Book by Allison Schnable: “Amateurs without Borders examines the rise of new actors in the international development world: volunteer-driven grassroots international nongovernmental organizations. These small aid organizations, now ten thousand strong, sidestep the world of professionalized development aid by launching projects built around personal relationships and the skills of volunteers. This book draws on fieldwork in the United States and Africa, web data, and IRS records to offer the first large-scale systematic study of these groups. Amateurs without Borders investigates the aspirations and limits of personal compassion on a global scale….(More)”.
Privacy and Data Protection in Academia
Report by IAPP: “Today, demand for qualified privacy professionals is surging. Soon, societal, business and government needs for practitioners with expertise in the legal, technical and business underpinnings of data protection could far outstrip supply. To fill this gap, universities around the world are adding privacy curricula in their law, business and computer science schools. The IAPP’s Westin Research Center has catalogued these programs with the aim of promoting, catalyzing and supporting academia’s growing efforts to build an on-ramp to the privacy profession.
The information presented in our inaugural issue of “Privacy and Data Protection in Academia, A Global Guide to Curricula” represents the results of our publicly available survey. The programs included voluntarily completed the survey. The IAPP then organized the information provided and the designated contact at each institution verified the accuracy of the information presented.
This is not a comprehensive list of colleges and universities offering privacy and data protection related curricula. We encourage higher education institutions interested in being included to complete the survey as the IAPP will periodically publish updates….(More)”.
Social-Tech Entrepreneurs: Building Blocks of a New Social Economy
Article by Mario Calderini, Veronica Chiodo, Francesco Gerli & Giulio Pasi: “Is it possible to create a sustainable, human-centric, resilient economy that achieves diverse objectives—including growth, inclusion, and equity? Could industry provide prosperity beyond jobs and economic growth, by adopting societal well-being as a compass to inform the production of goods and services?
The policy brief “Industry 5.0,” recently released by the European Commission, seems to reply positively. It makes the case for conceiving economic growth as a means to inclusive prosperity. It is also an invitation to rethink the role of industry in society, and reprioritize policy targets and tools
The following reflection, based on insights gathered from empirical research, is a first attempt to elaborate on how we might achieve this rethinking, and aims to contribute to the social economy debate in Europe and beyond.
A New Entrepreneurial Genre
A new entrepreneurial genre forged by the values of social entrepreneurship and fueled by technological opportunities is emerging, and it is well-poised to mend the economic and social wounds inflicted by both COVID-19 and the unexpected consequences of the early knowledge economy—an economy built around ideas and intellectual capital, and driven by diffused creativity, technology, and innovation.
We believe this genre, which we call social-tech entrepreneurship, is important to inaugurating a new generation of place-based, innovation-driven development policies inspired by a more inclusive idea of growth—though under the condition that industrial and innovation policies include it in their frame of reference.
This is partly because social innovation has undergone a complex transformation in recent years. It has seen a hybridization of social and commercial objectives and, as a direct consequence, new forms of management that support organizational missions that blend the two. Today, a more recent trend, reinforced by the pandemic, might push this transformation further: the idea that technologies—particularly those commoditized in the digital and software domains—offer a unique opportunity to solve societal challenges at scale.
Social-tech entrepreneurship differs from the work of high-tech companies in that, as researchers Geoffrey Desa and Suresh Kotha explain, it specifically aims to “develop and deploy technology-driven solutions to address social needs.” A social-tech entrepreneur also leverages technology not just to make parts of their operations more efficient, but to prompt a disruptive change in the way a specific social problem is addressed—and in a way that safeguards economic sustainability. In other words, they attempt to satisfy a social need through technological innovation in a financially sustainable manner. …(More)”.
Help us identify how data can make food healthier for us and the environment
The GovLab: “To make food production, distribution, and consumption healthier for people, animals, and the environment, we need to redesign today’s food systems. Data and data science can help us develop sustainable solutions — but only if we manage to define those questions that matter.
Globally, we are witnessing the damage that unsustainable farming practices have caused on the environment. At the same time, climate change is making our food systems more fragile, while the global population continues to rapidly increase. To feed everyone, we need to become more sustainable in our approach to producing, consuming, and disposing of food.
Policymakers and stakeholders need to work together to reimagine food systems and collectively make them more resilient, healthy, and inclusive.
Data will be integral to understanding where failures and vulnerabilities exist and what methods are needed to rectify them. Yet, the insights generated from data are only as good as the questions they seek to answer. To become smarter about current and future food systems using data, we need to ask the right questions first.
That’s where The 100 Questions Initiative comes in. It starts from the premise that to leverage data in a responsible and effective manner, data initiatives should be driven by demand, not supply. Working with a global cohort of experts, The 100 Questions seeks to map the most pressing and potentially impactful questions that data and data science can answer.
