Rosie the Robot: Social accountability one tweet at a time

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blogpost by Yasodara Cordova and Eduardo Vicente Goncalvese: “Every month in Brazil, the government team in charge of processing reimbursement expenses incurred by congresspeople receives more than 20,000 claims. This is a manually intensive process that is prone to error and susceptible to corruption. Under Brazilian law, this information is available to the public, making it possible to check the accuracy of this data with further scrutiny. But it’s hard to sift through so many transactions. Fortunately, Rosie, a robot built to analyze the expenses of the country’s congress members, is helping out.

Rosie was born from Operação Serenata de Amor, a flagship project we helped create with other civic hackers. We suspected that data provided by members of Congress, especially regarding work-related reimbursements, might not always be accurate. There were clear, straightforward reimbursement regulations, but we wondered how easily individuals could maneuver around them. 

Furthermore, we believed that transparency portals and the public data weren’t realizing their full potential for accountability. Citizens struggled to understand public sector jargon and make sense of the extensive volume of data. We thought data science could help make better sense of the open data  provided by the Brazilian government.

Using agile methods, specifically Domain Driven Design, a flexible and adaptive process framework for solving complex problems, our group started studying the regulations, and converting them into  software code. We did this by reverse-engineering the legal documents–understanding the reimbursement rules and brainstorming ways to circumvent them. Next, we thought about the traces this circumvention would leave in the databases and developed a way to identify these traces using the existing data. The public expenses database included the images of the receipts used to claim reimbursements and we could see evidence of expenses, such as alcohol, which weren’t allowed to be paid with public money. We named our creation, Rosie.

This method of researching the regulations to then translate them into software in an agile way is called Domain-Driven Design. Used for complex systems, this useful approach analyzes the data and the sector as an ecosystem, and then uses observations and rapid prototyping to generate and test an evolving model. This is how Rosie works. Rosie sifts through the reported data and flags specific expenses made by representatives as “suspicious.” An example could be purchases that indicate the Congress member was in two locations on the same day and time.

After finding a suspicious transaction, Rosie then automatically tweets the results to both citizens and congress members.  She invites citizens to corroborate or dismiss the suspicions, while also inviting congress members to justify themselves.

Rosie isn’t working alone. Beyond translating the law into computer code, the group also created new interfaces to help citizens check up on Rosie’s suspicions. The same information that was spread in different places in official government websites was put together in a more intuitive, indexed and machine-readable platform. This platform is called Jarbas – its name was inspired by the AI system that controls Tony Stark’s mansion in Iron Man, J.A.R.V.I.S. (which has origins in the human “Jarbas”) – and it is a website and API (application programming interface) that helps citizens more easily navigate and browse data from different sources. Together, Rosie and Jarbas helps citizens use and interpret the data to decide whether there was a misuse of public funds. So far, Rosie has tweeted 967 times. She is particularly good at detecting overpriced meals. According to an open research, made by the group, since her introduction, members of Congress have reduced spending on meals by about ten percent….(More)”.

The Challenges of Sharing Data in an Era of Politicized Science

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Editorial by Howard Bauchner in JAMA: “The goal of making science more transparent—sharing data, posting results on trial registries, use of preprint servers, and open access publishing—may enhance scientific discovery and improve individual and population health, but it also comes with substantial challenges in an era of politicized science, enhanced skepticism, and the ubiquitous world of social media. The recent announcement by the Trump administration of plans to proceed with an updated version of the proposed rule “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science,” stipulating that all underlying data from studies that underpin public health regulations from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must be made publicly available so that those data can be independently validated, epitomizes some of these challenges. According to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler: “Good science is science that can be replicated and independently validated, science that can hold up to scrutiny. That is why we’re moving forward to ensure that the science supporting agency decisions is transparent and available for evaluation by the public and stakeholders.”

