Forecasting Freedom of Information – Why it faces problems—and how experts say they could be solved,

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by David Cuillier: “People must have access to reliable public information to make informed decisions and hold their elected officials accountable. Without transparent government at all levels—local, state and federal—representative democracy is threatened. For a generation, presidents of both parties have in different ways tightened controls on government information. “The natural progress of things,” Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation commissioned this study to better understand the landscape involving public access to government records by gathering information and insights from 336 freedom of information experts—journalists, advocates, record custodians, technology companies, scholars and others. In all, from December 2016 through January 2017, 108 experts were interviewed and 228 surveyed online. The study is not representative of journalists or society as a whole, but rather a cross section of those who deal with public record laws routinely. They are the active members, and in some cases the leaders, of America’s freedom of information community. Freedom of information is not decided only in Washington, D.C. All levels of government are involved, bringing into view a diversity of government officials. Our objective was to canvass experts to identify barriers to information access and possible solutions, looking broadly at the law, public education, networking and new technology. We found dissatisfaction, uncertainty and worry.

Key points:

1. MANY EXPERTS SAY ACCESS IS WORSE TODAY COMPARED WITH FOUR YEARS AGO: About half of the 228 experts surveyed online reported that access to state and local records has gotten worse during the past four years (41 percent said it stayed the same, and 13 percent said it has gotten better2 ), and 41 percent said access to federal records has worsened. “What I hear from reporters in Washington and my students is that exemptions are being used in way too many cases and delays are still very long,” said Leonard Downie, former Washington Post executive editor and current Weil Family Professor of Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. “I hope the door doesn’t get shut tighter.”

2. NEARLY 4 IN 10 SEE A RISE IN DENIALS: Though most respondents (57 percent) said denials have stayed the same during the past four years, 38 percent said they have been denied records at any level of government more frequently, and only 6 percent said denials have decreased. …

3. OVERWHELMINGLY, EXPERTS PREDICTED THAT ACCESS WILL GET WORSE: Nearly 9 out of 10 predicted that access to government will worsen because of the new presidential administration. “I think it’s going to be a backyard brawl,” said Ted Bridis, investigations editor for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C. Over the past several months, nonprofit organizations scrambled to save data purged from federal websites and listed the many restrictions placed on communications with the public.

This report lays out problems with freedom of information and synthesizes solutions aimed at making freedom of information laws work as their creators intended—as an open, honest way for the public to know what its government is doing….(More)”

Mapatón CDMX

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

HBS Case Study by Mitchell Weiss and Maria Fernanda Miguel: “There were probably 30,000 public buses, minibuses, and vans in Mexico City. Though, in 2015, no one knew for certain since no comprehensive schedule existed. This was why el Laboratorio para la Ciudad (or LabCDMX) had spawned an effort to generate a map of the labyrinth system that provided an estimated 14 million rides a day. Gabriella Gómez-Mont, the Lab’s founder and director, had led her team in a project to crowd-source the routes from volunteer riders in what came to be known as Mapatón CDMX. After four pilots and a two-week “mapping marathon” later, she wondered exactly what to make of the lab’s fiftieth experiment? Was Mapatón successful?

Learning objective:

LabCDMX and their crowdsourced bus mapping project provides the setting to explore risk taking and experimentation in public settings. The case is designed to focus students most acutely on questions of can government take more risk and how? This is a key question for public entreprenuers. In class, students are encouraged to think both about the obstacles for risk taking and the tactics that elected leaders and innovation champions can take to surmount those obstacles. Students consider whether experimentation is one of those potential skills and, if so, how best and rigorously those experiments must be run. How willing must government be to admit failure if experiments don’t pan out? What can give them that leeway? How, tactically, can governments run these kinds of experiments? Is using off-the-shelf technology for quick, but imperfect beta services a productive strategy for securing buy-in and for learning? The case is adaptable for exploring big company settings, too. Mexico City’s municipal government is a giant organization, with 300,000 public workers. What is the role of an innovation office and it’s handful of employees in that context? How does it gain credibility with the rest of the organization? How do experiments help – or hurt – in that effort?…(More)”.

How disaster relief efforts could be improved with game theory

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 in The Conversation: “The number of disasters has doubled globally since the 1980s, with the damage and losses estimated at an average US$100 billion a year since the new millennium, and the number of people affected also growing.

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was the costliest natural disaster in the U.S., with estimates between $100 billion and $125 billion. The death toll of Katrina is still being debated, but we know that at least 2,000 were killed, and thousands were left homeless.

