Report by Phoensight: “With the emergence of increasing computational power, high cloud storage capacity and big data comes an eager anticipation of one of the biggest IT transformations of our society today.
Open data has an instrumental role to play in our digital revolution by creating unprecedented opportunities for governments and businesses to leverage off previously unavailable information to strengthen their analytics and decision making for new client experiences. Whilst virtually every business recognises the value of data and the importance of the analytics built on it, the ability to realise the potential for maximising revenue and cost savings is not straightforward. The discovery of valuable insights often involves the acquisition of new data and an understanding of it. As we move towards an increasing supply of open data, technological and other entrepreneurs will look to better utilise government information for improved productivity.
This report uses a data-centric approach to examine the usability of information by considering ways in which open data could better facilitate data-driven innovations and further boost our economy. It assesses the state of open data today and suggests ways in which data providers could supply open data to optimise its use. A number of useful measures of information usability such as accessibility, quantity, quality and openness are presented which together contribute to the Open Data Usability Index (ODUI). For the first time, a comprehensive assessment of open data usability has been developed and is expected to be a critical step in taking the open data agenda to the next level.
With over two million government datasets assessed against the open data usability framework and models developed to link entire country’s datasets to key industry sectors, never before has such an extensive analysis been undertaken. Government open data across Australia, Canada, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States reveal that most countries have the capacity for improvements in their information usability. It was found that for 2015 the United Kingdom led the way followed by Canada, Singapore, the United States and Australia. The global potential of government open data is expected to reach 20 exabytes by 2020, provided governments are able to release as much data as possible within legislative constraints….(More)”
Ana Campoy at Quartz: “Mexico City just launched a massive experiment in digital democracy. It is asking its nearly 9 million residents to help draft a new constitution through social media. The crowdsourcing exercise is unprecedented in Mexico—and pretty much everywhere else.
as locals are known, can petition for issues to be included in the constitution through Change.org (link inSpanish), and make their case in person if they gather more than 10,000 signatures. They can also annotate proposals by the constitution drafters via PubPub, an editing platform (Spanish) similar to GoogleDocs.
The idea, in the words of the mayor, Miguel Angel Mancera, is to“bestow the constitution project (Spanish) with a democratic,progressive, inclusive, civic and plural character.”
There’s a big catch, however. The constitutional assembly—the body that has the final word on the new city’s basic law—is under no obligation to consider any of the citizen input. And then there are the practical difficulties of collecting and summarizing the myriad of views dispersed throughout one of the world’s largest cities.
That makes Mexico City’s public-consultation experiment a big test for the people’s digital power, one being watched around the world.Fittingly, the idea of crowdsourcing a constitution came about in response to an attempt to limit people power.
Fittingly, the idea of crowdsourcing a constitution came about in response to an attempt to limit people power.
For decades, city officials had fought to get out from under the thumb of the federal government, which had the final word on decisions such as who should be the city’s chief of police. This year, finally, they won a legal change that turns the Distrito Federal (federal district), similar to the US’s District of Columbia, into Ciudad de México (Mexico City), a more autonomous entity, more akin to a state. (Confusingly, it’s just part of the larger urban area also colloquially known as Mexico City, which spills into neighboring states.)
However, trying to retain some control, the Mexican congress decided that only 60% of the delegates to the city’s constitutional assembly would be elected by popular vote. The rest will be assigned by the president, congress, and Mancera, the mayor. Mancera is also the only one who can submit a draft constitution to the assembly.
Mancera’s response was to create a committee of some 30 citizens(Spanish), including politicians, human-rights advocates, journalists,and even a Paralympic gold medalist, to write his draft. He also calledfor the development of mechanisms to gather citizens’ “aspirations,values, and longing for freedom and justice” so they can beincorporated into the final document.
The mechanisms, embedded in an online platform (Spanish) that offersvarious ways to weigh in, were launched at the end of March and willcollect inputs until September 1. The drafting group has until themiddle of that month to file its text with the assembly, which has toapprove the new constitution by the end of January.
