Digital Government Model

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by USAID: “The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the importance of digital government processes and tools. Governments with digital systems, processes, and infrastructure in place were able to quickly scale emergency response assistance, communications, and payments. At the same time, the pandemic accelerated many risks associated with digital tools, such as mis- and disinformation, surveillance, and the exploitation of personal data.

USAID and development partners are increasingly supporting countries in the process of adopting technologies to create public value– broadly referred to as digital government–while mitigating and avoiding risks. The Digital Government Model provides a basis for establishing a shared understanding and language on the core components of digital government, including the contextual considerations and foundational elements that influence the success of digital government investments…(More)”

Beyond Data: Human Rights, Ethical and Social Impact Assessment in AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Open access book by Alessandro Mantelero: “…focuses on the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on individuals and society from a legal perspective, providing a comprehensive risk-based methodological framework to address it. Building on the limitations of data protection in dealing with the challenges of AI, the author proposes an integrated approach to risk assessment that focuses on human rights and encompasses contextual social and ethical values.

The core of the analysis concerns the assessment methodology and the role of experts in steering the design of AI products and services by business and public bodies in the direction of human rights and societal values.

Taking into account the ongoing debate on AI regulation, the proposed assessment model also bridges the gap between risk-based provisions and their real-world implementation.

The central focus of the book on human rights and societal values in AI and the proposed solutions will make it of interest to legal scholars, AI developers and providers, policy makers and regulators….(More)”.

Democracy: by design and on the move

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Erica Dorn and Federico Vaz: “We live in an era of hyper-mobility, marked by the mass movement of people virtually, trans-locally, and globally. More people are on the move than ever before in human history. Today, dispersed across the globe, there are between 272 million and one billion migrants. More than 15 million people worldwide live without nationality, and an even larger number of people live undocumented.

Much like James C. Scott, it can be tempting to think that the state has always seemed to be the enemy of ‘people who move around‘. For the kinetic elite, borders are thresholds of access. Meanwhile, for a growing number of displaced people, borders represent inhumane exclusion.

More than 15 million people worldwide live without nationality, and an even larger number of people live undocumented

Current democratic structures designed to be representative of the people cannot adapt to the increasing number of people on the move. As a result, an overwhelming gap exists between the rapidly changing reality of democracies made up of ineligible voters, and the need for inclusive participation in the democratic process.

In the US, several cities, including New York, have taken measures to pass non-citizen voting policies. These promote the inclusion of more residents in local elections. However, given generally low voter turnout, it will take more than voting rights to create more inclusive democracies…(More)”.

The Political Impact of the Sustainable Development Goals: Transforming Governance Through Global Goals?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Frank Biermann, Thomas Hickmann, and Carole-Anne Sénit: “Written by an international team of over sixty experts and drawing on over three thousand scientific studies, this is the first comprehensive global assessment of the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals, which were launched by the United Nations in 2015. It explores in detail the political steering effects of the Sustainable Development Goals on the UN system and the policies of countries in the Global North and Global South; on institutional integration and policy coherence, and on the ecological integrity and inclusiveness of sustainability policies worldwide. This book is a key resource for scholars, policymakers and activists concerned with the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, and those working in political science, international relations and environmental studies….(More)”.

Omnivorous Analysis

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Anne Lee Steele: “Satellite imagery has woven itself into the fabric of the internet. We recognize these crisp, high-definition, bird’s-eye-view images most commonly from Google Earth—but we employ them in much more besides: from reporting on stuck shipping containers to getting directions to a friend’s house, to tracking forest fires in real time and scrolling through real estate listings. Given their ever-widening range of commercial, consumer, and civic uses, it won’t surprise most people to hear that the industry that produces them (also known as Earth Observation, or EO) is growing at an exponential rate, and is only expected to expand further in the coming years.

Yet despite the prominence of satellite imagery in the geographical imagination of the internet, the imperatives of the industry are much less clear. The corporations that produce them are much less well known, and the military interests that back them remain as murky as ever. The highly visible commercial side of the industry is still deeply intertwined with its classified counterpart, and two companies, Maxar and Planet, have emerged to dominate the industry—supporting civilian functions with one hand, while supplying US defense needs with the other. 

Indeed, the ubiquity of commercial satellite imagery gives nearly anyone godlike powers of reconnaissance and surveillance not that far removed from those enjoyed by militaries and intelligence agencies—a fact that causes no small amount of anxiety within the Pentagon. The pervasiveness and power of their imagery compels us to ask: Where do they come from? And how are they being put to use?…(More)”.

Imagining Governance for Emerging Technologies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Debra J.H. Mathews, Rachel Fabi and Anaeze C. Offodile: “…How should such technologies be regulated and governed? It is increasingly clear that past governance structures and strategies are not up to the task. What these technologies require is a new governance approach that accounts for their interdisciplinary impacts and potential for both good and ill at both the individual and societal level. 

To help lay the groundwork for a novel governance framework that will enable policymakers to better understand these technologies’ cross-sectoral footprint and anticipate and address the social, legal, ethical, and governance issues they raise, our team worked under the auspices of the National Academy of Medicine’s Committee on Emerging Science, Technology, and Innovation in health and medicine (CESTI) to develop an analytical approach to technology impacts and governance. The approach is grounded in detailed case studies—including the vignettes about Robyn and Liam—which have informed the development of a set of guiding principles (see sidebar).

