Government initiative offers Ghanaians chance for greater participation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “Openness and transparency are key ingredients in building an accountable and effective democratic government. An “open” government is transparent, accessible to anyone, anytime, anywhere; and is responsive to new ideas and demands. The key to this is providing access to accurate data to all citizens. However, in many countries, a low rate of citizen participation and involvement has led to poor accountability from government officials. In Ghana, a new project, TransGov, is developing innovative tools to foster participation in local governance of marginalised groups, and improve government accountability to those who need it most.

TransGov’s research found that many Ghanaians were not aware of the status of local development projects, and this has led to a general public apathy, where people felt they had no influence on getting the government to work for them. TransGov created a platform to enhance information disclosure, dissemination and to create ways for citizens to engage with the local leaders in their communities. The TransGov platform allows all citizens to track the progress of government projects in their area and to publish information about those projects. TransGov has four integrated platforms, including a website, mobile app, voice response technology (IVR) and SMS – to allow the participation of people from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds.

The organization has recently partnered with the government-sponsored Ghana Open Data Initiative, to share resources, tools, and research and hold workshops and seminars. This is aimed to strengthen various government agencies in collecting and managing data for public use. The hope is that making this information more accessible will help create more business opportunities and drive innovation, as well as increasing democratic participation. We have seen this in educational radio broadcasts in Cairo subways and an app that allows citizen feedback on city development….(More)”.

Uber Releases Open Source Project for Differential Privacy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Katie Tezapsidis at Uber Security: “Data analysis helps Uber continuously improve the user experience by preventing fraud, increasing efficiency, and providing important safety features for riders and drivers. Data gives our teams timely feedback about what we’re doing right and what needs improvement.

Uber is committed to protecting user privacy and we apply this principle throughout our business, including our internal data analytics. While Uber already has technical and administrative controls in place to limit who can access specific databases, we are adding additional protections governing how that data is used — even in authorized cases.

We are excited to give a first glimpse of our recent work on these additional protections with the release of a new open source tool, which we’ll introduce below.

Background: Differential Privacy

Differential privacy is a formal definition of privacy and is widely recognized by industry experts as providing strong and robust privacy assurances for individuals. In short, differential privacy allows general statistical analysis without revealing information about a particular individual in the data. Results do not even reveal whether any individual appears in the data. For this reason, differential privacy provides an extra layer of protection against re-identification attacks as well as attacks using auxiliary data.

Differential privacy can provide high accuracy results for the class of queries Uber commonly uses to identify statistical trends. Consequently, differential privacy allows us to calculate aggregations (averages, sums, counts, etc.) of elements like groups of users or trips on the platform without exposing information that could be used to infer details about a specific user or trip.

Differential privacy is enforced by adding noise to a query’s result, but some queries are more sensitive to the data of a single individual than others. To account for this, the amount of noise added must be tuned to the sensitivity of the query, which is defined as the maximum change in the query’s output when an individual’s data is added to or removed from the database.

As part of their job, a data analyst at Uber might need to know the average trip distance in a particular city. A large city, like San Francisco, might have hundreds of thousands of trips with an average distance of 3.5 miles. If any individual trip is removed from the data, the average remains close to 3.5 miles. This query therefore has low sensitivity, and thus requires less noise to enable each individual to remain anonymous within the crowd.

Conversely, the average trip distance in a smaller city with far fewer trips is more influenced by a single trip and may require more noise to provide the same degree of privacy. Differential privacy defines the precise amount of noise required given the sensitivity.

A major challenge for practical differential privacy is how to efficiently compute the sensitivity of a query. Existing methods lack sufficient support for the features used in Uber’s queries and many approaches require replacing the database with a custom runtime engine. Uber uses many different database engines and replacing these databases is infeasible. Moreover, custom runtimes cannot meet Uber’s demanding scalability and performance requirements.

Introducing Elastic Sensitivity

To address these challenges we adopted Elastic Sensitivity, a technique developed by security researchers at the University of California, Berkeley for efficiently calculating the sensitivity of a query without requiring changes to the database. The full technical details of Elastic Sensitivity are described here.

Today, we are excited to share a tool developed in collaboration with these researchers to calculate Elastic Sensitivity for SQL queries. The tool is available now on GitHub. It is designed to integrate easily with existing data environments and support additional state-of-the-art differential privacy mechanisms, which we plan to share in the coming months….(More)”.

Are innovation labs delivering on their promise?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Catherine Cheney at DEVEX: “Next month, a first-of-its-kind event will take place in Denmark, and it will draw on traditions and ways of living in one of the happiest countries in the world to unlock new perspectives on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Called UNLEASH, the new initiative will gather 1,000 young people from around the world in the capital city of Copenhagen. Then the participants will be transported to “folk high schools,” which are learning institutions in the countryside aimed at adult education. There, they will break into teams to tackle issues such as urban sustainability or education and ICT. The most promising ideas will have access to resources, including mentoring, angel investors and business plan development. Finally, all UNLEASH participants will be connected through an alumni network of individuals who come together at the annual event that will move country to country until 2030.