Today the Barilla Foundation, the Center for European Policy Studies, and The Governance Lab at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, are announcing the launch of the Food Systems Sustainability domain of The 100 Questions. We seek to identify the 10 most important questions that need to be answered to make food systems more sustainable…(More)”.
Collective data rights can stop big tech from obliterating privacy
Article by Martin Tisne: “…There are two parallel approaches that should be pursued to protect the public.
One is better use of class or group actions, otherwise known as collective redress actions. Historically, these have been limited in Europe, but in November 2020 the European parliament passed a measure that requires all 27 EU member states to implement measures allowing for collective redress actions across the region. Compared with the US, the EU has stronger laws protecting consumer data and promoting competition, so class or group action lawsuits in Europe can be a powerful tool for lawyers and activists to force big tech companies to change their behavior even in cases where the per-person damages would be very low.
Class action lawsuits have most often been used in the US to seek financial damages, but they can also be used to force changes in policy and practice. They can work hand in hand with campaigns to change public opinion, especially in consumer cases (for example, by forcing Big Tobacco to admit to the link between smoking and cancer, or by paving the way for car seatbelt laws). They are powerful tools when there are thousands, if not millions, of similar individual harms, which add up to help prove causation. Part of the problem is getting the right information to sue in the first place. Government efforts, like a lawsuit brought against Facebook in December by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and a group of 46 states, are crucial. As the tech journalist Gilad Edelman puts it, “According to the lawsuits, the erosion of user privacy over time is a form of consumer harm—a social network that protects user data less is an inferior product—that tips Facebook from a mere monopoly to an illegal one.” In the US, as the New York Times recently reported, private lawsuits, including class actions, often “lean on evidence unearthed by the government investigations.” In the EU, however, it’s the other way around: private lawsuits can open up the possibility of regulatory action, which is constrained by the gap between EU-wide laws and national regulators.
Which brings us to the second approach: a little-known 2016 French law called the Digital Republic Bill. The Digital Republic Bill is one of the few modern laws focused on automated decision making. The law currently applies only to administrative decisions taken by public-sector algorithmic systems. But it provides a sketch for what future laws could look like. It says that the source code behind such systems must be made available to the public. Anyone can request that code.
Importantly, the law enables advocacy organizations to request information on the functioning of an algorithm and the source code behind it even if they don’t represent a specific individual or claimant who is allegedly harmed. The need to find a “perfect plaintiff” who can prove harm in order to file a suit makes it very difficult to tackle the systemic issues that cause collective data harms. Laure Lucchesi, the director of Etalab, a French government office in charge of overseeing the bill, says that the law’s focus on algorithmic accountability was ahead of its time. Other laws, like the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), focus too heavily on individual consent and privacy. But both the data and the algorithms need to be regulated…(More)”
A fair data economy is built upon collaboration
Report by Heli Parikka, Tiina Härkönen and Jaana Sinipuro: “For a human-driven and fair data economy to work, it must be based on three important and interconnected aspects: regulation based on ethical values; technology; and new kinds of business models. With a human-driven approach, individual and social interests determine the business conditions and data is used to benefit individuals and society.
When developing a fair data economy, the aim has been to use existing technologies, operating models and concepts across the boundaries between different sectors. The goal is to enable not only new data-based business but also easier digital everyday life that is based on the more efficient and personal management of data. The human-driven approach is closely linked to the MyData concept.
At the beginning of the IHAN project, there were very few easy-to-use, individually tailored digital services. For example, the most significant data-based consumer services were designed on the basis of the needs of large corporations. To create demand, prevailing mindsets had to be changed and decision-makers needed to be encouraged to change direction, companies had to find new business with new business models and individuals had to be persuaded to demand change.
The terms and frameworks of the platform and data economies needed further clarification for the development of a fair data economy. We sought out examples from other sectors and found that, in addition to “human-driven”, another defining concept that emerged was “fair”, with fairness defined as a key goal in the IHAN project. A fair model also takes financial aspects into account and recognises the significance of companies and new services as a source of well-being.
Why did Sitra want to tackle this challenge to begin with? What had thus far been available to people was an unfair data economy model, which needed to be changed. The data economy direction had been defined by a handful of global companies, whose business models are based on collecting and managing data on their own platforms and on their own terms. There was a need to develop an alternative, a European data economy model.
One of the tasks of the future fund is to foresee future trends, the fair and human-driven use of data being one of them. The objective was to approach the theme in a pluralistic manner from the perspectives of different participants in society. Sitra’s unique position as an independent future fund made it possible to launch the project.
A fair data economy has become one of Sitra’s strategic spearheads and a new theme is being prepared at the time of the writing of this publication. The lessons learned and tools created so far will be moved under that theme and developed further, making them available to everyone who needs them….(More)“.
