Tracking the Labor Market with “Big Data”

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Tomaz Cajner, Leland Crane, Ryan Decker, Adrian Hamins-Puertolas, and Christopher Kurz at FEDSNotes: “Payroll employment growth is one of the most reliable business cycle indicators. Each postwar recession in the United States has been characterized by a year-on-year drop in payroll employment as measured by the BLS Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey, and, outside of these recessionary declines, the year-on-year payroll employment growth has always been positive. Thus, it is not surprising that policymakers, financial markets, and the general public pay a great deal of attention to the CES payroll employment gains reported at the beginning of each month.

However, while the CES survey is one of the most carefully conducted measures of labor market activity and uses an extremely large sample, it is still subject to significant sampling error and nonsampling errors. For example, when the BLS first reported that private nonfarm payroll gains were 148,000 in July 2019, the associated 90 percent confidence interval was +/- 100,000 due to sampling error alone….

One such source of alternative labor market data is the payroll-processing company ADP, which covers 20 percent of the private workforce. These are the data that underlie ADP’s monthly National Employment Report (NER), which forecasts BLS payroll employment changes by using a combination of ADP-derived data and other publicly available data. In our research, we explore the information content of the ADP microdata alone by producing an estimate of employment changes independent from the BLS payroll series as well as from other data sources.

A potential concern when using the ADP data is that only the firms which hire ADP to manage their payrolls will appear in the data, and this may introduce sample selection issues….(More)”

Citizens’ voices for better health and social policies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Olivia Biermann et al at PLOS Blog Speaking of Medicine: “Citizen engagement is important to make health and social policies more inclusive and equitable, and to contribute to learning and responsive health and social systems. It is also valuable in understanding the complexities of the social structure and how to adequately respond to them with policies. By engaging citizens, we ensure that their tacit knowledge feeds into the policy-making process. What citizens know can be valuable in identifying feasible policy options, understanding contextual factors, and putting policies into practice. In addition, the benefit of citizen engagement extends much beyond improving health policy-making processes by making them more participatory and inclusive; being engaged in policy-making processes can build patients’ capacity and empower them to speak up for their own and their families’ health and social needs, and to hold policy-makers accountable. Moreover, apart from being involved in their own care, citizen-patients can contribute to quality improvement, research and education.

Most studies on citizen engagement to date originate from high-income countries. The engagement methods used are not necessarily applicable in low- and middle-income countries, and even the political support, the culture of engagement and established citizen engagement processes might be different. Still, published processes of engaging citizens can be helpful in identifying key components across different settings, e.g. in terms of levels of engagement, communication channels and methods of recruitment. Contextualizing the modes of engagement between and within countries is a must.

Examples of citizen engagement

There are many examples of ad hoc citizen engagement initiatives at local, national and international levels. Participedia, a repository of public participation initiatives around the globe, showcases that the field of citizen engagement is extremely vibrant.  In the United Kingdom, the Citizens’ Council of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) provides NICE with a public perspective on overarching moral and ethical issues that NICE has to take into account when producing guidance. In the United States of America, the National Issues Forum supports the implementation of deliberative forums on pressing national policy issues. Yet, there are few examples that have long-standing programs of engagement and that engage citizens in evidence-informed policymaking.

A pioneer in engaging citizens in health policy-making processes is the McMaster Health Forum in Hamilton, Canada. The citizens who are invited to engage in a “citizen panel” first receive a pre-circulated, plain-language briefing document to spark deliberation about a pressing health and social-system issue. During the panels, citizens then discuss the problem and its causes, options to address it and implementation considerations. The values that they believe should underpin action to address the issue are captured in a panel summary which is used to inform a policy dialogue on the same topic, also organized by the McMaster Health Forum….(More)”.

We Need a PBS for Social Media

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Mark Coatney at the New York Times: “Social media is an opportunity wrapped in a problem. YouTube spreads propaganda and is toxic to children. Twitter spreads propaganda and is toxic to racial relations. Facebook spreads propaganda and is toxic to democracy itself.

