Disinformation Visualization: How to lie with datavis

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Mushon Zer-Aviv at School of Data: “Seeing is believing. When working with raw data we’re often encouraged to present it differently, to give it a form, to map it or visualize it. But all maps lie. In fact, maps have to lie, otherwise they wouldn’t be useful. Some are transparent and obvious lies, such as a tree icon on a map often represents more than one tree. Others are white lies – rounding numbers and prioritising details to create a more legible representation. And then there’s the third type of lie, those lies that convey a bias, be it deliberately or subconsciously. A bias that misrepresents the data and skews it towards a certain reading.

It all sounds very sinister, and indeed sometimes it is. It’s hard to see through a lie unless you stare it right in the face, and what better way to do that than to get our minds dirty and look at some examples of creative and mischievous visual manipulation.
Over the past year I’ve had a few opportunities to run Disinformation Visualization workshops, encouraging activists, designers, statisticians, analysts, researchers, technologists and artists to visualize lies. During these sessions I have used the DIKW pyramid (Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom), a framework for thinking about how data gains context and meaning and becomes information. This information needs to be consumed and understood to become knowledge. And finally when knowledge influences our insights and our decision making about the future it becomes wisdom. Data visualization is one of the ways to push data up the pyramid towards wisdom in order to affect our actions and decisions. It would be wise then to look at visualizations suspiciously.
DIKW
Centuries before big data, computer graphics and social media collided and gave us the datavis explosion, visualization was mostly a scientific tool for inquiry and documentation. This history gave the artform its authority as an integral part of the scientific process. Being a product of human brains and hands, a certain degree of bias was always there, no matter how scientific the process was. The effect of these early off-white lies are still felt today, as even our most celebrated interactive maps still echo the biases of the Mercator map projection, grounding Europe and North America on the top of the world, over emphasizing their size and perceived importance over the Global South. Our contemporary practices of programmatically data driven visualization hide both the human eyes and hands that produce them behind data sets, algorithms and computer graphics, but the same biases are still there, only they’re harder to decipher…”

The Power to Give

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “HTC, a global leader in mobile innovation and design, today unveiled HTC Power To Give™, an initiative that aims to create the a supercomputer by harnessing the collective processing power of Android smartphones.
Currently in beta, HTC Power To Give aims to galvanize smartphone owners to unlock their unused processing power in order to help answer some of society’s biggest questions. Currently, the fight against cancer, AIDS and Alzheimer’s; the drive to ensure every child has clean water to drink and even the search for extra-terrestrial life are all being tackled by volunteer computing platforms.
Empowering people to use their Android smartphones to offer tangible support for vital fields of research, including medicine, science and ecology, HTC Power To Give has been developed in partnership with Dr. David Anderson of the University of California, Berkeley.  The project will support the world’s largest volunteer computing initiative and tap into the powerful processing capabilities of a global network of smartphones.
Strength in numbers
One million HTC One smartphones, working towards a project via HTC Power To Give, could provide similar processing power to that of one of the world’s 30 supercomputers (one PetaFLOP). This could drastically shorten the research cycles for organizations that would otherwise have to spend years analyzing the same volume of data, potentially bringing forward important discoveries in vital subjects by weeks, months, years or even decades. For example, one of the programs available at launch is IBM’s World Community Grid, which gives anyone an opportunity to advance science by donating their computer, smartphone or tablet’s unused computing power to humanitarian research. To date, the World Community Grid volunteers have contributed almost 900,000 years’ worth of processing time to cutting-edge research.
Limitless future potential
Cher Wang, Chairwoman, HTC commented, “We’ve often used innovation to bring about change in the mobile industry, but this programme takes our vision one step further. With HTC Power To Give, we want to make it possible for anyone to dedicate their unused smartphone processing power to contribute to projects that have the potential to change the world.”
“HTC Power To Give will support the world’s largest volunteer computing initiative, and the impact that this project will have on the world over the years to come is huge. This changes everything,” noted Dr. David Anderson, Inventor of the Shared Computing Initiative BOINC, University of California, Berkeley.
Cher Wang added, “We’ve been discussing the impact that just one million HTC Power To Give-enabled smartphones could make, however analysts estimate that over 780 million Android phones were shipped in 2013i alone. Imagine the difference we could make to our children’s future if just a fraction of these Android users were able to divert some of their unused processing power to help find answers to the questions that concern us all.”
Opt-in with ease
After downloading the HTC Power To Give app from the Google Play™ store, smartphone owners can select the research programme to which they will divert a proportion of their phone’s processing power. HTC Power To Give will then run while the phone is chargingii  and connected to a WiFi network, enabling people to change the world whilst sitting at their desk or relaxing at home.
The beta version of HTC Power To Give will be available to download from the Google Play store and will initially be compatible with the HTC One family, HTC Butterfly and HTC Butterfly s. HTC plans to make the app more widely available to other Android smartphone owners in the coming six months as the beta trial progresses.”

