state & provincial

50 states, 50 public records stories

Curated on December 30, 2015May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Kelly Hinchcliffe at Poynter: “I try to feature journalists who are telling important stories using public records. For my final column of 2015, I wanted to do something big and decided to find public records stories from all 50 states (plus, a bonus: Washington, D.C.).

This is not meant to be a “best of” list. It’s simply a collection of public records stories from the past year that intrigued me. I found many of the stories by searching the National Freedom of Information Coalition’s website, as well as Investigative Reporters & Editors.…check out my list of public records stories from around the country and see what records journalists are requesting. It’s full of great story ideas:

Alabama

Auburn spent $1.67 million on Outback Bowl trip

(Montgomery Advertiser)

Auburn spent more than $1.6 million on its Outback Bowl trip, according to the Institutional Bowl Expense report summary submitted to the NCAA and released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Alaska

KMXT sues Kodiak City for documents in police brutality case

(KMXT)

The public radio station filed suit against the City of Kodiak to get records from police after three officers handcuffed and pepper-sprayed a man with autism.

Arizona

Legislature redacts, delays and denies access to messages

(Arizona Capitol Times)

The newspaper requested electronic messages sent among top state elected officials of both parties and their top staff. But getting access to those messages was difficult.

Arkansas

Some question email deletion policies

(Arkansas News)

After the state treasurer’s office instituted a policy requiring employees to delete all emails after 30 days, critics questioned whether it was necessary and whether it was consistent with the spirit of open government.

California

Collapsed I-10 bridge given an A rating just last year

(The Desert Sun)

After a bridge collapsed on Interstate 10, the newspaper reviewed Federal Highway Administration data and found that the bridge had been given an “A” rating and one of the highest possible flood safety ratings.

Colorado

Students accuse CU-Boulder of delaying release of debate documents

(Daily Camera)

University of Colorado students accused administrators of dragging their feet on an open records request the students filed to get letters, emails and documents related to the Republican presidential debate held on campus….(More)”

Privacy in Public Spaces: What Expectations of Privacy Do We Have in Social Media Intelligence?

Curated on December 16, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Edwards, Lilian and Urquhart, Lachlan: “In this paper we give a basic introduction to the transition in contemporary surveillance from top down traditional police surveillance to profiling and “pre-crime” methods. We then review in more detail the rise of open source (OSINT) and social media (SOCMINT) intelligence and its use by law enforcement and security authorities. Following this we consider what if any privacy protection is currently given in UK law to SOCMINT. Given the largely negative response to the above question, we analyse what reasonable expectations of privacy there may be for users of public social media, with reference to existing case law on art 8 of the ECHR. Two factors are in particular argued to be supportive of a reasonable expectation of privacy in open public social media communications: first, the failure of many social network users to perceive the environment where they communicate as “public”; and secondly, the impact of search engines (and other automated analytics) on traditional conceptions of structured dossiers as most problematic for state surveillance. Lastly, we conclude that existing law does not provide adequate protection foropen SOCMINT and that this will be increasingly significant as more and more personal data is disclosed and collected in public without well-defined expectations of privacy….(More)”

To reduce economic inequality, do we need better democracy?

Curated on December 16, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Matt Leighninger at Public Agenda: “When people have a say in the decisions that affect their lives, they will be better off economically as well as politically.

This idea has intrigued community development experts, foundation executives, public officials and academic researchers for many years. It has also animated some of the work people and governments are undertaking to address inequality, both in the United States and (especially) in the Global South.

But can a participatory democracy lead to greater economic opportunity? We are just beginning to amass evidence that this idea is true, understand how and why it works, and figure out how to make it happen better and faster.

Over the last two decades we have witnessed a quiet revolution in how governments and other institutions engage the public. Public officials, technologists, engagement practitioners, community organizers and other leaders have developed hundreds of projects, processes, tools and apps that boost engagement.

While they differ in many ways, these strategies and resources have one common thread: they treat citizens like adults rather than the clients (or children) of the state. They give people chances to connect, learn, deliberate, make recommendations, vote on budget or policy decisions, take action to solve public problems or all of the above. The principles behind these practices embody and enable greater political equality.

This wave of experimentation has produced inspiring outcomes in cities all over the world, but it has been particularly productive in Brazil and other parts of the Global South, where engagement has been built into the way that many cities operate. In these places, it is increasingly clear that when people have a legitimate voice in the institutions that govern their communities, and when they have support through various kinds of social and political networks, their economic fortunes improve.

