New Human Need Index fills a data void to help those in need

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Scott W. Allard at Brookings: “My 2009 book, “Out of Reach,” examined why it can be hard for poor families to get help from the safety net. One critical barrier is the lack of information about local program resources and nonprofit social service organizations. Good information is key to finding help, but also to important if we are to target resources effectively and assess if program investments were successful.

As I prepared data for the book in 2005, my research team struggled to compile useful information about services and programs in the three major metro areas at the center of the study. We grappled with out-of-date print directories, incomplete online listings, bad addresses, disconnected phone numbers, and inaccurate information about the availability of services. It wasn’t clear families experiencing hardship could easily find the help they needed. It also wasn’t clear how potential volunteers or donors could know where to direct their energies, or whether communities could know whether they were deploying adequate and relevant safety net resources. In the book’s conclusion, however, I was optimistic things would get better. A mix of emerging technology, big data systems, and a generation of young entrepreneurs would certainly close these information gaps over the next several years.

Recently, I embarked upon an effort to again identify the social service organizations operating in one of the book’s original study sites. To my surprise, the work was much harder this time around. Print directories are artifacts of the past. Online referral tools provided only spotty coverage. Addresses and service information can still be quite out of date. In many local communities, it felt as if there was less information available now than a decade ago.

Lack of data about local safety net programs, particularly nonprofit organizations, has long been a problem for scholars, community advocates, nonprofit leaders, and philanthropists. Data about providers and populations served are expensive to collect, update, and disseminate. There are no easy ways to monetize data resources or find regular revenue streams to support data work. There are legal obstacles and important concerns about confidentiality. Many organizations don’t have the resources to do much analytic or learning work.

The result is striking. We spend tens of billions of dollars on social services for low-income households each year, but we have only the vaguest ideas of where those dollars go, what impact they have, and where unmet needs exist.

Into this information void steps the Salvation Army and the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University with a possible path forward. Working together and with an advisory board of scholars, the Salvation Army and the Lilly School have created a real-time Human Needs Index drawn from service provision tracking systems maintained by more than 7,000 Salvation Army sites nationwide. The index provides useful insight into consumption of an array of emergency services (e.g., food, shelter, clothing) at a given place and point in time across the entire country…(More)”

Teaching Open Data for Social Movements: a Research Strategy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Alan Freihof Tygel and Maria Luiza Machado Campo at the Journal of Community Informatics: “Since the year 2009, the release of public government data in open formats has been configured as one of the main actions taken by national states in order to respond to demands for transparency and participation by the civil society. The United States and theUnited Kingdom were pioneers, and today over 46 countries have their own Open Government Data Portali , many of them fostered by the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international agreement aimed at stimulating transparency.

The premise of these open data portals is that, by making data publicly available in re-usable formats, society would take care of building applications and services, and gain value from this data (Huijboom & Broek, 2011). According to the same authors, the discourse around open data policies also includes increasing democratic control and participation and strengthening law enforcement.

Several recent works argue that the impact of open data policies, especially the release of open data portals, is still difficult to assess (Davies & Bawa, 2012; Huijboom & Broek, 2011; Zuiderwijk, Janssen, Choenni, Meijer, & Alibaks, 2012). One important consideration is that “The gap between the promise and reality of OGD [Open Government Data] re-use cannot be addressed by technological solutions alone” (Davies, 2012). Therefore, sociotechnical approaches (Mumford, 1987) are mandatory.

The targeted users of open government data lie over a wide range that includes journalists, non-governmental organizations (NGO), civil society organizations (CSO), enterprises, researchers and ordinary citizens who want to audit governments’ actions. Among them, the focus of our research is on social (or grassroots) movements. These are groups of organized citizens at local, national or international level who drive some political action, normally placing themselves in opposition to the established power relations and claiming rights for oppressed groups.

A literature definition gives a social movement as “collective social actions with a socio-political and cultural approach, which enable distinct forms of organizing the population and expressing their demands” (Gohn, 2011).