An experiment with few precedents
Mexico City didn’t have a lot of examples to draw on, since not a lot ofplaces have experience with crowdsourcing laws. In the US, a few locallawmakers have used Wiki pages and GitHub to draft bills, says MarilynBautista, a lecturer at Stanford Law School who has researched thepractice. Iceland—with a population some 27 times smaller than MexicoCity’s—famously had its citizens contribute to its constitution withinput from social media. The effort failed after the new constitution gotstuck in parliament.
In Mexico City, where many citizens already feel left out, the first bighurdle is to convince them it’s worth participating….
Then comes the task of making sense of the cacophony that will likelyemerge. Some of the input can be very easily organized—the results ofthe survey, for example, are being graphed in real time. But there could be thousands of documents and comments on the Change.org petitionsand the editing platform.
Ideas are grouped into 18 topics, such as direct democracy,transparency and economic rights. They are prioritized based on theamount of support they’ve garnered and how relevant they are, saidBernardo Rivera, an adviser for the city. Drafters get a weekly deliveryof summarized citizen petitions….
An essay about human rights on the PubPub platform.(PubPub)
The most elaborate part of the system is PubPub, an open publishing platform similar to Google Docs, which is based on a project originally developed by MIT’s Media Lab. The drafters are supposed to post essays on how to address constitutional issues, and potentially, the constitution draft itself, once there is one. Only they—or whoever they authorize—will be able to reword the original document.
User comments and edits are recorded on a side panel, with links to the portion of text they refer to. Another screen records every change, so everyone can track which suggestions have made it into the text. Members of the public can also vote comments up or down, or post their own essays….(More).
Melody Kramer at 18F: “We’re starting to see state and local governments adapt or use 18F products or tools. Nothing could make us happier; all of our code (and content) is available for anyone to use and reusable.
There are a number of open source projects that 18F has worked on that could work particularly well at any level of government. We’re highlighting seven below:
We built a responsive, accessible website template (based on open source work by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) that we use primarily for documentation and guides. You can take the website template, adapt the colors and fonts to reflect your own style template, and have an easy way to release notes about a project. We’ve used this template to write a guide on accessibility in government, content guidelines, and a checklist for what needs to take place before we release software. You’re also welcome to take our content and adapt it for your own needs — what we write is in the public domain.
Insight into how people interact with government
Over the last several months, staff from General Service Administration’s USAGov and 18F teams have been talking to Americans around the country about their interactions with the federal government. The goal of the research was to identify and create cross-agency services and resources to improve how the government interacts with the public. Earlier this month, we published all of our research. You can read the full report with findings or explore what we learned on the 18F blog.
Market research for procurement
We developed a tool that helps you easily conduct market research across a number of categories for acquiring professional labor. You can read about how the city of Boston is using the tool to conduct market research.
Vocabulary for user-centered design
We released a deck of method cards that help research and design teams communicate a shared vocabulary across teams and agencies.
Task management
We recently developed a checklist program that help users manage complex to-do lists. One feature: checklist items deadlines can be set according to a fixed date or relative to completion of other items. This means you can create checklist for all new employees, for example, and say “Task five should be completed four days after task four,” whenever task four is completed by an employee.
Help small businesses find opportunities
FBOpen is a set of open source tools to help small businesses search for opportunities to work with the U.S. government. FBOpen presents an Application Programming Interface (API) to published Federal contracting opportunities, as well as implementing a beautiful graphical user interface to the same opportunities.
Anyone who wishes to may reuse this code to create their own website, free of charge and unencumbered by obligations….(More)”
The Open Data Barometer: “Once the preserve of academics and statisticians, data has become a development cause embraced by everyone from grassroots activists to the UN Secretary-General. There’s now a clear understanding that we need robust data to drive democracy and development — and a lot of it.