The best-documented cases come from cities in Brazil, where Participatory Budgeting and other forms of engagement have been built into a much more robust “civic infrastructure” than we have in most American cities. In other words, people in these places have a wider variety of ways to participate on a broader range of issues and decisions. Their chances for engagement include online opportunities as well as face-to-face meetings. Many are social events as much as political ones: people participate because they get to see their neighbors and feel like they are part of a community, in addition to being able to weigh in on a public decision.

In these cities, the gap between rich and poor has narrowed, much more so than in similar cities without vibrant local democracies. In addition, governments are more likely to complete planned projects; public finances are better managed and less prone to corruption; people exhibit increased trust in public institutions and are more likely to pay their taxes; public expenditures are more likely to benefit low-income people; public health outcomes, such as the rate of infant mortality, have improved; and poverty has been reduced.

The connection between democratic innovation and greater economic equity raises many questions ripe for research:….(More)”

Guffipedia: a dictionary of business jargon

Curated on December 15, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Lucy Kellaway in the Financial Times: ” At this time of year, my mind naturally turns to guff. Every December I open the cupboard in which I store the worst examples of the year’s jargon and begin the search for winners of my annual Golden Flannel awards.

This year, as ever, the cupboard is stuffed with ugly words and phrases that people have written or spoken in 2015. To pick a few at random, there is “passionpreneur”. There is delta (to mean gap). There is to solutionize, to mindshare and even to role-model. All are new. All reach new linguisticlows….

To this end we have created Guffipedia, a repository for the terms that I’verailed at over the years. You will find previous years’ Golden Flannel winners with chapter-and-verse from me on why they are so ghastly (in case you are too steeped in the stuff to be able to work it out for yourself)….The point of Guffipedia is not just for you to admire the extent of my guff collection, but to help me curate it going forward, as they say in

The point of Guffipedia is not just for you to admire the extent of my guff collection, but to help me curate it going forward, as they say in Guffish.

I am urging you to submit horrible new words or phrases, to have a stab at translating them into serviceable English, and to state where you found them. You don’t need to name the perpetrator (though it would be nice if you did). “Heard in a lift” is fine — so long as it actually was. And if you get your entries in before the end of the year, they may end up winning a prize in my 2015 Golden Flannel awards, announced the first week inJanuary….See Guffipedia”

Controlling the crowd? Government and citizen interaction on emergency-response platforms

Curated on December 12, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Gregory Asmolov at the Policy and Internet Blog: “My interest in the role of crowdsourcing tools and practices in emergency situations was triggered by my personal experience. In 2010 I was one of the co-founders of the Russian “Help Map” project, which facilitated volunteer-based response to wildfires in central Russia. When I was working on this project, I realized that a crowdsourcing platform can bring the participation of the citizen to a new level and transform sporadic initiatives by single citizens and groups into large-scale, relatively well coordinated operations. What was also important was that both the needs and the forms of participation required in order to address these needs be defined by the users themselves.

To some extent the citizen-based response filled the gap left by the lack of a sufficient response from the traditional institutions.[1] This suggests that the role of ICTs in disaster response should be examined within the political context of the power relationship between members of the public who use digital tools and the traditional institutions. My experience in 2010 was the first time I was able to see that, while we would expect that in a case of natural disaster both the authorities and the citizens would be mostly concerned about the emergency, the actual situation might be different.

Apparently the emergence of independent, citizen-based collective action in response to a disaster was considered as some type of threat by the institutional actors. First, it was a threat to the image of these institutions, which didn’t want citizens to be portrayed as the leading responding actors. Second, any type of citizen-based collective action, even if not purely political, may be an issue of concern in authoritarian countries in particular. Accordingly, one can argue that, while citizens are struggling against a disaster, in some cases the traditional institutions may make substantial efforts to restrain and contain the action of citizens. In this light, the role of information technologies can include not only enhancing citizen engagement and increasing the efficiency of the response, but also controlling the digital crowd of potential volunteers.

The purpose of this paper was to conceptualize the tension between the role of ICTs in the engagement of the crowd and its resources, and the role of ICTs in controlling the resources of the crowd. The research suggests a theoretical and methodological framework that allows us to explore this tension. The paper focuses on an analysis of specific platforms and suggests empirical data about the structure of the platforms, and interviews with developers and administrators of the platforms. This data is used in order to identify how tools of engagement are transformed into tools of control, and what major differences there are between platforms that seek to achieve these two goals. That said, obviously any platform can have properties of control and properties of engagement at the same time; however the proportion of these two types of elements can differ significantly.

