Nabeel Abdur Rehman et al at Science Advances: “Thousands of lives are lost every year in developing countries for failing to detect epidemics early because of the lack of real-time disease surveillance data. We present results from a large-scale deployment of a telephone triage service as a basis for dengue forecasting in Pakistan. Our system uses statistical analysis of dengue-related phone calls to accurately forecast suspected dengue cases 2 to 3 weeks ahead of time at a subcity level (correlation of up to 0.93). Our system has been operational at scale in Pakistan for the past 3 years and has received more than 300,000 phone calls. The predictions from our system are widely disseminated to public health officials and form a critical part of active government strategies for dengue containment. Our work is the first to demonstrate, with significant empirical evidence, that an accurate, location-specific disease forecasting system can be built using analysis of call volume data from a public health hotline….(More)”
Is internet freedom a tool for democracy or authoritarianism?
The irony of internet freedom was on full display shortly after midnight July 16 in Turkey when President Erdogan used FaceTime and independent TV news to call for public resistance against the military coup that aimed to depose him.
In response, thousands of citizens took to the streets and aided the government in beating back the coup. The military plotters had taken over state TV. In this digital age they apparently didn’t realize television was no longer sufficient to ensure control over the message.
This story may appear like a triumphant example of the internet promoting democracy over authoritarianism.
Not so fast….This duality of the internet, as a tool to promote democracy or authoritarianism, or simultaneously both, is a complex puzzle.
The U.S. has made increasing internet access around the world a foreign policy priority. This policy was supported by both Secretaries of State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.
The U.S. State Department has allocated tens of millions of dollars to promote internet freedom, primarily in the area of censorship circumvention. And just this month, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution declaring internet freedom a fundamental human right. The resolution condemns internet shutdowns by national governments, an act that has become increasingly common in variety of countries across the globe, including Turkey, Brazil, India and Uganda.
On the surface, this policy makes sense. The internet is an intuitive boon for democracy. It provides citizens around the world with greater freedom of expression, opportunities for civil society, education and political participation. And previous research, including our own, has been optimistic about the internet’s democratic potential.
However, this optimism is based on the assumption that citizens who gain internet access use it to expose themselves to new information, engage in political discussions, join social media groups that advocate for worthy causes and read news stories that change their outlook on the world.
And some do.
But others watch Netflix. They use the internet to post selfies to an intimate group of friends. They gain access to an infinite stream of music, movies and television shows. They spend hours playing video games.
However, our recent research shows that tuning out from politics and immersing oneself in online spectacle has political consequences for the health of democracy….Political use of the internet ranks very low globally, compared to other uses. Research has found that just 9 percent of internet users posted links to political news and only 10 percent posted their own thoughts about political or social issues. In contrast, almost three-quarters (72 percent) say they post about movies and music, and over half (54 percent) also say they post about sports online.
This inspired our study, which sought to show how the internet does not necessarily serve as democracy’s magical solution. Instead, its democratic potential is highly dependent on how citizens choose to use it….
Ensuring citizens have access to the internet is not sufficient to ensure democracy and human rights. In fact, internet access may negatively impact democracy if exploited for authoritarian gain.
The U.S. government, NGOs and other democracy advocates have invested a great deal of time and resources toward promoting internet access, fighting overt online censorship and creating circumvention technologies. Yet their success, at best, has been limited.
The reason is twofold. First, authoritarian governments have adapted their own strategies in response. Second, the “if we build it, they will come” philosophy underlying a great deal of internet freedom promotion doesn’t take into account basic human psychology in which entertainment choices are preferred over news and attitudes toward the internet determine its use, not the technology itself.
Allies in the internet freedom fight should realize that the locus of the fight has shifted. Greater efforts must be put toward tearing down “psychological firewalls,” building demand for internet freedom and influencing citizens to employ the internet’s democratic potential.
Doing so ensures that the democratic online toolkit is a match for the authoritarian one….(More)”
Data at the Speed of Life
Marc Gunther at The Chronicle of Philanthropy: “Can pregnant women in Zambia be persuaded to deliver their babies in hospitals or clinics rather than at home? How much are villagers in Cambodia willing to pay for a simple latrine? What qualities predict success for a small-scale entrepreneur who advises farmers?
Governments, foundations, and nonprofits that want to help the world’s poor regularly face questions like these. Answers are elusive. While an estimated $135 billion in government aid and another $15 billion in charitable giving flow annually to developing countries, surprisingly few projects benefit from rigorous evaluations. Those that do get scrutinized in academic studies often don’t see the results for years, long after the projects have ended.
IDinsight puts data-driven research on speed. Its goal is to produce useful, low-cost research results fast enough that nonprofits can use it make midcourse corrections to their programs….
