Paper by Dirk Helbing et al: “The technological revolution, particularly the availability of more data and more powerful computational tools, has led to the emergence of a new scientific area called Computational Diplomacy. Our work focuses on a popular subarea of it. In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in using digital technologies to promote more participatory forms of democracy. While there are numerous potential benefits to using digital tools to enhance democracy, significant challenges must be addressed. It is essential to ensure that digital technologies are used in an accessible, equitable, and fair manner rather than reinforcing existing power imbalances. This paper investigates how digital tools can be used to help design more democratic societies by investigating three key research areas: (1) the role of digital technologies in facilitating civic engagement in collective decision-making; (2) the use of digital tools to improve transparency and accountability in gover-nance; and (3) the potential for digital technologies to enable the formation of more inclusive and representative democracies. We argue that more research on how digital technologies can be used to support democracy upgrade is needed, and we make some recommendations for future research in this direction…(More)”.
Climate Action Data Trust to unify carbon credit registry data
Press Release: “The International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) today revealed information on the forthcoming launch of Climate Action Data Trust (CAD Trust), a decentralised metadata system that can link, aggregate and harmonise all major carbon market registry data.
Climate Action Data Trust (CAD Trust) is a joint initiative of the International Emissions Trading Association, The World Bank and the Singapore government, along with a variety of governments and public and private organisations. It will provide an open-source metadata system to share information about carbon credits and projects across digital platforms, easing future integration of multiple registry systems. CAD Trust uses distributed ledger technology to create a decentralised record with the aim to avoid double counting, increase trust in carbon data and enhance climate ambition.
Many countries and companies intend to use carbon markets to deliver their contributions to the Paris Climate Agreement. IETA’s review of the latest updates to Nationally Determined Contributions shows that about 80% are interested in using Article 6 trading provisions to meet their goals. To use Article 6, countries must track and report on use of international credits through a registry system. The CAD Trust system will assist in promoting high-integrity systems and digital linkages.
The CAD Trust platform will go live in early December, when the public metadata layer will be widely available through https://climateactiondata.org. CAD Trust evolved out of the Climate Warehouse, an initiative launched by the World Bank. For the past three years, the initiative has prototyped a series of simulations of the data system with partner governments, carbon crediting programmes and other organisations. The final prototype ended in August and work is now underway to prepare the data layer to go live…(More)”.
Artificial intelligence in government: Concepts, standards, and a unified framework
Paper by Vincent J. Straub, Deborah Morgan, Jonathan Bright, Helen Margetts: “Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) hold the promise of improving government. Given the advanced capabilities of AI applications, it is critical that these are embedded using standard operational procedures, clear epistemic criteria, and behave in alignment with the normative expectations of society. Scholars in multiple domains have subsequently begun to conceptualize the different forms that AI systems may take, highlighting both their potential benefits and pitfalls. However, the literature remains fragmented, with researchers in social science disciplines like public administration and political science, and the fast-moving fields of AI, ML, and robotics, all developing concepts in relative isolation. Although there are calls to formalize the emerging study of AI in government, a balanced account that captures the full breadth of theoretical perspectives needed to understand the consequences of embedding AI into a public sector context is lacking. Here, we unify efforts across social and technical disciplines by using concept mapping to identify 107 different terms used in the multidisciplinary study of AI. We inductively sort these into three distinct semantic groups, which we label the (a) operational, (b) epistemic, and (c) normative domains. We then build on the results of this mapping exercise by proposing three new multifaceted concepts to study AI-based systems for government (AI-GOV) in an integrated, forward-looking way, which we call (1) operational fitness, (2) epistemic completeness, and (3) normative salience. Finally, we put these concepts to work by using them as dimensions in a conceptual typology of AI-GOV and connecting each with emerging AI technical measurement standards to encourage operationalization, foster cross-disciplinary dialogue, and stimulate debate among those aiming to reshape public administration with AI…(More)”.
Computing the News: Data Journalism and the Search for Objectivity
Book by Sylvain Parasie: “…examines how data journalists and news organizations have navigated the tensions between traditional journalistic values and new technologies. Offering an in-depth analysis of how computing has become part of the daily practices of journalists, this book proposes ways for journalism to evolve in order to serve democratic societies…(More)”.
Democratised and declassified: the era of social media war is here
Essay by David V. Gioe & Ken Stolworthy: “In October 1962, Adlai Stevenson, US ambassador to the United Nations, grilled Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin about whether the Soviet Union had deployed nuclear-capable missiles to Cuba. While Zorin waffled (and didn’t know in any case), Stevenson went in for the kill: ‘I am prepared to wait for an answer until Hell freezes over… I am also prepared to present the evidence in this room.’ Stevenson then theatrically revealed several poster-sized photographs from a US U-2 spy plane, showing Soviet missile bases in Cuba, directly contradicting Soviet claims to the contrary. It was the first time that (formerly classified) imagery intelligence (IMINT) had been marshalled as evidence to publicly refute another state in high-stakes diplomacy, but it also revealed the capabilities of US intelligence collection to a stunned audience.