Virtually every time JAMA publishes an article on the effects of pollution or climate change on health, the journal immediately receives demands from critics to retract the article for various reasons. Some individuals and groups simply do not believe that pollution or climate change affects human health. Research on climate change, and the effects of climate change on the health of the planet and human beings, if made available to anyone for reanalysis could be manipulated to find a different outcome than initially reported. In an age of skepticism about many issues, including science, with the ability to use social media to disseminate unfounded and at times potentially harmful ideas, it is challenging to balance the potential benefits of sharing data with the harms that could be done by reanalysis.

Can the experience of sharing data derived from randomized clinical trials (RCTs)—either as mandated by some funders and journals or as supported by individual investigators—serve as examples as a way to safeguard “truth” in science….

Although the sharing of data may have numerous benefits, it also comes with substantial challenges particularly in highly contentious and politicized areas, such as the effects of climate change and pollution on health, in which the public dialogue appears to be based on as much fiction as fact. The sharing of data, whether mandated by funders, including foundations and government, or volunteered by scientists who believe in the principle of data transparency, is a complicated issue in the evolving world of science, analysis, skepticism, and communication. Above all, the scientific process—including original research and reanalysis of shared data—must prevail, and the inherent search for evidence, facts, and truth must not be compromised by special interests, coercive influences, or politicized perspectives. There are no simple answers, just words of caution and concern….(More)”.

A New Wave of Deliberative Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Claudia Chwalisz: “….Deliberative bodies such as citizens’ councils, assemblies, and juries are often called “deliberative mini-publics” in academic literature. They are just one aspect of deliberative democracy and involve randomly selected citizens spending a significant period of time developing informed recommendations for public authorities. Many scholars emphasize two core defining features: deliberation (careful and open discussion to weigh the evidence about an issue) and representativeness, achieved through sortition (random selection).

Of course, the principles of deliberation and sortition are not new. Rooted in ancient Athenian democracy, they were used throughout various points of history until around two to three centuries ago. Evoked by the Greek statesman Pericles in 431 BCE, the ideas—that “ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters” and that instead of being a “stumbling block in the way of action . . . [discussion] is an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all”—faded to the background when elections came to dominate the contemporary notion of democracy.

But the belief in the ability of ordinary citizens to deliberate and participate in public decisionmaking has come back into vogue over the past several decades. And it is modern applications of the principles of sortition and deliberation, meaning their adaption in the context of liberal representative democratic institutions, that make them “democratic innovations” today. This is not to say that there are no longer proponents who claim that governance should be the domain of “experts” who are committed to govern for the general good and have superior knowledge to do it. Originally espoused by Plato, the argument in favor of epistocracy—rule by experts—continues to be reiterated, such as in Jason Brennan’s 2016 book Against Democracy. It is a reminder that the battle of ideas for democracy’s future is nothing new and requires constant engagement.

Today’s political context—characterized by political polarization; mistrust in politicians, governments, and fellow citizens; voter apathy; increasing political protests; and a new context of misinformation and disinformation—has prompted politicians, policymakers, civil society organizations, and citizens to reflect on how collective public decisions are being made in the twenty-first century. In particular, political tensions have raised the need for new ways of achieving consensus and taking action on issues that require long-term solutions, such as climate change and technology use. Assembling ordinary citizens from all parts of society to deliberate on a complex political issue has thus become even more appealing.

Some discussions have returned to exploring democracy’s deliberative roots. An ongoing study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is analyzing over 700 cases of deliberative mini-publics commissioned by public authorities to inform their decisionmaking. The forthcoming report assesses the mini-publics’ use, principles of good practice, and routes to institutionalization.3 This new area of work stems from the 2017 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Open Government, which recommends that adherents (OECD members and some nonmembers) grant all stakeholders, including citizens, “equal and fair opportunities to be informed and consulted and actively engage them in all phases of the policy-cycle” and “promote innovative ways to effectively engage with stakeholders to source ideas and co-create solutions.” A better understanding of how public authorities have been using deliberative mini-publics to inform their decisionmaking around the world, not just in OECD countries, should provide a richer understanding of what works and what does not. It should also reveal the design principles needed for mini-publics to effectively function, deliver strong recommendations, increase legitimacy of the decisionmaking process, and possibly even improve public trust….(More)”.