IDinsight calls this kind of research “decision-focused evaluation,” which sets it apart from traditional monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and academic research. M&E, experts say, is mostly about accountability and outputs — how many training sessions were held, how much food was distributed, and so on. Usually, it occurs after a program is complete. Academic studies are typically shaped by researchers’ desire to break new ground and publish on topics of broad interest. The IDinsight approach aims instead “for contemporaneous decision-making rather than for publication in the American Economic Review,” says Ruth Levine, who directs the global development program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
A decade ago, Ms. Levine and William Savedoff, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, wrote an influential paper entitled “When Will We Ever Learn? Improving Lives Through Impact Evaluation.” They lamented that an “absence of evidence” for the effectiveness of global development programs “not only wastes money but denies poor people crucial support to improve their lives.”
Since then, impact evaluation has come a “huge distance,” Ms. Levine says….
Actually, others are. Innovations for Poverty Action recently created the Goldilocks Initiative to do what it calls “right fit” evaluations leading to better policy and programs, according to Thoai Ngo, who leads the effort. Its first clients include GiveDirectly, which facilitates cash transfers to the extreme poor, and Splash, a water charity….All this focus on data has generated pushback. Many nonprofits don’t have the resources to do rigorous research, according to Debra Allcock Tyler, chief executive at Directory of Social Change, a British charity that provides training, data, and other resources for social enterprises.
All this focus on data has generated pushback. Many nonprofits don’t have the resources to do rigorous research, according to Debra Allcock Tyler, chief executive at Directory of Social Change, a British charity that provides training, data, and other resources for social enterprises.
“A great deal of the time, data is pointless,” Allcock Tyler said last year at a London seminar on data and nonprofits. “Very often it is dangerous and can be used against us, and sometimes it takes away precious resources from other things that we might more usefully do.”
A bigger problem may be that the accumulation of knowledge does not necessarily lead to better policies or practices.
“People often trust their experience more than a systematic review,” says Ms. Levine of the Hewlett Foundation. IDinsight’s Esther Wang agrees. “A lot of our frustration is looking at the development world and asking why are we not accountable for the money that we are spending,” she says. “That’s a waste that none of us really feels is justifiable.”…(More)”
Smart Cities – International Case Studies
“These case studies were developed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), in association with the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS).
Anyang, Korea Anyang, a 600,000 population city near Seoul is developing international recognition on its smart city project that has been implemented incrementally since 2003. This initiative began with the Bus Information System to enhance citizen’s convenience at first, and has been expanding its domain into wider Intelligent Transport System as well as crime and disaster prevention in an integrated manner. Anyang is considered a benchmark for smart city with a 2012 Presidential Award in Korea and receives large number of international visits. Anyang’s Integrated Operation and Control Center (IOCC) acts as the platform that gathers, analyzes and distributes information for mobility, disasters management and crime. Anyang is currently utilizing big data for policy development and is continuing its endeavor to expand its smart city services into areas such as waste and air quality management. Download Anyang case study
Medellín, Colombia Medellin is a city that went from being known for its security problems to being an international referent of technological and social innovation, urban transformation, equity, and citizen participation. This report shows how Medellin has implemented a series of strategies that have made it a smart city that is developing capacity and organic structure in the entities that control mobility, the environment, and security. In addition, these initiatives have created mechanisms to communicate and interact with citizens in order to promote continuous improvement of smart services.
Through the Program “MDE: Medellin Smart City,” Medellin is implementing projects to create free Internet access zones, community centers, a Mi-Medellin co-creation portal, open data, online transactions, and other services. Another strategy is the creation of the Smart Mobility System which, through the use of technology, has achieved a reduction in the number of accidents, improvement in mobility, and a reduction in incident response time. Download Medellin case study
Tel Aviv, Israel… (More)”
OpenData.Innovation: an international journey to discover innovative uses of open government data
Nesta: “This paper by Mor Rubinstein (Open Knowledge International) and Josh Cowls and Corinne Cath (Oxford Internet Institute) explores the methods and motivations behind innovative uses of open government data in five specific country contexts – Chile, Argentine, Uruguay, Israel, and Denmark; and considers how the insights it uncovers might be adopted in a UK context.
Through a series of interviews with ‘social hackers’ and open data practitioners and experts in countries with recognised open government data ‘hubs’, the authors encountered a diverse range of practices and approaches in how actors in different sectors of society make innovative uses of open government data. This diversity also demonstrated how contextual factors shape the opportunities and challenges for impactful open government data use.
