How Libraries Became Public

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Barbara Fister at Inside HigherEd: “Of all of our cultural institutions, the public library is remarkable. There are few tax-supported services that are used by people of all ages, classes, races, and religions. I can’t think of any public institutions (except perhaps parks) that are as well-loved and widely used as libraries. Nobody has suggested that tax dollars be used for vouchers to support the development of private libraries or that we shouldn’t trust those “government” libraries. Even though the recession following the 2008 crash has led to reduced staff and hours in American libraries, threats of closure are generally met with vigorous community resistance. Visits and check-outs are up significantly over the past ten years, though it has decreased a bit in recent years. Reduced funding seems to be a factor, though the high point was 2009; library use parallels unemployment figures – low unemployment often means fewer people use public libraries. A for-profit company that claims to run libraries more cheaply than local governments currently has contracts to manage only sixteen of over 9,000 public library systems in the U.S. Few public institutions have been so impervious to privatization.

I find it intriguing that the American public library grew out of an era that has many similarities to this one – the last quarter of the 19th century, when large corporations owned by the super-rich had gained the power to shape society and fundamentally change the lives of ordinary people. It was also a time of new communication technologies, novel industrial processes, and data-driven management methods that treated workers as interchangeable cogs in a Tayloristic, efficient machine. Stuff got cheaper and more abundant, but wages fell and employment was precarious, with mass layoffs common. The financial sector was behaving badly, too, leading to cyclical panics and depressions. The gap between rich and poor grew, with unprecedented levels of wealth concentrated among a tiny percentage of the population. It all sounds strangely familiar.

The changes weren’t all economic. A wave of immigration, largely from southern and eastern Europe and from the Far East before the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, changed national demographics. Teddy Roosevelt warned of “race suicide,” urging white protestant women to reproduce at the same rate as other groups to make America Anglo-Saxon again. The hard-won rights of emancipated African Americans were systematically rolled back through voter suppression, widespread acts of terror, and the enactment of Jim Crow laws. Indigenous people faced broken treaties, seized land, military suppression, and forced assimilation.

How interesting that it was during this turbulent time of change when the grand idea of the American public library – a publicly-supported cultural institution that would be open to all members of the community for their enjoyment and education – emerged….(More)”.

How maps and machine learning are helping to eliminate malaria

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Allie Lieber at The Keyword: “Today is World Malaria Day, a moment dedicated to raising awareness and improving access to tools to prevent malaria. The World Health Organization says nearly half of the world’s population is at risk for malaria, and estimates that in 2015 there were 212 million malaria cases resulting in 429,000 deaths. In places with high transmission rates, children under five account for 70 percent of malaria deaths.

DiSARM (Disease Surveillance and Risk Monitoring), a project led by the Malaria Elimination Initiative and supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundationand Clinton Health Access Initiative, is fighting the spread of malaria by mapping the places where malaria could occur. With the help of Google Earth Engine, DiSARM creates high resolution “risk maps” that help malaria control programs identify the areas where they should direct resources for prevention and treatment.

We sat down with Hugh Sturrock, who leads the DiSARM project and is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the University of California, San Francisco’s Global Health Group, to learn more about DiSARM’s fight against malaria, and how Google fits in….

How does DiSARM use Google Earth Engine to help fight malaria?

If we map where malaria is most likely to occur, we can target those areas for action. Every time someone is diagnosed with malaria in Swaziland and Zimbabwe, a team goes to the village where the infection occurred and collects a GPS point with the precise infection location. Just looking at these points won’t allow you to accurately determine the risk of malaria, though. You also need satellite imagery of conditions like rainfall, temperature, slope and elevation, which affect mosquito breeding and parasite development.

To determine the risk of malaria, DiSARM combines the precise location of the malaria infection,  with satellite data of conditions like rainfall, temperature, vegetation, elevation, which affect mosquito breeding. DiSARM’s mobile app can be used by the malaria programs and field teams to target interventions.

