The 2021 Good Tech Awards

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Kevin Roose at the New York Times: “…Especially at a time when many of tech’s leaders seem more interested in building new, virtual worlds than improving the world we live in, it’s worth praising the technologists who are stepping up to solve some of our biggest problems.

So here, without further ado, are this year’s Good Tech Awards…

One of the year’s most exciting A.I. breakthroughs came in July when DeepMind — a Google-owned artificial intelligence company — published data and open-source code from its groundbreaking AlphaFold project.

The project, which used A.I. to predict the structures of proteins, solved a problem that had vexed scientists for decades, and was hailed by experts as one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. And by publishing its data freely, AlphaFold set off a frenzy among researchers, some of whom are already using it to develop new drugs and better understand the proteins involved in viruses like SARS-CoV-2.

Google’s overall A.I. efforts have been fraught with controversy and missteps, but AlphaFold seems like an unequivocally good use of the company’s vast expertise and resources…

Prisons aren’t known as hotbeds of innovation. But two tech projects this year tried to make our criminal justice system more humane.

Recidiviz is a nonprofit tech start-up that builds open-source data tools for criminal justice reform. It was started by Clementine Jacoby, a former Google employee who saw an opportunity to corral data about the prison system and make it available to prison officials, lawmakers, activists and researchers to inform their decisions. Its tools are in use in seven states, including North Dakota, where the data tools helped prison officials assess the risk of Covid-19 outbreaks and identify incarcerated people who were eligible for early release….(More)”.

Expecting the Unexpected: Effects of Data Collection Design Choices on the Quality of Crowdsourced User-Generated Content

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Roman Lukyanenko: “As crowdsourced user-generated content becomes an important source of data for organizations, a pressing question is how to ensure that data contributed by ordinary people outside of traditional organizational boundaries is of suitable quality to be useful for both known and unanticipated purposes. This research examines the impact of different information quality management strategies, and corresponding data collection design choices, on key dimensions of information quality in crowdsourced user-generated content. We conceptualize a contributor-centric information quality management approach focusing on instance-based data collection. We contrast it with the traditional consumer-centric fitness-for-use conceptualization of information quality that emphasizes class-based data collection. We present laboratory and field experiments conducted in a citizen science domain that demonstrate trade-offs between the quality dimensions of accuracy, completeness (including discoveries), and precision between the two information management approaches and their corresponding data collection designs. Specifically, we show that instance-based data collection results in higher accuracy, dataset completeness and number of discoveries, but this comes at the expense of lower precision. We further validate the practical value of the instance-based approach by conducting an applicability check with potential data consumers (scientists, in our context of citizen science). In a follow-up study, we show, using human experts and supervised machine learning techniques, that substantial precision gains on instance-based data can be achieved with post-processing. We conclude by discussing the benefits and limitations of different information quality and data collection design choice for information quality in crowdsourced user-generated content…(More)”.

Expanding Mobility: The Power of Linked Administrative Data and Integrated Data Systems

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Brief by Della Jenkins and Emily Berkowitz: “This brief describes how linking administrative data can expand traditional measures of mobility for research and action, provides examples of the types of economic mobility research questions that are only answerable using linked administrative data, and describes how analysis can be deepened using spatial and multi-generational perspectives. In addition, we discuss how the field of economic mobility research benefits when state and local governments are resourced to build systems that enable routine reuse of linked data. Finally, we end with a summary of the opportunities that exist to build on data capacity already developed by state and local governments across the US to better understand the policies that support pathways out of poverty. Now more than ever, governments, research partners, and stakeholders can come together to make use of the data already collected by social service programs to generate evidence-based approaches to expanding mobility…(More)”

Research Anthology on Citizen Engagement and Activism for Social Change

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by the Information Resources Management Association (IRMA): “Activism and the role everyday people play in making a change in society are increasingly popular topics in the world right now, especially as younger generations begin to speak out. From traditional protests to activities on college campuses, to the use of social media, more individuals are finding accessible platforms with which to share their views and become more actively involved in politics and social welfare. With the emergence of new technologies and a spotlight on important social issues, people are able to become more involved in society than ever before as they fight for what they believe. It is essential to consider the recent trends, technologies, and movements in order to understand where society is headed in the future.