During the Cuban missile crisis — and indeed until the end of the Cold War — such exquisite airborne and satellite collection was exclusively the purview of the US, UK and USSR. The world (and the world of intelligence) has come a long way in the past 60 years. By the time President Putin launched his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine in late February 2022, IMINT and geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) was already highly democratised. Commercial satellite companies, such as Maxar or Google Earth, provide high resolution images free of charge. Thanks to such ubiquitous imagery online, anyone could see – in remarkable clarity – that the Russian military was massing on Ukraine’s border. Geolocation stamped photos and user generated videos uploaded to social media platforms, such as Telegram or TikTok, enabled further refinement of – and confidence in – the view of Russian military activity. And continued citizen collection showed a change in Russian positions over time without waiting for another satellite to pass over the area. Of course, such a show of force was not guaranteed to presage an invasion, but there was no hiding the composition and scale of the build-up.
Once the Russians actually invaded, there was another key development – the democratisation of near real-time battlefield awareness. In a digitally connected context, everyone can be a sensor or intelligence collector, wittingly or unwittingly. This dispersed and crowd-sourced collection against the Russian campaign was based on the huge number of people taking pictures of Russian military equipment and formations in Ukraine and posting them online. These average citizens likely had no idea what exactly they were snapping a picture of, but established military experts on the internet do. Sometimes within minutes, internet platforms such as Twitter had threads and threads of what the pictures were, and what they revealed, providing what intelligence professionals call Russian ‘order of battle’…(More)”.
Citizen science tackles plastics in Ghana
Interview with Dilek Fraisl and Omar Seidu by Stephanie Olen: “An estimated 8 million tonnes of plastic waste leaks into the ocean every year, and Ghana generates approximately 1.1 million tonnes of plastics per year. This is due to the substantial economic growth that Ghana has experienced in recent years, as well as the 2.2% population growth annually, which has urged the Ghanaian authorities to act. Ghana was the first African country to join the Global Plastic Action Partnership in 2019. Ghana also has a growing and active citizen science beach clean-up community including one of our project partners, the Smart Nature Freak Youth Volunteers Foundation (SNFYVF).
Before our work, Ghana had no official data available related to marine plastic litter. Based on the data collected through citizen science initiatives in the country and our project ‘Citizen Science for the SDGs in Ghana’ (CS4SDGs), we now know that in 2020 alone more than 152 million plastic items were found along the beaches in the country…
One of the key factors for the success of our project was due to Ghana’s progressive approach to the use of new sources of data for official statistics. For example, the Ghanaian Government passed the new Statistical Service Act in 2019, which mandates the GSS to coordinate statistical information across the whole government system, develop and raise awareness of codes of ethics and practices to produce data, and include new sources of data as a valid input for production of official statistics. This shows that the effective legal arrangements can prepare the groundwork for citizen science data to be used as official statistics and for SDG monitoring and reporting. Political commitment from the partners in Ghana also helped to achieve success. Ultimately, without the support of citizen science and action groups in the country that actually collected the litter and the data on the ground, this project would have never been successful. Since the start, citizen scientists have been willing to work with the government agencies and international partners, as well as other key stakeholders to support our project, which played a significant role in achieving our result…(More)”.
Public Access to Advance Equity
Essay by Alondra Nelson, Christopher Marcum and Jedidah Isler: “Open science began in the scientific community as a movement committed to making all aspects of research freely available to all members of society.
As a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States is committed to promoting open science, which the OECD defines as “unhindered access to scientific articles, access to data from public research, and collaborative research enabled by information and communication technology tools and incentives.”
At the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), we have been inspired by the movement to push for openness in research by community activists, researchers, publishers, higher-education leaders, policymakers, patient advocates, scholarly associations, librarians, open-government proponents, philanthropic organizations, and the public.
Open science is an essential part of the Biden-Harris administration’s broader commitment to providing public access to data, publications, and the other important products of the nation’s taxpayer-supported research and innovation enterprise. We look to the lessons, methods, and products of open science to deliver on this commitment to policy that advances equity, accelerates discovery and innovation, provides opportunities for all to participate in research, promotes public trust, and is evidence-based. Here, we detail some of the ways OSTP is working to expand the American public’s access to the federal research and development ecosystem, and to ensure it is open, equitable, and secure…(More)”.
Avert Bangladesh’s looming water crisis through open science and better data
Article by Augusto Getirana et al: “Access to data is a huge problem. Bangladesh collects a large amount of hydrological data, such as for stream flow, surface and groundwater levels, precipitation, water quality and water consumption. But these data are not readily available: researchers must seek out officials individually to gain access. India’s hydrological data can be similarly hard to obtain, preventing downstream Bangladesh from accurately predicting flows into its rivers.
