OECD Report: “Governments can use artificial intelligence (AI) to design better policies and make better and more targeted decisions, enhance communication and engagement with citizens, and improve the speed and quality of public services. The Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region is seeking to leverage the immense potential of AI to promote the digital transformation of the public sector. The OECD, in collaboration with CAF, Development Bank of Latin America, prepared this report to help national governments in the LAC region understand the current regional baseline of activities and capacities for AI in the public sector; to identify specific approaches and actions they can take to enhance their ability to use this emerging technology for efficient, effective and responsive governments; and to collaborate across borders in pursuit of a regional vision for AI in the public sector. This report incorporates a stocktaking of each country’s strategies and commitments around AI in the public sector, including their alignment with the OECD AI Principles. It also includes an analysis of efforts to build key governance capacities and put in place critical enablers for AI in the public sector. It concludes with a series of recommendations for governments in the LAC region….(More)”.
Russian Asset Tracker
Project by OCCRP: “In the wake of Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine, governments around the world have imposed sanctions on many of Putin’s enablers. But they have learned to keep their wealth obscured, hiring an army of lawyers to hide it in secretive bank accounts and corporate structures that reach far offshore. Figuring out who owns what, and how much of it, is a tall order even for experienced police investigators.
That’s why we decided to follow the trail, tracking down as many of these assets as possible and compiling them in a database for the public to see and use. We started with a list of names of people who “actively participate in the oppression and corruption of Putin’s regime” drawn up by the Anti-Corruption Foundation, led by opposition leader Alexei Navalny. We’ll be expanding it soon to include other Russians sanctioned for corruption or their support of Putin.
We looked for land, mansions, companies, boats, planes, and anything else of value that could be tied through documentary evidence to Putin’s circle. Some of these assets have been reported before. Some are being revealed here for the first time. Some are still to be discovered: We’ll keep searching for more properties and yachts, adding more names, and updating this database regularly. If you are aware of anything we’ve missed, please let us know by filling out this form.
For now, we’ve uncovered over $17.5 billion in assets, and counting….(More)”.
Digitisation and Sovereignty in Humanitarian Space: Technologies, Territories and Tensions
Paper by Aaron Martin: “Debates are ongoing on the limits of – and possibilities for – sovereignty in the digital era. While most observers spotlight the implications of the Internet, cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence/machine learning and advanced data analytics for the sovereignty of nation states, a critical yet under-examined question concerns what digital innovations mean for authority, power and control in the humanitarian sphere in which different rules, values and expectations are thought to apply. This forum brings together practitioners and scholars to explore both conceptually and empirically how digitisation and datafication in aid are (re)shaping notions of sovereign power in humanitarian space. The forum’s contributors challenge established understandings of sovereignty in new forms of digital humanitarian action. Among other focus areas, the forum draws attention to how cyber dependencies threaten international humanitarian organisations’ purported digital sovereignty. It also contests the potential of technologies like blockchain to revolutionise notions of sovereignty in humanitarian assistance and hypothesises about the ineluctable parasitic qualities of humanitarian technology. The forum concludes by proposing that digital technologies deployed in migration contexts might be understood as ‘sovereignty experiments’. We invite readers from scholarly, policy and practitioner communities alike to engage closely with these critical perspectives on digitisation and sovereignty in humanitarian space….(More)”.
Trade in Knowledge: Intellectual Property, Trade and Development in a Transformed Global Economy
Book edited by Antony Taubman and Jayashree Watal: “Technological change has transformed the ways knowledge is developed and shared internationally. Accordingly, in the quarter-century since the WTO was established, and since its Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights came into force, both the knowledge dimension of trade and the functioning of the IP system have been radically transformed. The need to understand and respond to this change has placed knowledge at the centre of policy debates about economic and social development. Recognizing the need for modern analytical tools to support policymakers and analysts, this publication draws together contributions from a diverse range of scholars and analysts. Together, they offer a fresh understanding of what it means to trade in knowledge in today’s technological and commercial environment. The publication offers insights into the prospects for knowledge-based development and ideas for updated systems of governance that promote the creation and sharing of the benefits of knowledge….(More)”.
