Paper by Anke Schwittay, Paul Braund: “Through an empirical analysis of Amplify, a crowdsourcing platform funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), we examine the potential of ICTs to afford more participatory development. Especially interactive Web2.0 technologies are often assumed to enable the participation of marginalized groups in their development, through allowing them to modify content and generate their own communication. We use the concepts of platform politics and voice to show that while Amplify managers and designers invested time and resources to include the voices of Amplify beneficiaries on the platform and elicit their feedback on... (More >)
All of Us Research Program Expands Data Collection Efforts with Fitbit
NIH Press Release: “The All of Us Research Program has launched the Fitbit Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) project. Now, in addition to providing health information through surveys, electronic health records, and biosamples, participants can choose to share data from their Fitbit accounts to help researchers make discoveries. The project is a key step for the program in integrating digital health technologies for data collection. Digital health technologies, like mobile apps and wearable devices, can gather data outside of a hospital or clinic. This data includes information about physical activity, sleep, weight, heart rate, nutrition, and water intake, which can give researchers... (More >)
The Future of Civic Engagement
Report by Hollie Russon Gilman: “The 2018 mid-term voter turnout was the highest in 50 years. While vital, voting can’t sustain civic engagement in the long term. So, how do we channel near-term activism into long-term civic engagement? In her essay, Gilman paints a picture of how new institutional structures, enabled by new technologies, could lead to a new “civic layer” in society that results in “a more responsive, participatory, collaborative, and adaptive future for civic engagement in governance decision making.” Creating a New “Civic Layer.” The longer-term future presents an opportunity to set up institutionalized structures for engagement... (More >)
The democratic potential of civic applications
Paper by Jäske, Maija and Ertiö, Titiana: “Recently, digital democratic applications have increased in presence and scope. This study clarifies how civic applications – bottom-up technologies that use open data to solve governance and policy challenges – can contribute to democratic governance. While civic applications claim to deepen democracy, systematic frameworks for assessing the democratic potential of civic apps are missing, because apps are often evaluated against technical criteria. This study introduces a framework for evaluating the democratic potential of civic apps, distinguishing six criteria: inclusiveness, deliberation, influence, publicity, mobilization, and knowledge production. The framework is applied to a... (More >)
Democracy From Above? The Unfulfilled Promise of Nationally Mandated Participatory Reforms
Book by Stephanie L. McNulty: “People are increasingly unhappy with their governments in democracies around the world. In countries as diverse as India, Ecuador, and Uganda, governments are responding to frustrations by mandating greater citizen participation at the local and state level. Officials embrace participatory reforms, believing that citizen councils and committees lead to improved accountability and more informed communities. Yet there’s been little research on the efficacy of these efforts to improve democracy, despite an explosion in their popularity since the mid-1980s.Democracy from Above? tests the hypothesis that top-down reforms strengthen democracies and evaluates the conditions that affect... (More >)
Societal costs and benefits of high-value open government data: a case study in the Netherlands
Paper by F.M. Welle Donker and B. van Loenen: “Much research has emphasised the benefits of open government data, and especially high-value data. The G8 Open Data Charter defines high-value data as data that improve democracy and encourage the innovative reuse of the particular data. Thus, governments worldwide invest resources to identify potential high-value datasets and to publish these data as open data. However, while the benefits of open data are well researched, the costs of publishing data as open data are less researched. This research examines the relationship between the costs of making data suitable for publication as... (More >)
Index: Open Data
By Alexandra Shaw, Michelle Winowatan, Andrew Young, and Stefaan Verhulst The Living Library Index – inspired by the Harper’s Index – provides important statistics and highlights global trends in governance innovation. This installment focuses on open data and was originally published in 2018. Value and Impact Direct market value of open data in EU from 2016 to 2020: estimated EUR 325 billion Predicted number of Open Data jobs in Europe by 2020: 100,000 (35% increase) The projected year at which all 28+ EU member countries will have a fully operating open data portal: 2020 Between 2016 and 2020, the... (More >)
Can a set of equations keep U.S. census data private?
Jeffrey Mervis at Science: “The U.S. Census Bureau is making waves among social scientists with what it calls a “sea change” in how it plans to safeguard the confidentiality of data it releases from the decennial census. The agency announced in September 2018 that it will apply a mathematical concept called differential privacy to its release of 2020 census data after conducting experiments that suggest current approaches can’t assure confidentiality. But critics of the new policy believe the Census Bureau is moving too quickly to fix a system that isn’t broken. They also fear the changes will degrade the... (More >)
Government Information in Canada: Access and Stewardship
Book edited by Amanda Wakaruk and Sam-chin Li: “Government information is not something that most people think about until they need it or see it in a headline. Indeed, even then librarians, journalists, and intellectually curious citizens will rarely recognize or identify that the statistics needed to complete a report, or the scandal-breaking evidence behind a politician’s resignation, was sourced from taxpayer-funded publications and documents. Fewer people will likely appreciate the fact that access to government information is a requirement of a democratic society. Government Information in Canada introduces the average librarian, journalist, researcher, and intellectually curious citizen to... (More >)
Congress passes ‘Open Government Data Act’ to make open data part of the US Code
Melisha Dsouza at Packt>: “22nd December marked a win for U.S. government in terms of efficiency, accountability, and transparency of open data. Following the Senate vote held on 19th December, Congress passed the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking (FEBP) Act (H.R. 4174, S. 2046). Title II of this package is the Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act, which requires all non-sensitive government data to be made available in open and machine-readable formats by default. The federal government possesses a huge amount of public data which should ideally be used to improve government services and promote private sector... (More >)