Four Threats to American Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jared Diamond in Governance: “The U.S. government has spent the last two years wrestling with a series of crises over the federal budget and debt ceiling. I do not deny that our national debt and the prospect of a government shutdown pose real problems. But they are not our fundamental problems, although they are symptoms of them. Instead, our fundamental problems are four interconnected issues combining to threaten a breakdown of effective democratic government in the United States.
Why should we care? Let’s remind ourselves of the oft-forgotten reasons why democracy is a superior form of government (provided that it works), and hence why its deterioration is very worrisome. (Of course, I acknowledge that there are many countries in which democracy does not work, because of the lack of a national identity, of an informed electorate, or of both). The advantages of democracy include the following:

  • In a democracy, one can propose and discuss virtually any idea, even if it is initially unpalatable to the government. Debate may reveal the idea to be the best solution, whereas in a dictatorship the idea would not have gotten debated, and its virtues would not have been discovered.
  • In a democracy, citizens and their ideas get heard. Hence, without democracy, people are more likely to feel unheard and frustrated and to resort to violence.
  • Compromise is essential to a democracy. It enables us to avoid tyranny by the majority or (conversely) paralysis of government through vetoes exercised by a frustrated minority.
  • In modern democracies, all citizens can vote. Hence, government is motivated to invest in all citizens, who thereby receive the opportunity to become productive, rather than just a small dictatorial elite receiving that opportunity.

Why should we Americans keep reminding ourselves of those fundamental advantages of democracies? I would answer: not only in order to motivate ourselves to defend our democratic processes, but also because increasing numbers of Americans today are falling into the trap of envying the supposed efficiency of China’s dictatorship. Yes, it is true that dictatorships, by closing debate, can sometimes implement good policies faster than can the United States, as has China in quickly converting to lead-free gasoline and building a high-speed rail network. But dictatorships suffer from a fatal disadvantage. No one, in the 5,400 years of history of centralized government on all the continents, has figured out how to ensure that a dictatorship will embrace only good policies. Dictatorships also prevent the public debate that helps to avert catastrophic policies unparalleled in any large modern First World democracy—such as China’s quickly abolishing its educational system, sending its teachers out into the fields, and creating the world’s worst air pollution.
That is why democracy, given the prerequisites of an informed electorate and a basic sense of common interest, is the best form of government—at least, better than all the alternatives that have been tried, as Winston Churchill quipped. Our form of government is a big part of the explanation why the United States has become the richest and most powerful country in the world. Hence, an undermining of democratic processes in the United States means throwing away one of our biggest advantages. Unfortunately, that is what we are now doing, in four ways.
First, political compromise has been deteriorating in recent decades, and especially in the last five years. That deterioration can be measured as the increase in Senate rejections of presidential nominees whose approvals used to be routine, the increasing use of filibusters by the minority party, the majority party’s response of abolishing filibusters for certain types of votes, and the decline in number of laws passed by Congress to the lowest level of recent history. The reasons for this breakdown in political compromise, which seems to parallel increasing levels of nastiness in other areas of American life, remain debated. Explanations offered include the growth of television and then of the Internet, replacing face-to-face communication, and the growth of many narrowly partisan TV channels at the expense of a few broad-public channels. Even if these reasons hold a germ of truth, they leave open the question why these same trends operating in Canada and in Europe have not led to similar deterioration of political compromise in those countries as well.
Second, there are increasing restrictions on the right to vote, weighing disproportionately on voters for one party and implemented at the state level by the other party. Those obstacles include making registration to vote difficult and demanding that registered voters show documentation of citizenship when they present themselves at the polls. Of course, the United States has had a long history of denying voting rights to blacks, women, and other groups. But access to voting had been increasing in the last 50 years, so the recent proliferation of restrictions reverses that long positive trend. In addition to those obstacles preventing voter registration, the United States has by far the lowest election turnout among large First World democracies: under 60% of registered voters in most presidential elections, 40% for congressional elections, and 20% for the recent election for mayor of my city of Los Angeles. (A source of numbers for this and other comparisons that I shall cite is an excellent recent book by Howard Steven Friedman, The Measure of a Nation). And, while we are talking about elections, let’s not forget the astronomical recent increase in costs and durations of election campaigns, their funding by wealthy interests, and the shift in campaign pitches to sound bites. Those trends, unparalled in other large First World democracies, undermine the democratic prerequisite of a well-informed electorate.
A third contributor to the growing breakdown of democracy is our growing gap between rich and poor. Among our most cherished core values is our belief that the United States is a “land of opportunity,” and that we uniquely offer to our citizens the potential for rising from “rags to riches”—provided that citizens have the necessary ability and work hard. This is a myth. Income and wealth disparity in the United States (as measured by the Gini index of equality/inequality, and in other ways) is much higher in the United States than in any other large First World democracy. So is hereditary socioeconomic immobility, that is, the probability that a son’s relative income will just mirror his father’s relative income, and that sons of poor fathers will not become wealthy. Part of the reason for those depressing facts is inequality of educational opportunities. Children of rich Americans tend to receive much better educations than children of poor Americans.
That is bad for our economy, because it means that we are failing to develop a large fraction of our intellectual capital. It is also bad for our political stability, because poor parents who correctly perceive that their children are not being given the opportunity to succeed may express their resulting frustration in violence. Twice during my 47 years of residence in Los Angeles, in 1964 and 1993, frustration in poor areas of Los Angeles erupted into violence, lootings, and killings. In the 1993 riots, when police feared that rioters would spill into the wealthy suburb of Beverly Hills, all that the outnumbered police could do to protect Beverly Hills was to string yellow plastic police tape across major streets. As it turned out, the rioters did not try to invade Beverly Hills in 1993. But if present trends causing frustration continue, there will be more riots in Los Angeles and other American cities, and yellow plastic police tape will not suffice to contain the rioters.
The remaining contributor to the decline of American democracy is the decline of government investment in public purposes, such as education, infrastructure, and nonmilitary research and development. Large segments of the American populace deride government investment as “socialism.” But it is not socialism. On the contrary, it is one of the longest established functions of government. Ever since the rise of the first governments 5,400 years ago, governments have served two main functions: to maintain internal peace by monopolizing force, settling disputes, and forbidding citizens to resort to violence in order to settle disputes themselves; and to redistribute individual wealth for investing in larger aims—in the worst cases, enriching the elite; in the best cases, promoting the good of society as a whole. Of course, some investment is private, by wealthy individuals and companies expecting to profit from their investments. But many potential payoffs cannot attract private investment, either because the payoff is so far off in the future (such as the payoff from universal primary school education), or because the payoff is diffused over all of society rather than concentrated in areas profitable to the private investor (such as diffused benefits of municipal fire departments, roads, and broad education). Even the most passionate American supporters of small government do not decry as socialism the funding of fire departments, interstate highways, and public schools.

