with the rise of behavioral economics: Assuming cognitive biases to be present in the market, but not in politics, behavioral economists often call for government to intervene in a “benevolent” way. Recently, however, political economists have started to apply behavioral economics insights to the study of political processes, thereby re-establishing a unified methodology. This paper surveys the current state of the emerging field of “Behavioral Political Economy” and considers the scope for further research.”

New Data for a New Energy Future


(This post originally appeared on the blog of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.)

Two growing concerns—climate change and U.S. energy self-sufficiency—have accelerated the search for affordable, sustainable approaches to energy production and use. In this area, as in many others, data-driven innovation is a key to progress. Data scientists are working to help improve energy efficiency and make new forms of energy more economically viable, and are building new, profitable businesses in the process.
In the same way that government data has been used by other kinds of new businesses, the Department of Energy is releasing data that can help energy innovators. At a recent “Energy Datapalooza” held by the department, John Podesta, counselor to the President, summed up the rationale: “Just as climate data will be central to helping communities prepare for climate change, energy data can help us reduce the harmful emissions that are driving climate change.” With electric power accounting for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, the opportunities for improvement are great.
The GovLab has been studying the business applications of public government data, or “open data,” for the past year. The resulting study, the Open Data 500, now provides structured, searchable information on more than 500 companies that use open government data as a key business driver. A review of those results shows four major areas where open data is creating new business opportunities in energy and is likely to build many more in the near future.

Commercial building efficiency
Commercial buildings are major energy consumers, and energy costs are a significant business expense. Despite programs like LEED Certification, many commercial buildings waste large amounts of energy. Now a company called FirstFuel, based in Boston, is using open data to drive energy efficiency in these buildings. At the Energy Datapalooza, Swap Shah, the company’s CEO, described how analyzing energy data together with geospatial, weather, and other open data can give a very accurate view of a building’s energy consumption and ways to reduce it. (Sometimes the solution is startlingly simple: According to Shah, the largest source of waste is running heating and cooling systems at the same time.) Other companies are taking on the same kind of task – like Lucid, which provides an operating system that can track a building’s energy use in an integrated way.

Home energy use
A number of companies are finding data-driven solutions for homeowners who want to save money by reducing their energy usage. A key to success is putting together measurements of energy use in the home with public data on energy efficiency solutions. PlotWatt, for example, promises to help consumers “save money with real-time energy tracking” through the data it provides. One of the best-known companies in this area, Opower, uses a psychological strategy: it simultaneously gives people access to their own energy data and lets them compare their energy use to their neighbors’ as an incentive to save. Opower partners with utilities to provide this information, and the Virginia-based company has been successful enough to open offices in San Francisco, London, and Singapore. Soon more and more people will have access to data on their home energy use: Green Button, a government-promoted program implemented by utilities, now gives about 100 million Americans data about their energy consumption.

Solar power and renewable energy
As solar power becomes more efficient and affordable, a number of companies are emerging to support this energy technology. Clean Power Finance, for example, uses its database to connect solar entrepreneurs with sources of capital. In a different way, a company called Solar Census is analyzing publicly available data to find exactly where solar power can be produced most efficiently. The kind of analysis that used to require an on-site survey over several days can now be done in less than a minute with their algorithms.
Other kinds of geospatial and weather data can support other forms of renewable energy. The data will make it easier to find good sites for wind power stations, water sources for small-scale hydroelectric projects, and the best opportunities to tap geothermal energy.

Supporting new energy-efficient vehicles
The Tesla and other electric vehicles are becoming commercially viable, and we will soon see even more efficient vehicles on the road. Toyota has announced that its first fuel-cell cars, which run on hydrogen, will be commercially available by mid-2015, and other auto manufacturers have announced plans to develop fuel-cell vehicles as well. But these vehicles can’t operate without a network to supply power, be it electricity for a Tesla battery or hydrogen for a fuel cell.
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: People won’t buy large numbers of electric or fuel-cell cars unless they know they can power them, and power stations will be scarce until there are enough vehicles to support their business. Now some new companies are facilitating this transition by giving drivers data-driven tools to find and use the power sources they need. Recargo, for example, provides tools to help electric car owners find charging stations and operate their vehicles.
The development of new energy sources will involve solving social, political, economic, and technological issues. Data science can help develop solutions and bring us more quickly to a new kind of energy future.
Joel Gurin, senior advisor at the GovLab and project director, Open Data 500. He also currently serves as a fellow of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