UNLEASH is a global innovation lab. It is just one of a growing number of innovation labs, which bring people together to develop and test new methods to address challenges across the global health, international development and humanitarian response sectors. But while the initiative sounds new and exciting, the description reads much like many other initiatives springing up around the SDGs: identifying innovative, scalable, implementable solutions, supporting disruptive ideas, and accelerating development impact.

As the global development sector seeks to take on global problems as complex as those captured by the SDGs, innovation will certainly be necessary. But with the growing number of innovation labs not translating as quickly as expected to real progress on the SDGs, some in the industry are also starting to ask tough questions: How can these initiatives go beyond generating ideas, transition into growing and scaling, then go on to changing entire systems in order to, for example, achieve SDG 1 to end poverty in all its forms by 2030? Experts tell Devex the road to success will not be an easy one, but those who have tested out and improved upon models of innovation in this sector are sharing what is working, what is not, and what needs to change….(More)”.

Bangalore Taps Tech Crowdsourcing to Fix ‘Unruly’ Gridlock

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Saritha Rai at Bloomberg Technology: “In Bangalore, tech giants and startups typically spend their days fiercely battling each other for customers. Now they are turning their attention to a common enemy: the Indian city’s infernal traffic congestion.

Cross-town commutes that can take hours has inspired Gridlock Hackathon, a contest initiated by Flipkart Online Services Pvt. for technology workers to find solutions to the snarled roads that cost the economy billions of dollars. While the prize totals a mere $5,500, it’s attracting teams from global giants Microsoft Corp., Google and Amazon.com. Inc. to local startups including Ola.

The online contest is crowdsourcing solutions for Bangalore, a city of more than 10 million, as it grapples with inadequate roads, unprecedented growth and overpopulation. The technology industry began booming decades ago and with its base of talent, it continues to attract companies. Just last month, Intel Corp. said it would invest $178 million and add more workers to expand its R&D operations.

The ideas put forward at the hackathon range from using artificial intelligence and big data on traffic flows to true moonshots, such as flying cars.

The gridlock remains a problem for a city dependent on its technology industry and seeking to attract new investment…(More)”.

NIH-funded team uses smartphone data in global study of physical activity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

National Institutes of Health: “Using a larger dataset than for any previous human movement study, National Institutes of Health-funded researchers at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, have tracked physical activity by population for more than 100 countries. Their research follows on a recent estimate that more than 5 million people die each year from causes associated with inactivity.

The large-scale study of daily step data from anonymous smartphone users dials in on how countries, genders, and community types fare in terms of physical activity and what results may mean for intervention efforts around physical activity and obesity. The study was published July 10, 2017, in the advance online edition of Nature.

“Big data is not just about big numbers, but also the patterns that can explain important health trends,” said Grace Peng, Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) program in Computational Modeling, Simulation and Analysis.

“Data science and modeling can be immensely powerful tools. They can aid in harnessing and analyzing all the personalized data that we get from our phones and wearable devices.”

Almost three quarters of adults in developed countries and half of adults in developing economies carry a smartphone. The devices are equipped with tiny accelerometers, computer chip that maintains the orientation of the screen, and can also automatically record stepping motions. The users whose data contributed to this study subscribed to the Azumio Argus app, a free application for tracking physical activity and other health behaviors….

In addition to the step records, the researchers accessed age, gender, and height and weight status of users who registered the smartphone app. They used the same calculation that economists use for income inequality — called the Gini index — to calculate activity inequality by country.

“These results reveal how much of a population is activity-rich, and how much of a population is activity-poor,” Delp said. “In regions with high activity inequality there are many people who are activity poor, and activity inequality is a strong predictor of health outcomes.”…

The researchers investigated the idea that making improvements in a city’s walkability — creating an environment that is safe and enjoyable to walk — could reduce activity inequality and the activity gender gap.

“If you must cross major highways to get from point A to point B in a city, the walkability is low; people rely on cars,” Delp said. “In cities like New York and San Francisco, where you can get across town on foot safely, the city has high walkability.”

Data from 69 U.S. cities showed that higher walkability scores are associated with lower activity inequality. Higher walkability is associated with significantly more daily steps across all age, gender, and body-mass-index categories.  However, the researchers found that women recorded comparatively less activity than men in places that are less walkable.

The study exemplifies how smartphones can deliver new insights about key health behaviors, including what the authors categorize as the global pandemic of physical inactivity….(More)”.