11 ways to rethink open data and make it relevant to the public

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Miguel Paz at IJNET: “It’s time to transform open data from a trendy concept among policy wonks and news nerds into something tangible to everyday life for citizens, businesses and grassroots organizations. Here are some ideas to help us get there:
1. Improve access to data
Craig Hammer from the World Bank has tackled this issue, stating that “Open Data could be the game changer when it comes to eradicating global poverty”, but only if governments make available online data that become actionable intelligence: a launch pad for investigation, analysis, triangulation, and improved decision making at all levels.
2. Create open data for the end user
As Hammer wrote in a blog post for the Harvard Business Review, while the “opening” has generated excitement from development experts, donors, several government champions, and the increasingly mighty geek community, the hard reality is that much of the public has been left behind, or tacked on as an afterthought. Let`s get out of the building and start working for the end user.
3. Show, don’t tell
Regular folks don’t know what “open data” means. Actually, they probably don’t care what we call it and don’t know if they need it. Apple’s Steve Jobs said that a lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. We need to stop telling them they need it and start showing them why they need it, through actionable user experience.
4. Make it relevant to people’s daily lives, not just to NGOs and policymakers’ priorities
A study of the use of open data and transparency in Chile showed the top 10 uses were for things that affect their lives directly for better or for worse: data on government subsidies and support, legal certificates, information services, paperwork. If the data doesn’t speak to priorities at the household or individual level, we’ve lost the value of both the “opening” of data, and the data itself.
5. Invite the public into the sandbox
We need to give people “better tools to not only consume, but to create and manipulate data,” says my colleague Alvaro Graves, Poderopedia’s semantic web developer and researcher. This is what Code for America does, and it’s also what happened with the advent of Web 2.0, when the availability of better tools, such as blogging platforms, helped people create and share content.
6. Realize that open data are like QR codes
Everyone talks about open data the way they used to talk about QR codes–as something ground breaking. But as with QR Codes, open data only succeeds with the proper context to satisfy the needs of citizens. Context is the most important thing to funnel use and success of open data as a tool for global change.
7. Make open data sexy and pop, like Jess3.com
Geeks became popular because they made useful and cool things that could be embraced by end users. Open data geeks need to stick with that program.
8. Help journalists embrace open data
Jorge Lanata, a famous Argentinian journalist who is now being targeted by the Cristina Fernández administration due to his unfolding of government corruption scandals, once said that 50 percent of the success of a story or newspaper is assured if journalists like it.
That’s true of open data as well. If journalists understand its value for the public interest and learn how to use it, so will the public. And if they do, the winds of change will blow. Governments and the private sector will be forced to provide better, more up-to-date and standardized data. Open data will be understood not as a concept but as a public information source as relevant as any other. We need to teach Latin American journalists to be part of this.
9. News nerds can help you put your open data to good use
In order to boost the use of open data by journalists we need news nerds, teams of lightweight and tech-heavy armored journalist-programmers who can teach colleagues how open data through brings us high-impact storytelling that can change public policies and hold authorities accountable.
News nerds can also help us with “institutionalizing data literacy across societies” as Hammer puts it. ICFJ Knight International Journalism Fellow and digital strategist Justin Arenstein calls these folks “mass mobilizers” of information. Alex Howard “points to these groups because they can help demystify data, to make it understandable by populations and not just statisticians.”
I call them News Ninja Nerds, accelerator taskforces that can foster innovationsin news, data and transparency in a speedy way, saving governments and organizations time and a lot of money. Projects like ProPublica’s Dollars For Docs are great examples of what can be achieved if you mix FOIA, open data and the will to provide news in the public interest.
10. Rename open data
Part of the reasons people don’t embrace concepts such as open data is because it is part of a lingo that has nothing to do with them. No empathy involved. Let’s start talking about people’s right to know and use the data generated by governments. As Tim O’Reilly puts it: “Government as a Platform for Greatness,” with examples we can relate to, instead of dead .PDF’s and dirty databases.
11. Don’t expect open data to substitute for thinking or reporting
Investigative Reporting can benefit from it. But “but there is no substitute for the kind of street-level digging, personal interviews, and detective work” great journalism projects entailed, says David Kaplan in a great post entitled, Why Open Data is Not Enough.”

