international

Is Open Data Working for Women in Africa?

Curated on July 15, 2018May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Web Foundation: “Open data has the potential to change politics, economies and societies for the better by giving people more opportunities to engage in the decisions that affect their lives. But to reach the full potential of open data, it must be available to and used by all. Yet, across the globe — and in Africa in particular — there is a significant data gap.

This report — Is open data working for women in Africa — maps the current state of open data for women across Africa, with insights from country-specific research in Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda and South Africa with additional data from a survey of experts in 12 countries across the continent.

Our findings show that, despite the potential for open data to empower people, it has so far changed little for women living in Africa.

Key findings

There is a closed data culture in Africa — Most countries lack an open culture and have legislation and processes that are not gender-responsive. Institutional resistance to disclosing data means few countries have open data policies and initiatives at the national level. In addition, gender equality legislation and policies are incomplete and failing to reduce gender inequalities. And overall, Africa lacks the cross-organisational collaboration needed to strengthen the open data movement.
There are barriers preventing women from using the data that is available — Cultural and social realities create additional challenges for women to engage with data and participate in the technology sector. 1GB of mobile data in Africa costs, on average, 10% of average monthly income. This high cost keeps women, who generally earn less than men, offline. Moreover, time poverty, the gender pay gap and unpaid labour create economic obstacles for women to engage with digital technology.
Key datasets to support the advocacy objectives of women’s groups are missing — Data on budget, health and crime are largely absent as open data. Nearly all datasets in sub-Saharan Africa (373 out of 375) are closed, and sex-disaggregated data, when available online, is often not published as open data. There are few open data policies to support opening up of key datasets and even when they do exist, they largely remain in draft form. With little investment in open data initiatives, good data management practices or for implementing Right To Information (RTI) reforms, improvement is unlikely.
There is no strong base of research on women’s access and use of open data — There is lack of funding, little collaboration and few open data champions. Women’s groups, digital rights groups and gender experts rarely collaborate on open data and gender issues. To overcome this barrier, multi-stakeholder collaborations are essential to develop effective solutions….(More)”.

Reduced‐Boundary Governance: The Advantages of Working Together

Curated on July 2, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction by Jeremy L. Hall and R. Paul Battaglio of Special Issue of the Public Administration Review: “Collaboration, cooperation, and coproduction are all approaches that reflect the realization that creative solutions look beyond traditional, organizational, and structural boundaries to overcome various capacity deficiencies while working toward shared goals….One of the factors complicating measurement and analysis in multistakeholder approaches to solving problems and delivering services is the inherently intergovernmental and intersectoral nature of the work. Performance now depends on accumulated capacity across organizations, including a special form of capacity—the ability to work together collaboratively. Such activity within a government has been referred to as “whole of government” approaches or “joined up government” (Christensen and Lægreid 2007). We have terms for work across levels of government (intergovernmental relations) and between government and the public and private sectors (intersectoral relations), but on the whole, the creative, collaborative, and interactive activities in which governments are involved today transcend even these neat categories and classifications. We might call this phenomenon reduced‐boundary governance. Moving between levels of government or between sectors often changes the variables that are available for analysis, or at least introduces validity issues associated with differences in measurement and estimation (see Brandsen and Honingh 2016; Nabatchi, Sancino, and Sicilia 2017). Sometimes data are not available at all. And, of course, collaboration or pooling of resources typically occurs in an ad hoc or one‐off basis that is limited to a single problem, a single program, or a single defined period of time, further complicating study and knowledge accumulation.

Increasingly, public service is accomplished together rather than alone. Boundaries between organizations are becoming blurred in new approaches to solving public problems (Christensen and Lægreid 2007). PAR is committed to better understanding the circumstances under which collaboration, cooperation, and coproduction occurs. What are the necessary antecedents? What are the deterrents? We are interested in the challenges that organizations face as they pursue collaborative action that transcends boundaries. And, of course, we are interested in the efficiency and performance gains that are achieved as a result of those efforts, as well as in their long‐term sustainability.

