Book by Victoria Gordon, Jeffery L. Osgood, Jr., Daniel Boden: “Although citizen engagement is a core public service value, few public administrators receive training on how to share leadership with people outside the government.Participatory Budgeting in the United States serves as a primer for those looking to understand a classic example of participatory governance, engaging local citizens in examining budgetary constraints and priorities before making recommendations to local government. Utilizing case studies and an original set of interviews with community members, elected officials, and city employees, this book provides a rare window onto the participatory budgeting process through the words and experiences of the very individuals involved. The central themes that emerge from these fascinating and detailed cases focus on three core areas: creating the participatory budgeting infrastructure; increasing citizen participation in participatory budgeting; and assessing and increasing the impact of participatory budgeting. This book provides students, local government elected officials, practitioners, and citizens with a comprehensive understanding of participatory budgeting and straightforward guidelines to enhance the process of civic engagement and democratic values in local communities….(More)”
Three Use Cases How Big Data Helps Save The Earth
DataFloq: “The earth is having a difficult time, for quite some time already. Deforestation is still happening at a large scale across the globe. In Brazil alone 40,200 hectares were deforested in the past year. The great pacific garbage patch is still growing and smog in Beijing is more common than a normal bright day. This is nothing new unfortunately. A possible solution is however. Since a few years, scientists, companies and governments are turning to Big Data to solve such problems or even prevent them from happening. It turns out that Big Data can help save the earth and if done correctly, this could lead to significant results in the coming years. Let’s have a look at some fascinating use cases of how Big Data can contribute:
Monitoring Biodiversity Across the Globe
Conservation International, a non-profit environmental organization with a mission to protect nature and its biodiversity, crunches vast amounts of data from images to monitor biodiversity around the world. At 16 important sites across the continents, they have installed over a 1000 smart cameras. Thanks to the motion sensor, these cameras will captures images as soon as the sensor is triggered by animals passing by. Per site these cameras cover approximately 2.000 square kilometres…. They automatically determine which species have appeared in the images and enrich the data with other information such as climate data, flora and fauna data and land use data to better understand how animal populations change over time…. the Wildlife Picture Index (WPI) Analytics System, a project dashboard and analytics tool for visualizing user-friendly, near real-time data-driven insights on the biodiversity. The WPI monitors ground-dwelling tropical medium and large mammals and birds, species that are important economically, aesthetically and ecologically.
Using Satellite Imagery to Combat Deforestation
Mapping deforestation is becoming a lot easier today thanks to Big Data. Imagery analytics allows environmentalists and policy makers to monitor, almost in real-time, the status of forests around the globe with the help of satellite imagery. New tools like the Global Forest Watch uses a massive amount of high-resolution NASA satellite imagery to assist conservation organizations, governments and concerned citizens monitor deforestation in “near-real time.”…
But that’s not all. Planet Labs has developed a tiny satellite that they are currently sending into space, dozens at a time. The satellite measures only 10 by 10 by 30 centimeters but is outfitted with the latest technology. They aim to create a high-resolution image of every spot on the earth, updated daily. Once available, this will generate massive amounts of data that they will open source for others to develop applications that will improve earth.
Monitoring and Predicting with Smart Oceans
Over 2/3 of the world consists of oceans and also these oceans can be monitored. Earlier this year, IBM Canada and Ocean Networks Canada announced a three-year program to better understand British Colombia’s Oceans. Using the latest technology and sensors, they want to predict offshore accidents, natural disasters and tsunamis and forecast the impact of these incidents. Using hundreds of cabled marine sensors they are capable of monitoring waves, currents, water quality and vessel traffic in some of the major shipping channels….These are just three examples of how Big Data can help save the planet. There are of course a lot more fascinating examples and here is list of 10 of such use cases….(More)”
USGS expands sensor network to track monster hurricane
Mark Rockwell at FCW: “The internet of things is tracking Hurricane Matthew. As the monster storm draws a bead on the south Atlantic coast after wreaking havoc in the Caribbean, its impact will be measured by a sensor network deployed by the U.S. Geological Survey.
USGS hurricane response crews are busy installing two kinds of sensors in areas across four states where the agency expects the storm to hit hardest. The information the sensors collect will help with disaster recovery efforts and critical weather forecasts for the National Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
As is the case with most things these days, the storm will be tracked online.
The information collected will be distributed live on the USGS Flood Viewer to help federal and state officials gauge the extent and the storm’s damage as it passes through each area.
FEMA, which tasked USGS with the sensor distribution, is also talking with other federal and state officials further up the Atlantic coastline about whether the equipment is needed there. Recent forecasts call for Matthew to take a sharp easterly turn and head out to sea as it reaches the North Carolina coast.
USGS crews are in installing storm-surge sensors at key sites along the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida in anticipation of the storm, said Brian McCallum, associate director for data at the USGS South Atlantic Water Science Center.