Google Earth Engine collects and organizes the public satellite imagery data we need. In the past we had to obtain those images from a range of sources: NASA, USGS and different universities around the world. But with Google Earth Engine, it’s all in one place and can be processed using Google computers. We combine satellite imagery data from Google Earth Engine with the locations of malaria cases collected by a country’s national malaria control program, and create models that let us generate maps identifying areas at greatest risk.

The DiSARM interface gives malaria programs a near real-time view of malaria and predicts risk at specific locations, such as health facility service areas, villages and schools. Overlaying data allows malaria control programs to identify high-risk areas that have insufficient levels of protection and better distribute their interventions….(More)”

The Moment for Participatory Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Hollie Russon Gilman at the Stanford Social Innovation Review: “Since the 2016 US presidential election, everyone—including the President and those protesting outside his office—has been talking about bringing the voices of everyday citizens into public life. Several hurdles have prevented the efforts of many groups—including nationwide organizations, civic technologists, social entrepreneurs, policymakers, and advocates championing civic innovation—from reaching and supporting communities that are already engaging citizens in effective ways. These include but are not limited to:

  • The challenge of taking local interventions to national politics
  • Overreliance on data-driven mechanisms versus community-based solutions
  • A lack of definition of political participation beyond elections

Through many disparate efforts runs a persistent question: Where are these citizens? Where, precisely, are people congregating in public life in 2017 America?

One challenge to engaging community residents in civic life beyond simply voting every two or four years is that there is no consensus about what a more robust, participatory model of democracy—one in which people more actively participate in the civic fabric of their community—looks like in the United States. As Harvard Kennedy School Professor Archon Fung noted in an article:

The lack of any background agreement, or even common orientation, on even basic questions about public participation makes the job of those who champion participatory innovation much more difficult. … There would be much more friction and unevenness in elections in the United States if, every two years, supporters of representative democracy had to convince people in every community across the country why voting is desirable and explain how to conduct elections.

For many scholars and practitioners, the answer to where citizens are congregating is a bit of a riddle: Civic life takes place both everywhere and nowhere specific—it is in cities, towns, and communities all across the country, but there is no single center of gravity. That poses challenges for those who wish to mobilize nationwide efforts and who recognize that citizens have finite time. But beneath these challenges, there is also an opportunity to look with fresh eyes on what is already working, and find ways to build on it and bring it to scale.

Below are three models that have the potential to counter these obstacles and scale across communities. It is important to note, however, that unlike getting a product to market, scale in civic engagement does not always mean working on a national level. Efforts should measure civic engagement “return on investment” not just by the number of people reached, but also by the efficacy, equity, and inclusivity of the activity….(More).

Smart Government: A New Adjective to Government Transformation or a Trick?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Leonidas G. Anthopoulos in Understanding Smart Cities: A Tool for Smart Government or an Industrial Trick: “Smart city and smart government appear to share a common scientific interest, since they structure corresponding research and practice terms like the “Web Applications and Smart Cities (AW4City)”, “The Smart Cities and Smart Government Research-Practice (SCSGRP) Consortium” and the “Beyond Bureaucracy”, while calls for mutual scientific tracks, workshops and articles can be located in several conference posts. This chapter analyzes the context of smart government. It performs a literature review on the term, where several conceptualization models are compared and explained. It is cleared that smart government is different to smart city government and to smart city. On the contrary, smart city can be seen as an area of practice for smart government, while smart governance is one of the smart city’s dimensions.

Moreover, the role of government is documented to be changed due to urbanization and technology. Urbanization results to communities, which are larger to nations and the role of local government is more complex compared to the usual national one. Moreover, technology provides governments with tools that has never got before, like the Internet-of-Things (IoT), which changes information collection and process flow, while it enables a direct and continuous connection with the community. Both these two phenomena highlight the government challenges of the forthcoming decades, which governments try to deal with data, process re-engineering, co-decision and service co-production….(More)”

The Governance Report 2017

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by The Hertie School of Governance: “Looking at recent developments around the world, it seems that democratic values — from freedom of association and speech to fair and free elections and a system of checks and balances — have come under threat. Experts have, however, disproportionately focused on the problems of democracy in the West, and pointed to familiar sets of shortcomings and emerging deficiencies. By contrast, and with few exceptions, there is less attention to assessing the numerous efforts and innovative activities that are taking place at local, national and international levels. They seek to counteract backsliding and subversion by improving resilience and consolidation and by promoting the expansion of democracy, especially in an era of limited sovereignty and, frequently also, statehood.