Driving Innovation With Open Data


Research Article by The GovLab’s Joel Gurin (Chapter 6 in the report, “The Future of Data-Driven Innovation.”):  The chapters in this report provide ample evidence of the power of data and its business potential. But like any business resource, data is only valuable if the benefit of using it outweighs its cost. Data collection, management, distribution, quality control, and application all come at a price—a potential obstacle for companies of any size, though especially for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Over the last several years, however, the “I” of data’s return on investment (ROI) has become less of a hurdle, and new data-driven companies are developing rapidly as a result. One major reason is that governments at the federal, state, and local level are making more data available at little or no charge for the private sector and the public to use. Governments collect data of all kinds—including scientific, demographic, and financial data—at taxpayer expense.
Now, public sector agencies and departments are increasingly repaying that public investment by making their data available to all for free or at a low cost. This is Open Data. While there are still costs in putting the data to use, the growing availability of this national resource is becoming a significant driver for hundreds of new businesses. This chapter describes the growing potential of Open Data and the data-driven innovation it supports, the types of data and applications that are most promising, and the policies that will encourage innovation going forward. Read and download this article in PDF format.

Building a Smarter University Big Data, Innovation, and Analytics


New book edited by Jason E. Lane : “The Big Data movement and the renewed focus on data analytics are transforming everything from healthcare delivery systems to the way cities deliver services to residents. Now is the time to examine how this Big Data could help build smarter universities. While much of the cutting-edge research that is being done with Big Data is happening at colleges and universities, higher education has yet to turn the digital mirror on itself to advance the academic enterprise. Institutions can use the huge amounts of data being generated to improve the student learning experience, enhance research initiatives, support effective community outreach, and develop campus infrastructure. This volume focuses on three primary themes related to creating a smarter university:  refining the operations and management of higher education institutions, cultivating the education pipeline, and educating the next generation of data scientists. Through an analysis of these issues, the contributors address how universities can foster innovation and ingenuity in the academy. They also provide scholarly and practical insights in order to frame these topics for an international discussion.”

Codifying Collegiality: Recent Developments in Data Sharing Policy in the Life Sciences


New paper by Genevieve Pham-Kanter et al in PLoS ONE: “Over the last decade, there have been significant changes in data sharing policies and in the data sharing environment faced by life science researchers. Using data from a 2013 survey of over 1600 life science researchers, we analyze the effects of sharing policies of funding agencies and journals. We also examine the effects of new sharing infrastructure and tools (i.e., third party repositories and online supplements). We find that recently enacted data sharing policies and new sharing infrastructure and tools have had a sizable effect on encouraging data sharing. In particular, third party repositories and online supplements as well as data sharing requirements of funding agencies, particularly the NIH and the National Human Genome Research Institute, were perceived by scientists to have had a large effect on facilitating data sharing. In addition, we found a high degree of compliance with these new policies, although noncompliance resulted in few formal or informal sanctions. Despite the overall effectiveness of data sharing policies, some significant gaps remain: about one third of grant reviewers placed no weight on data sharing plans in their reviews, and a similar percentage ignored the requirements of material transfer agreements. These patterns suggest that although most of these new policies have been effective, there is still room for policy improvement.”

CaseCommons


About: “The vision of Case Commons is to support the transformation of public human services through innovative technology. In the 21st century, web-native, real time technology and analytics all have the potential to radically change how public human services agencies meet the needs of the country’s most vulnerable children and families.
To fulfill this vision, we have designed and built revolutionary software for child welfare. Called Casebook, our tool has been collaboratively developed with agencies and practitioners, uses intuitive design to meet the needs of human services caseworkers and administrators, and is centered on the person and their family rather than isolated “cases.” Casebook helps support child welfare workers and policy makers in their effort to make decisions based on data, rather than on anecdote.
The mission of our organization is to:
• Change Lives: above all, Case Commons seeks to better serve, and to improve outcomes and life opportunities for vulnerable children and their families;
• Help the Helpers: Case Commons believes that new technology can and must support – not hinder – the frontline workers who serve our nation’s most vulnerable children and families; and
• Measure Results: Case Commons uses the latest technology to improve the quality and timeliness of data and analytics so that everyone can make better decisions. Supervisors can better support their workers, policymakers can understand what works, and everyone can use greater knowledge to transform service delivery and improve lives.