Canadian Organizations Join Forces to Launch Open Data Institute to Foster Open Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Press Release: “The Canadian Digital Media Network, the University of Waterloo, Communitech, OpenText and Desire2Learn today announced the creation of the Open Data Institute.

The Open Data Institute, which received support from the Government of Canada in this week’s budget, will work with governments, academic institutions and the private sector to solve challenges facing “open government” efforts and realize the full potential of “open data.”
According to a statement, partners will work on development of common standards, the integration of data from different levels of government and the commercialization of data, “allowing Canadians to derive greater economic benefit from datasets that are made available by all levels of government.”
The Open Data Institute is a public-private partnership. Founding partners will contribute $3 million in cash and in-kind contributions over three years to establish the institute, a figure that has been matched by the Government of Canada.
“This is a strategic investment in Canada’s ability to lead the digital economy,” said Kevin Tuer, Managing Director of CDMN. “Similar to how a common system of telephone exchanges allowed world-wide communication, the Open Data Institute will help create a common platform to share and access datasets.”
“This will allow the development of new applications and products, creating new business opportunities and jobs across the country,” he added.
“The Institute will serve as a common forum for government, academia and the private sector to collaborate on Open Government initiatives with the goal of fueling Canadian tech innovation,” noted OpenText President and CEO Mark J. Barrenechea
“The Open Data Institute has the potential to strengthen the regional economy and increase our innovative capacity,” added Feridun Hamdullahpur, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo.

The newsonomics of measuring the real impact of news

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Ken Doctor at Nieman Journalism Lab: “Hello there! It’s me, your friendly neighborhood Tweet Button. What if you could tap me and unlock a brand new source of funding for startup news sources of all kinds? What if, even better, you the reader could tap that money loose with a single click?
That’s the delightfully simple conceit behind a little widget, Impaq.me, you may have seen popping up as you traverse the news web. It’s social. It’s viral. It uses OPM (Other People’s Money) — and maybe a little bit of your own. It makes a new case to funders and maybe commercial sponsors. And it spits out metrics around the clock. It aims to be a convergence widget, acting on that now-aging idea that our attention is as important as our wallet. Consider it a new digital Swiss Army knife for the attention economy. TWEET
It’s impossible to tell how much of an impact Impaq.me may have. It’s still in its second round of testing at six of the U.S.’s most successful independent nonprofit startups — MinnPost, Center for Investigative Reporting, The Texas Tribune, Voice of San Diego, ProPublica, and the Center for Public Integrity — but as in all things digital, timing is everything. And that timing seems right.
First, let’s consider that spate of new news sites that have sprouted with the winter rains — Bill Keller’s and Neil Barsky’s Marshall Project being only the latest. It’s been quite a run — from Ezra Klein’s Project X to Pierre Omidyar’s First Look (and just launched The Intercept) to the reimagining of FiveThirtyEight. While they encompass a broad range of business models and goals (“The newsonomics of why everyone seems to be starting a news site”), they all need two things: money and engagement. Or, maybe better ordered, engagement and money. The dance between the two is still in the early stages of Internet choreography. Get the sequences right and you win.
Second, and related, is the big question of “social” and how our sharing of news is changing the old publishing dynamic of editors deciding what we’re going to read. Just this week, two pieces here at the Lab — one on Upworthy’s influence and one on the social/search tango — highlighted the still-being-understood role of social in our news-reading lives.
Third, funders of news sites, especially Knight and other lead foundations, are looking for harder evidence of the value generated by their early grants. Millions have been poured into creating new news sites. Now they’re asking: What has our funding really done? Within that big question, Impaq.me is only one of several new attempts to demonstrably measure real impact in new ways. We’ll take a brief look at those impact initiatives below….
If Impaq.me is all about impact and money, then it’s got good company. There are at least two other noteworthy impact-measuring projects going on.

  • The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Impact Tracker effort impact-tracking initiative launched last fall. The big idea: getting beyond the traditional metrics like unique visitors and pageviews to track the value of investigative and enterprise work. To that end, CIR has hired Lindsay Green-Barber, a CUNY-trained social scientist, and given her a perhaps first-ever title: media impact analyst.We can see the fruits of the work around CIR’s impressive Returning Home to Battle veterans series. On that series, CIR is tracking such impacts as change and rise in the public discourse around veterans’ issues and related allocation of government resources. The notion of good journalism intended to shine a light in dark places has been embedded in the CIR DNA for a long time; this new effort is intended to provide data — and words — to describe progress toward solutions. CIR is working with The Seattle Times on the impact of that paper’s education reporting, and CIR may soon look at more partnerships as well. Related: CIR is holding two “Dissection” events in New York and Washington in April, bringing together journalists, funders, and social scientists to widen the media impact movement.
  • Chalkbeat, a growing national education news site, too, is moving on impact analysis. It’s called MORI (Measures of our Reporting’s Influence), and it’s a WordPress plugin. Says Chalkbeat cofounder Elizabeth Green: “We built MORI to solve for a problem that I guess you could call ‘impact loss.’ We knew that our stories were having all kinds of impacts, but we had no way of keeping track of these impacts or making sense of them. That meant that we couldn’t easily compile what we had done in the last year to share with the outside world (board, donors, foundations, readers, our moms) but also — just as important — we couldn’t look back on what we’d done and learn from it.”Sound familiar?
    After much inquiry, Chalkbeat settled on technology. “Within each story’s back end,” Green said, “we can enter inputs — qualitative data about the type of story, topic, and target audience — as well as outcomes — impacts on policy and practice (what we call ‘informed action’) as well as impacts on what we call ‘civic deliberation.’”