Worldwide, the toll is staggering. The triple disaster of an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown that started March 11, 2011 in Fukushima, Japan killed thousands, as did the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

The challenges to disaster relief organizations, including nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), are immense. The majority operate under a single, common, humanitarian principle of protecting the vulnerable, reducing suffering and supporting the quality of life. At the same time, they need to compete for financial funds from donors to ensure their own sustainability.

This competition is intense. The number of registered U.S. nonprofit organizations increased from 12,000 in 1940 to more than 1.5 million in 2012. Approximately $300 billion are donated to charities in the United States each year.

At the same time, many stakeholders believe that humanitarian aid has not been as successful in delivering on its goals due to a lack of coordination among NGOs, which results in duplication of services.

My team and I have been looking at a novel way to improve how we respond to natural disasters. One solution might be game theory.

Getting the right supplies to those in need is daunting

The need for improvement is strong.

Within three weeks following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, 1,000 NGOs were operating in Haiti. News media attention of insufficient water supplies resulted in immense donations to the Dominican Red Cross to assist its island neighbor. As a result, Port-au-Prince was saturated with cargo and gifts-in-kind, so that shipments from the Dominican Republic had to be halted for multiple days. After the Fukushima disaster, there were too many blankets and items of clothing shipped and even broken bicycles.

In fact, about 60 percent of the items that arrive at a disaster site are nonpriority items. Rescue workers then waste precious time dealing with these nonpriority supplies, whereas victims suffer because they do not receive the critical needs supplies in a timely manner.

The delivery and processing of wrong supplies also adds to the congestion at transportation and distribution nodes, overwhelms storage capabilities and results in further delays of necessary items. The flood of donated inappropriate materiel in response to a disaster is often referred to as the second disaster.

The economics of disaster relief, on the supply side, is challenged as people need to secure donations and ensure the financial sustainability of their organizations. On the demand side, the victims’ needs must be fulfilled in a timely manner while avoiding wasteful duplication and congestion in terms of logistics.

Game theory in disasters

Game theory is a powerful tool for the modeling and analysis of complex behaviors of competing decision-makers. It received a tremendous boost from the contributions of the Nobel laureate John Nash.

Game theory has been used in numerous disciplines, from economics, operations research and management science, to even political science.

In the context of disaster relief, however, there has been little work done in harnessing the scope of game theory. It is, nevertheless, clear that disaster relief organizations compete for financial funds and donors respond to the visibility of the organizations in the delivery of relief supplies to victims through media coverage of disasters….(More)”

Does digital democracy improve democracy?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Thamy Pogrebinschi at Open Democracy: “The advancement of tools of information and communications technology (ICT) has the potential to impact democracy nearly as much as any other area, such as science or education. The effects of the digital world on politics and society are still difficult to measure, and the speed with which these new technological tools evolve is often faster than a scholar’s ability to assess them, or a policymaker’s capacity to make them fit into existing institutional designs.

Since their early inception, digital tools and widespread access to the internet have been changing the traditional means of participation in politics, making them more effective. Electoral processes have become more transparent and effective in several countries where the paper ballot has been substituted for electronic voting machines. Petition-signing became a widespread and powerful tool as individual citizens no longer needed to be bothered out in the streets to sign a sheet of paper, but could instead be simultaneously reached by the millions via e-mail and have their names added to virtual petition lists in seconds. Protests and demonstrations have also been immensely revitalized in the internet era. In the last few years, social networks like Facebook and WhatsApp have proved to be a driving-force behind democratic uprisings, by mobilizing the masses, invoking large gatherings, and raising awareness, as was the case of the Arab Spring.

While traditional means of political participation can become more effective by reducing the costs of participation with the use of ICT tools, one cannot yet assure that it would become less subject to distortion and manipulation. In the most recent United States’ elections, computer scientists claimed that electronic voting machines may have been hacked, altering the results in the counties that relied on them. E-petitions can also be easily manipulated, if safe identification procedures are not put in place. And in these times of post-facts and post-truths, protests and demonstrations can result from strategic partisan manipulation of social media, leading to democratic instability as has recently occurred in Brazil. Nevertheless, the distortion and manipulation of these traditional forms of participation were also present before the rise of ICT tools, and regardless, even if the latter do not solve these preceding problems, they may manage to make political processes more effective anyway.

The game-changer for democracy, however, is not the revitalization of the traditional means of political participation like elections, petition-signing and protests through digital tools. Rather, the real change on how democracy works, governments rule, and representation is delivered comes from entirely new means of e-participation, or the so-called digital democratic innovations. While the internet may boost traditional forms of political participation by increasing the quantity of citizens engaged, democratic innovations that rely on ICT tools may change the very quality of participation, thus in the long-run changing the nature of democracy and its institutions….(More)”

Americans have lost faith in institutions. That’s not because of Trump or ‘fake news.’