Last year, the world agreed the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — seventeen global commitments that set an ambitious agenda to end poverty, fight inequality and tackle climate change by 2030. Recognising that good data is essential to the success of the SDGs, the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data and the International Open Data Charter were launched as the SDGs were unveiled. These alliances mean the “data revolution” now has over 100 champions willing to fight for it. Meanwhile, Africa adopted the African Data Consensus — a roadmap to improving data standards and availability in a region that has notoriously struggled to capture even basic information such as birth registration.
But while much has been made of the need for bigger and better data to power the SDGs, this year’s Barometer follows the lead set by the International Open Data Charter by focusing on how much of this data will be openly available to the public.
Open data is essential to building accountable and effective institutions, and to ensuring public access to information — both goals of SDG 16. It is also essential for meaningful monitoring of progress on all 169 SDG targets. Yet the promise and possibilities offered by opening up data to journalists, human rights defenders, parliamentarians, and citizens at large go far beyond even these….
At a glance, here are this year’s key findings on the state of open data around the world:
Open data is entering the mainstream.The majority of the countries in the survey (55%) now have an open data initiative in place and a national data catalogue providing access to datasets available for re-use. Moreover, new open data initiatives are getting underway or are promised for the near future in a number of countries, including Ecuador, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Nepal, Thailand, Botswana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda. Demand is high: civil society and the tech community are using government data in 93% of countries surveyed, even in countries where that data is not yet fully open.
Despite this, there’s been little to no progress on the number of truly open datasets around the world.Even with the rapid spread of open government data plans and policies, too much critical data remains locked in government filing cabinets. For example, only two countries publish acceptable detailed open public spending data. Of all 1,380 government datasets surveyed, almost 90% are still closed — roughly the same as in the last edition of the Open Data Barometer (when only 130 out of 1,290 datasets, or 10%, were open). What is more, much of the approximately 10% of data that meets the open definition is of poor quality, making it difficult for potential data users to access, process and work with it effectively.
“Open-washing” is jeopardising progress. Many governments have advertised their open data policies as a way to burnish their democratic and transparent credentials. But open data, while extremely important, is just one component of a responsive and accountable government. Open data initiatives cannot be effective if not supported by a culture of openness where citizens are encouraged to ask questions and engage, and supported by a legal framework. Disturbingly, in this edition we saw a backslide on freedom of information, transparency, accountability, and privacy indicators in some countries. Until all these factors are in place, open data cannot be a true SDG accelerator.
Implementation and resourcing are the weakest links.Progress on the Barometer’s implementation and impact indicators has stalled or even gone into reverse in some cases. Open data can result in net savings for the public purse, but getting individual ministries to allocate the budget and staff needed to publish their data is often an uphill battle, and investment in building user capacity (both inside and outside of government) is scarce. Open data is not yet entrenched in law or policy, and the legal frameworks supporting most open data initiatives are weak. This is a symptom of the tendency of governments to view open data as a fad or experiment with little to no long-term strategy behind its implementation. This results in haphazard implementation, weak demand and limited impact.
The gap between data haves and have-nots needs urgent attention.Twenty-six of the top 30 countries in the ranking are high-income countries. Half of open datasets in our study are found in just the top 10 OECD countries, while almost none are in African countries. As the UN pointed out last year, such gaps could create “a whole new inequality frontier” if allowed to persist. Open data champions in several developing countries have launched fledgling initiatives, but too often those good open data intentions are not adequately resourced, resulting in weak momentum and limited success.