Open Data (Updated and Expanded)

Curated on Posted on by Andrew Young

As part of an ongoing effort to build a knowledge base for the field of opening governance by organizing and disseminating its learnings, the GovLab Selected Readings series provides an annotated and curated collection of recommended works on key opening governance topics. We start our series with a focus on Open Data. To suggest additional readings on this or any other topic, please email biblio@thegovlab.org.

Data and its uses for GovernanceOpen data refers to data that is publicly available for anyone to use and which is licensed in a way that allows for its re-use. The common requirement that open data be machine-readable not only means that data is distributed via the Internet in a digitized form, but can also be processed by computers through automation, ensuring both wide dissemination and ease of re-use. Much of the focus of the open data advocacy community is on government data and government-supported research data. For example, in May 2013, the US Open Data Policy defined open data as publicly available data structured in a way that enables the data to be fully discoverable and usable by end users, and consistent with a number of principles focused on availability, accessibility and reusability.

Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)

Annotated Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)
Fox, Mark S. “City Data: Big, Open and Linked.” Working Paper, Enterprise Integration Laboratory (2013). http://bit.ly/1bFr7oL.

  • This paper examines concepts that underlie Big City Data using data from multiple cities as examples. It begins by explaining the concepts of Open, Unified, Linked, and Grounded data, which are central to the Semantic Web. Fox then explore Big Data as an extension of Data Analytics, and provide case examples of good data analytics in cities.
  • Fox concludes that we can develop the tools that will enable anyone to analyze data, both big and small, by adopting the principles of the Semantic Web:
    • Data being openly available over the internet,
    • Data being unifiable using common vocabularies,
    • Data being linkable using International Resource Identifiers,
    • Data being accessible using a common data structure, namely triples,
    • Data being semantically grounded using Ontologies.

Foulonneau, Muriel, Sébastien Martin, and Slim Turki. “How Open Data Are Turned into Services?” In Exploring Services Science, edited by Mehdi Snene and Michel Leonard, 31–39. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing 169. Springer International Publishing, 2014. http://bit.ly/1fltUmR.

  • In this chapter, the authors argue that, considering the important role the development of new services plays as a motivation for open data policies, the impact of new services created through open data should play a more central role in evaluating the success of open data initiatives.
  • Foulonneau, Martin and Turki argue that the following metrics should be considered when evaluating the success of open data initiatives: “the usage, audience, and uniqueness of the services, according to the changes it has entailed in the public institutions that have open their data…the business opportunity it has created, the citizen perception of the city…the modification to particular markets it has entailed…the sustainability of the services created, or even the new dialog created with citizens.”

Goldstein, Brett, and Lauren Dyson. Beyond Transparency: Open Data and the Future of Civic Innovation. 1 edition. (Code for America Press: 2013). http://bit.ly/15OAxgF

  • This “cross-disciplinary survey of the open data landscape” features stories from practitioners in the open data space — including Michael Flowers, Brett Goldstein, Emer Colmeman and many others — discussing what they’ve accomplished with open civic data. The book “seeks to move beyond the rhetoric of transparency for transparency’s sake and towards action and problem solving.”
  • The book’s editors seek to accomplish the following objectives:
    • Help local governments learn how to start an open data program
    • Spark discussion on where open data will go next
    • Help community members outside of government better engage with the process of governance
    • Lend a voice to many aspects of the open data community.
  • The book is broken into five sections: Opening Government Data, Building on Open Data, Understanding Open Data, Driving Decisions with Data and Looking Ahead.

Granickas, Karolis. “Understanding the Impact of Releasing and Re-using Open Government Data.” European Public Sector Information Platform, ePSIplatform Topic Report No. 2013/08, (2013). http://bit.ly/GU0Nx4.

  • This paper examines the impact of open government data by exploring the latest research in the field, with an eye toward enabling  an environment for open data, as well as identifying the benefits of open government data and its political, social, and economic impacts.
  • Granickas concludes that to maximize the benefits of open government data: a) further research is required that structure and measure potential benefits of open government data; b) “government should pay more attention to creating feedback mechanisms between policy implementers, data providers and data-re-users”; c) “finding a balance between demand and supply requires mechanisms of shaping demand from data re-users and also demonstration of data inventory that governments possess”; and lastly, d) “open data policies require regular monitoring.”

Gurin, Joel. Open Data Now: The Secret to Hot Startups, Smart Investing, Savvy Marketing, and Fast Innovation, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014). http://amzn.to/1flubWR.

  • In this book, GovLab Senior Advisor and Open Data 500 director Joel Gurin explores the broad realized and potential benefit of Open Data, and how, “unlike Big Data, Open Data is transparent, accessible, and reusable in ways that give it the power to transform business, government, and society.”
  • The book provides “an essential guide to understanding all kinds of open databases – business, government, science, technology, retail, social media, and more – and using those resources to your best advantage.”
  • In particular, Gurin discusses a number of applications of Open Data with very real potential benefits:
    • “Hot Startups: turn government data into profitable ventures;
    • Savvy Marketing: understanding how reputational data drives your brand;
    • Data-Driven Investing: apply new tools for business analysis;
    • Consumer Information: connect with your customers using smart disclosure;
    • Green Business: use data to bet on sustainable companies;
    • Fast R&D: turn the online world into your research lab;
    • New Opportunities: explore open fields for new businesses.”