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Bill Bishop in the Washington Post: “…Trust in American institutions, however, has been in decline for some time. Trump is merely feeding on that sentiment.

The leaders of once-powerful institutions are desperate to resurrect the faith of the people they serve. They act like they have misplaced a credit card and must find the number so that a replacement can be ordered and then FedEx-ed, if possible overnight.

But that delivery truck is never coming. The decline in trust isn’t because of what the press (or politicians or scientists) did or didn’t do. Americans didn’t lose their trust because of some particular event or scandal. And trust can’t be regained with a new app or even an outbreak of competence. To believe so is to misunderstand what was lost.

In 1964, 3 out of 4 Americans trusted their government to do the right thing most of the time. By 1976, that number had dropped to 33 percent. It was a decline that political scientist Walter Dean Burnham described as “among the largest ever recorded in opinion surveys.”…

Everything about modern life works against community and trust. Globalization and urbanization put people in touch with the different and the novel. Our economy rewards initiative over conformity, so that the weight of convention and tradition doesn’t squelch the latest gizmo from coming to the attention of the next Bill Gates. Whereas parents in the 1920s said it was most important for their children to be obedient, that quality has declined in importance, replaced by a desire for independence and autonomy. Widespread education gives people the tools to make up their own minds. And technology offers everyone the chance to be one’s own reporter, broadcaster and commentator.

We have become, in Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s description, “artists of our own lives,” ignoring authorities and booting traditions while turning power over to the self. The shift in outlook has been all-encompassing. It has changed the purpose of marriage (once a practical arrangement, now a means of personal fulfillment). It has altered the relationship between citizens and the state (an all-volunteer fighting force replacing the military draft). It has transformed the understanding of art (craftsmanship and assessment are out; free-range creativity and self-promotion are in). It has even inverted the orders of humanity and divinity (instead of obeying a god, now we choose one).

People enjoy their freedoms. There’s no clamoring for a return to gray flannel suits and deferential housewives. Constant social retooling and choice come with costs, however. Without the authority and guidance of institutions to help order their lives, many people feel overwhelmed and adrift. “Depression is truly our modern illness,” writes French sociologist Alain Ehrenberg, with rates 20 to 30 times what they were just two generations ago.

Sustained collective action has also become more difficult. Institutions are turning to behavioral “nudges,” hoping to move an increasingly suspicious public to do what once could be accomplished by command or law. As groups based on tradition and consistent association dwindle, they are being replaced by “event communities,” temporary gatherings that come and go without long-term commitment (think Burning Man). The protests spawned by Trump’s election are more about passion than organization and focus. Today’s demonstrations are sometimes compared to civil-rights-era marches, but they have more in common with L.A.’s Sunset Strip riots of 1966, when more than 1,000 young people gathered to object to a 10 p.m. curfew. “There’s something happening here,” goes the Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth,” commemorating the riots. “What it is ain’t exactly clear.” In our new politics, expression is a purpose itself….(More)”.

Digital Democracy: The Tools Transforming Political Engagement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Julie Simon, Theo Bass, Victoria Boelman and Geoff Mulgan: “… shares lessons from Nesta’s research into some of the pioneering innovations in digital democracy which are taking place across Europe and beyond.

Key findings

  • Digital democracy is a broad concept and not easy to define. The paper provides a granular approach to help encompass its various activities and methods (our ‘typology of digital democracy’).
  • Many initiatives exist simply as an app, or web page, driven by what the technology can do, rather than by what the need is.
  • Lessons from global case studies describe how digital tools are being used to engage communities in more meaningful political participation, and how they are improving the quality and legitimacy of decision-making.
  • Digital democracy is still young. Projects must embed better methods for evaluation of their goals if the field is to grow.

Thanks to digital technologies, today we can bank, read the news, study for a degree, and chat with friends across the world – all without leaving the comfort of our homes. But one area that seems to have remained impervious to these benefits is our model of democratic governance, which has remained largely unchanged since it was invented in the 20th century.

New experiments are showing how digital technologies can play a critical role in engaging new groups of people, empowering citizens and forging a new relationship between cities and local residents, and parliamentarians and citizens.