In this issue, we feature a series of articles that highlight research that focuses on working together, through collaboration, coproduction, or cooperation. The issue begins with a look at right‐sizing the use of volunteerism in public and nonprofit organizations given their limitations and possibilities (Nesbit, Christensen, and Brudney 2018). Uzochukwu and Thomas (2018) then explore coproduction using a case study of Atlanta to better understand who uses it and why. Klok et al. (2018) presents a fascinating look at intermunicipal cooperation through polycentric regional governance in the Netherlands, with an eye toward the costs and effectiveness of those arrangements. McGuire, Hoang, and Prakash (2018) look at the effectiveness of voluntary environmental programs in pollution reduction. Using different policy tools as lenses for analysis, Jung, Malatesta, and LaLonde (2018) ask whether work release programs are improved by working together or working alone. Finally, Yi et al. (2018) explore the role of regional governance and institutional collective action in promoting environmental sustainability. Each of these pieces explores unique dimensions of working together, or governing beyond traditional boundaries….(More)”.

The Palgrave Handbook of Bottom-Up Urbanism

Curated on July 1, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Mahyar Arefi and Conrad Kickert: “Who shapes our cities? In an age of increasing urban pluralism, globalization and immigration, decreasing public budgets, and an ongoing crisis of authority among designers and planners, the urban environment is shaped by a number of non-traditional stakeholders.

The book surveys the kaleidoscope of views on the agency of urbanism, providing an overview of the various scholarly debates and territories that pertain to bottom-up efforts such as everyday urbanism, DIY urbanism, guerilla urbanism, tactical urbanism, and lean urbanism. Uniquely, this books seeks connections between the various movements by curating a range of views on the past, present, and future of bottom-up urbanism. The contributors also connect the recent trend of bottom-up efforts in the West with urban informality in the Global South, drawing parallels and finding contrast between social and institutional structures across the globe. The book appeals to urbanists in the widest sense of the word: those who shape, study, and improve our urban spaces….(More)”.

When Technology Gets Ahead of Society

Curated on June 20, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Tarun Khanna at Harvard Business Review: “Drones, originally developed for military purposes, weren’t approved for commercial use in the United States until 2013. When that happened, it was immediately clear that they could be hugely useful to a whole host of industries—and almost as quickly, it became clear that regulation would be a problem. The new technology raised multiple safety and security issues, there was no consensus on who should write rules to mitigate those concerns, and the knowledge needed to develop the rules didn’t yet exist in many cases. In addition, the little flying robots made a lot of people nervous.

Such regulatory, logistical, and social barriers to adopting novel products and services are very common. In fact, technology routinely outstrips society’s ability to deal with it. That’s partly because tech entrepreneurs are often insouciant about the legal and social issues their innovations birth. Although electric cars are subsidized by the federal government, Tesla has run afoul of state and local regulations because it bypasses conventional dealers to sell directly to consumers. Facebook is only now facing up to major regulatory concerns about its use of data, despite being massively successful with users and advertisers.

It’s clear that even as innovations bring unprecedented comfort and convenience, they also threaten old ways of regulating industries, running a business, and making a living. This has always been true. Thus early cars weren’t allowed to go faster than horses, and some 19th-century textile workers used sledgehammers to attack the industrial machinery they feared would displace them. New technology can even upend social norms: Consider how dating apps have transformed the way people meet.

Entrepreneurs, of course, don’t really care that the problems they’re running into are part of a historical pattern. They want to know how they can manage—and shorten—the period between the advent of a technology and the emergence of the rules and new behaviors that allow society to embrace its possibilities.

Interestingly, the same institutional murkiness that pervades nascent industries such as drones and driverless cars is something I’ve also seen in developing countries. And strange though this may sound, I believe that tech entrepreneurs can learn a lot from businesspeople who have succeeded in the world’s emerging markets.

Entrepreneurs in Brazil or Nigeria know that it’s pointless to wait for the government to provide the institutional and market infrastructure their businesses need, because that will simply take too long. They themselves must build support structures to compensate for what Krishna Palepu and I have referred to in earlier writings as “institutional voids.” They must create the conditions that will allow them to create successful products or services.

