US Federal Data Strategy: “For the purposes of the Federal Data Strategy, a “Use Case” is a data practice or method that leverages data to support an articulable federal agency mission or public interest outcome. The Federal Data Strategy sought use cases from the public that solve problems or demonstrate solutions that can help inform the four strategy areas: Enterprise Data Governance; Use, Access, and Augmentation; Decision-making and Accountability; and Commercialization, Innovation, and Public Use. The Federal Data Strategy team was in part informed by these submissions, which are posted below…..(More)”.
We Read 150 Privacy Policies. They Were an Incomprehensible Disaster.
Kevin Litman-Navarro at the New York Times: “….I analyzed the length and readability of privacy policies from nearly 150 popular websites and apps. Facebook’s privacy policy, for example, takes around 18 minutes to read in its entirety – slightly above average for the policies I tested….
Despite efforts like the General Data Protection Regulation to make policies more accessible, there seems to be an intractable tradeoff between a policy’s readability and length. Even policies that are shorter and easier to read can be impenetrable, given the amount of background knowledge required to understand how things like cookies and IP addresses play a role in data collection….
So what might a useful privacy policy look like?
Consumers don’t need a technical understanding of data collection processes in order to protect their personal information. Instead of explaining the excruciatingly complicated inner workings of the data marketplace, privacy policies should help people decide how they want to present themselves online. We tend to go on the internet privately – on our phones or at home – which gives the impression that our activities are also private. But, often, we’re more visible than ever.
A good privacy policy would help users understand how exposed they are: Something as simple as a list of companies that might purchase and use your personal information could go a long way towards setting a new bar for privacy-conscious behavior. For example, if you know that your weather app is constantly tracking your whereabouts and selling your location data as marketing research, you might want to turn off your location services entirely, or find a new app.
Until we reshape privacy policies to meet our needs — or we find a suitable replacement — it’s probably best to act with one rule in mind. To be clear and concise: Someone’s always watching….(More)”.
Number of fact-checking outlets surges to 188 in more than 60 countries
Mark Stencel at Poynter: “The number of fact-checking outlets around the world has grown to 188 in more than 60 countries amid global concerns about the spread of misinformation, according to the latest tally by the Duke Reporters’ Lab.
Since the last annual fact-checking census in February 2018, we’ve added 39 more outlets that actively assess claims from politicians and social media, a 26% increase. The new total is also more than four times the 44 fact-checkers we counted when we launched our global database and map in 2014.
Globally, the largest growth came in Asia, which went from 22 to 35 outlets in the past year. Nine of the 27 fact-checking outlets that launched since the start of 2018 were in Asia, including six in India. Latin American fact-checking also saw a growth spurt in that same period, with two new outlets in Costa Rica, and others in Mexico, Panama and Venezuela.
The actual worldwide total is likely much higher than our current tally. That’s because more than a half-dozen of the fact-checkers we’ve added to the database since the start of 2018 began as election-related partnerships that involved the collaboration of multiple organizations. And some those election partners are discussing ways to continue or reactivate that work— either together or on their own.
Over the past 12 months, five separate multimedia partnerships enlisted more than 60 different fact-checking organizations and other news companies to help debunk claims and verify information for voters in Mexico, Brazil, Sweden,Nigeria and the Philippines. And the Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network assembled a separate team of 19 media outlets from 13 countries to consolidate and share their reporting during the run-up to last month’s elections for the European Parliament. Our database includes each of these partnerships, along with several others— but not each of the individual partners. And because they were intentionally short-run projects, three of these big partnerships appear among the 74 inactive projects we also document in our database.
Politics isn’t the only driver for fact-checkers. Many outlets in our database are concentrating efforts on viral hoaxes and other forms of online misinformation — often in coordination with the big digital platforms on which that misinformation spreads.
We also continue to see new topic-specific fact-checkers such as Metafact in Australia and Health Feedback in France— both of which launched in 2018 to focus on claims about health and medicine for a worldwide audience….(More)”.
Of Governance and Revenue: Participatory Institutions and Tax Compliance in Brazil
Paper by Michael Touchton, Brian Wampler and Tiago C. Peixoto: “Traditionally, governments seek to mobilize tax revenues by expanding their enforcement of existing tax regimes and facilitating tax payments. However, enforcement and facilitation can be costly and produce diminishing marginal returns if citizens are unwilling to pay their taxes. This paper addresses gaps in knowledge about tax compliance, by asking a basic question: what explains why citizens and businesses comply with tax rules? To answer this question, the paper shows how the voluntary adoption of two different types of participatory governance institutions influences municipal tax collection in Brazil. Municipalities that voluntarily adopt participatory institutions collect significantly higher levels of taxes than similar municipalities without these institutions. The paper provides evidence that moves scholarship on tax compliance beyond enforcement and facilitation paradigms, while offering a better assessment of the role of local democratic institutions for government performance and tax compliance….(More)”.