At the parliamentary level, including in Brazil and France, experiments with new tools are enabling citizens to contribute to draft legislation. Political parties such as Podemos in Spain and the Icelandic Pirate Party are using tools such as Loomio, Reddit and Discourse to enable party members and the general public to deliberate and feed into policy proposals. Local governments have set up platforms to enable citizens to submit ideas and information, rank priorities and allocate public resources…..

Lessons from the innovators 

  • Develop a clear plan and process: Pioneers in the field engage people meaningfully by giving them a clear stake; they conduct stakeholder analysis; operate with full transparency; and access harder-to-reach groups with offline methods.
  • Get the necessary support in place: The most successful initiatives have clear-backing from lawmakers; they also secure the necessary resources to promote to the process properly (PR and advertising), as well as the internal systems to manage and evaluate large numbers of ideas.
  • Choose the right tools: The right digital tools help to improve the user-experience and understanding of the issue, and can help remove some of the negative impacts of those who might try to damage or ‘game’ the process….(More)”

What is the Spectrum of Public Participation?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Post by : “The Spectrum of Public Participation was developed by the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) to help clarify the role of the public (or community) in planning and decision-making, and how much influence the community has over planning or decision-making processes. It identifies five levels of public participation (or community engagement). The further to the right on the Spectrum, the more influence the community has over decisions, and each level can be appropriate depending on the context. It is important to recognise they are levels; not steps.

For each level it each articulates the public participation goal and the promise to the public….

Spectrum of Public Participation

Using the Spectrum of Public Participation

Many practitioners and organisations find the Spectrum very helpful. The IAP2 claims that the Spectrum is “quickly becoming an international standard” and, while this claim is partly marketing, it certainly has some validity in some sectors. In Australia, the Spectrum forms a basis for many state and federal government guides to community engagement (e.g., Department Environment, Land, Water and Planning, Department of Primary Industries) local government community engagement plans (e.g., City of Newcastle, Latrobe City and the Local Government Association of South Australia ) and a range of other organisations (e.g., Australian Water Recycling Centre of Excellence and Trinity Grammar School).

While not as widely used in other parts of the world, it is still relevant and has been used in a range of contexts (e.g., The United States Environmental Protection Agency, the British Forestry Commission and Vancouver’s Engage City Task Force).

….

Selecting a level

The Spectrum is not a flow chart. They are not steps in a process – starting on the left and working to the right – so selecting a level needs to be based on the specific context.

Higher levels are not necessarily “better”. If an issue is not controversial and does not provoke passionate feelings, a lower level maybe more appropriate, but for issues which are complex and controversial, it can save time in the long run to choose a higher level ….

Selecting a level of participation does not mean that the level cannot change, (e.g., it might be discovered that an issue was more controversial than thought, and so a higher level might be adopted) nor is the selected level the only one that can be used. It can be quite appropriate to provide ways of engaging the community at lower levels than the level selected. For example, some people may not have the time and energy to participate in day long workshop held at the Collaborate level, but might still want to have the opportunity to contribute their ideas.

The level is only part of the picture

Community engagement needs to have strong ethical base. Selecting appropriate levels is important but the way we engage the community and who we engage are also vitally important.

The Spectrum of Public Participation is underpinned by seven values.….

The Spectrum is a useful tool in thinking about, and planning, community engagement that has helped many practitioners in a wide range of contexts. Although there are examples where it has been used poorly, it provides a valuable starting place and can, in fact, be used to challenge poor community engagement practice….(More)”

Fighting Illegal Fishing With Big Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Emily Matchar in Smithsonian: “In many ways, the ocean is the Wild West. The distances are vast, the law enforcement agents few and far between, and the legal jurisdiction often unclear. In this environment, illegal activity flourishes. Illegal fishing is so common that experts estimate as much as a third of fish sold in the U.S. was fished illegally. This illegal fishing decimates the ocean’s already dwindling fish populations and gives rise to modern slavery, where fishermen are tricked onto vessels and forced to work, sometimes for years.

A new use of data technology aims to help curb these abuses by shining a light on the high seas. The technology uses ships’ satellite signals to detect instances of transshipment, when two vessels meet at sea to exchange cargo. As transshipment is a major way illegally caught fish makes it into the legal supply chain, tracking it could potentially help stop the practice.

“[Transshipment] really allows people to do something out of sight,” says David Kroodsma, the research program director at Global Fishing Watch, an online data platform launched by Google in partnership with the nonprofits Oceana and SkyTruth. “It’s something that obscures supply chains. It’s basically being able to do things without any oversight. And that’s a problem when you’re using a shared resource like the oceans.”