Did the GDPR increase trust in data collectors? Evidence from observational and experimental data
Paper by Paul C. Bauer, Frederic Gerdon, Florian Keusch, Frauke Kreuter & David Vannette: “In the wake of the digital revolution and connected technologies, societies store an ever-increasing amount of data on humans, their preferences, and behavior. These modern technologies create a trust challenge, insofar as individuals have to trust data collectors such as private organizations, government institutions, and researchers that their data is not misused. Privacy regulations should increase trust because they provide laws that increase transparency and allow for punishment in cases in which the trustee violates trust. The introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018 – a wide-reaching regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy that covers millions of individuals in Europe – provides a unique setting to study the impact of privacy regulation on trust in data collectors. We collected survey panel data in Germany around the implementation date and ran a survey experiment with a GDPR information treatment. Our observational and experimental evidence does not support the hypothesis that the GDPR has positively affected trust. This finding and our discussion of the underlying reasons are relevant for the wider research field of trust, privacy, and big data….(More)”
A growing number of governments hope to clone America’s DARPA
The Economist: “Using messenger RNA to make vaccines was an unproven idea. But if it worked, the technique would revolutionise medicine, not least by providing protection against infectious diseases and biological weapons. So in 2013 America’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) gambled. It awarded a small, new firm called Moderna $25m to develop the idea. Eight years, and more than 175m doses later, Moderna’s covid-19 vaccine sits on the list of innovations for which DARPA can claim at least partial credit, alongside weather satellites, GPS, drones, stealth technology, voice interfaces, the personal computer and the internet.
It is the agency that shaped the modern world, and this success has spurred imitators. In America there are ARPAs for homeland security, intelligence and energy, as well as the original defence one. President Joe Biden has asked Congress for $6.5bn to set up a health version, which will, the president vows, “end cancer as we know it”. His administration also has plans for another, to tackle climate change. Germany has recently established two such agencies: one civilian (the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, or SPRIN-D) and another military (the Cybersecurity Innovation Agency). Japan’s version is called Moonshot R&D. In Britain, a bill for an Advanced Research and Invention Agency—often referred to as UK ARPA—is making its way through parliament….(More)”.
Data-driven environmental decision-making and action in armed conflict
Essay by Wim Zwijnenburg: “Our understanding of how severely armed conflicts have impacted natural resources, eco-systems, biodiversity and long-term implications on climate has massively improved over the last decade. Without a doubt, cataclysmic events such as the 1991 Gulf War oil fires contributed to raising awareness on the conflict-environment nexus, and the images of burning wells are engraved into our collective mind. But another more recent, under-examined yet major contributor to this growing cognizance is the digital revolution, which has provided us with a wealth of data and information from conflict-affected countries quickly made available through the internet. With just a few clicks, anyone with a computer or smartphone and a Wi-Fi connection can follow, often in near-real time, events shared through social media in warzones or satellite imagery showing what is unfolding on the ground.
These developments have significantly deepened our understanding of how military activities, both historically and in current conflicts, contribute to environmental damage and can impact the lives and livelihoods of civilians. Geospatial analysis through earth observation (EO) is now widely used to document international humanitarian law (IHL) violations, improve humanitarian response and inform post-conflict assessments.
These new insights on conflict-environment dynamics have driven humanitarian, military and political responses. The latter are essential for the protection of the environment in armed conflict: with knowledge and understanding also comes a responsibility to prevent, mitigate and minimize environmental damage, in line with existing international obligations. Of particular relevance, under international humanitarian law, militaries must take into account incidental environmental damage that is reasonably foreseeable based on an assessment of information from all sources available to them at the relevant time (ICRC Guidelines on the Protection of the Environment, Rule 7; Customary IHL Rule 43). Excessive harm is prohibited, and all feasible precautions must be taken to reduce incidental damage (Guidelines Rule 8, Customary IHL Rule 44).
How do we ensure that the data-driven strides forward in understanding conflict-driven environmental damage translate into proper military training and decision-making, humanitarian response and reconstruction efforts? How can this influence behaviour change and improve accountability for military actions and targeting decisions?…(More)”.
Innovating Public Service Delivery Through Crowdsourcing: What Role for The Third Sector and Civil Society?
Paper by Nathalie Colasanti, Chiara Fantauzzi, and Rocco Frondizi: “The purpose of this paper is to study the involvement of the “crowd” in designing innovative public policies, and the possibility for the Third Sector to play a role in this process. To do so, we want to answer the following research question: what is the extent to which crowdsourcing is adopted in financing and delivering public services within New Public Governance arenas? In order to answer it, we employ the following approach. First of all, we will set public innovation into the context of New Public Governance; secondly, we will analyse definitions for crowdsourcing, and thirdly, we will provide an overview and crisis of crowdsourcing examples to demonstrate their significance as novel forms of public service finance and delivery. This approach evidences the potential and the outcomes of applying crowdsourcing in the public sector, and indicates the role of the actors involved: the adoption of a leadership role by the Third Sector could facilitate crowdsourcing processes. The outcome of the application of crowdsourcing in the public sector is a greater involvement of the civil society in its relationship with the State….(More)”.