The Research Anthology on Citizen Engagement and Activism for Social Change examines a plethora of innovative research surrounding social change and the various ways citizens are involved in shaping society. Covering topics such as accountability, social media, voter turnout, and leadership, it is an ideal work for activists, sociologists, social workers, politicians, public administrators, sociologists, journalists, policymakers, social media analysts, government administrators, academicians, researchers, practitioners, and students….(More)”.

Whistleblowing for Change: Exposing Systems of Power and Injustice

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Access book edited by Tatiana Bazzichelli: “The courageous acts of whistleblowing that inspired the world over the past few years have changed our perception of surveillance and control in today’s information society. But what are the wider effects of whistleblowing as an act of dissent on politics, society, and the arts? How does it contribute to new courses of action, digital tools, and contents? This urgent intervention based on the work of Berlin’s Disruption Network Lab examines this growing phenomenon, offering interdisciplinary pathways to empower the public by investigating whistleblowing as a developing political practice that has the ability to provoke change from within…(More)”.

CoFoE: deliberative democracy more accountable than elections and polls

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Eleonora Vasques: “Deliberative democracy processes are more democratic than general elections or surveys, according to Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) participants and experts of the second panel on democracy gathered in Florence last weekend.

CoFoE is a deliberative democracy experiment where 800 citizens, divided into four thematic panels, deliberate recommendations to discuss and vote on with lawmakers.

The panel on European democracy, values, rights, the rule of law, and security, recently approved 39 recommendations on anti-discrimination, democracy, the rule of law, EU institutional reforms, the building of a European identity, and the strengthening of citizen participation.

“Usually, the way we try to understand what people think is through elections or opinion polls. However, I think both methods are biased. They rather ‘freeze’ a debate, imposing the discussion, without asking people what they want. Thus, it is good that people here speak about their own will. And they do not necessarily use the same categories utilised by electoral campaigns and opinion polls,” Oliver Roy, professor at the European University Institute and one of the panel experts, told journalists…

Similarly, citizens selected for this panel believe that this democratic exercise is more valuable than mainstream political participation.

“I feel I am living a unique democratic experiment, which goes beyond the majority rule. Democracy is often understood only as a majority rule exercise, with elections. But here, we are demonstrating that democracy is about debating, sharing general ideas from the bottom up that can have an impact,” Max, a participant from Slovakia, told EURACTIV…(More)”.

Prisms of the People

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Hahrie Han, Elizabeth McKenna, and Michelle Oyakawa: “Grassroots organizing and collective action have always been fundamental to American democracy but have been burgeoning since the 2016 election, as people struggle to make their voices heard in this moment of societal upheaval. Unfortunately much of that action has not had the kind of impact participants might want, especially among movements representing the poor and marginalized who often have the most at stake when it comes to rights and equality. Yet, some instances of collective action have succeeded. What’s the difference between a movement that wins victories for its constituents, and one that fails? What are the factors that make collective action powerful?

Prisms of the People addresses those questions and more. Using data from six movement organizations—including a coalition that organized a 104-day protest in Phoenix in 2010 and another that helped restore voting rights to the formerly incarcerated in Virginia—Hahrie Han, Elizabeth McKenna, and Michelle Oyakawa show that the power of successful movements most often is rooted in their ability to act as  “prisms of the people,” turning participation into political power just as prisms transform white light into rainbows. Understanding the organizational design choices that shape the people, their leaders, and their strategies can help us understand how grassroots groups achieve their goals.

Linking strong scholarship to a deep understanding of the needs and outlook of activists, Prisms of the People is the perfect book for our moment—for understanding what’s happening and propelling it forward….(More)”.

For Queer Communities, Being Counted Has Downsides

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Kevin Guyan: “Next March, for the first time, Scotland’s census will ask all residents 16 and over to share information about their sexual orientation and whether they identify as trans. These new questions, whose addition follows similar developments in other parts of the United Kingdom and Malta, invite people to “come out” on their census return. Proposals to add more questions about gender, sex, and sexuality to national censuses are at various stages of discussion in countries outside of Europe, including New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and the United States.

