Will data improve governance? It depends on the questions we ask

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Uma Kalkar, Andrew Young and Stefaan Verhulst in the Quaterly Inquiry of the Development Intelligence Lab: “…What are the key takeaways from our process and how does it relate to the Summit for Democracy? First, good questions serve as the bedrock for effective and data-driven decision-making across the governance ecosystem. Second, sourcing multidisciplinary and global experts allow us to paint a fuller picture of the hot-button issues and encourage a more nuanced understanding of priorities. Lastly, including the public as active participants in the process of designing questions can help to increase the legitimacy of and obtain a social impact for data efforts, as well as tap into the collective intelligence that exists across society….

A key focus for world leaders, civil society members, academics, and private sector representatives at the Summit for Democracy should not only be on how to promote open governance by democratising data and data science. It must also consider how we can democratise and improve the way we formulate and prioritise questions facing society. To paraphrase Albert Einstein’s famous quote: “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask… for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes”….(More)”.

Eight ways to institutionalise deliberative democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “This guide for public officials and policy makers outlines eight models for institutionalising representative public deliberation to improve collective decision making and strengthen democracy.

Increasingly, public authorities are reinforcing democracy by making use of deliberative processes in a structural way, beyond one-off initiatives that are often dependent on political will. The guide provides examples of how to create structures that allow representative public deliberation to become an integral part of how certain types of public decisions are taken.


Eight models to consider for implementation:

1. Combining a permanent citizens’ assembly with one-off citizens’ panels

2. Connecting representative public deliberation to parliamentary committees

3. Combining deliberative and direct democracy

4. Standing citizens’ advisory panels

5. Sequenced representative deliberative processes throughout the policy cycle

6. Giving people the right to demand a representative deliberative process

7. Requiring representative public deliberation before certain types of public decisions

8. Embedding representative deliberative processes in local strategic planning…(More)”.

Using social media data to ‘nowcast’ migration around the globe

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by RAND: “In recent years, unprecedented waves of refugees, economic migrants and people displaced by a variety of factors have made migration a high-priority policy issue around the world. Despite this, official migration statistics often come with a time lag and can fail to correctly capture the full extent of migration, leaving decision makers without timely and robust data to make informed policy decisions.

In a RAND-initiated, self-funded research study, we developed a methodological tool to compute near real-time migration estimates for European Union member states and the United States. The tool, underpinned by a Bayesian model, is capable of providing ‘nowcasts’ of migrant stocks by combining real-time data from the Facebook Marketing Application Programming Interface and data from official migration sources, such as Eurostat and the US Census Bureau.

These nowcasts can serve as an early-warning system to anticipate ‘shock events’ and rapid migration trends that would otherwise be captured too late or not at all by official migration data sources. The tool could therefore enable decision makers to make informed, evidence-based policy decisions in the rapidly changing social policy sphere of international migration.

The study also provides a useful example of how to combine ‘big data’ with traditional data to improve measurement and estimation which can be applied to other social and demographic phenomena…(More)”.

The state of AI in 2021

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

McKinsey Global Survey on AI: “..indicate that AI adoption continues to grow and that the benefits remain significant— though in the COVID-19 pandemic’s first year, they were felt more strongly on the cost-savings front than the top line. As AI’s use in business becomes more common, the tools and best practices to make the most out of AI have also become more sophisticated. We looked at the practices of the companies seeing the biggest earnings boost from AI and found that they are not only following more of both the core and advanced practices, including machine-learning operations (MLOps), that underpin success but also spending more efficiently on AI and taking more advantage of cloud technologies. Additionally, they are more likely than other organizations to engage in a range of activities to mitigate their AI-related risks—an area that continues to be a shortcoming for many companies’ AI efforts…(More)”.

Strengthening CRVS Systems to Improve Migration Policy: A Promising Innovation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Tawheeda Wahabzada and Deirdre Appel: “Migration is one of the most pressing issues of our time and innovation for migration policy can take on several different shapes to help solve challenges. It is seen through radical technological breakthrough such as biometric identifiers that completely transform the status quo as well as technological disruptions like mobile phone fund transforms that alter an existing process. There is also incremental innovation, or the gradual improvement of an existing process or institution even. Regardless of where the fall on the spectrum, their innovative applications are all relevant to migration policy.

Incremental innovation for civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems can greatly benefit migrants and the policymakers trying to help them. According to World Health Organization, a well-functioning CRVS system registers all births and deaths, issues birth and death certificates, and compiles and disseminates vital statistics, including cause of death information. It may also record marriages and divorces. Each of these services brings a world of crucial advantages. But despite the social and legal benefits for individuals, especially migrants, these systems remain underfunded and under functioning. More than 100 low and middle-income countries lack functional CRVS systems and about one-third of all births are not registered. This amounts to more than one billion people without a legal identity leaving them unable to prove who they are and creating serious barriers to access health, education, financial, and other social services.