Lessons from Airbnb and Uber to Open Government as a Platform

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Interview by Marquis Cabrera with Sangeet Paul Choudary: “…Platform companies have a very strong core built around data, machine learning, and a central infrastructure. But they rapidly innovate around it to try and test new things in the market and that helps them open themselves for further innovation in the ecosystem. Governments can learn to become more modular and more agile, the way platform companies are. Modularity in architecture is a very fundamental part of being a platform company; both in terms of your organizational architecture, as well as your business model architecture.

The second thing that governments can learn from a platform company is that successful platform companies are created with intent. They are not created by just opening out what you have available. If you look at the current approach of applying platform thinking in government, a common approach is just to take data and open it out to the world. However, successful platform companies first create a shaping strategy to shape-out and craft a direction of vision for the ecosystem in terms of what they can achieve by being on the platform. They then provision the right tools and services that serve the vision to enable success for the ecosystem[1] . And only then do they open up their infrastructure. It’s really important that you craft the right shaping strategy and use that to define the rights tools and services before you start pursuing a platform implementation.

In my work with governments, I regularly find myself stressing the importance of thinking as a market maker rather than as a service provider. Governments have always been market makers but when it comes to technology, they often take the service provider approach.

In your book, you used San Francisco City Government and Data.gov as examples of infusing platform thinking in government. But what are some global examples of governments, countries infusing platform thinking around the world?

One of the best examples is from my home country Singapore, which has been at the forefront of converting the nation into a platform. It has now been pursuing platform strategy both overall as a nation by building a smart nation platform, and also within verticals. If you look particularly at mobility and transportation, it has worked to create a central core platform and then build greater autonomy around how mobility and transportation works in the country. Other good examples of governments applying this are Dubai, South Korea, Barcelona; they are all countries and cities that have applied the concept of platforms very well to create a smart nation platform. India is another example that is applying platform thinking with the creation of the India stack, though the implementation could benefit from better platform governance structures and a more open regulation around participation….(More)”.

Madrid as a democracy lab

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Bernardo Gutiérrez at OpenDemocracy: “…The launch of Decide Madrid, the city participation platform running on the Consul free software, signaled a real revolution. On the one hand, it paved the way for democracy from the bottom up, through direct and binding mechanisms. Unlike other historical participatory budgets, the 100 million Euros devoted to Decide Madrid participatory budgets in 2017 are allocated according to proposals coming from below. The proposals that get the most votes, whenever technically feasible, are approved. The platform also carries a section for “citizen proposals”. …

The Decide Madrid platform was not initially well received by the traditional neighbourhood associations, used to face-to-face participation and to mediating between citizens and government. In order to tackle this, a number of face-to-face deliberation spaces are being set up, such as the Local Forums (physical participation spaces in the districts), and also projects such as If you feel like a cat (participation for children and teenagers), or processes such as G1000, which aims at promoting collective deliberation and fostering proposals from below on the basis of a representative sample of the population, so that the participants’ diversity and plurality is guaranteed.

Most projects are being carried out with the support of the new Laboratories of Citizen Innovation of the prestigious Medialab-Prado. The Participa LAB(Collective Intelligence for Democracy), the DataLab (open data) and the InciLab (Citizen Innovation Lab) are joint public/common initiatives, acting as a bridge between local government and citizens. The Participa LAB, which is the one working more closely on participation, is collaborating with Decide Madridin a number of projects (Codat Madrid hackathons, If you feel like a cat, community lines, gamification, G1000, narrative groups…) and coordinates the Collective Intelligence for Democracy international call. InciLab has launched, among many other initiatives, the Madrid Listens project, to connect City Hall officials with citizens on concrete projects, blending disintermediation and the citizen lab philosophy.

More than 300.000 users strong, Decide Madrid is consolidating itself as the hegemonic space for participation in the city. It activates a variety of processes, debates, proposals, and projects. Its free software means that any city can adapt Consul to its needs, without any substantial investment, and set up a platform. From Barcelona to A Coruña, from Rome to Paris and Buenos Aires, dozens of institutions around the world have replicated the initial Decide Madrid core, thus setting up what Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s digital minister, calls a “liquid federation of cities”. Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona, praising the cooperative network of participation cities says: “It is very interesting that in Barcelona we have been able to carry out our first experience of digital participation, Decidim Barcelona, adapting Madrid’s base code. Once we have had a first proposal, we have shared it with many municipalities throughout Catalonia”.