Jetzek, Thorhildur, Michel Avital, and Niels Bjørn-Andersen. “Generating Value from Open Government Data.” Thirty Fourth International Conference on Information Systems, 5. General IS Topics 2013. http://bit.ly/1gCbQqL.

  • In this paper, the authors “developed a conceptual model portraying how data as a resource can be transformed to value.”
  • Jetzek, Avital and Bjørn-Andersen propose a conceptual model featuring four Enabling Factors (openness, resource governance, capabilities and technical connectivity) acting on four Value Generating Mechanisms (efficiency, innovation, transparency and participation) leading to the impacts of Economic and Social Value.
  • The authors argue that their research supports that “all four of the identified mechanisms positively influence value, reflected in the level of education, health and wellbeing, as well as the monetary value of GDP and environmental factors.”

Kassen, Maxat. “A promising phenomenon of open data: A case study of the Chicago open data project.” Government Information Quarterly (2013). http://bit.ly/1ewIZnk.

  • This paper uses the Chicago open data project to explore the “empowering potential of an open data phenomenon at the local level as a platform useful for promotion of civic engagement projects and provide a framework for future research and hypothesis testing.”
  • Kassen argues that “open data-driven projects offer a new platform for proactive civic engagement” wherein governments can harness “the collective wisdom of the local communities, their knowledge and visions of the local challenges, governments could react and meet citizens’ needs in a more productive and cost-efficient manner.”
  • The paper highlights the need for independent IT developers to network in order for this trend to continue, as well as the importance of the private sector in “overall diffusion of the open data concept.”

Keen, Justin, Radu Calinescu, Richard Paige, John Rooksby. “Big data + politics = open data: The case of health care data in England.” Policy and Internet 5 (2), (2013): 228–243. http://bit.ly/1i231WS.

  • This paper examines the assumptions regarding open datasets, technological infrastructure and access, using healthcare systems as a case study.
  • The authors specifically address two assumptions surrounding enthusiasm about Big Data in healthcare: the assumption that healthcare datasets and technological infrastructure are up to task, and the assumption of access to this data from outside the healthcare system.
  • By using the National Health Service in England as an example, the authors identify data, technology, and information governance challenges. They argue that “public acceptability of third party access to detailed health care datasets is, at best, unclear,” and that the prospects of Open Data depend on Open Data policies, which are inherently political, and the government’s assertion of property rights over large datasets. Thus, they argue that the “success or failure of Open Data in the NHS may turn on the question of trust in institutions.”

Kulk, Stefan and Bastiaan Van Loenen. “Brave New Open Data World?” International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research, May 14, 2012. http://bit.ly/15OAUYR.

  • This paper examines the evolving tension between the open data movement and the European Union’s privacy regulations, especially the Data Protection Directive.
  • The authors argue, “Technological developments and the increasing amount of publicly available data are…blurring the lines between non-personal and personal data. Open data may not seem to be personal data on first glance especially when it is anonymised or aggregated. However, it may become personal by combining it with other publicly available data or when it is de-anonymised.”

Kundra, Vivek. “Digital Fuel of the 21st Century: Innovation through Open Data and the Network Effect.” Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard College: Discussion Paper Series, January 2012, http://hvrd.me/1fIwsjR.

  • In this paper, Vivek Kundra, the first Chief Information Officer of the United States, explores the growing impact of open data, and argues that, “In the information economy, data is power and we face a choice between democratizing it and holding on to it for an asymmetrical advantage.”
  • Kundra offers four specific recommendations to maximize the impact of open data: Citizens and NGOs must demand open data in order to fight government corruption, improve accountability and government services; Governments must enact legislation to change the default setting of government to open, transparent and participatory; The press must harness the power of the network effect through strategic partnerships and crowdsourcing to cut costs and provide better insights; and Venture capitalists should invest in startups focused on building companies based on public sector data.

Noveck, Beth Simone and Daniel L. Goroff. “Information for Impact: Liberating Nonprofit Sector Data.” The Aspen Institute Philanthropy & Social Innovation Publication Number 13-004. 2013. http://bit.ly/WDxd7p.

  • This report is focused on “obtaining better, more usable data about the nonprofit sector,” which encompasses, as of 2010, “1.5 million tax-exempt organizations in the United States with $1.51 trillion in revenues.”
  • Toward that goal, the authors propose liberating data from the Form 990, an Internal Revenue Service form that “gathers and publishes a large amount of information about tax-exempt organizations,” including information related to “governance, investments, and other factors not directly related to an organization’s tax calculations or qualifications for tax exemption.”
  • The authors recommend a two-track strategy: “Pursuing the longer-term goal of legislation that would mandate electronic filing to create open 990 data, and pursuing a shorter-term strategy of developing a third party platform that can demonstrate benefits more immediately.”

Robinson, David G., Harlan Yu, William P. Zeller, and Edward W. Felten, “Government Data and the Invisible Hand.” Yale Journal of Law & Technology 11 (2009), http://bit.ly/1c2aDLr.