Such problems aren’t surprising when you consider that all these companies operate on the same basic model: Create a product that maximizes the attention you can command from a person, collect as much data as you can about that person, and sell it.

Proposed solutions like breaking up companies and imposing regulation have been met with resistance: The platforms, understandably, worry that their profits might be reduced from staggering to merely amazing. And this may not be the best course of action anyway.

What if the problem is something that can’t be solved by existing for-profit media platforms? Maybe the answer to fixing social media isn’t trying to change companies with business models built around products that hijack our attention, and instead work to create a less toxic alternative.

Nonprofit public media is part of the answer. More than 50 years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act, committing federal funds to create public television and radio that would “be responsive to the interests of people.”

It isn’t a big leap to expand “public media” to include not just television and radio but also social media. In 2019, the definition of “media” is considerably larger than it was in 1967. Commentary on Twitter, memes on Instagram and performances on TikTok are all as much a part of the media landscape today as newspapers and television news.

Public media came out of a recognition that the broadcasting spectrum is a finite resource. TV broadcasters given licenses to use the spectrum were expected to provide programming like news and educational shows in return. But that was not enough. To make sure that some of that finite resource would always be used in the public interest, Congress established public media.

Today, the limited resource isn’t the spectrum — it’s our attention….(More)”.

Mobility Data Sharing: Challenges and Policy Recommendations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Mollie D’Agostino, Paige Pellaton, and Austin Brown: “Dynamic and responsive transportation systems are a core pillar of equitable and sustainable communities. Achieving such systems requires comprehensive mobility data, or data that reports the movement of individuals and vehicles. Such data enable planners and policymakers to make informed decisions and enable researchers to model the effects of various transportation solutions. However, collecting mobility data also raises concerns about privacy and proprietary interests.

This issue paper provides an overview of the top needs and challenges surrounding mobility data sharing and presents four relevant policy strategies: (1) Foster voluntary agreement among mobility providers for a set of standardized data specifications; (2) Develop clear data-sharing requirements designed for transportation network companies and other mobility providers; (3) Establish publicly held big-data repositories, managed by third parties, to securely hold mobility data and provide structured access by states, cities, and researchers; (4) Leverage innovative land-use and transportation-planning tools….(More)”.

New York Report Studies Risks, Rewards of the Smart City

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

GovTech: “The New York state comptroller tasked his staff with analyzing the deployment of new technologies at the municipal level while cautioning local leaders and the public about cyberthreats.

New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced the report, Smart Solutions Across the State: Advanced Technology in Local Governments, during a press conference last week in Schenectady, which was featured in the 25-page document for its deployment of an advanced streetlight network.

“New technologies are reshaping how local government services are delivered,” DiNapoli said during the announcement. “Local officials are stepping up to meet the evolving expectations of residents who want their interactions with government to be easy and convenient.”

The report showcases online bill payment for people to resolve parking tickets, utilities and property taxes; bike-share programs using mobile apps to access bicycles in downtown areas; public Wi-Fi through partnerships with telecommunication companies; and more….The modernization of communities across New York could create possibilities for partnerships between municipalities, counties and the state, she said. The report details how a city might attempt to emulate some of the projects included. Martinez said local government leaders should collaborate and share best practices if they decide to innovate their jurisdictions in similar ways….(More)”.

A fairer way forward for AI in health care

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Linda Nordling at Nature: “When data scientists in Chicago, Illinois, set out to test whether a machine-learning algorithm could predict how long people would stay in hospital, they thought that they were doing everyone a favour. Keeping people in hospital is expensive, and if managers knew which patients were most likely to be eligible for discharge, they could move them to the top of doctors’ priority lists to avoid unnecessary delays. It would be a win–win situation: the hospital would save money and people could leave as soon as possible.