Global Fishing Watch analyzed some 21 billion satellite signals broadcast by ships, which are required to carry transceivers for collision avoidance, from between 2012 and 2016. It then used an artificial intelligence system it created to identify which ships were refrigerated cargo vessels (known in the industry as “reefers”). They then verified this information with fishery registries and other sources, eventually identifying 794 reefers—90 percent of the world’s total number of such vessels. They tracked instances where a reefer and a fishing vessel were moving at similar speeds in close proximity, labeling these instances as “likely transshipments,” and also traced instances where reefers were traveling in a way that indicated a rendezvous with a fishing vessel, even if no fishing vessel was present—fishing vessels often turn off their satellite systems when they don’t want to be seen. All in all there were more than 90,000 likely or potential transshipments recorded.

Even if these encounters were in fact transshipments, they would not all have been for nefarious purposes. They may have taken place to refuel or load up on supplies. But looking at the patterns of where the potential transshipments happen is revealing. Very few are seen close to the coasts of the U.S., Canada and much of Europe, all places with tight fishery regulations. There are hotspots off the coast of Peru and Argentina, all over Africa, and off the coast of Russia. Some 40 percent of encounters happen in international waters, far enough off the coast that no country has jurisdiction.

The tracked reefers were flying flags from some 40 different countries. But that doesn’t necessarily tell us much about where they really come from. Nearly half of the reefers tracked were flying “flags of convenience,” meaning they’re registered in countries other than where the ship’s owners are from to take advantage of those countries’ lax regulations….(More)”

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/fighting-illegal-fishing-big-data-180962321/#7eCwGrGS5v5gWjFz.99
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Denmark is appointing an ambassador to big tech

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Matthew Hughes in The Next Web: “Question: Is Facebook a country? It sounds silly, but when you think about it, it does have many attributes in common with nation states. For starters, it’s got a population that’s bigger than that of India, and its 2016 revenue wasn’t too far from Estonia’s GDP. It also has a ‘national ethos’. If America’s philosophy is capitalism, Cuba’s is communism, and Sweden’s is social democracy, Facebook’s is ‘togetherness’, as corny as that may sound.

 Given all of the above, is it really any surprise that Denmark is considering appointing a ‘big tech ambassador’ whose job is to establish and manage the country’s relationship with the world’s most powerful tech companies?

Denmark’s “digital ambassador” is a first. No country has ever created such a role. Their job will be to liase with the likes of Google, Twitter, Facebook.

Given the fraught relationship many European countries have with American big-tech – especially on issues of taxation, privacy, and national security – Denmark’s decision to extend an olive branch seems sensible.

Speaking with the Washington Post, Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said, “just as we engage in a diplomatic dialogue with countries, we also need to establish and prioritize comprehensive relations with tech actors, such as Google, Facebook, Apple and so on. The idea is, we see a lot of companies and new technologies that will in many ways involve and be part of everyday life of citizens in Denmark.”….(More)”

From Nairobi to Manila, mobile phones are changing the lives of bus riders

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Shomik Mehnidrata at Transport for Development Blog: “Every day around the world, millions of people rely on buses to get around. In many cities, these services carry the bulk of urban trips, especially in Africa and Latin America. They are known by many different names—matatus, dalalas, minibus taxis, colectivos, diablos rojos, micros, etc.—but all have one thing in common: they are either hardly regulated… or not regulated at all. Although buses play a critical role in the daily life of many urban dwellers, there are a variety of complaints that have spurred calls for improvement and reform.

However, we are now witnessing a different, more organic kind of change that is disrupting the world of informal buses using ubiquitous cheap sensors and mobile technology. One hotbed of innovation is Nairobi, Kenya’s bustling capital. Two years ago, Nairobi made a splash in the world of urban transport by mapping all the routes of informal matatus. Other countries have sought to replicate this model, with open source tools and crowdsourcing supporting similar efforts in Mexico, Manila, and beyond. Back in Nairobi, the Magic Bus app helps commuters use sms services to reserve and pay for seats in matatus; in September 2016, MagicBus’ potential for easing commuter pain in the Kenyan capital was rewarded with a $1 million prize. Other programs implemented in collaboration with insurers and operators are experimenting with on-board sensors to identify and correct dangerous driver behavior such as sudden braking and acceleration. Ma3Route, also in Nairobi (there is a pattern here!) used crowdsourcing to identify dangerous drivers as well as congestion. At the same time, operators are upping their game: using technology to improve system management, control and routing in La Paz, and working with universities to improve their financial planning and capabilities in Cape Town.

Against this backdrop, the question is then: can these ongoing experimental initiatives offer a coherent alternative to formal reform? …(More)”.