Information Sharing as a Dimension of Smartness: Understanding Benefits and Challenges in Two Megacities
Paper by J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, Theresa A. Pardo, and Manuel De Tuya: “Cities around the world are facing increasingly complex problems.
These problems frequently require collaboration and information sharing across agency boundaries.
In our view, information sharing can be seen as an important dimension of what is recently being called smartness in cities and enables the ability to improve decision making and day-to-day operations in urban settings. Unfortunately, what many city managers are learning is that there are important challenges to sharing information both within their city and with others.
Based on nonemergency service integration initiatives in New York City and Mexico City, this article examines important benefits from and challenges to information sharing in the context of what the participants characterize as smart city initiatives, particularly in large metropolitan areas.
The research question guiding this study is as follows: To what extent do previous findings about information sharing hold in the context of city initiatives, particularly in megacities?
The results provide evidence on the importance of some specific characteristics of cities and megalopolises and how they affect benefits and challenges of information sharing. For instance, cities seem to have more managerial flexibility than other jurisdictions such as state governments.
In addition, megalopolises have most of the necessary technical skills and financial resources needed for information sharing and, therefore, these challenges are not as relevant as in other local governments….(More)”.
How Organizations with Data and Technology Skills Can Play a Critical Role in the 2020 Census
Blog Post by Kathryn L.S. Pettit and Olivia Arena: “The 2020 Census is less than a year away, and it’s facing new challenges that could result in an inaccurate count. The proposed inclusion of a citizenship question, the lack of comprehensive and unified messaging, and the new internet-response option could worsen the undercount of vulnerable and marginalized communities and deprive these groups of critical resources.
The US Census Bureau aims to count every US resident. But some groups are more likely to be missed than others. Communities of color, immigrants, young children, renters, people experiencing homelessness, and people living in rural areas have long been undercounted in the census. Because the census count is used to apportion federal funding and draw legislative districts for political seats, an inaccurate count means that these populations receive less than their fair share of resources and representation.
Local governments and community-based organizations have begun forming Complete Count Committees, coalitions of trusted community voices established to encourage census responses, to achieve a more accurate count in 2020. Local organizations with data and technology skills—like civic tech groups, libraries, technology training organizations, and data intermediaries—can harness their expertise to help these coalitions achieve a complete count.
As the coordinator of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP), we are learning about 2020 Census mobilization in communities across the country. We have found that data and technology groups are natural partners in this work; they understand what is at risk in 2020, are embedded in communities as trusted data providers, and can amplify the importance of the census.
Threats to a complete count
The proposed citizenship question, currently being challenged in court, would likely suppress the count of immigrants and households in immigrant communities in the US. Though federal law prohibits the Census Bureau from disclosing individual-level data, even to other agencies, people may still be skeptical about the confidentiality of the data or generally distrust the government. Acknowledging these fears is important for organizations partnering in outreach to vulnerable communities.
Another potential hurdle is that, for the first time, the Census Bureau will encourage people to complete their census forms online (though answering by mail or phone will still be options). Though a high tech census could be more cost-effective, the digital divide compounded by the underfunding of the Census Bureau that limited initial testing of new methods and outreach could worsen the undercount….(More)”.
Open government and citizen engagement: From theory to action
Camilo Romero Galeano at apolitical: “…According to the 2016 Corruption Perception Index analysing the behaviour of 178 countries, 69% of countries evaluated again raised the alarm about what has been referred to as “the cancer of the public service”.
The scandals of misappropriation of public funds, illicit enrichment of public officials, the slippery labyrinths of procurement and all kinds of practices that challenge ethics in the public service are daily news around the world.
Colombia and the department of Nariño suffer from the same problems. Bad practices of traditional politics and chiefdoms have ended up destroying the trust that citizens once had in political institutions. Corruption and its devastating effects always end up undermining people’s dignity.
With this as the current state of affairs, and in our capacity as a subnational government, we have designed hand in hand with the citizens of Nariño a new government program. It is based on an approach to innovation called “New Government” that relies on three pillars: open government; social innovation; and collaborative economy.
The new program has been endorsed by more than 300,000 voters and subsequently concretised in our roadmap for the territory: “Nariño heart of the World”. The creation of this policy document brought together 31,700 participants and involved travelling around the 13 subregions that compose the 64 municipalities in Nariño.
In this way, citizen participation has become an essential tool in the fight against corruption.