Bilateral scientific collaboration between Bangladesh and water-sharing nations, including India, Nepal, Bhutan and China, would be mutually beneficial. The decades-long Mekong River Commission between Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam is one successful transboundary agreement that could serve as a model.
Publishing hydrological data in an open-access database would be an exciting step. For now, however, the logistics, funding and politics to make on-the-ground data publicly available are likely to remain out of reach.
Fortunately, satellite data can help to fill the gaps. Current Earth-observing satellite missions, such as the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) Follow-On, the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) network, multiple radar altimeters and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors make data freely available and can provide an overall picture of water availability across the country (this is what we used in many of our analyses). The picture is soon to improve. In December, NASA and CNES, France’s space agency, plan to launch the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission. SWOT will provide unprecedented information on global ocean and inland surface waters at fine spatial resolution, allowing for much more detailed monitoring of water levels than is possible today. The international scientific community has been working hard over the past 15 years to get ready to store, process and use SWOT data.
New open-science initiatives, particularly NASA’s Earth Information System, launched in 2021, can help by supporting the development of customized data-analysis and modelling tools (see go.nature.com/3cffbh9). The data we present here were acquired in this framework. We are currently working on an advanced hydrological model that will be capable of representing climate-change effects and human impacts on Bangladesh’s water availability. We expect that the co-development of such a modelling system with local partners will support decision-making.
SERVIR, a joint programme of NASA and the US Agency for International Development that focuses on capacity-building, could also help improve forecasting of severe weather for Bangladesh, for example. This could improve the flood monitoring and forecast system operated by the Bangladesh Water Development Board, which is limited in geographical scope — flooding is monitored only at specific locations, not across the country. Such efforts will help with short-term adaptation and emergency responses to flood conditions, and with long-term planning for infrastructure…(More)”.
Does South Africa’s Proposed State Ownership of Data Make Any Sense?
Paper by Enyinna S. Nwauche: “This paper interrogates the proposed state ownership of data by South Africa’s Draft National Cloud and Data Policy 2021 and argues that the quest for state ownership is evidence of South Africa’s policy preference for the state custodianship of critical natural resources. The paper suggests that a preferred reading of the proposed state ownership is the affirmation of a regulatory space to address issues related to the digital economy. This paper further suggests that regulatory oversight is inconsistent with the proposed state ownership because of the multi-dimensional nature of data and the fact that data is constitutional property. Rather than seek state ownership of data, the paper examines how to strike a delicate balance between the rights of citizens over data, such as privacy and the data use by companies who are recognized by South African Law to be entitled to some protection of privacy; intellectual property rights and confidential information. The paper sketches a framework of the balance in data governance in South Africa by reviewing jurisprudence that enables South Africa assert appropriate regulatory oversight through laws policies and institutions that enhance her digital economy…(More)”.
Tech-Fuelled Inequality Could Catalyze Populism 2.0
Article by Kyle Hiebert: “Geopolitical crises, looming climate chaos and the relentless expansion of surveillance capitalism are driving the development of the technologies of tomorrow — artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, green energy, big data, advanced robotics, virtual and augmented reality, nanotechnology, quantum computing, the Internet of Things and more.
Each of these tools holds tremendous potential to improve lives and help solve the world’s biggest problems. But technological change always produces winners and losers by giving rise to new concentrations of power and novel forms of inequality. For example, a study by the US National Bureau of Economic Research found that between 50 and 70 percent of lost wages in America from 1980 to 2016 stemmed from automation — far more than from aggressive offshoring or the withering of labour unions.
However, automation has brought about new occupations as well, evidenced by the absence of mass joblessness in the United States over the same period. Despite the lost wages, the US unemployment rate from 1993 to 2019 stayed around or below seven percent when excluding a four-year recovery following the exogenous shock of the 2008 financial crisis. Productivity has also increased by nearly 62 percent since 1979. But the wages of American workers have failed to keep pace, rising only 17.5 percent, signalling a deep disconnect in recent history between new technologies being adopted and the average worker being better off as a result.
Similar circumstances across the democratic world have provoked severe political consequences over the past decade. Disaffected populations caught on the wrong side of economic transformations and alienated by the accompanying social changes spurred by globalization have aligned themselves with populists pitching simplistic solutions to complex problems. Polarization has skyrocketed; international cooperation has frayed.
As the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution accelerates in coming years, upending how economies and societies operate, a new form of populism rooted in tech-fuelled disparities may eventually consume democratic nations. To avoid this outcome, governments must get serious about harnessing new technologies to make the democratic process more agile and responsive to voters’ frustrations…(More)”