In all, USGS is deploying more than 300 additional weather and condition sensors, he told FCW in an interview on Oct. 5.
The devices come in two varieties. The first are 280 storm surge sensors, set out in protective steel tubes lashed to piers, bridges and other solid structures in the storm’s projected path. The low-cost devices will provide the highest density of storm data, such as depth and duration of the storm surge, McCallum said. The devices won’t communicate their information in real time, however; McCallum said USGS crews will come in behind the storm to upload the sensor data to the Internet.
The second set of sensors, however, could be thought of as the storm’s “live tweets.” USGS is installing 25 rapid-deployment gauges to augment its existing collection of sensors and fill in gaps along the coast….(More)”
Evaluating World Bank Support to Budget Analysis and Transparency
Report by Linnea Mills and Clay G. Wescott: “BOOST is a new resource launched in 2010 to facilitate improved quality, classification, and access to budget data and promote effective use for improved government decision making, transparency and accountability. Using the Government’s own data from public expenditure accounts held in the Government’s Financial Management Information System, and benefiting from a consistent methodology, the BOOST data platform makes highly granular fiscal data accessible and ready-for-use. National authorities can significantly enhance fiscal transparency by publishing summary data and analysis or by providing open access to the underlying dataset. This paper addresses four research questions: Did BOOST help improve the quality of expenditure analysis available to government decision makers? Did it help to develop capacity in central finance and selected spending agencies to sustain expenditure analysis? Did it help to improve public access to expenditure analysis anddata? Did it help to increase awareness of the opportunities for BOOST and expenditure analysis in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as countries outside this region where BOOST has been used (Georgia, Haiti and Tunisia).
Evidence has been drawn from various sources. Survey questionnaires were sent to all World Bank task team leaders for Gates Trust Fund supported countries. Completed questionnaires were received from 18 predominantly African countries (Annex 4). These 18 countries constitute the majority but not all of the countries implementing BOOST with financial support from the Trust Fund. Information has also been gathered through a BOOST stakeholder questionnaire targeting government officials, civil society representatives and representatives from parliaments at country level, field visits to Kenya, Mozambique and Uganda, interviews with stakeholders at the Bank and at country level, participation at regional conferences on BOOST in South Africa and Senegal, and document review. Interviews covered participants from some countries that did not complete questionnaires, such as Haiti.
The research will help to inform the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the World Bank, the administrator of the trust fund on the achievements of the program, and the value of continuing support. It will inform client country Governments, and non-Government actors interested in improved dissemination and analysis of quality public financial data. The research should also be useful for vendors of similar products like OpenGov; and to international scholars and experts working to better understand public expenditure management in developing countries….(More)”
Privacy Laws Around the World
Bloomberg Law: “Development of international privacy laws and regulations with critical impact on the global economy been extremely active over the last several years.
Download Privacy Laws Around the World to access common and disparate elements of the privacy laws from 61 countries. Crafted by Cynthia Rich of Morrison & Foerster LLP, the report includes expert analysis on privacy laws in Europe and Eurasia (non-EEA); East, Central and South Asia and the Pacific; the Western Hemisphere (Latin America, Caribbean and Canada); as well as Africa and the Near East.
…access:
Side-by-side charts comparing four key compliance areas including registration requirements, cross-border data transfer limitations, data breach notification requirements and data protection officer requirements
A country-by-country review of the special characteristics of framework privacy laws
An overview of privacy legislation in development around the world…(More) (Requires Registration)”
Helping Smart Cities Harness Big Data
Linda Poon in CityLab: “Harnessing the power of open data is key to developing the smart cities of the future. But not all governments have the capacity—be that funding or human capital—to collect all the necessary information and turn it into a tool. That’s where Mapbox comes in.
Mapbox offers open-source mapping platforms, and is no stranger to turning complex data into visualizations cities can use, whether it’s mapping traffic fatalities in the U.S. or the conditions of streets in Washington, D.C., during last year’s East Coast blizzard. As part of the White House Smart Cities Initiative, which announced this week that it would make more than $80 million in tech investments this year, the company is rolling out Mapbox Cities, a new “mentorship” program that, for now, will give three cities the tools and support they need to solve some of their most pressing urban challenges. It issued a call for applications earlier this week, and responses have poured in from across the globe says Christina Franken, who specializes in smart cities at Mapbox.
“It’s very much an experimental approach to working with cities,” she says. “A lot of cities have open-data platforms but they don’t really do something with the data. So we’re trying to bridge that gap.”
But the company isn’t approaching the project blindly. In a way, Mapbox has the necessary experience to help cities jumpstart their own projects. Its resume includes, for example, a map that visualizes the sheer quantity of traffic fatalities along any commuting route in the U.S., showcasing its ability to turn a whopping five years’ worth of data into a public-safety tool. During 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, they created a disaster-relief tool to help New Yorkers find shelter.