One of the core issues for my research is how traditional actors respond to fast, bottom-up innovation by citizens.[2]. On the one hand, the authorities try to restrict the empowerment of citizens by the new tools. On the other hand, the institutional actors also seek to innovate and develop new tools that can restore the balance of power that has been challenged by citizen-based innovation. The tension between using digital tools for the engagement of the crowd and for control of the crowd can be considered as one of the aspects of this dynamic.

That doesn’t mean that all state-backed platforms are created solely for the purpose of control. One can argue, however, that the development of digital tools that offer a mechanism of command and control over the resources of the crowd is prevalent among the projects that are supported by the authorities. This can also be approached as a means of using information technologies in order to include the digital crowd within the “vertical of power”, which is a top-down strategy of governance. That is why this paper seeks to conceptualize this phenomenon as “vertical crowdsourcing”.

The question of whether using a digital tool as a mechanism of control is intentional is to some extent secondary. What is important is that the analysis of platform structures relying on activity theory identifies a number of properties that allow us to argue that these tools are primarily tools of control. The conceptual framework introduced in the paper is used in order to follow the transformation of tools for the engagement of the crowd into tools of control over the crowd. That said, some of the interviews with the developers and administrators of the platforms may suggest the intentional nature of the development of tools of control, while crowd engagement is secondary….Read the full article: Asmolov, G. (2015) Vertical Crowdsourcing in Russia: Balancing Governance of Crowds and State–Citizen Partnership in Emergency Situations.”

Open Data Index 2015

Curated on December 10, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Knowledge: “….This year’s Index showed impressive gains from non-OECD countries with Taiwan topping the Index and Colombia and Uruguay breaking into the top ten at four and seven respectively. Overall, the Index evaluated 122 places and 1586 datasets and determined that only 9%, or 156 datasets, were both technically and legally open.

The Index ranks countries based on the availability and accessibility of data in thirteen key categories, including government spending, election results, procurement, and pollution levels. Over the summer, we held a public consultation, which saw contributions from individuals within the open data community as well as from key civil society organisations across an array of sectors. As a result of this consultation, we expanded the 2015 Index to include public procurement data, water quality data, land ownership data and weather data; we also decided to removed transport timetables due to the difficulties faced when comparing transport system data globally.

Open Knowledge International began to systematically track the release of open data by national governments in 2013 with the objective of measuring if governments were releasing the key datasets of high social and democratic value as open data. That enables us to better understand the current state of play and in turn work with civil society actors to address the gaps in data release. Over the course of the last three years, the Global Open Data Index has become more than just a benchmark – we noticed that governments began to use the Index as a reference to inform their open data priorities and civil society actors began to use the Index advocacy tool to encourage governments to improve their performance in releasing key datasets.

Furthermore, indices such as the Global Open Data Index are not without their challenges. The Index measures the technical and legal openness of datasets deemed to be of critical democratic and social value – it does not measure the openness of a given government. It should be clear that the release of a few key datasets is not a sufficient measure of the openness of a government. The blurring of lines between open data and open government is nothing new and has been hotly debated by civil society groups and transparency organisations since the sharp rise in popularity of open data policies over the last decade. …Index at http://index.okfn.org/”

State of the Commons

Curated on December 9, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Creative Commons: “Creative Commoners have known all along that collaboration, sharing, and cooperation are a driving force for human evolution. And so for many it will come as no surprise that in 2015 we achieved a tremendous milestone: over 1.1 billion CC licensed photos, videos, audio tracks, educational materials, research articles, and more have now been contributed to the shared global commons…..

Whether it’s open education, open data, science, research, music, video, photography, or public policy, we are putting sharing and collaboration at the heart of the Web. In doing so, we are much closer to realizing our vision: unlocking the full potential of the Internet to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity.