Starting their work at the end of 2017, the scientists trained their algorithm on patient data from the University of Chicago academic hospital system. Taking data from the previous three years, they crunched the numbers to see what combination of factors best predicted length of stay. At first they only looked at clinical data. But when they expanded their analysis to other patient information, they discovered that one of the best predictors for length of stay was the person’s postal code. This was puzzling. What did the duration of a person’s stay in hospital have to do with where they lived?

As the researchers dug deeper, they became increasingly concerned. The postal codes that correlated to longer hospital stays were in poor and predominantly African American neighbourhoods. People from these areas stayed in hospitals longer than did those from more affluent, predominantly white areas. The reason for this disparity evaded the team. Perhaps people from the poorer areas were admitted with more severe conditions. Or perhaps they were less likely to be prescribed the drugs they needed.

The finding threw up an ethical conundrum. If optimizing hospital resources was the sole aim of their programme, people’s postal codes would clearly be a powerful predictor for length of hospital stay. But using them would, in practice, divert hospital resources away from poor, black people towards wealthy white people, exacerbating existing biases in the system.

“The initial goal was efficiency, which in isolation is a worthy goal,” says Marshall Chin, who studies health-care ethics at University of Chicago Medicine and was one of the scientists who worked on the project. But fairness is also important, he says, and this was not explicitly considered in the algorithm’s design….(More)”.

The Church of Techno-Optimism

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Margaret O’Mara at the New York Times: “…But Silicon Valley does have a politics. It is neither liberal nor conservative. Nor is it libertarian, despite the dog-eared copies of Ayn Rand’s novels that you might find strewn about the cubicles of a start-up in Palo Alto.

It is techno-optimism: the belief that technology and technologists are building the future and that the rest of the world, including government, needs to catch up. And this creed burns brightly, undimmed by the anti-tech backlash. “It’s now up to all of us together to harness this tremendous energy to benefit all humanity,” the venture capitalist Frank Chen said in a November 2018 speech about artificial intelligence. “We are going to build a road to space,” Jeff Bezos declared as he unveiled plans for a lunar lander last spring. And as Elon Musk recently asked his Tesla shareholders, “Would I be doing this if I weren’t optimistic?”

But this is about more than just Silicon Valley. Techno-optimism has deep roots in American political culture, and its belief in American ingenuity and technological progress. Reckoning with that history is crucial to the discussion about how to rein in Big Tech’s seemingly limitless power.

The language of techno-optimism first appears in the rhetoric of American politics after World War II. “Science, the Endless Frontier” was the title of the soaringly techno-optimistic 1945 report by Vannevar Bush, the chief science adviser to Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, which set in motion the American government’s unprecedented postwar spending on research and development. That wave of money transformed the Santa Clara Valley and turned Stanford University into an engineering powerhouse. Dwight Eisenhower filled the White House with advisers whom he called “my scientists.” John Kennedy, announcing America’s moon shot in 1962, declared that “man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred.”

In a 1963 speech, a founder of Hewlett-Packard, David Packard, looked back on his life during the Depression and marveled at the world that he lived in, giving much of the credit to technological innovation unhindered by bureaucratic interference: “Radio, television, Teletype, the vast array of publications of all types bring to a majority of the people everywhere in the world information in considerable detail, about what is going on everywhere else. Horizons are opened up, new aspirations are generated.”…(More)”

The Global Disinformation Order: 2019 Global Inventory of Organised Social Media Manipulation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Philip Howard and Samantha Bradshaw: “…The report explores the tools, capacities, strategies and resources employed by global ‘cyber troops’, typically government agencies and political parties, to influence public opinion in 70 countries.