Governments at the top of the Barometer are being challenged by a new generation of open data adopters. Traditional open data stalwarts such as the USA and UK have seen their rate of progress on open data slow, signalling that new political will and momentum may be needed as more difficult elements of open data are tackled. Fortunately, a new generation of open data adopters, including France, Canada, Mexico, Uruguay, South Korea and the Philippines, are starting to challenge the ranking leaders and are adopting a leadership attitude in their respective regions. The International Open Data Charter could be an important vehicle to sustain and increase momentum in challenger countries, while also stimulating renewed energy in traditional open data leaders….(More)”
Series of interviews on Collective Problem Solving by Henry Farrell: Over the last two years, a group of scholars from disciplines including political science, political theory, cognitive psychology, information science, statistics and computer science have met under the auspices of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Opening Governance. The goal of these meetings has been to bring the insights of different disciplines to bear on fundamental problems of collective problem solving. How do we best solve collective problems? How should we study and think about collective intelligence? How can we apply insights to real world problems? A wide body of work leads us to believe that complex problems are most likely to be solved when people with different viewpoints and sets of skills come together. This means that we can expect that the science of collective problem solving too will be improved when people from diverse disciplinary perspectives work together to generate new insights on shared problems.
Political theorists are beginning to think in different ways about institutions such as juries. Here, the crucial insights will involve how these institutions can address the traditional concerns of political theory, such as justice and recognition, while also solving the complex problem of figuring out how best to resolve disputes, and establishing the guilt or innocence of parties in criminal cases.
Melissa Schwartzberg is an associate professor of political science at New York University, working on the political theory of democratic decision making. I asked her a series of questions about the jury as a problem-solving institution.
…
Henry: Are there any general ways for figuring out the kinds of issues that juries (based on random selection of citizens and some voting rule) are good at deciding on, and the issues that they might have problems with?
Melissa: This is a difficult question, in part because we don’t have unmediated access to the “true state of the world”: our evidence about jury competence essentially derives from the correlation of jury verdicts with what the judge would have rendered, but obviously that doesn’t mean that the judge was correct. One way around the question is to ask instead what, historically, have been the reasons why we would wish to assign judgment to laypersons: what the “jury of one’s peers” signifies. Placing a body of ordinary citizens between the state and the accused serves an important protective device, so the use of the jury is quite clearly not all about judgment. But there is a long history of thinking that juries have special access to local knowledge – the established norms, practices, and expectations of a community, but in early periods knowledge of the parties and the alleged crime – that helps to shed light on why we still think “vicinage” is important…..(More)”
Paper by Joshua A. Kroll et al: “Many important decisions historically made by people are now made by computers. Algorithms count votes, approve loan and credit card applications, target citizens or neighborhoods for police scrutiny, select taxpayers for an IRS audit, and grant or deny immigration visas.
The accountability mechanisms and legal standards that govern such decision processes have not kept pace with technology. The tools currently available to policymakers, legislators, and courts were developed to oversee human decision-makers and often fail when applied to computers instead: for example, how do you judge the intent of a piece of software? Additional approaches are needed to make automated decision systems — with their potentially incorrect, unjustified or unfair results — accountable and governable. This Article reveals a new technological toolkit to verify that automated decisions comply with key standards of legal fairness.
We challenge the dominant position in the legal literature that transparency will solve these problems. Disclosure of source code is often neither necessary (because of alternative techniques from computer science) nor sufficient (because of the complexity of code) to demonstrate the fairness of a process. Furthermore, transparency may be undesirable, such as when it permits tax cheats or terrorists to game the systems determining audits or security screening.
The central issue is how to assure the interests of citizens, and society as a whole, in making these processes more accountable. This Article argues that technology is creating new opportunities — more subtle and flexible than total transparency — to design decision-making algorithms so that they better align with legal and policy objectives. Doing so will improve not only the current governance of algorithms, but also — in certain cases — the governance of decision-making in general. The implicit (or explicit) biases of human decision-makers can be difficult to find and root out, but we can peer into the “brain” of an algorithm: computational processes and purpose specifications can be declared prior to use and verified afterwards.
The technological tools introduced in this Article apply widely. They can be used in designing decision-making processes from both the private and public sectors, and they can be tailored to verify different characteristics as desired by decision-makers, regulators, or the public. By forcing a more careful consideration of the effects of decision rules, they also engender policy discussions and closer looks at legal standards. As such, these tools have far-reaching implications throughout law and society.