Based on careful analysis of past governance, these case studies also contain a plausible vision of what might happen in the future. They illuminate ethical issues and help reveal governance tools and choices that could be crucial to delivering social benefits and reducing or avoiding harms. We believe that the approach taken by the committee will be widely applicable to considering the governance of emerging health technologies. Our methodology and process, as we describe here, may also be useful to a range of stakeholders involved in governance issues like these…(More)”.

How can interoperability stimulate the use of digital public services? An analysis of national interoperability frameworks and e-Government in the European Union

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Alexandra Campmas, Nadina Iacob and Felice Simonelli: “This article explores the role of interoperability in the development of digital public services in Europe, analyzing the effects of an European Union (EU)-level initiative (the European interoperability framework, EIF) and the development of e-Government services on how citizens interact online with public administrations. The EIF is a common EU framework providing guidance on public sector interoperability. EU countries are not mandated to follow the EIF, but they are encouraged to take up its guidance in their respective national interoperability frameworks (NIFs). Against this background, this article tests two hypotheses: (a) the introduction of NIFs facilitates the online interaction between citizens and public administrations and (b) better e-Government services encourage citizens to interact online with public administrations. Both hypotheses are confirmed by a panel data analysis covering 26 European countries over the period 2012–2019. The analysis relies on a dummy variable reflecting the adoption of NIFs, built by carefully examining official documents of the countries in the scope of the analysis. Based on the empirical results, this article puts forward two main policy recommendations. First, efforts to improve e-Government services across Europe should be intensified in order to support the overarching digital agenda of the EU and increase benefits for European citizens. Second, interoperability should become a central element when designing new digital public services. Therefore, the European Commission could foster a common approach to interoperability of digital public services across the EU by strengthening the governance of interoperability initiatives and encouraging the adoption of specific interoperability requirements…(More)”.

A Future Built on Data: Data Strategies, Competitive Advantage and Trust

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Susan Ariel Aaronson: “In the twenty-first century, data became the subject of national strategy. This paper examines these visions and strategies to better understand what policy makers hope to achieve. Data is different from other inputs: it is plentiful, easy to use and can be utilized and shared by many different people without being used up. Moreover, data can be simultaneously a commercial asset and a public good. Various types of data can be analyzed to create new products and services or to mitigate complex “wicked” problems that transcend generations and nations (a public good function). However, an economy built on data analysis also brings problems — firms and governments can manipulate or misuse personal data, and in so doing undermine human autonomy and human rights. Given the complicated nature of data and its various types (for example, personal, proprietary, public, and so on), a growing number of governments have decided to outline how they see data’s role in the economy and polity. While it is too early to evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies, policy makers increasingly recognize that if they want to build their country’s future on data, they must also focus on trust….(More)”.

Dynamic World

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About: “The real world is as dynamic as the people and natural processes that shape it. Dynamic World is a near realtime 10m resolution global land use land cover dataset, produced using deep learning, freely available and openly licensed. It is the result of a partnership between Google and the World Resources Institute, to produce a dynamic dataset of the physical material on the surface of the Earth. Dynamic World is intended to be used as a data product for users to add custom rules with which to assign final class values, producing derivative land cover maps.

Key innovations of Dynamic World

  1. Near realtime data. Over 5000 Dynamic World image are produced every day, whereas traditional approaches to building land cover data can take months or years to produce. As a result of leveraging a novel deep learning approach, based on Sentinel-2 Top of Atmosphere, Dynamic World offers global land cover updating every 2-5 days depending on location.
  2. Per-pixel probabilities across 9 land cover classes. A major benefit of an AI-powered approach is the model looks at an incoming Sentinel-2 satellite image and, for every pixel in the image, estimates the degree of tree cover, how built up a particular area is, or snow coverage if there’s been a recent snowstorm, for example.
  3. Ten meter resolution. As a result of the European Commission’s Copernicus Programme making European Space Agency Sentinel data freely and openly available, products like Dynamic World are able to offer 10m resolution land cover data. This is important because quantifying data in higher resolution produces more accurate results for what’s really on the surface of the Earth…(More)”.

Global Struggle Over AI Surveillance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the National Endowment for Democracy: “From cameras that identify the faces of passersby to algorithms that keep tabs on public sentiment online, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools are opening new frontiers in state surveillance around the world. Law enforcement, national security, criminal justice, and border management organizations in every region are relying on these technologies—which use statistical pattern recognition, machine learning, and big data analytics—to monitor citizens.

What are the governance implications of these enhanced surveillance capabilities?

This report explores the challenge of safeguarding democratic principles and processes as AI technologies enable governments to collect, process, and integrate unprecedented quantities of data about the online and offline activities of individual citizens. Three complementary essays examine the spread of AI surveillance systems, their impact, and the transnational struggle to erect guardrails that uphold democratic values.

In the lead essay, Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, assesses the global spread of AI surveillance tools and ongoing efforts at the local, national, and multilateral levels to set rules for their design, deployment, and use. It gives particular attention to the dynamics in young or fragile democracies and hybrid regimes, where checks on surveillance powers may be weakened but civil society still has space to investigate and challenge surveillance deployments.

Two case studies provide more granular depictions of how civil society can influence this norm-shaping process: In the first, Eduardo Ferreyra of Argentina’s Asociación por los Derechos Civiles discusses strategies for overcoming common obstacles to research and debate on surveillance systems. In the second, Danilo Krivokapic of Serbia’s SHARE Foundation describes how his organization drew national and global attention to the deployment of Huawei smart cameras in Belgrade…(More)”.