Our open government strategy is called GANA — Gobierno Abierto de Nariño (in English, “Win — Open Government of Nariño”). The strategy takes a step forward in ensuring cabinet officials become transparent and publicly declare private assets. Citizens can now find out the financial conditions in which public officials begin and finish their administrative periods. Each one of us….(More)”
Hacking Corruption
Paper by Tamar Ziff and Maria Fernanda Pérez Argüello: “Across the Americas, corruption scandals have eroded citizens’ trust in their governing officials and institutions, leading elected leaders to promise they will root out graft. Against this backdrop of a growing citizen backlash against corruption, the Peruvian government designated “Democratic Governance against Corruption” as the central theme of the 2018 Summit of the Americas—the triennial meeting of heads of state from countries in the Americas. The Summit produced a Lima Declaration with 57 concrete actions to strengthen the fight against corruption in the Americas, including one–Commitment 17–specifically dedicated to promoting the use of new technologies to promote transparency and government accountability.
A new report by the Inter-American Dialogue’s Peter D. Bell Rule of Law program and the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council aims to advance Commitment 17 by examining the promise of tech solutions to assist the fight against corruption, specifically in public procurement. The report provides examples of a number of such solutions, as well as identifying obstacles to their more widespread adoption and proposing appropriate policy responses….(More)”
Measuring impact by design: A guide to methods for impact measurement
Privy Council Office (Canada): “…This document is intended to be both an accessible introduction to the topic, as well as a reference for those involved in the design, delivery, procurement or appraisal of impact measurement strategies for Impact Canada projects. Drawing on best practices, Measuring Impact by Design was written to guide its readers to think differently about measuring impact than we have traditionally done within the federal public service.
In its role leading Impact Canada as a whole-of-government effort, the IIU works with an ever-expanding network of partners to deliver a range of innovative, outcomes-based program approaches. We are aware that program spending is an investment that we are making on behalf of, and directly for Canadians, and we need to place a greater emphasis on understanding what differences these investments make in improving the lives of citizens. That means we need a better understanding of what works, for whom, and in what contexts; and we need a better understanding of what kinds of investments are likely to maximize the social, economic and environmental returns we seek.
“We are aware that program spending is an investment that we are making on behalf of, and directly for Canadians, and we need to place a greater emphasis on understanding what differences these investments make in improving the lives of citizens.”
Good impact measurement practices are fundamental to these understandings and it is incumbent upon us to be rigorous in our efforts. We recognize that we are still building our capacity in government deliver on these approaches. It is why we built flexibility within Impact Canada authorities to use grants and contributions to fund research organizations with expertise in the kinds of techniques outlined in this guide. We encourage our partner departments to consider taking up these flexibilities.
Measuring Impact by Design is one of a number of supports that the IIU provides to deliver on its commitment to improve measurement practices for Impact Canada. We look forward to continued collaboration with our partners in the delivery of these important outcomes-based approaches across the public sector….(More)”.
The Landscape of Open Data Policies
Apograf: “Open Access (OA) publishing has a long history, going back to the early 1990s, and was born with the explicit intention of improving access to scholarly literature. The internet has played a pivotal role in garnering support for free and reusable research publications, as well as stronger and more democratic peer-review systems — ones are not bogged down by the restrictions of influential publishing platforms….
Looking back, looking forward
Launched in 1991, ArXiv.org was a pioneering platform in this regard, a telling example of how researchers could cooperate to publish academic papers for free and in full view for the public. Though it has limitations — papers are curated by moderators and are not peer-reviewed — arXiv is a demonstration of how technology can be used to overcome some of the incentive and distribution problems that scientific research had long been subjected to.
The scientific community has itself assumed the mantle to this end: the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access Initiative, launched in 2002 and 2003 respectively, are considered landmark movements in the push for unrestricted access to scientific research. While mostly symbolic, the effort highlighted the growing desire to solve the problems plaguing the space through technology.
The BOAI manifesto begins with a statement that is an encapsulation of the movement’s purpose,
“An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds.”
Plan S is a more recent attempt to make publicly funded research available to all. Launched by Science Europe in September 2018, Plan S — short for ‘Shock’ — has energized the research community with its resolution to make access to publicly funded knowledge a right to everyone and dissolve the profit-driven ecosystem of research publication. Members of the European Union have vowed to achieve this by 2020.
Plan S has been supported by governments outside Europe as well. China has thrown itself behind it, and the state of California has enacted a law that requires open access to research one year after publishing. It is, of course, not without its challenges: advocacy and ensuring that publishing is not restricted a few venues are two such obstacles. However, the organization behind forming the guidelines, cOAlition S, has agreed to make the guidelines more flexible.
The emergence of this trend is not without its difficulties, however, and numerous obstacles continue to hinder the dissemination of information in a manner that is truly transparent and public. Chief among these are the many gates that continue to keep research as somewhat of exclusive property, besides the fact that the infrastructure and development for such systems are short on funding and staff…..(More)”.