  • This paper proposes a new approach to online government data that “leverages both the American tradition of entrepreneurial self-reliance and the remarkable low-cost flexibility of contemporary digital technology.”
  • “In order for public data to benefit from the same innovation and dynamism that characterize private parties’ use of the Internet, the federal government must reimagine its role as an information provider. Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user need, it should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that ‘exposes’ the underlying data.”
Ubaldi, Barbara. “Open Government Data: Towards Empirical Analysis of Open Government Data Initiatives.” OECD Working Papers on Public Governance. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, May 27, 2013. http://bit.ly/15OB6qP.

  • This working paper from the OECD seeks to provide an all-encompassing look at the principles, concepts and criteria framing open government data (OGD) initiatives.
  • Ubaldi also analyzes a variety of challenges to implementing OGD initiatives, including policy, technical, economic and financial, organizational, cultural and legal impediments.
  • The paper also proposes a methodological framework for evaluating OGD Initiatives in OECD countries, with the intention of eventually “developing a common set of metrics to consistently assess impact and value creation within and across countries.”

Worthy, Ben. “David Cameron’s Transparency Revolution? The Impact of Open Data in the UK.” SSRN Scholarly Paper. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, November 29, 2013. http://bit.ly/NIrN6y.

  • In this article, Worthy “examines the impact of the UK Government’s Transparency agenda, focusing on the publication of spending data at local government level. It measures the democratic impact in terms of creating transparency and accountability, public participation and everyday information.”
  • Worthy’s findings, based on surveys of local authorities, interviews and FOI requests, are disappointing. He finds that:
    • Open spending data has led to some government accountability, but largely from those already monitoring government, not regular citizens.
    • Open Data has not led to increased participation, “as it lacks the narrative or accountability instruments to fully bring such effects.”
    • It has also not “created a new stream of information to underpin citizen choice, though new innovations offer this possibility. The evidence points to third party innovations as the key.
  • Despite these initial findings, “Interviewees pointed out that Open Data holds tremendous opportunities for policy-making. Joined up data could significantly alter how policy is made and resources targeted. From small scale issues e.g. saving money through prescriptions to targeting homelessness or health resources, it can have a transformative impact. “

Zuiderwijk, Anneke, Marijn Janssen, Sunil Choenni, Ronald Meijer and Roexsana Sheikh Alibaks. “Socio-technical Impediments of Open Data.” Electronic Journal of e-Government 10, no. 2 (2012). http://bit.ly/17yf4pM.

  • This paper to seeks to identify the socio-technical impediments to open data impact based on a review of the open data literature, as well as workshops and interviews.
  • The authors discovered 118 impediments across ten categories: 1) availability and access; 2) find-ability; 3) usability; 4) understandability; 5) quality; 6) linking and combining data; 7) comparability and compatibility; 8) metadata; 9) interaction with the data provider; and 10) opening and uploading.

Zuiderwijk, Anneke and Marijn Janssen. “Open Data Policies, Their Implementation and Impact: A Framework for Comparison.” Government Information Quarterly 31, no. 1 (January 2014): 17–29. http://bit.ly/1bQVmYT.

  • In this article, Zuiderwijk and Janssen argue that “currently there is a multiplicity of open data policies at various levels of government, whereas very little systematic and structured research [being] done on the issues that are covered by open data policies, their intent and actual impact.”
  • With this evaluation deficit in mind, the authors propose a new framework for comparing open data policies at different government levels using the following elements for comparison:
    • Policy environment and context, such as level of government organization and policy objectives;
    • Policy content (input), such as types of data not publicized and technical standards;
    • Performance indicators (output), such as benefits and risks of publicized data; and
    • Public values (impact).

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Did we miss anything? Please submit reading recommendations to biblio@thegovlab.org or in the comments below.

House Bill Raises Questions about Crowdsourcing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Anne Bowser for Commons Lab (Wilson Center):”A new bill in the House is raising some key questions about how crowdsourcing is understood by scientists, government agencies, policymakers and the public at large.
Robin Bravender’s recent article in Environment & Energy Daily, “House Republicans Push Crowdsourcing on Agency Science,” (subscription required) neatly summarizes the debate around H.R. 4012, a bill introduced to the House of Representatives earlier this month. The House Science, Space and Technology Committe earlier this week held a hearing on the bill, which could see a committee vote as early as next month.
Dubbed the “Secret Science Reform Act of 2014,” the bill prohibits the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from “proposing, finalizing, or disseminating regulations or assessments based upon science that is not transparent or reproducible.” If the bill is passed, EPA would be unable to base assessments or regulations on any information not “publicly available in a manner that is sufficient for independent analysis.” This would include all information published in scholarly journals based on data that is not available as open source.
The bill is based on the premise that forcing EPA to use public data will inspire greater transparency by allowing “the crowd” to conduct independent analysis and interpretation. While the premise of involving the public in scientific research is sound, this characterization of crowdsourcing as a process separate from traditional scientific research is deeply problematic.
This division contrasts the current practices of many researchers, who use crowdsourcing to directly involve the public in scientific processes. Galaxy Zoo, for example, enlists digital volunteers (called “citizen scientists”) help classify more than 40 million photographs of galaxies taken by the Hubble Telescope. These crowdsourced morphological classifications are a powerful form of data analysis, a key aspect of the scientific process. Galaxy Zoo then publishes a catalogue of these classifications as an open-source data set. And the data reduction techniques and measures of confidence and bias for the data catalogue are documented in MNRAS, a peer-reviewed journal. A recent Google Scholar search shows that the data set published in MNRAS has been cited a remarkable 121 times.
As this example illustrates, crowdsourcing is often embedded in the process of formal scientific research. But prior to being published in a scientific journal, the crowdsourced contributions of non-professional volunteers are subject to the scrutiny of professional scientists through the rigorous process of peer review. Because peer review was designed as an institution to ensure objective and unbiased research, peer-reviewed scientific work is widely accepted as the best source of information for any science-based decision.
Separating crowdsourcing from the peer review process, as this legislation intends, means that there will be no formal filters in place to ensure that open data will not be abused by special interests. Ellen Silbergeld, a professor at John Hopkins University who testified at the hearing this week, made exactly this point when she pointed to data manipulation commonly practiced by tobacco lobbyists in the United States.
Contributing to scientific research is one goal of crowdsourcing for science. Involving the public in scientific research also increases volunteer understanding of research topics and the scientific process and inspires heightened community engagement. These goals are supported by President Obama’s Second Open Government National Action Plan, which calls for “increased crowdsourcing and citizen science programs” to support “an informed and active citizenry.” But H.R. 4012 does not support these goals. Rather, this legislation could further degrade the public’s understanding of science by encouraging the public to distrust professional scientists rather than collaborate with them.
Crowdsourcing benefits organizations by bringing in the unique expertise held by external volunteers, which can augment and enhance the traditional scientific process. In return, these volunteers benefit from exposure to new and exciting processes, such as scientific research. This mutually beneficial relationship depends on collaboration, not opposition. Supporting an antagonistic relationship between science-based organizations like the EPA and members of “the crowd” will benefit neither institutions, nor volunteers, nor the country as a whole.“
 