The idea of being counted in a census feels good. Perhaps it’s my passion for data, but I feel recognized when I tick the response option “gay” in a survey that previously pretended I did not exist or was not important enough to count. If you identify with descriptors less commonly listed in drop-down boxes, seeing yourself reflected in a survey can change how you relate to wider communities that go beyond individual experiences. It therefore makes sense that many bottom-up queer rights groups and top-down government agencies frame the counting of queer communities in a positive light and position expanded data collection as a step toward greater inclusion.

There is great historical significance in increased visibility for many queer communities. But an over-focus on the benefits of being counted distracts from the potential harms for queer communities that come with participation in data collection activities….

The limits of inclusion became apparent to me as I observed the design process for Scotland’s 2022 census. While researching my book Queer Data, I sat through committee meetings at the Scottish Parliament, digested lengthy reports, submitted evidence, and participated in stakeholder engagement sessions. As many months of disagreement over how to count and who to count progressed, it grew more and more obvious that the design of a census is never exclusively about the collection of accurate data.

I grew ambivalent about what “being counted” actually meant for queer communities and concerned that the expansion of the census to include some queer people further erased those who did not match the government’s narrow understanding of gender, sex, and sexuality. Most notably, Scotland’s 2022 census does not count nonbinary people, who are required to identify their sex as either male or female. In another example, trans-exclusionary campaign groups requested that the census remove the “other” write-in box and limit response options for sexual orientation to “gay or lesbian,” “bisexual,” and “straight/heterosexual.” Reproducing the idea that sexual orientation is based on a fixed, binary notion of sex and restricting the question to just three options would effectively delete those who identify as queer, pansexual, asexual, and other sexualities from the count. Although the final version of the sexual orientation question includes an “other” write-in box for sexuality, collecting data about the lives of some queer people can push those who fall outside these expectations further into the shadows…(More)”.

Eight ways to institutionalise deliberative democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “This guide for public officials and policy makers outlines eight models for institutionalising representative public deliberation to improve collective decision making and strengthen democracy.

Increasingly, public authorities are reinforcing democracy by making use of deliberative processes in a structural way, beyond one-off initiatives that are often dependent on political will. The guide provides examples of how to create structures that allow representative public deliberation to become an integral part of how certain types of public decisions are taken.


Eight models to consider for implementation:

1. Combining a permanent citizens’ assembly with one-off citizens’ panels

2. Connecting representative public deliberation to parliamentary committees

3. Combining deliberative and direct democracy

4. Standing citizens’ advisory panels

5. Sequenced representative deliberative processes throughout the policy cycle

6. Giving people the right to demand a representative deliberative process

7. Requiring representative public deliberation before certain types of public decisions

8. Embedding representative deliberative processes in local strategic planning…(More)”.

Making Space for Everyone

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Amy Paige Kaminski at Issues: “The story of how NASA came to see the public as instrumental in accomplishing its mission provides insights for R&D agencies trying to create societal value, relevance, and connection….Over the decades since, NASA’s approaches to connecting with citizens have evolved with the introduction of new information and communications technologies, social change, legal developments, scientific progress, and external trends in space activities and public engagement. The result has been an increasing and increasingly accessible set of opportunities that have enabled diverse segments of society to connect more closely with NASA’s work and, in turn, boost the agency’s techno-scientific and societal value….

Another significant change in public engagement practices has been providing more people with opportunities to do space-related R&D. Through the shuttle program, the agency enabled companies, universities, high schools, and an eclectic set of participants ranging from artists to garden seed companies to develop and fly payloads. The stated purpose was to advance knowledge of the effects of the space environment—a concept that was sometimes loosely defined. 

Today NASA similarly encourages a broad set of players to use the International Space Station (ISS) for R&D. While some of the shuttle and ISS programs have charged fees to payload owners, NASA has instead offered grants, primarily to the university community, for competitively selected research projects in space science. The agency also invites various groups to propose experiments and technology development projects through government-wide programs such as the Small Business Innovative Research program, which aims to foster innovation in small businesses, as well as the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (better known by its EPSCoR acronym), which seeks to enhance research infrastructure and competitiveness at the state level….(More)”.