The Governance Report 2017 focuses on those policies, programs, and initiatives meant to address the causes of the current democratic malaise, to foster democratic resilience, and to stimulate the (re-)consolidation and development of democratic regimes. The Report’s ambition, reflecting its evidence-based approach, is to shed light on how to manage and care for democracy itself. Specifically, against the backdrop of an assessment of the state of democracy and enriched by cross-national, comparative indicators and case studies, the Report emphasizes solutions geared toward enhancing citizen participation and improving institutions in various contexts, including the rise of neo-populism. Going beyond descriptions of best practices, the Report also examines their origins, identifies the actual and potential trade-offs these solutions entail, and makes concrete recommendations to policymakers….(More)”

Access to New Data Sources for Statistics: Business Models and Incentives for the Corporate Sector

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Screen Shot 2017-03-28 at 11.45.07 AMReport by Thilo Klein and Stefaan Verhulst: “New data sources, commonly referred to as “Big Data”, have attracted growing interest from National Statistical Institutes. They have the potential to complement official and more conventional statistics used, for instance, to determine progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other targets. However, it is often assumed that this type of data is readily available, which is not necessarily the case. This paper examines legal requirements and business incentives to obtain agreement on private data access, and more generally ways to facilitate the use of Big Data for statistical purposes. Using practical cases, the paper analyses the suitability of five generic data access models for different data sources and data uses in an emerging new data ecosystem. Concrete recommendations for policy action are presented in the conclusions….(More)”.

Open Data Maturity in Europe 2016

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European Data Portal Report: “…the second in a series of annual studies and explores the level of Open Data Maturity in the EU28 and Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein – referred to as EU28+. The measurement is built on two key indicators Open Data Readiness and Portal Maturity, thereby covering the level of development of national activities promoting Open Data as well as the level of development of national portals. In 2016, with a 28.6% increase compared to 2015, the EU28+ countries completed over 55% of their Open Data journey showing that, by 2016, a majority of the EU28+ countries have successfully developed a basic approach to address Open Data. The Portal Maturity level increased by 22.6 percentage points from 41.7% to 64.3% thanks to the development of more advanced features on country data portals. The overall Open Data Maturity groups countries into different clusters: Beginners, Followers, Fast Trackers and Trend Setters. Barriers do remain to move Open Data forward. The report concludes on a series of recommendations, providing countries with guidance to further improve Open Data maturity. Countries need to raise more (political) awareness around Open Data, increase automated processes on their portals to increase usability and re-usability of data, and organise more events and trainings to support both local and national initiatives….(More)”.

The Routledge Handbook of Global Public Policy and Administration

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Thomas R. Klassen, Denita Cepiku, T. J. Lah: “…a comprehensive leading-edge guide for students, scholars and practitioners of public policy and administration. Public policy and administration are key aspects of modern societies that affect the daily lives of all citizens. This handbook examines current trends and reforms in public policy and administration, such as financial regulation, risk management, public health, e-government and many others at the local, national and international levels. The two themes of the book are that public policy and administration have acquired an important global aspect, and that a critical role for government is the regulation of capital.

The handbook is organized into three thematic sections – Contemporary Challenges, Policy and Administration Responses and Forging a Resilient Public Administration – to allow readers to quickly access knowledge and improve their understanding of topics. The opening chapter, introductions to sections and extensive glossary aid readers to most effectively learn from the book. Each chapter provides a balanced overview of current knowledge, identifying issues and discussing relevant debates. The book is written by authors from Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia….(More)’

Fighting famine with mobile data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Steve Schwartz at Tableau: “For most people, asking about the price of a bag of rice is inconsequential. For Moustapha Toure, it is a question of life and death for thousands.

A Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (VAM) Officer with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Maiduguri, Nigeria, Moustapha and his team are currently collecting price data and assessing food security in a corner of the country wracked by the effects of the Boko Haram insurgency.

When the conflict broke out in 2009, the threat of violence made it difficult for humanitarian workers like Moustapha to access the communities they serve.

“The security situation made it impossible for the team to go to local markets, talk to vendors, or even chat with people in their homes—all the things they usually do to gather data on local food prices,” said the WFP Nigeria Country Director, Ronald Sibanda.

To overcome this challenge, WFP, in collaboration with the Nigerian National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), turned to an innovative new approach for collecting data via mobile phones, known as mobile Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (mVAM). Using mVAM, WFP and its partners can remotely collect food security and price data. Not only does this approach provide a way to hear from people in inaccessible areas, but it also makes near real-time reporting to local decision-makers possible. That means WFP staff like Moustapha are able to make reliable, data-informed decisions that may impact the lives of more than one million people across the affected Nigerian states.

A Vital Lifeline for a Looming Famine

The mVAM team could be in demand now more than ever. Along with Yemen, Somalia, and South Sudan, Nigeria is one of the four countries at risk of famine. Stephen O’Brien, the United Nation’s Emergency Relief Coordinator, recently described this global food security emergency as the most serious humanitarian crisis since the Second World War.

For seven years, the Boko Haram conflict has affected communities in north-eastern Nigeria, leaving some 5.1 million people food insecure in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states and forcing an estimated 1.9 million people to leave behind their homes, land, and livelihoods.

Without this remotely-collected information, little would be known about these areas and how the conflict is affecting food security. However, this data—collected on a regular basis—actually presents a unique opportunity. In the new system, WFP’s VAM team can take a leap forward from traditional PDF reports which take at least a few weeks, to produce a near real-time look at the situation on the ground…(More)”.

The law is adapting to a software-driven world

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Andrew Burt in the Financial Times: “When the investor Marc Andreessen wrote in 2011 that “software is eating the world,” his point was a contentious one. He argued that the boundary between technology companies and the rest of industry was becoming blurred, and that the “information economy” would supplant the physical economy in ways that were not entirely obvious. Six years later, software’s dominance is a fact of life. What it has yet to eat, however, is the law. If almost every sector of society has been exposed to the headwinds of the digital revolution, governments and the legal profession have not. But that is about to change. The rise of complex software systems has led to new legal challenges. Take, for example, the artificial intelligence systems used in self-driving cars. Last year, the US Department of Transportation wrote to Google stating that the government would “interpret ‘driver’ in the context of Google’s described motor-vehicle design” as referring to the car’s artificial intelligence. So what does this mean for the future of law?

It means that regulations traditionally meant to govern the way that humans interact are adapting to a world that has been eaten by software, as Mr Andreessen predicted. And this is about much more than self-driving cars. Complex algorithms are used in mortgage and credit decisions, in the criminal justice and immigration systems and in the realm of national security, to name just a few areas. The outcome of this shift is unlikely to be more lawyers writing more memos. Rather, new laws will start to become more like software — embedded within applications as computer code. As technology evolves, interpreting the law itself will become more like programming software.

But there is more to this shift than technology alone. The fact is that law is both deeply opaque and unevenly accessible. The legal advice required to understand both what our governments are doing, and what our rights are, is only accessible to a select few. Studies suggest, for example, that an estimated 80 per cent of the legal needs of the poor in the US go unmet. To the average citizen, the inner workings of government have become more impenetrable over time. Granted, laws have been murky to average citizens for as long as governments have been around. But the level of disenchantment with institutions and the experts who run them is placing new pressures on governments to change their ways. The relationship between citizens and professionals — from lawyers to bureaucrats to climatologists — has become tinged with scepticism and suspicion. This mistrust is driven by the sense that society is stacked against those at the bottom — that knowledge is power, but that power costs money only a few can afford….(More)”.