The Role and Impact of the Right of Petition as an Instrument of Participatory Democracy in the European Union
Paper by Alberto Alemanno: “Petitioning represents the oldest, most accessible, permanent and general-purpose participatory mechanism for any individual who intends to enter into contact with the EU institutional apparatus. As such, the right to petition provides EU citizens and residents with a simple means of contacting the European institutions with complaints or requests for action in relation to “orphan” or “dormant” issues that fail to get the attention and action of other European Parliament committees or EU institutions, in particular concerning problems related to the application of EU law at the national and local level. The right to petition plays different and complementary functions, from administrative and political oversight over the EU Commission and the Member States to legislative agenda-setting, while offering a unique mechanism of representation for individuals and minorities – such as non-EU citizens, migrants and minors – who currently lack such representation. There are, however, still some major structural issues over effectively ensuring the exercise of the right to petition and the full realisation of its multiple democratic functions within the current EU participatory infrastructure. It does so at time the EU undergoes a major democratic exercise – the Conference on the Future of Europe – that, for the first time since 2007, may lead to institutional reform and put to test democratic innovations, such as citizens’ assemblies at the transnational level. Against this background, this study identifies and systematises the EU petition system’s major flaws – focusing on its design, accountability and actual practice – in order to provide a set of recommendations on how to strengthen the role and impact of the right of petition as the privileged instrument of EU participatory democracy…(More)”.
When Launching a Collaboration, Keep It Agile
Essay by the Stakeholder Alignment Collaborative: “Conventional wisdom holds that large-scale societal challenges require large-scale responses. By contrast, we argue that progress on major societal challenges can and often should begin with small, agile initiatives—minimum viable consortia (MVC)—that learn and adapt as they build the scaffolding for large-scale change. MVCs can address societal challenges by overcoming institutional inertia, opposition, capability gaps, and other barriers because they require less energy for activation, reveal dead ends early on, and can more easily adjust and adapt over time.
Large-scale societal challenges abound, and organizations and institutions are increasingly looking for ways to deal with them. For example, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has identified 14 Grand Societal Challenges for “sustaining civilization’s continuing advancement while still improving the quality of life” in the 21st century. They include making solar energy economical, developing carbon sequestration methods, advancing health informatics, and securing cyberspace. The United Nations has set 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to achieve by 2030 for a better future for humanity. They include everything from eliminating hunger to reducing inequality.
Tackling such universal goals requires large-scale cooperation, because existing organizations and institutions simply do not have the ability to resolve these challenges independently. Further note that the NAE’s announcement of the challenges stated that “governmental and institutional, political and economic, and personal and social barriers will repeatedly arise to impede the pursuit of solutions to problems.” The United Nations included two enabling SDGs: “peace, justice, and strong institutions” and “partnership for the goals.” The question is how to bring such large-scale partnerships and institutional change into existence.
We are members of the Stakeholder Alignment Collaborative, a research consortium of scholars at different career stages, spanning multiple fields and disciplines. We study collaboration collaboratively and maintain a very flat structure. We have published on multistakeholder consortia associated with science1 and provided leadership and facilitation for the launch and sustainment of many of these consortia. Based on our research into the problem of developing large-scale, multistakeholder partnerships, we believe that MVCs provide an answer.
MVCs are less vulnerable to the many barriers to large-scale solutions, better able to forge partnerships and a more agile framework for making needed adjustments. To demonstrate these points, we focus on examples of MVCs in the domain of scientific research data and computing infrastructure. Research data are essential for virtually all societal challenges, and an upsurge of multistakeholder consortia has occurred in this domain. But the MVC concept is not limited to these challenges, nor to digitally oriented settings. We have chosen this sphere because it offers a diversity of MVC examples for illustration….(More)”. (See also “The Potential and Practice of Data Collaboratives for Migration“).
Theory of Change Workbook: A Step-by-Step Process for Developing or Strengthening Theories of Change
USAID Learning Lab: “While over time theories of change have become synonymous with simple if/then statements, a strong theory of change should actually be a much more detailed, context-specific articulation of how we *theorize* change will happen under a program. Theories of change should articulate:
- Outcomes: What is the change we are trying to achieve?
- Entry points: Where is there momentum to create that change?
- Interventions: How will we achieve the change?
- Assumptions: Why do we think this will work?
This workbook helps stakeholders work through the process of developing strong theories of change that answers the above questions.
A strong theory of change process leads to stronger theory of change products, which include:
- the theory of change narrative: a 1-3 page description of the context, entry points within the context to enable change to happen, ultimate outcomes that will result from interventions, and assumptions that must hold for the theory of change to work and
- a logic model: a visual representation of the theory of change narrative…(More)”
Crypto’s “Freedom to Transact” May Actually Threaten Human Rights
Essay by Elizabeth M. Renieris: “What began as a small convoy of truck drivers protesting COVID-19 vaccine mandates in late January quickly grew to a large-scale protest blocking nearly $350 million a day in trade and crippling the transport of vital supplies across the US-Canada border for more than three weeks. After struggling to disband the protestors, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time since its passage in 1988, compelling financial institutions to freeze the assets of protesters and urging local cryptocurrency exchanges not to process transactions from 253 bitcoin addresses suspected of supporting their efforts. Cryptocurrency promoters responded with outrage, siding with truckers, and calling Trudeau’s actions authoritarian, even comparing the Canadian prime minister to Hitler.