Social movements have been using data in their actions repertory with several motivations (as can be seen in Table 1 and Listing 1). From our experience, an overview of several cases where social movements use open data reveals a better understanding of reality and a more solid basis for their claims as motivations. Additionally, in some cases data produced by the social movements was used to build a counter-hegemonic discourse based on data. An interesting example is the Citizen Public Depth Audit Movement which takes place in Brazil. This movement, which is part of an international network, claims that “significant amounts registered as public debt do not correspond to money collected through loans to the country” (Fattorelli, 2011), and thus origins of this debt should be proven. According to the movement, in 2014 45% of Brazil’s Federal spend was paid to debt services.

Recently, a number of works tried to develop comparison schemes between open data strategies (Atz, Heath, & Fawcet, 2015; Caplan et al., 2014; Ubaldi, 2013; Zuiderwijk & Janssen, 2014). Huijboom & Broek (2011) listed four categories of instruments applied by the countries to implement their open data policies:

  • voluntary approaches, such as general recommendations,
  • economic instruments,
  • legislation and control, and
  • education and training.

One of the conclusions is that the latter was used to a lesser extent than the others.

Social movements, in general, are composed of people with little experience of informatics, either because of a lack of opportunities or of interest. Although it is recognized that using data is important for a social movement’s objectives, the training aspect still hinders a wider use of it.

In order to address this issue, an open data course for social movements was designed. Besides building a strategy on open data education, the course also aims to be a research strategy to understand three aspects:

  • the motivations of social movements for using open data;
  • the impediments that block a wider and better use; and
  • possible actions to be taken to enhance the use of open data by social movements….(More)”

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Trust

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Shockley, E., Neal, T.M.S., PytlikZillig, L.M., and Bornstein, B.H.:  “This timely collection explores trust research from many angles while ably demonstrating the potential of cross-discipline collaboration to deepen our understanding of institutional trust. Citing, among other things, current breakdowns of trust in prominent institutions, the book presents a multilevel model identifying universal aspects of trust as well as domain- and context-specific variations deserving further study. Contributors analyze similarities and differences in trust across public domains from politics and policing to medicine and science, and across languages and nations. Innovative strategies for measuring and assessing trust also shed new light on this essentially human behavior.

Highlights of the coverage:

  • Consensus on conceptualizations and definitions of trust: are we there yet?
  • Differentiating between trust and legitimacy in public attitudes towards legal authority.
  • Examining the relationship between interpersonal and institutional trust in political and health care contexts.
  • Trust as a multilevel phenomenon across contexts.
  • Institutional trust across cultures.
  • The “dark side” of institutional trust….(more)”

Implementing Innovation: A User’s Manual for Open Government Programs

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Panthea Lee at Reboot: “…As the number of open government programs proliferates around the world, more innovators are finding themselves in similar situations. While guidelines for general and public sector program management abound, the implementation of open government policies and programs remains largely uncharted territory. Many who sign up to pursue innovation in government find themselves challenged to be innovative in their own program management. Case studies of these programs are common, but advice for the nitty-gritty work of execution is still sparse.

This manual was created in response to this widespread need. It benefits heavily from the experience of innovators within the Mexican government and draws on Reboot’s work with open government initiatives around the world. With an openness towards learning and, importantly, toward taking calculated risks, the leaders of the aforementioned innovation unit curated a team to design and launch a portfolio of programs that would advance public sector innovation. They collaborated across agencies and with civil society and the private sector, navigated unfamiliar processes, and pioneered new approaches where needed. They found ways to dig into the questions that initially sound overwhelming.

And you can too.

A growing community is creating new models for effective design and management of government innovation programs. Although too many practitioners are working in isolation, the field is rich with their collective experience and hard-earned wisdom. This guide is one small contribution to this community, as it increasingly comes together to share and exchange advice in the spirit of greater transparency, accountability, and civic participation worldwide.