The GovLab Index: Designing for Behavior Change

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Please find below the latest installment in The GovLab Index series, inspired by the Harper’s Index. “The GovLab Index: Designing for Behavior Change” explores the recent application of psychology and behavioral economics towards solving social issues and shaping public policy and programs. Previous installments include The Networked Public, Measuring Impact with Evidence, Open Data, The Data Universe, Participation and Civic Engagement and Trust in Institutions.

  • Year the Behavioural Insights or “Nudge” Team was established by David Cameron in the U.K.: 2010
  • Amount saved by the U.K. Courts Service a year by sending people owing fines personalized text messages to persuade them to pay promptly since the creation of the Nudge unit: £30m
    • Entire budget for the Behavioural Insights Team: less than £1 million
    • Estimated reduction in bailiff interventions through the use of personalized text reminders: 150,000 fewer interventions annually
  • Percentage increase among British residents who paid their taxes on time when they received a letter saying that most citizens in their neighborhood pay their taxes on time: 15%
  • Estimated increase in organ-donor registrations in the U.K. if people are asked “If you needed an organ transplant, would you take one?”: 96,000
  • Proportion of employees who now have a workplace pension since the U.K. government switched from opt-in to opt-out (illustrating the power of defaults): 83%, 63% before opt-out
  • Increase in 401(k) enrollment rates within the U.S. by changing the default from ‘opt in’ to ‘opt out’: from 13% to 80%
  • Behavioral studies have shown that consumers overestimate savings from credit cards with no annual fees. Reduction in overall borrowing costs to consumers by requiring card issuers to tell consumers how much it would cost them in fees and interest, under the 2009 CARD Act in the U.S.: 1.7% of average daily balances 
  • Many high school students and their families in the U.S. find financial aid forms for college complex and thus delay filling them out. Increase in college enrollment as a result of being helped to complete the FAFSA financial aid form by an H&R tax professional, who then provided immediate estimates of the amount of aid the student was eligible for, and the net tuition cost of four nearby public colleges: 26%
  • How much more likely people are to keep accounting records, calculate monthly revenues, and separate their home and business books if given “rules of thumb”-based training with regards to managing their finances, according to a randomized control trial conducted in a bank in the Dominican Republic: 10%
  • Elderly Americans are asked to choose from over 40 options when enrolling in Medicaid Part D private drug plans. How many switched plans to save money when they received a letter providing information about three plans that would be cheaper for them: almost double 
    • The amount saved on average per person by switching plans due to this intervention: $150 per year
  • Increase in prescriptions to manage cardiac disease when Medicaid enrollees are sent a suite of behavioral nudges such as more salient description of the consequences of remaining untreated and post-it note reminders during an experiment in the U.S.: 78%
  • Reduction in street-litter when a trail of green footprints leading to nearby garbage cans is stenciled on the ground during an experiment in Copenhagen, Denmark: 46%
  • Reduction in missed National Health Service appointments in the U.K. when patients are asked to fill out their own appointment cards: 18%
    • Reduction in missed appointments when patients are also made aware of the number of people who attend their appointments on time: 31%
    • The cost of non-attendance per year for the National Health Service: £700m 
  • How many people in a U.S. experiment chose to ‘downsize’ their meals when asked, regardless of whether they received a discount for the smaller portion: 14-33%
    • Average reduction in calories as a result of downsizing: 200
  • Number of households in the U.K. without properly insulated attics, leading to high energy consumption and bills: 40%
    • Result of offering group discounts to motivate households to insulate their attics: no effect
    • Increase in households that agreed to insulate their attics when offered loft-clearing services even though they had to pay for the service: 4.8 fold increase

Full list and sources at http://thegovlab.org/the-govlab-index-designing-for-behavior-change/