The people, not governments, should exercise digital sovereignty

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

John Thornhill at the Financial Times: “European politicians who have been complaining recently about the loss of “digital sovereignty” to US technology companies are like children grumbling in the back of a car about where they are heading. …

Sovereign governments used to wield exclusive power over validating identity, running critical infrastructure, regulating information flows and creating money. Several of those functions are being usurped by the latest tech.

Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, recently told The Economist that Europe had inadvertently abandoned the “grammar” of sovereignty by allowing private companies, rather than public interest, to decide on digital infrastructure. In 10 years’ time, he feared, Europe would no longer be able to guarantee the soundness of its cyber infrastructure or control its citizens’ and companies’ data.

The instinctive response of many European politicians is to invest in grand, state-led projects and to regulate the life out of Big Tech. A recent proposal to launch a European cloud computing company, called Gaia-X, reflects the same impulse that lay behind the creation of Quaero, the Franco-German search engine set up in 2008 to challenge Google. That you have to Google “Quaero” rather than Quaero “Quaero” tells you how that fared. The risk of ill-designed regulation is that it can stifle innovation and strengthen the grip of dominant companies.

Rather than just trying to shore up the diminishing sovereignty of European governments and prop up obsolete national industrial champions, leaders may do better to reshape the rules of the data economy to empower users and stimulate a new wave of innovation. True sovereignty, after all, lies in the hands of the people. To this end, Europe should encourage greater efforts to “re-decentralise the web”, as computer scientists say, to accelerate the development of the next generation internet. The principle of privacy by design should be enshrined in the next batch of regulations, following the EU’s landmark General Data Protection Regulation, and written into all public procurement contracts. …(More).

Technology & the Law of Corporate Responsibility – The Impact of Blockchain

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blogpost by Elizabeth Boomer: “Blockchain, a technology regularly associated with digital currency, is increasingly being utilized as a corporate social responsibility tool in major international corporations. This intersection of law, technology, and corporate responsibility was addressed earlier this month at the World Bank Law, Justice, and Development Week 2019, where the theme was Rights, Technology and Development. The law related to corporate responsibility for sustainable development is increasingly visible due in part to several lawsuits against large international corporations, alleging the use of child and forced labor. In addition, the United Nations has been working for some time on a treaty on business and human rights to encourage corporations to avoid “causing or contributing to adverse human rights impacts through their own activities and [to] address such impacts when they occur.”

DeBeers, Volvo, and Coca-Cola, among other industry leaders, are using blockchain, a technology that allows digital information to be distributed and analyzed, but not copied or manipulated, to trace the source of materials and better manage their supply chains. These initiatives have come as welcome news in industries where child or forced labor in the supply chain can be hard to detect, e.g. conflict minerals, sugar, tobacco, and cacao. The issue is especially difficult when trying to trace the mining of cobalt for lithium ion batteries, increasingly used in electric cars, because the final product is not directly traceable to a single source.

While non governmental organizations (NGOs) have been advocating for improved corporate performance in supply chains regarding labor and environmental standards for years, blockchain may be a technological tool that could reliably trace information regarding various products – from food to minerals – that go through several layers of suppliers before being certified as slave- or child labor- free.

Child labor and forced labor are still common in some countries. The majority of countries worldwide have ratified International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 182, prohibiting the worst forms of child labor (186 ratifications), as well as the ILO Convention prohibiting forced labor (No. 29, with 178 ratifications), and the abolition of forced labor (Convention No. 105, with 175 ratifications). However, the ILO estimates that approximately 40 million men and women are engaged in modern day slavery and 152 million children are subject to child labor, 38% of whom are working in hazardous conditions. The enduring existence of forced labor and child labor raises difficult ethical questions, because in many contexts, the victim does not have a viable alternative livelihood….(More)”.

How Data Can Help in the Fight Against the Opioid Epidemic in the United States

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Joshua New: “The United States is in the midst of an opioid epidemic 20 years in the making….