Implementing Innovation (PDF 1.2MB) (More)”

Good Governance by All Means

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 at Huffington Post: “Citizens today have higher expectations and demand effective solutions to every day issues and challenges. From climate change to expedient postal services, governments are required to act with transparency and diligence. Public accountability demands us, public servants, to act with almost no margin of error and using the most open and transparent means available to achieve our goals. The name of the game is simple: government efforts should focus on building stronger, better and healthier relationships with civil society. Nobody should be left behind when tailoring public policy. For the Mexican Government, it is crystal clear, that such endeavor is no longer the State’s monopoly and thus, the pressing need for governments to use smarter and more efficient tool boxes, such as the one that the Open Government Partnership (OGP), provides. The buzzword is good governance by all means.

The High Level Segment of the 70th Session of the United Nations General Assembly was a milestone for the open government community. It allowed the 13 countries taking part of the OGP Steering Committee and several civil society organizations to endorse the Joint Declaration: Open Government for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This declaration highlights the paramount importance of promoting the principles of open government (transparency, accountability, citizen participation and innovation) as key enablers of the Sustainable Development Goals. The Declaration particularly embraces Agenda 2030’s Goal 16 as a common target for all 66 OGP member countries. Our common goal is to continue building stronger institutions while weaving peaceful and inclusive societies. Our meeting in New York also allowed us to work with key players to develop the Open Data Charter that recognizes the value of having timely, comprehensive, accessible, and comparable data for the promotion of greater citizen engagement triggering development and innovation….(More)

Cleaning Up Lead Poisoning One Tweet at a Time

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

WorldPolicy Blog: “At first, no one knew why the children of Bagega in Zamfara state were dying. In the spring of 2010, hundreds of kids in and around the northern Nigerian village were falling ill, having seizures and going blind, many of them never to recover. A Médecins Sans Frontières‎ team soon discovered the causes: gold and lead.

With the global recession causing the price of precious metals to soar, impoverished villagers had turned to mining the area’s gold deposits. But the gold veins were mingled with lead, and as a result the villagers’ low-tech mining methods were sending clouds of lead-laced dust into the air. The miners, unknowingly carrying the powerful toxin on their clothes and skin, brought it into their homes where their children breathed it in.

The result was perhaps the worst outbreak of lead poisoning in history, killing over 400 children in Bagega and neighboring villages. In response, the Nigerian government pledged to cleanup the lead-contaminated topsoil and provide medical care to the stricken children. But by mid-2012, there was no sign of the promised funds. Digitally savvy activists with the organization Connected Development (CODE) stepped in to make sure that the money was disbursed.

A group of young Nigerians founded CODE in 2010 in the capital Abuja, with the mission of empowering local communities to hold the government to account by improving their access to information and helping their voices to be heard. “In 2010, we were working to connect communities with data for advocacy programs,” says CODE co-founder Oludotun Babayemi, a former country director of a World Wildlife Fund project in Nigeria. “When we heard about Bagega, we thought this was an opportunity for us.”

In 2012, CODE launched a campaign dubbed ‘Follow the Money Nigeria’ aimed at applying pressure on the government to release the promised funds. “Eighty percent of the less developed parts of Nigeria have zero access to Twitter, let alone Facebook, so it’s difficult for them to convey their stories,” says Babayemi. “We collect all the videos and testimonies and take it global.”

CODE members travelled to the lead-afflicted area to gather information. They then posted their findings online, and publicized them with a #SaveBagegahashtag, which they tweeted to members of the government, local and international organizations and the general public. CODE hosted a 48-hour ‘tweet-a-thon’, joined by a senator, to support the campaign….

By July 2014, CODE reported that the clean-up was complete and that over 1,000 children had been screened and enrolled in lead treatment programs. Bagega’s health center has also been refurbished and the village’s roads improved. “There are thousands of communities like Bagega,” says Babayemi. “They just need someone to amplify their voice.”….