Tech-forward entrepreneurs in developed economies may want to believe that it’s not their job to guide policy makers and the public—but the truth is that nobody else can play that role. They may favor hardball tactics, getting ahead by evading rules, co-opting regulators, or threatening to move overseas. But in the long term, they’d be wiser to use soft power, working with a range of partners to co-create the social and institutional fabric that will support their growth—as entrepreneurs in emerging markets have done.…(More)”.

Who wants to know?: The Political Economy of Statistical Capacity in Latin America

Curated on June 19, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

IADB paper by Dargent, Eduardo; Lotta, Gabriela; Mejía-Guerra, José Antonio; Moncada, Gilberto: “Why is there such heterogenity in the level of technical and institutional capacity in national statistical offices (NSOs)? Although there is broad consensus about the importance of statistical information as an essential input for decision making in the public and private sectors, this does not generally translate into a recognition of the importance of the institutions responsible for the production of data. In the context of the role of NSOs in government and society, this study seeks to explain the variation in regional statistical capacity by comparing historical processes and political economy factors in 10 Latin American countries. To do so, it proposes a new theoretical and methodological framework and offers recommendations to strengthen the institutionality of NSOs….(More)”.

Wikipedia vandalism could thwart hoax-busting on Google, YouTube and Facebook

Curated on June 19, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Daniel Funke at Poynter: “For a brief moment, the California Republican Party supported Nazism. At least, that’s what Google said.

That’s because someone vandalized the Wikipedia page for the party on May 31 to list “Nazism” alongside ideologies like “Conservatism,” “Market liberalism” and “Fiscal conservatism.” The mistake was removed from search results, with Google clarifying to Vice News that the search engine had failed to catch the vandalism in the Wikipedia entry….

Google has long drawn upon the online encyclopedia for appending basic information to search results. According to the edit log for the California GOP page, someone added “Nazism” to the party’s ideology section around 7:40 UTC on May 31. The edit was removed within a minute, but it appears Google’s algorithm scraped the page just in time for the fake.

“Sometimes people vandalize public information sources, like Wikipedia, which can impact the information that appears in search,” a Google spokesperson told Poynter in an email. “We have systems in place that catch vandalism before it impacts search results, but occasionally errors get through, and that’s what happened here.”…

According to Google, more than 99.9 percent of Wikipedia edits that show up in Knowledge Panels, which display basic information about searchable keywords at the top of results, aren’t vandalism. The user who authored the original edit to the California GOP’s page did not use a user profile, making them hard to track down.

That’s a common tactic among people who vandalize Wikipedia pages, a practice the nonprofit has documented extensively. But given the volume of edits that are made on Wikipedia — about 10 per second, with 600 new pages per day — and the fact that Facebook and YouTube are now pulling from them to provide more context to posts, the potential for and effect of abuse is high….(More)”.

Data Stewards: Data Leadership to Address 21st Century Challenges

Curated on June 14, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Post by Stefaan Verhulst: “…Over the last two years, we have focused on the opportunities (and challenges) surrounding what we call “data collaboratives.” Data collaboratives are an emerging form of public-private partnership, in which information held by companies (or other entities) is shared with the public sector, civil society groups, research institutes and international organizations. …

For all its promise, the practice of data collaboratives remains ad hoc and limited. In part, this is a result of the lack of a well-defined, professionalized concept of data stewardship within corporations that has a mandate to explore ways to harness the potential of their data towards positive public ends.

Today, each attempt to establish a cross-sector partnership built on the analysis of private-sector data requires significant and time-consuming efforts, and businesses rarely have personnel tasked with undertaking such efforts and making relevant decisions.

As a consequence, the process of establishing data collaboratives and leveraging privately held data for evidence-based policy making and service delivery is onerous, generally one-off, not informed by best practices or any shared knowledge base, and prone to dissolution when the champions involved move on to other functions.