Days later, Russian President Vladimir Putin plunged the world into geopolitical instability with a full-scale unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine, resulting in mounting civilian causalities and sparking the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War. Fearing the ramifications of a military response, governments around the world imposed an array of targeted financial sanctions, freezing and seizing the assets of Russian politicians and oligarchs, blocking transactions with Russia’s central bank and removing others from the SWIFT international payments network. Companies, including legacy payment processors Mastercard and Visa and tech platforms Apple Pay and Google Pay, followed with similar measures. However, as with the Canadian truckers, cryptocurrency exchanges have resisted similar steps, even when implored by Ukrainian officials, with one CEO remarking that sanctioning Russian users would “fly in the face of the reason crypto exists” — namely, for the “freedom to transact.”
As recently summarized by one journalist, the freedom to transact is a core tenet of crypto-libertarian ideology whereby “the individual is sovereign, and the state has no authority to limit what a person can do with their assets, digital or otherwise,” and money is magically apolitical. An extension of the same school of thought that elevates economic freedom above all other social, cultural and political interests, the freedom to transact is increasingly invoked by cryptocurrency promoters and right-wing politicians, who share similar ideological leanings, in response to measures by governments and private sector actors to impose political consequences through economic means, including in situations such as the Canadian truckers’ blockade or Russia’s recent assault on Ukraine…(More)”.
Mapping of exposed water tanks and swimming pools based on aerial images can help control dengue
Press Release by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo: “Brazilian researchers have developed a computer program that locates swimming pools and rooftop water tanks in aerial photographs with the aid of artificial intelligence to help identify areas vulnerable to infestation by Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that transmits dengue, zika, chikungunya and yellow fever.
The innovation, which can also be used as a public policy tool for dynamic socio-economic mapping of urban areas, resulted from research and development work by professionals at the University of São Paulo (USP), the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and the São Paulo State Department of Health’s Endemic Control Superintendence (SUCEN), as part of a project supported by FAPESP. An article about it is published in the journal PLOS ONE.
“Our work initially consisted of creating a model based on aerial images and computer science to detect water tanks and pools, and to use them as a socio-economic indicator,” said Francisco Chiaravalloti Neto, last author of the article. He is a professor in the Epidemiology Department at USP’s School of Public Health (FSP), with a first degree in engineering.
As the article notes, previous research had already shown that dengue tends to be most prevalent in deprived urban areas, so that prevention of dengue, zika and other diseases transmitted by the mosquito can be made considerably more effective by use of a relatively dynamic socio-economic mapping model, especially given the long interval between population censuses in Brazil (ten years or more).
“This is one of the first steps in a broader project,” Chiaravalloti Neto said. Among other aims, he and his team plan to detect other elements of the images and quantify real infestation rates in specific areas so as to be able to refine and validate the model.
“We want to create a flow chart that can be used in different cities to pinpoint at-risk areas without the need for inspectors to call on houses, buildings and other breeding sites, as this is time-consuming and a waste of the taxpayer’s money,” he added…(More)”.
An ad hoc army of volunteers assembles to help Ukrainian refugees
Eric Westervelt at NPR: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sparked the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II as the U.N. refugee agency says more than 1.5 million Ukrainians have fled their homeland in just the first 12 days of fighting.
The bulk of the refugees — more than 1 million — have left Ukraine through one of eight border crossings in Poland. At more than 20 reception centers along the Polish border, NGOs, charities and the U.N. refugee agency are being aided by an ad hoc army of volunteers from Poland and across Europe who are playing a vital support role serving food, directing donations and helping to drive refugees to friends and family across the continent.
“This is not job for me. If I can help, I can help,” says Krstaps Naymanes, a deliveryman from Liepaja, Latvia, who hit pause on his day job to aid Ukrainians. With friends and a charity, he helped organize cars, RVs and a large bus to take refugees anywhere in Latvia, where others on the ground there are ready to help.”We have flats, houses, food, everything,” he says. “Don’t charge, like, money for this. Peoples want help, and can help. This time need to do! That’s it.”…(More)”.