Throughout countries in Africa, there are great differences in CRVS coverage, where birth coverage ranges from above 90 percent in some North African countries to under 50 percent across several countries in different regions; and with death registration having greater gaps with either no information or lower coverage rates. For countries with low functioning CRVS systems, potential migrants from these countries could face additional obstacles in obtaining birth certificates and proof of identification….(More)”. See also https://data4migration.org/blog/

Technology and democracy: a paradox wrapped in a contradiction inside an irony

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Stephan Lewandowsky and Peter Pomerantsev: “Democracy is in retreat around the globe. Many commentators have blamed the Internet for this development, whereas others have celebrated the Internet as a tool for liberation, with each opinion being buttressed by supporting evidence. We try to resolve this paradox by reviewing some of the pressure points that arise between human cognition and the online information architecture, and their fallout for the well-being of democracy. We focus on the role of the attention economy, which has monetised dwell time on platforms, and the role of algorithms that satisfy users’ presumed preferences. We further note the inherent asymmetry in power between platforms and users that arises from these pressure points, and we conclude by sketching out the principles of a new Internet with democratic credentials….(More)”.

The role of artificial intelligence in disinformation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Noémi Bontridder and Yves Poullet: “Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are playing an overarching role in the disinformation phenomenon our world is currently facing. Such systems boost the problem not only by increasing opportunities to create realistic AI-generated fake content, but also, and essentially, by facilitating the dissemination of disinformation to a targeted audience and at scale by malicious stakeholders. This situation entails multiple ethical and human rights concerns, in particular regarding human dignity, autonomy, democracy, and peace. In reaction, other AI systems are developed to detect and moderate disinformation online. Such systems do not escape from ethical and human rights concerns either, especially regarding freedom of expression and information. Having originally started with ascending co-regulation, the European Union (EU) is now heading toward descending co-regulation of the phenomenon. In particular, the Digital Services Act proposal provides for transparency obligations and external audit for very large online platforms’ recommender systems and content moderation. While with this proposal, the Commission focusses on the regulation of content considered as problematic, the EU Parliament and the EU Council call for enhancing access to trustworthy content. In light of our study, we stress that the disinformation problem is mainly caused by the business model of the web that is based on advertising revenues, and that adapting this model would reduce the problem considerably. We also observe that while AI systems are inappropriate to moderate disinformation content online, and even to detect such content, they may be more appropriate to counter the manipulation of the digital ecosystem….(More)”.

Leveraging Location and Mobility Data: Perils & Practices

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Suha Mohamed: “…Mobility data refers to information (often passively captured) that provides insights into the location and movement of a population – often through their interactions with digital mobility devices (like our smartphones) or transport services. Sources of mobility data, while diverse, include call detail records from telecom companies, GPS details from phones or vehicles, geotagged social media data or first or third-party software data. 

Geolocation, a subset of mobility data, may be useful in shaping responsive courses of action as it can be leveraged in granular form to understand hyperlocal realities or, when aggregated, regional, national or international patterns. However, privacy concerns arise from the sensitive or personal data that may be inferred from these records and the often opaque conditions around its usage. The ongoing deployment of contact tracing applications, which largely depend on individual-level location data, have demonstrated extensive potential for misuse and surveillance….

Despite the surveillance and privacy concerns around the use of contact tracing apps and mobility data, it is undeniable that this data has immense public value and has helped officials understand the development of the COVID-19 virus and map its variants and waves. It has also been used to track: areas of mobility that contribute towards increased transmission of the virus, adherence to social distancing norms and the effectiveness of measures like lockdowns or restrictions….(More)”.

Improving Consumer Welfare with Data Portability

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Daniel Castro: “Data protection laws and regulations can contain restrictive provisions, which limit data sharing and use, as well as permissive provisions, which increase it. Data portability is an example of a permissive provision that allows consumers to obtain a digital copy of their personal information from an online service and provide this information to other services. By carefully crafting data portability provisions, policymakers can enable consumers to obtain more value from their data, create new opportunities for businesses to innovate with data, and foster competition….(More)”.

What Biden’s Democracy Summit Is Missing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Hélène Landemore: “U.S. President Joe Biden is set to host a virtual summit this week for leaders from government, civil society, and the private sector to discuss the renewal of democracy. We can expect to see plenty of worthy yet predictable issues discussed: the threat of foreign agents interfering in elections, online disinformation, political polarization, and the temptation of populist and authoritarian alternatives. For the United States specifically, the role of money in politics, partisan gerrymandering, endless gridlock in Congress, and the recent voter suppression efforts targeting Black communities in the South should certainly be on the agenda.

All are important and relevant topics. Something more fundamental, however, is needed.

The clear erosion of our political institutions is just the latest evidence, if any more was needed, that it’s past time to discuss what democracy actually means—and why we should care about it. We have to question, moreover, whether the political systems we have are even worth restoring or if we should more substantively alter them, including through profound constitutional reforms.

Such a discussion has never been more vital. The systems in place today once represented a clear improvement on prior regimes—monarchies, theocracies, and other tyrannies—but it may be a mistake to call them adherents of democracy at all. The word roughly translates from its original Greek as “people’s power.” But the people writ large don’t hold power in these systems. Elites do. Consider that in the United States, according to a 2014 study by the political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, only the richest 10 percent of the population seems to have any causal effect on public policy. The other 90 percent, they argue, is left with “democracy by coincidence”—getting what they want only when they happen to want the same thing as the people calling the shots.

This discrepancy between reality—democracy by coincidence—and the ideal of people’s power is baked in as a result of fundamental design flaws dating back to the 18th century. The only way to rectify those mistakes is to rework the design—to fully reimagine what it means to be democratic. Tinkering at the edges won’t do….(More)”