Casebook is a powerful example of technology innovation at work, and Case Commons is helping to lead a growing movement to revolutionize how government puts technology to work for Americans.
Read our paper on Casebook and the future of government innovation.

Google’s Waze announces government data exchange program with 10 initial partners


Josh Ong at TheNextWeb blog: “Waze today announced “Connected Citizens,” a new government partnership program that will see both parties exchange data in order to improve traffic conditions.

For the program, Waze will provide real-time anonymized crowdsourced traffic data to government departments in exchange for information on public projects like construction, road sensors, and pre-planned road closures.

The first 10 partners include:

  • Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • Barcelona, Spain and the Government of Catalonia
  • Jakarta, Indonesia
  • Tel Aviv, Israel
  • San Jose, Costa Rica
  • Boston, USA
  • State of Florida, USA
  • State of Utah, USA
  • Los Angeles County
  • The New York Police Department (NYPD)

Waze has also signed on five other government partners and has received applications from more than 80 municipal groups. The company ran an initial pilot program in Rio de Janeiro where it partnered with the city’s traffic control center to supplement the department’s sensor data with reports from Waze users.

At an event celebrating the launch, Di-Ann Eisnor, head of Growth at Waze noted that the data exchange will only include public alerts, such as accidents and closures.

We don’t share anything beyond that, such as where individuals are located and who they are,” she said.

Eisnor also made it clear that Waze isn’t selling the data. GPS maker TomTom came under fire several years ago after customers learned that the company had sold their data to police departments to help find the best places to put speed traps.

“We keep [the data] clean by making sure we don’t have a business model around it,” Eisnor added.

Waze will requires that new Connected Citizens partners “prove their dedication to citizen engagement and commit to use Waze data to improve city efficiency.”…”

Crowdsourcing and collaborative translation: mass phenomena or silent threat to translation studies?


Article by Alberto Fernandez Costales: ” This article explores the emerging phenomenon of amateur translation and tries to shed some light on the implications this process may have both for Translation Studies as an academic discipline and for the translation industry itself. The paper comments on the main activities included within the concept of fan translation and approaches the terminological issues concerning the categorization of “non-professional translation”. In addition, the article focuses on the existing differences between collaborative translation and crowdsourcing, and posits new hypotheses regarding the development of these initiatives and the possible erosion of the boundaries which separate them. The question of who-does-what in the industry of translation is a major issue to be addressed in order to gain a clear view of the global state of translation today.”

Real-time information about public transport's position using crowdsourcing


Paper by Nikos Souliotis et al, published at PCI ’14 Proceedings of the 18th Panhellenic Conference on Informatics: “Nowadays there is a multitude of mobile and tablet applications being developed in order to facilitate or disrupt every day tasks. Many of these are location based. A technique to serve in providing information and content is crowdsourcing. This technique is based on the public contributing information or resources giving them the opportunity to become both service providers and recipients at the same time.
Taking into account the above and after observing passengers using the public transport system, we came to the conclusion that it would be useful to be able to determine which transport medium (i.e which bus line out of a number running concurrently) is nearer at any given moment. This information allows for better decision making and choice of transportation.
For this we propose the development of an application to show the position of a selected transport vehicle. The position will be calculated based on geo-tracking provided by passengers boarded on a vehicle. This will allow for real time information to the application users in order to be able to determine their optimal route.”

Open Data as Universal Service. New perspectives in the Information Profession


Paper by L. Fernando Ramos Simón et al in Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences: “The Internet provides a global information flow, which improves living conditions in poor countries as well as in rich countries. Owing to its abundance and quality, public information (meteorological, geographic, transport information. and also the content managed in libraries, archives and museums) is an incentive for change, becoming invaluable and accessible to all citizens. However, it is clear that Open Data plays a significant role and provides a business service in the digital economy. Nevertheless, it is unknown how this amount of public data may be introduced as universal service to make it available to all citizens in matters of education, health, culture . In fact, a function or role which has traditionally been assumed by libraries. In addition, information professionals will have to acquire new skills that enable them to assume a new role in the information management: data management (Open Data) and content management (Open Content). Thus, this study analyzes new roles, which will be assumed by new information professionals such as metadata, interoperability, access licenses, information search and retrieval tools and applications for data queries…”