One of the most pernicious obstacles in the fight against the opioid epidemic is that, until relatively recently, it was difficult to measure the epidemic in any comprehensive capacity beyond such high-level statistics. A lack of granular data and authorities’ inability to use data to inform response efforts allowed the epidemic to grow to devastating proportions. The maxim “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” has never been so relevant, and this failure to effectively leverage data has undoubtedly cost many lives and caused severe social and economic damage to communities ravaged by opioid addiction, with authorities limited in their ability to fight back.

Many factors contributed to the opioid epidemic, including healthcare providers not fully understanding the potential ramifications of prescribing opioids, socioeconomic conditions that make addiction more likely, and drug distributors turning a blind eye to likely criminal behavior, such as pharmacy workers illegally selling opioids on the black market. Data will not be able to solve these problems, but it can make public health officials and other stakeholders more effective at responding to them. Fortunately, recent efforts to better leverage data in the fight against the opioid epidemic have demonstrated the potential for data to be an invaluable and effective tool to inform decision-making and guide response efforts. Policymakers should aggressively pursue more data-driven strategies to combat the opioid epidemic while learning from past mistakes that helped contribute to the epidemic to prevent similar situations in the future.

The scope of this paper is limited to opportunities to better leverage data to help address problems primarily related to the abuse of prescription opioids, rather than the abuse of illicitly manufactured opioids such as heroin and fentanyl. While these issues may overlap, such as when a person develops an opioid use disorder from prescribed opioids and then seeks heroin when they are unable to obtain more from their doctor, the opportunities to address the abuse of prescription opioids are more clear-cut….(More)”.

Fixing Democracy Demands the Building and Aligning of People’s Motivation and Authority to Act

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Hahrie Han at SSIR: “Power operates in every domain of human life: in families and communities; in social, civic, and economic organizations; and in political states and regimes. Reclaiming democracy means contending with power.

Yet reformers are often reluctant to confront problems of power. Revealing underlying power dynamics can be complex and uncomfortable. It is often tempting to try to solve problems by instead looking for policy fixes, new technologies, and informational solutions.

In fact, some problems can be solved through policy, technology, and information. For instance, when doctors wanted to reduce the rate of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in the early 1990s, they launched a campaign to teach parents to put babies to sleep on their backs instead of on their stomachs. Once parents had the knowledge that babies who sleep on their backs are less likely to suffocate, they made the necessary change and the SIDS rates dramatically declined. When scientists used technology to create the polio vaccine, they were able to basically eradicate polio. In these examples, there is an alignment, broadly speaking, between the motivation to act and the authority to act. Because parents have both the motivation to protect their children and the authority to determine how they sleep, when they had the information they needed, they adjusted their behaviors.

Problems of power, however, are different because there is usually a misalignment between motivation and authority. Either those who have the motivation to make change lack the authority or capacity to act, or those who have the authority lack the motivation. Solving problems of power, then, requires bringing motivation and authority into alignment.

Recasting challenges of democracy as problems of power makes visible a distinct set of solutions. Considered in this frame, the embrace of antidemocratic authoritarian ideologies around the world is not just a rejection of particular candidates, parties, or policies. Instead, it is a reflection of the profound mismatch between the motivations or interests of the public and the actions of those with authority to act. If people are left feeling powerless, they might believe they have no choice but to blow up the system.

But giving up on democracy is not the only solution. Reformers can also seek to strengthen the capacity of people to exercise their voices in the democratic process—and instantiate the authority they have to hold economic and political leaders accountable within institutions. Realizing democracy must be about building the motivation, capacity, and authority that people of all kinds need to act as a source of countervailing power to institutions of the economy and the state. That is realizing the promise of democracy….(More)”.

Civic Power: Rebuilding American Democracy in an Era of Crisis

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Demos Press Release: “American democracy is in crisis. In their new book, Civic Power, political scientists K. Sabeel Rahman and Hollie Russon Gilman argue that the daily political turmoil of the Trump era actually masks a larger ailment. The current threat to U.S. democracy is rooted not just in the outcome of one election or the ascent of one leader, but in deeper systemic forms of inequality that concentrate political and economic power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. 