I am proud to share with you our 2015 State of the Commons report, our best effort to measure the immeasurable scope of the commons by looking at the CC licensed content, along with content marked as public domain, that comprise the slice of the commons powered by CC tools. We are proud to be a leader in the commons movement, and we hope you will join us as we celebrate all we have accomplished together this year. ….Report at https://stateof.creativecommons.org/2015/”

Creating Value through Open Data

Curated on December 3, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “Capgemini Consulting, the global strategy and transformation consulting arm of the Capgemini Group, today published two new reports on the state of play of Open Data in Europe, to mark the launch of the European Open Data Portal. The first report addresses “Open Data Maturity in Europe 2015: Insights into the European state of play” and the second focuses on “Creating Value through Open Data: Study on the Impact of Re-use of Public Data Resources.” The countries covered by these assessments include the EU28 countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland – commonly referred to as the EU28+ countries. The reports were requested by the European Commission within the framework of the Connecting Europe Facility program, supporting the deployment of European Open Data infrastructure.

Open Data refers to the information collected, produced or paid for by public bodies and can be freely used, modified and shared by anyone.. For the period 2016-2020, the direct market size for Open Data is estimated at EUR 325 billion for Europe. Capgemini’s study “Creating Value through Open Data” illustrates how Open Data can create economic value in multiple ways including increased market transactions, job creation from producing services and products based on Open Data, to cost savings and efficiency gains. For instance, effective use of Open Data could help save 629 million hours of unnecessary waiting time on the roads in the EU; and help reduce energy consumption by 16%. The accumulated cost savings for public administrations making use of Open Data across the EU28+ in 2020 are predicted to equal 1.7 bn EUR. Reaping these benefits requires reaching a high level of Open Data maturity.

In order to address the accessibility and the value of Open Data across European countries, the European Union has launched the Beta version of the European Data Portal. The Portal addresses the whole Data Value Chain, from data publishing to data re-use. Over 240,000 data sets are referenced on the Portal and 34 European countries. It offers seamless access to public data across Europe, with over 13 content categories to categorize data, ranging from health or education to transport or even science and justice. Anyone, citizens, businesses, journalists or administrations can search, access and re-use the full data collection. A wide range of data is available, from crime records in Helsinki, labor mobility in the Netherlands, forestry maps in France to the impact of digitization in Poland…..The study, “Open Data Maturity in Europe 2015: Insights into the European state of play”, uses two key indicators: Open Data Readiness and Portal Maturity. These indicators cover both the maturity of national policies supporting Open Data as well as an assessment of the features made available on national data portals. The study shows that the EU28+ have completed just 44% of the journey towards achieving full Open Data Maturity and there are large discrepancies across countries. A third of European countries (32%), recognized globally, are leading the way with solid policies, licensing norms, good portal traffic and many local initiatives and events to promote Open Data and its re-use….(More)”

Can we achieve effective economic diplomacy without innovation diplomacy?

Curated on December 3, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Lisa Rauter at innovationXchange (Australia): “Increasingly innovation is a topic of discussion within Government departments; across agencies; and between governments and external organisations. It is also a strong focus in the development community. At its core, innovation is the development of new ideas, more effective technologies or approaches. Innovation leads to the application of better solutions to improve outputs.

DFAT’s innovationXchange is seeing throughout our conversations with other countries that so many of us are looking at the issue of innovation. …There is a great deal of interest in exploring how we can share information across borders, how we use that information to trigger new ideas, and how we leverage the skills and knowledge of others to achieve better outcomes. Innovation is fast becoming a common objective, something we all aim to embed in our respective organisations, but which we know we cannot do alone. The problems we seek to solve are global and a collaborative, innovative approach to solve them is needed….

This makes me think, is innovation the new diplomatic tool on which we can base new or enhanced relationships on? Can we use the shared goal of doing things better, more cost effectively harnessing the knowledge and capital that sits outside governments to not only have a better impact but bring countries closer together in a collaborative partnership? Could these collaborative partnerships even contribute to increased regional stability?

Innovation is fuelled by collaboration – taking an idea, sharing with others, using their knowledge and creativity to improve the idea, building on it, testing it, adapting and testing again. This collaborative process aligns very well with the intent behind diplomacy – the act of a state seeking toachieve its aims, in relation to those of others, through dialogue and negotiation.

This is already happening to some extent with like-mindeds, like UK and US. But innovation is about risk taking, trying new things and stepping outside of the familiar and comfortable. The emergence of new groupings, like MIKTA, and the increasing engagement of the private sector in partnering for social impact expands the opportunities to learn about other approaches and find complementary skills and knowledge.

This is all about making collaboration, co-creation and through that, innovation a way of working – an approach we can take to working with other states and other organisations. While innovation is the latest buzzword in government and in the development community, it will remain just a buzzword, easily replaced by the next trend, unless we look for opportunities to work with others to co-create and innovate to solve shared problems….(More)”