And that’s just in the United States. Mapbox recently also started a group focusing primarily on humanitarian issues and bringing their mapping and data-collecting tools to aid organizations all over the world in times of crisis. It provides free access to its vast collection of resources, and works closely with collaborators to help them customize maps based on specific needs….(More)”
Philanthropy in Democratic Societies
New book edited by Rob Reich, Chiara Cordelli, and Lucy Bernholz: “Philanthropy is everywhere. In 2013, in the United States alone, some $330 billion was recorded in giving, from large donations by the wealthy all the way down to informal giving circles. We tend to think of philanthropy as unequivocally good, but as the contributors to this book show, philanthropy is also an exercise of power. And like all forms of power, especially in a democratic society, it deserves scrutiny. Yet it rarely has been given serious attention. This book fills that gap, bringing together expert philosophers, sociologists, political scientists, historians, and legal scholars to ask fundamental and pressing questions about philanthropy’s role in democratic societies.
The contributors balance empirical and normative approaches, exploring both the roles philanthropy has actually played in societies and the roles it should play. They ask a multitude of questions: When is philanthropy good or bad for democracy? How does, and should, philanthropic power interact with expectations of equal citizenship and democratic political voice? What makes the exercise of philanthropic power legitimate? What forms of private activity in the public interest should democracy promote, and what forms should it resist? Examining these and many other topics, the contributors offer a vital assessment of philanthropy at a time when its power to affect public outcomes has never been greater…(More)”
Bringing together the United States of data
“The U.S. Data Federation will support government-wide data standardization and data federation initiatives across both Federal agencies and local governments. This is intended to be a fundamental coordinating mechanism for a more open and interconnected digital government by profiling and supporting use-cases that demonstrate unified and coherent data architectures across disparate government agencies. These examples will highlight emerging data standards and API initiatives across all levels of government, convey the level of maturity for each effort, and facilitate greater participation by government agencies. Initiatives that may be profiled within the U.S. Data Federation include Open311, DOT’s National Transit Map, the Project Open Data metadata schema, Contact USA, and the Police Data Initiative. As part of the U.S. Data Federation, GSA will also pilot the development of reusable components needed for a successful data federation strategy including schema documentation tools, schema validation tools, and automated data aggregation and normalization capabilities. The U.S. Data Federation will provide more sophisticated and seamless opportunities on the foundation of U.S. open data initiatives by allowing the public to more easily do comparative data analysis across government bodies and create applications that work across multiple government agencies….(More)”
The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-first Century
Book by Ryan Avent: “None of us has ever lived through a genuine industrial revolution. Until now.
Digital technology is transforming every corner of the economy, fundamentally altering the way things are done, who does them, and what they earn for their efforts. In The Wealth of Humans, Economist editor Ryan Avent brings up-to-the-minute research and reporting to bear on the major economic question of our time: can the modern world manage technological changes every bit as disruptive as those that shook the socioeconomic landscape of the 19th century?
Traveling from Shenzhen, to Gothenburg, to Mumbai, to Silicon Valley, Avent investigates the meaning of work in the twenty-first century: how technology is upending time-tested business models and thrusting workers of all kinds into a world wholly unlike that of a generation ago. It’s a world in which the relationships between capital and labor and between rich and poor have been overturned.
Past revolutions required rewriting the social contract: this one is unlikely to demand anything less. Avent looks to the history of the Industrial Revolution and the work of numerous experts for lessons in reordering society. The future needn’t be bleak, but as The Wealth of Humans explains, we can’t expect to restructure the world without a wrenching rethinking of what an economy should be….(More)”
Crowdsourcing at Statistics Canada
Pilot project by Statistics Canada: “Our crowdsourcing pilot project will focus on mapping buildings across Canada.
If you live in Ottawa or Gatineau, you can be among the first to collaborate with us. If you live elsewhere, stay in touch! Your town or city could be next. We are very excited to work with communities across the country on this project.
As a project contributor, you can help create a free and open source of information on commercial, industrial, government and other buildings in Canada. We need your support to close this important data gap! Your work will improve your community’s knowledge of its buildings, and in turn inform policies and programs designed to help you.
An eye on the future
There are currently no accurate national-level statistics on buildings— and their attributes—that can be used to compare specific local areas. The information you submit will help to fill existing data gaps and provide new analytical opportunities that are important to data users.
This project will also teach us about the possibilities and limitations of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing data collection may become a way for Statistics Canada and other organizations around the world to collect much-needed information by reaching out to citizens.
What you can do
Using your knowledge of your neighbourhood, along with an online mapping tool called OpenStreetMap, you and other members of the public will be able to input the location, physical attributes and other features of buildings.
It all starts with you, on October 17, 2016
We will officially launch the crowdsourcing campaign for the pilot on October 17, 2016 and will provide further instructions and links to resources.
To subscribe to a distribution list for periodic updates on the project, send us an email at statcan.crowdsource.statcan@canada.ca. We will keep you posted!….(More)”