Key findings include:

  • Organized social media manipulation has more than doubled since 2017, with 70 countries using computational propaganda to manipulate public opinion.
  • In 45 democracies, politicians and political parties have used computational propaganda tools by amassing fake followers or spreading manipulated media to garner voter support.
  • In 26 authoritarian states, government entities have used computational propaganda as a tool of information control to suppress public opinion and press freedom, discredit criticism and oppositional voices, and drown out political dissent.
  • Foreign influence operations, primarily over Facebook and Twitter, have been attributed to cyber troop activities in seven countries: China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
  • China has now emerged as a major player in the global disinformation order, using social media platforms to target international audiences with disinformation.
  • 25 countries are working with private companies or strategic communications firms offering a computational propaganda as a service.
  • Facebook remains the platform of choice for social media manipulation, with evidence of formally organised campaigns taking place in 56 countries….

The report explores the tools and techniques of computational propaganda, including the use of fake accounts – bots, humans, cyborgs and hacked accounts – to spread disinformation. The report finds:

  • 87% of countries used human accounts
  • 80% of countries used bot accounts
  • 11% of countries used cyborg accounts
  • 7% of countries used hacked or stolen accounts…(More)”.

Community Data Dialogues

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Sunlight foundation: “Community Data Dialogues are in-person events designed to share open data with community members in the most digestible way possible to start a conversation about a specific issue. The main goal of the event is to give residents who may not have technical expertise but have local experience a chance to participate in data-informed decision-making. Doing this work in-person can open doors and let facilitators ask a broader range of questions. To achieve this, the event must be designed to be inclusive of people without a background in data analysis and/or using statistics to understand local issues. Carrying out this event will let decision-makers in government use open data to talk with residents who can add to data’s value with their stories of lived experience relevant to local issues.

These events can take several forms, and groups both in and outside of government have designed creative and innovative events tailored to engage community members who are actively interested in helping solve local issues but are unfamiliar with using open data. This guide will help clarify how exactly to make Community Data Dialogues non-technical, interactive events that are inclusive to all participants….

A number of groups both in and outside of government have facilitated accessible open data events to great success. Here are just a few examples from the field of what data-focused events tailored for a nontechnical audience can look like:

Data Days Cleveland

Data Days Cleveland is an annual one-day event designed to make data accessible to all. Programs are designed with inclusivity and learning in mind, making it a more welcoming space for people new to data work. Data experts and practitioners direct novices on the fundamentals of using data: making maps, reading spreadsheets, creating data visualizations, etc….

The Urban Institute’s Data Walks

The Urban Institute’s Data Walks are an innovative example of presenting data in an interactive and accessible way to communities. Data Walks are events gathering community residents, policymakers, and others to jointly review and analyze data presentations on specific programs or issues and collaborate to offer feedback based on their individual experiences and expertise. This feedback can be used to improve current projects and inform future policies….(More)“.

Great Policy Successes

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Book by Mallory Compton and Edited by Paul ‘t Hart: “With so much media and political criticism of their shortcomings and failures, it is easy to overlook the fact that many governments work pretty well much of the time. Great Policy Successes turns the spotlight on instances of public policy that are remarkably successful. It develops a framework for identifying and assessing policy successes, paying attention not just to their programmatic outcomes but also to the quality of the processes by which policies are designed and delivered, the level of support and legitimacy they attain, and the extent to which successful performance endures over time. The bulk of the book is then devoted to 15 detailed case studies of striking policy successes from around the world, including Singapore’s public health system, Copenhagen and Melbourne’s rise from stilted backwaters to the highly liveable and dynamic urban centres they are today, Brazil’s Bolsa Familia poverty relief scheme, the US’s GI Bill, and Germany’s breakthrough labour market reforms of the 2000s. Each case is set in context, its main actors are introduced, key events and decisions are described, the assessment framework is applied to gauge the nature and level of its success, key contributing factors to success are identified, and potential lessons and future challenges are identified. Purposefully avoiding the kind of heavy theorizing that characterizes many accounts of public policy processes, each case is written in an accessible and narrative style ideally suited for classroom use in conjunction with mainstream textbooks on public policy design, implementation, and evaluation….(More)”.