By establishing data stewardship as a corporate function, recognized and trusted within corporations as a valued responsibility, and by creating the methods and tools needed for responsible data-sharing, the practice of data collaboratives can become regularized, predictable, and de-risked….

To take stock of current practice and scope needs and opportunities we held a small yet in-depth kick-off event at the offices of the Cloudera Foundation in San Francisco on May 8th 2018 that was attended by representatives from Linkedin, Facebook, Uber, Mastercard, DigitalGlobe, Cognizant, Streetlight Data, the World Economic Forum, and Nethope — among others.

Four Key Take Aways

The discussions were varied and wide-ranging.

Several reflected on the risks involved — including the risks of NOT sharing or collaborating on privately held data that could improve people’s lives (and in some occasions save lives).

Others warned that the window of opportunity to increase the practice of data collaboratives may be closing — given new regulatory requirements and other barriers that may disincentivize corporations from engaging with third parties around their data.

Ultimately four key take aways emerged. These areas — at the nexus of opportunities and challenges — are worth considering further, because they help us better understand both the potential and limitations of data collaboratives….(More)”

Latin America is fighting corruption by opening up government data

Curated on June 14, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Anoush Darabi in apolitical: “Hardly a country in Latin America has been untouched by corruption scandals; this was just one of the more bizarre episodes. In response, using a variety of open online platforms, both city and national governments are working to lift the lid on government activity, finding new ways to tackle corruption with technology….

In Buenos Aires, government is dealing with the problem by making the details of all its public works projects completely transparent. With BA Obras, an online platform, the city maps projects across the city, and lists detailed information on their cost, progress towards completion and the names of the contractors.

“We allocate an enormous amount of money,” said Alvaro Herrero, Under Secretary for Strategic Management and Institutional Quality for the government of Buenos Aires, who helped to build the tool. “We need to be accountable to citizens in terms of what are we doing with that money.”

The portal is designed to be accessible to the average user. Citizens can filter the map to focus on their neighbourhood, revealing information on existing projects with the click of a mouse.

“A journalist called our communications team a couple of weeks ago,” said Herrero. “He said: ‘I want all the information on all the infrastructure projects that the government has, and I want the documentation.’ Our guy’s answer was, ‘OK, I will send you all the information in ten seconds.’ All he had to do was send a link to the platform.”

Since launching in October 2017 with 80 public works projects, the platform now features over 850. It has had 75,000 unique views, the majority coming in the month after launching.

Making people aware and encouraging them to use it is key. “The main challenge is not the platform itself, but getting residents to use it,” said Herrero. “We’re still in that process.”

Brazil’s public spending checkers

Brazil is using big data analysis to scrutinise its spending via its Public Expenditure Observatory (ODP).

The ODP was founded in 2008 to help monitor spending across government departments systematically. In such a large country, spending data is difficult to pull together, and its volume makes it difficult to analyse. The ODP pulls together disparate information from government databases across the country into a central location, puts it into a consistent format and analyses it for inconsistency. Alongside analysis, the ODP also makes the data public.

For example, in 2010 the ODP analysed expenses made on credit cards by federal government officers. They discovered that 11% of all transactions that year were suspicious, requiring further investigation. After the data was published, credit card expenditure dropped by 25%….(More)”.

Do Delivery Units Deliver?: Assessing Government Innovations

Curated on June 14, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Technical note by Lafuente, Mariano and González, Sebastián prepared as part of the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) agenda on Center of Government: “… analyzes how delivery units (DU) have been adapted by Latin American and Caribbean governments, the degree to which they have contributed to meeting governments’ priority goals between 2007 and 2018, and the lessons learned along the way. The analysis, which draws lessons from 14 governments in the region, shows that the implementation of the DU model has varied as it has been tailored to each country’s context and that, under certain preconditions, has contributed to: (i) improved management using specific tools in contexts where institutional development is low; and (ii) attaining results that have a direct impact on citizens. The objective of this document is to serve as a guide for governments interested in applying similar management models as well as to set out an agenda for the future of DU in the region….(More)“.