Key lessons

  • Revealing information is not enough; change requires a real-world campaign driven by that information and civil society champions who can leverage their status and networks to draw international attention to the issues and maintain pressure.
  • Building relationships with sympathetic members of government is key.
  • Targeted online campaigns can help amplify the message of marginalized communities offline to achieve impact (More)”

Citizen-Generated Data and Governments: Towards a Collaborative Model

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Civicus: “…we’re very happy today to launch “Citizen-Generated Data and Governments: Towards a Collaborative Model”.

This piece explores the idea that governments could host and publish citizen-generated data (CGD) themselves, and whether this could mean that data is applied more widely and in a more sustainable way. It was inspired by a recent meeting in Buenos Aires with Argentine civil society organizations and government representatives, hosted by the City of Buenos Aires Innovation and Open Government Lab (Laboratorio de innovación y Gobierno Abierto de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires).

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The meeting was organized to explore how people within government think about citizen-generated data, and discuss what would be needed for them to consider it as a valid method of data generation. One of the most novel and exciting ideas that surfaced was the potential for government open data portals, such as that managed by the Buenos Aires Innovation Lab, to host and publish CGD.

We wrote this report to explore this issue further, looking at existing models of data collaboration and outlining our first thoughts on the benefits and obstacles this kind of model might face. We welcome feedback from those with deeper expertise into different aspects of citizen-generated data, and look forward to refining these thoughts in the future together with the broader community…(More)”

Advancing Open and Citizen-Centered Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The White House: “Today, the United States released our third Open Government National Action Plan, announcing more than 40 new or expanded initiatives to advance the President’s commitment to an open and citizen-centered government….In the third Open Government National Action Plan, the Administration both broadens and deepens efforts to help government become more open and more citizen-centered. The plan includes new and impactful steps the Administration is taking to openly and collaboratively deliver government services and to support open government efforts across the country. These efforts prioritize a citizen-centric approach to government, including improved access to publicly available data to provide everyday Americans with the knowledge and tools necessary to make informed decisions.

One example is the College Scorecard, which shares data through application programming interfaces (APIs) to help students and families make informed choices about education. Open APIs help create an ecosystem around government data in which civil society can provide useful visual tools, making this data more accessible and commercial developers can enable even more value to be extracted to further empower students and their families. In addition to these newer approaches, the plan also highlights significant longstanding open government priorities such as access to information, fiscal transparency, and records management, and continues to push for greater progress in that work.

The plan also focuses on supporting implementation of the landmark 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which sets out a vision and priorities for global development over the next 15 years and was adopted last month by 193 world leaders including President Obama. The plan includes commitments to harness open government and progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) both in the United States and globally, including in the areas of education, health, food security, climate resilience, science and innovation, justice and law enforcement. It also includes a commitment to take stock of existing U.S. government data that relates to the 17 SDGs, and to creating and using data to support progress toward the SDGs.

Some examples of open government efforts newly included in the plan:

  • Promoting employment by unlocking workforce data, including training, skill, job, and wage listings.
  • Enhancing transparency and participation by expanding available Federal services to theOpen311 platform currently available to cities, giving the public a seamless way to report problems and request assistance.
  • Releasing public information from the electronically filed tax forms of nonprofit and charitable organizations (990 forms) as open, machine-readable data.
  • Expanding access to justice through the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable.
  • Promoting open and accountable implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals….(More)”

The big cost of using big data in elections

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Michael McDonald, Peter Licari and Lia Merivaki in the Washington Post: “In modern campaigns, buzzwords like “microtargeting” and “big data” are often bandied about as essential to victory. These terms refer to the practice of analyzing (or “microtargeting”) millions of voter registration records (“big data”) to predict who will vote and for whom.

If you’ve ever gotten a message from a campaign, there’s a good chance you’ve been microtargeted. Serious campaigns use microtargeting to persuade voters through mailings, phone calls, knocking on doors, and — in our increasingly connected world — social media.