Part I of this Article provides an accessible and concise introduction to foundational computer science concepts that can be used to verify and demonstrate compliance with key standards of legal fairness for automated decisions without revealing key attributes of the decision or the process by which the decision was reached. Part II then describes how these techniques can assure that decisions are made with the key governance attribute of procedural regularity, meaning that decisions are made under an announced set of rules consistently applied in each case. We demonstrate how this approach could be used to redesign and resolve issues with the State Department’s diversity visa lottery. In Part III, we go further and explore how other computational techniques can assure that automated decisions preserve fidelity to substantive legal and policy choices. We show how these tools may be used to assure that certain kinds of unjust discrimination are avoided and that automated decision processes behave in ways that comport with the social or legal standards that govern the decision. We also show how algorithmic decision-making may even complicate existing doctrines of disparate treatment and disparate impact, and we discuss some recent computer science work on detecting and removing discrimination in algorithms, especially in the context of big data and machine learning. And lastly in Part IV, we propose an agenda to further synergistic collaboration between computer science, law and policy to advance the design of automated decision processes for accountability….(More)”
USA Gov: “There’s an app for everything in this digital age, including hundredsdeveloped by the federal government. Here are six apps that we foundespecially useful.
Smart Traveler– Planning a trip out of the country this year? SmartTraveler by the State Department is great for all your trips abroad. Getthe latest travel alerts and information on every country, includinghow to find and contact each U.S. Embassy.
FoodKeeper – Ever wonder how long you should cook chicken or howlong food can sit in the fridge before it goes bad? The U.S. Departmentof Agriculture’s FoodKeeper is the tool for you. Not only can you findresources on food safety and post reminders of how long food willremain safe to eat, you can also ask a food safety specialist questions 24/7.
FEMA App – The FEMA app helps you learn how to prepare for and respond to disasters. It includes weather alerts, tipsfor building a basic emergency supply kit, and contact information for applying for assistance and finding local sheltersand disaster recovery centers. Stay safe and know what to do when disasters happen.
IRS2GO – Tax season is here. This IRS app can help you track the status of your refund, make a payment, or find taxpreparation assistance, sometimes for free.
CDC Influenza App-Stay on top of the flu this season and get the latest updates from this official Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention app. It’s great for health practitioners, teachers, and parents, and includes tips for avoiding the fluand maps of influenza activity.
Dwellr– Have you ever wondered what U.S. city might best suit you? Then the Dwellr app is just for you. When you firstopen the app, you’re guided through an interactive survey, to better understand your ideal places to live based on datagathered by the Census Bureau….(More)”
Q and A: “The e-Government Action Plan includes 20 initiatives to be launched in 2016 and 2017 (full list). Several of them aim to accelerate the implementation of existing legislation and related take-up of online public services. The Commission will notably support the transition of Member States towards full e-procurement, use of contract registers and interoperable e-signatures.
Another part of this set of initiatives focuses on cross-border digital public services. For example, the Commission will submit a proposal to create a Single Digital Gateway as a one-stop entry point for business and people to all Digital Single Market related information, assistance, advice and problem-solving services and making sure that the most frequently used procedures for doing business across borders can be completed fully online. The ESSI (Electronic Exchange of Social Security Information) will help national administrations to electronically share personal social information between Member States, thereby making it easier for people to live and work across borders.
Finally, the action plan aims to ensure that high-quality digital public services are designed for users and encourage their participation.
The plan will be regularly reviewed and if needed completed. An online platform for users will ensure that ideas and feedback are collected.
What is the “once-only” principle?
The “once-only” principle means that citizens and businesses should supply the same information only once to a public administration. Public administration internally shares this data, so that no additional burden falls on citizens and businesses. It calls for a reorganisation of public sector internal processes, rather than forcing businesses and citizens to fit around these processes.
The Commission will launch a pilot project with Member States to apply once-only principle across borders, with €8 million funding from Horizon 2020. This pilot will test out a technical once-only solution for businesses working in different EU Member States. Another activity will explore the once-only concept for citizens, and support networking and discussions on how this could be implemented, in due respect of the legal framework on personal data protection and privacy.