Distributed democracy

The brain as a metaphor. A map of Hamburg (Germany) as a symbol of the networked, decentralized city. Neurons and neighbourhoods connected by flows, inevitably synchronized. Both images are to be found in Emergency, Steven Johnson’s classic book on collective intelligence processes. The city as a brain, as a whole made of decentralized nodes. The city as an open network, where any neighbourhood-node can connect with any other. Caio Vassão’s concept of a distributed city rounds the edges of the city with no centre, “networked, open, fluid, flexible, adaptable, reconfigurable”. A city where the neighbourhoods in the suburbs dialogue and relate to each other without the mediation of a historical center.

Left: Diagram of the human brain. Image source: Mittermeier. Right: Map of Hamburg, circa 1850. Image source: Princeton Architectural Press.

Madrid has kick-started a forceful decentralization policy. Distributed democracy in Madrid can be seen in how budgets are allocated, how city districts have multiplied their resources and partly manage cultural festivals (like the Summers in the City) and cultural projects (Madrid District).

At the same time, the launching of the Local Forums is a clear move to decentralize power and participation in the city. Through projects such as Experiment District (travelling citizen laboratories), Imagine Madrid (rethinking 10 territories) or the M.A.R.E.S project, Spain’s capital city is redrawing its neighbourhood fabric, its economic relations, and citizen involvement in decision making. The successful Medialab-Prado’s Experiment District project, which has already visited Villaverde, Moratalaz and Fuencarral, is in full expansion. It is about to even launch a global call, as dozens of cities around the world want to replicate it. Medialab-Prado, one of the city innovation centres, defines Experiment District as a set of “citizen labs for experimenting and collaborative learning in which anyone can participate”. Citizen (neighbourhood) labs based on the prototyping culture, an open and collaborative way of developing projects. Citizen (neighbourhood) labs for learning and teaching, where the result is not a perfect product, but a process that can be improved in real time through the collaboration of citizens from the Madrid neighbourhoods….(More)”

A City Is a Data Pool: Blockchains and the Crypto-City

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jason Potts, Ellie Rennie and Jake Goldenfein: “The Smart City agenda of integrating ICT and Internet of Things (IoT) informatic infrastructure to improve the efficiency and adaptability of city governance has been shaping urban development policy for more than a decade now. A smart city has more data, gathered though new and better technology, delivering higher quality city services. In this paper, we explore how blockchain technology could shift the Smart City agenda by altering transaction costs with implications for the coordination of infrastructures and resources. Like the Smart City the Crypto City utilizes data informatics, but can be coordinated through distributed rather than centralized systems. The data infrastructure of the Crypto-City can enable civil society to run local public goods, and facilitate economic and social entrepreneurship. Drawing on economic theory of transaction costs, the paper sets out an explanatory framework for understanding the kinds of new governance mechanisms that may emerge in conjunction with automated systems, including the challenges that blockchain poses for cities….(More)”.

Tackling Challenges in the Engagement of Citizens with Smart City Initiatives

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Long Pham and Conor Linehan: “Smart City (SC) initiatives offer best possible outcomes to  citizens and other stakeholders when those people are  involved centrally in all stages of the project. However,  undertaking design processes that facilitate citizen  engagement often involves prohibitive challenges in cost,  design and deployment mechanisms, particularly for small  cities that have limited resources. We report on a project  carried out in Cork City, a small city in Ireland, where a  method inspired by crowdsourcing was used to involve  local participants in decisions regarding smart city  infrastructure. Academics, local government, volunteers  and civil organisations came together to collaboratively  design and carry out a study to represent local interests  around the deployment of smart city infrastructure. Our  project demonstrates a new way of translating  crowdsourcing for use in government problem-solving. It  was comparatively inexpensive, creative in design, and  flexible but collaborative in deployment, resulting in high  volume of reliable data for project prioritisation and  implementation….(More)”

Data and the City

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Rob Kitchin, Tracey P. Lauriault, and Gavin McArdle: “There is a long history of governments, businesses, science and citizens producing and utilizing data in order to monitor, regulate, profit from and make sense of the urban world. Recently, we have entered the age of big data, and now many aspects of everyday urban life are being captured as data and city management is mediated through data-driven technologies.

Data and the City is the first edited collection to provide an interdisciplinary analysis of how this new era of urban big data is reshaping how we come to know and govern cities, and the implications of such a transformation. This book looks at the creation of real-time cities and data-driven urbanism and considers the relationships at play. By taking a philosophical, political, practical and technical approach to urban data, the authors analyse the ways in which data is produced and framed within socio-technical systems. They then examine the constellation of existing and emerging urban data technologies. The volume concludes by considering the social and political ramifications of data-driven urbanism, questioning whom it serves and for what ends.

This book, the companion volume to 2016’s Code and the City, offers the first critical reflection on the relationship between data, data practices and the city, and how we come to know and understand cities through data. It will be crucial reading for those who wish to understand and conceptualize urban big data, data-driven urbanism and the development of smart cities….(More)”