But the big data that fuels such efforts comes at a big price, which can create a serious barrier to entry for candidates and groups seeking to participate in elections — that is, if they are allowed to buy the data at all.

When we asked state election officials about prices and restrictions on who can use their voter registration files, we learned that the rules are unsettlingly arbitrary.

Contrast Arizona and Washington. Arizona sells its statewide voter file for an estimated $32,500, while Washington gives its file away for free. Before jumping to the conclusion that this is a red- state/blue-state thing, consider that Oklahoma gives its file away, too.

A number of states base their prices on a per-record formula, which can massively drive up the price despite the fact that files are often delivered electronically. Alabama sells its records for 1 cent per voter , which yields an approximately $30,000 charge for the lot. Seriously, in this day and age, who prices an electronic database by the record?

Some states will give more data to candidates than to outside groups. Delaware will provide phone numbers to candidates but not to nonprofit organizations doing nonpartisan voter mobilization.

In some states, the voter file is not even available to the general public. States such as South Carolina and Maryland permit access only to residents who are registered voters. States including Kentucky and North Dakota grant access only to campaigns, parties and other political organizations.

We estimate that it would cost roughly $140,000 for an independent presidential campaign or national nonprofit organization to compile a national voter file, and this would not be a one-time cost. Voter lists frequently change as voters are added and deleted.

Guess who most benefits from all the administrative chaos? Political parties and their candidates. Not only are they capable of raising the vast amounts of money needed to purchase the data, but, adding insult to injury, they sometimes don’t even have to. Some states literally bequeath the data to parties at no cost. Alabama goes so far as to give parties a free statewide copy for every election.

Who is hurt by this? Independent candidates and nonprofit organizations that want to run national campaigns but don’t have deep pockets. If someone like Donald Trump launched an independent presidential run, he could buy the necessary data without much difficulty. But a nonprofit focused on mobilizing low-income voters could be stretched thin….(More)”

Governments’ Self-Disruption Challenge

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Mohamed A. El-Erian at Project Syndicate: “One of the most difficult challenges facing Western governments today is to enable and channel the transformative – and, for individuals and companies, self-empowering – forces of technological innovation. They will not succeed unless they become more open to creative destruction, allowing not only tools and procedures, but also mindsets, to be revamped and upgraded. The longer it takes them to meet this challenge, the bigger the lost opportunities for current and future generations.
Self-empowering technological innovation is all around us, affecting a growing number of people, sectors, and activities worldwide. Through an ever-increasing number of platforms, it is now easier than ever for households and corporations to access and engage in an expanding range of activities – from urban transportation to accommodation, entertainment, and media. Even the regulation-reinforced, fortress-like walls that have traditionally surrounded finance and medicine are being eroded.

…In fact, Western political and economic structures are, in some ways, specifically designed to resist deep and rapid change, if only to prevent temporary and reversible fluctuations from having an undue influence on underlying systems. This works well when politics and economies are operating in cyclical mode, as they usually have been in the West. But when major structural and secular challenges arise, as is the case today, the advanced countries’ institutional architecture acts as a major obstacle to effective action….Against this background, a rapid and comprehensive transformation is clearly not feasible. (In fact, it may not even be desirable, given the possibility of collateral damage and unintended consequences.) The best option for Western governments is thus to pursue gradual change, propelled by a variety of adaptive instruments, which would reach a critical mass over time.
Such tools include well-designed public-private partnerships, especially when it comes to modernizing infrastructure; disruptive outside advisers – selected not for what they think, but for how they think – in the government decision-making process; mechanisms to strengthen inter-agency coordination so that it enhances, rather than retards, policy responsiveness; and broader cross-border private-sector linkages to enhance multilateral coordination.
How economies function is changing, as relative power shifts from established, centralized forces toward those that respond to the unprecedented empowerment of individuals. If governments are to overcome the challenges they face and maximize the benefits of this shift for their societies, they need to be a lot more open to self-disruption. Otherwise, the transformative forces will leave them and their citizens behind….(More)”