Drawing on historical and social science research, as well as case studies of contemporary democratic innovations across the country, Civic Power calls for a broader approach to democratic reform, offering a critical framework and concrete suggestions to support those reforms that meaningfully redistribute power to citizens.

This original, timely effort offering fresh thinking about how best to pursue civic engagement and democracy reform. It offers concrete suggests to revive grassroots civil society and calls for novel approaches to governance, policymaking, civic technology, and institutional design. With these tools, readers can aim to address structural disparities to build a more inclusive, empowered, bottom-up democracy where communities and people have greater agency, voice, and civic power….(Excerpt)”.

The Right to Be Seen

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Anne-Marie Slaughter and Yuliya Panfil at Project Syndicate: “While much of the developed world is properly worried about myriad privacy outrages at the hands of Big Tech and demanding – and securing – for individuals a “right to be forgotten,” many around the world are posing a very different question: What about the right to be seen?

Just ask the billion people who are locked out of services we take for granted – things like a bank account, a deed to a house, or even a mobile phone account – because they lack identity documents and thus can’t prove who they are. They are effectively invisible as a result of poor data.

The ability to exercise many of our most basic rights and privileges – such as the right to vote, drive, own property, and travel internationally – is determined by large administrative agencies that rely on standardized information to determine who is eligible for what. For example, to obtain a passport it is typically necessary to present a birth certificate. But what if you do not have a birth certificate? To open a bank account requires proof of address. But what if your house doesn’t have an address?

The inability to provide such basic information is a barrier to stability, prosperity, and opportunity. Invisible people are locked out of the formal economy, unable to vote, travel, or access medical and education benefits. It’s not that they are undeserving or unqualified, it’s that they are data poor.

In this context, the rich digital record provided by our smartphones and other sensors could become a powerful tool for good, so long as the risks are acknowledged. These gadgets, which have become central to our social and economic lives, leave a data trail that for many of us is the raw material that fuels what Harvard’s Shoshana Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism.” Our Google location history shows exactly where we live and work. Our email activity reveals our social networks. Even the way we hold our smartphone can give away early signs of Parkinson’s.

But what if citizens could harness the power of these data for themselves, to become visible to administrative gatekeepers and access the rights and privileges to which they are entitled? Their virtual trail could then be converted into proof of physical facts.

That is beginning to happen. In India, slum dwellers are using smartphone location data to put themselves on city maps for the first time and register for addresses that they can then use to receive mail and register for government IDs. In Tanzania, citizens are using their mobile payment histories to build their credit scores and access more traditional financial services. And in Europe and the United States, Uber drivers are fighting for their rideshare data to advocate for employment benefits….(More)”.

“Mind the Five”: Guidelines for Data Privacy and Security in Humanitarian Work With Undocumented Migrants and Other Vulnerable Populations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sara Vannini, Ricardo Gomez and Bryce Clayton Newell: “The forced displacement and transnational migration of millions of people around the world is a growing phenomenon that has been met with increased surveillance and datafication by a variety of actors. Small humanitarian organizations that help irregular migrants in the United States frequently do not have the resources or expertise to fully address the implications of collecting, storing, and using data about the vulnerable populations they serve. As a result, there is a risk that their work could exacerbate the vulnerabilities of the very same migrants they are trying to help. In this study, we propose a conceptual framework for protecting privacy in the context of humanitarian information activities (HIA) with irregular migrants. We draw from a review of the academic literature as well as interviews with individuals affiliated with several US‐based humanitarian organizations, higher education institutions, and nonprofit organizations that provide support to undocumented migrants. We discuss 3 primary issues: (i) HIA present both technological and human risks; (ii) the expectation of privacy self‐management by vulnerable populations is problematic; and (iii) there is a need for robust, actionable, privacy‐related guidelines for HIA. We suggest 5 recommendations to strengthen the privacy protection offered to undocumented migrants and other vulnerable populations….(More)”.