What is the digitisation of company law?
A number of EU company rules were conceived in a pre-digital era, when every form had to be completed on paper. As a result, many companies cannot fully benefit from digital tools where it comes to fulfilling company law requirements or interacting with business registers because many of the rules and processes are still paper-based.
The Commission will work on ways to achieve simpler and less burdensome solutions for companies, by facilitating the use of digital solutions throughout a company’s lifecycle in the interaction between companies and business registers, including in cross-border situations.
For instance, in order to set up as a company in a Member State, it is necessary to register that company in a business register. The Commission will look at how and in what ways online registration procedures could be made available in order to reduce the administrative burden and costs of founding a new company. Also, under EU law, companies are obliged to file a number of documents and information in business registers. Cost and time savings for companies could be generated through better use of digital tools when a company needs to submit and disclose new documents or up-date those throughout its lifecycle, for instance when the company name changes.
How will the Single Digital Gateway help European businesses and citizens?
The Single Digital Gateway will link up (not replace) relevant EU and national websites, portals, assistance services and procedures in a seamless and user-friendly way. Over time it will offer users a streamlined, comprehensive portal to find information, initiate and complete transactions with Member States’ administrations across the EU. The most frequently used administrative procedures will be identified and be brought fully online, so that no offline steps like printing and sending documents on paper will be needed.
This will save time and thereby costs for businesses and citizens when they want to engage in cross-border activities like setting up a business, exporting, moving or studying in another EU Member State.
How will interconnecting businesses registers, insolvency registers, and making the e-Justice portal a one-stop shop for justice help businesses?
These initiatives will help businesses trade within the EU with much more confidence. Not only will they be able to find the relevant information on other businesses themselves, but also on their possible insolvency, through the different interconnections of registers. This will increase transparency and enhance confidence in the Digital Single Market.
Interconnecting business registers will also ensure that business registers can communicate to each other electronically in a safe and secure way and that information is up-to-date without any additional red tape for companies.
The European e-Justice Portal provides a lot of additional information in case of problems, including tools to find a lawyer or notary, and tools for the exercise of their rights. It gives businesses easy access to information needed before entering into a business arrangement, as well as the confidence that if things go wrong, a solution is near at hand…. (More)”
Paper by Zachary F. Meisel, Lauren A. Houdek VonHoltz, and Raina M. Merchant in Healthcare: “Efforts to improve health care price transparency have garnered significant attention from patients, policy makers, and health insurers. In response to increasing consumer demand, state governments, insurance plans, and health care providers are reporting health care prices. However, such data often do not provide consumers with the most salient information: their own actual out-of-pocket cost for medical care. Although untested, crowdsourcing, a mechanism for the public to help answer complex questions, represents a potential solution to the problem of opaque hospital costs. This article explores, the challenges and potential opportunities for crowdsourcing out-of-pocket costs for healthcare consumers….(More)”.
Paper by Dennis Broeders in Philosophy & Technology: “Who can still keep a secret in a world in which everyone and everything are connected by technology aimed at charting and cross-referencing people, objects, movements, behaviour, relationships, tastes and preferences? The possibilities to keep a secret have come under severe pressure in the information age. That goes for the individual as well as the state. This development merits attention as secrecy is foundational for individual freedom as well as essential to the functioning of the state. Building on Simmel’s work on secrecy, this paper argues that the individual’s secrets should be saved from the ever-expanding digital transparency. The legitimate function of state secrecy in turn needs rescuing from a culture of secrecy and over-classification that has exploded in recent years. Contrary to popular expectation, the digital revolution adds another layer of secrecy that is increasingly hidden behind the facade of the ‘big usable systems’ we work and play with every day. Our dependence on information systems and their black-boxed algorithmic analytical core leads to a certain degree of Weberian (re) enchantment that may increase the disconnect between the system, user and object….(More)”