Based on insights from these international case studies, the paper offers a number of recommendations – around community engagement, data literacy and practices of opening data – which aim to support governments and citizens unlock greater knowledge exchange and social impact through open government data….(More)”
Open Data in Southeast Asia
Book by Manuel Stagars: “This book explores the power of greater openness, accountability, and transparency in digital information and government data for the nations of Southeast Asia. The author demonstrates that, although the term “open data” seems to be self-explanatory, it involves an evolving ecosystem of complex domains. Through empirical case studies, this book explains how governments in the ASEAN may harvest the benefits of open data to maximize their productivity, efficiency and innovation. The book also investigates how increasing digital divides in the population, boundaries to civil society, and shortfalls in civil and political rights threaten to arrest open data in early development, which may hamper post-2015 development agendas in the region. With robust open data policies and clear roadmaps, member states of the ASEAN can harvest the promising opportunities of open data in their particular developmental, institutional and legal settings. Governments, policy makers, entrepreneurs and academics will gain a clearer understanding of the factors that enable open data from this timely research….(More)”
Civic Data Initiatives
Burak Arikan at Medium: “Big data is the term used to define the perpetual and massive data gathered by corporations and governments on consumers and citizens. When the subject of data is not necessarily individuals but governments and companies themselves, we can call it civic data, and when systematically generated in large amounts, civic big data. Increasingly, a new generation of initiatives are generating and organizing structured data on particular societal issues from human rights violations, to auditing government budgets, from labor crimes to climate justice.
These civic data initiatives diverge from the traditional civil society organizations in their outcomes,that they don’t just publish their research as reports, but also open it to the public as a database.Civic data initiatives are quite different in their data work than international non-governmental organizations such as UN, OECD, World Bank and other similar bodies. Such organizations track social, economical, political conditions of countries and concentrate upon producing general statistical data, whereas civic data initiatives aim to produce actionable data on issues that impact individuals directly. The change in the GDP value of a country is useless for people struggling for free transportation in their city. Incarceration rate of a country does not help the struggle of the imprisoned journalists. Corruption indicators may serve as a parameter in a country’s credit score, but does not help to resolve monopolization created with public procurement. Carbon emission statistics do not prevent the energy deals between corrupt governments that destroy the nature in their region.
Needless to say, civic data initiatives also differ from governmental institutions, which are reluctant to share any more that they are legally obligated to. Many governments in the world simply dump scanned hardcopies of documents on official websites instead of releasing machine-readable data, which prevents systematic auditing of government activities.Civic data initiatives, on the other hand, make it a priority to structure and release their data in formats that are both accessible and queryable.
Civic data initiatives also deviate from general purpose information commons such as Wikipedia. Because they consistently engage with problems, closely watch a particular societal issue, make frequent updates,even record from the field to generate and organize highly granular data about the matter….
Several civic data initiatives generate data on variety of issues at different geographies, scopes, and scales. The non-exhaustive list below have information on founders, data sources, and financial support. It is sorted according to each initiative’s founding year. Please send your suggestions to contact at graphcommons.com. See more detailed information and updates on the spreadsheet of civic data initiatives.
Open Secrets tracks data about the money flow in the US government, so it becomes more accessible for journalists, researchers, and advocates.Founded as a non-profit in 1983 by Center for Responsive Politics, gets support from variety of institutions.
PolitiFact is a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others who speak up in American politics. Uses on-the-record interviews as its data source. Founded in 2007 as a non-profit organization by Tampa Bay Times. Supported by Democracy Fund, Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, FordFoundation, Knight Foundation, Craigslist Charitable Fund, and the CollinsCenter for Public Policy…..
La Fabrique de La loi (The Law Factory) maps issues of local-regional socio-economic development, public investments, and ecology in France.Started in 2014, the project builds a database by tracking bills from government sources, provides a search engine as well as an API. The partners of the project are CEE Sciences Po, médialab Sciences Po, RegardsCitoyens, and Density Design.
Mapping Media Freedom identifies threats, violations and limitations faced by members of the press throughout European Union member states,candidates for entry and neighbouring countries. Initiated by Index onCensorship and European Commission in 2004, the project…(More)”
Transparency and the open society: Practical lessons for effective policy
Book by Roger Taylor and Tim Kelsey: “Greater transparency is increasingly seen as the answer to a wide range of social issues by governments, NGOs and businesses around the world. However, evidence of its impact is mixed. Using case studies from around the world including India, Tanzania, the UK and US, Transparency and the open society surveys the adoption of transparency globally, providing an essential framework for assessing its likely performance as a policy and the steps that can be taken to make it more effective. It addresses the role of transparency in the context of growing use by governments and businesses of surveillance and database driven decision making. The book is written for anyone involved in the use of transparency whether campaigning from outside or working inside government or business to develop policies….(More)”
Transforming governance: how can technology help reshape democracy?
Research Briefing by Matt Leighninger: “Around the world, people are asking how we can make democracy work in new and better ways. We are frustrated by political systems in which voting is the only legitimate political act, concerned that many republics don’t have the strength or appeal to withstand authoritarian figures, and disillusioned by the inability of many countries to address the fundamental challenges of health, education and economic development.
We can no longer assume that the countries of the global North have ‘advanced’ democracies, and that the nations of the global South simply need to catch up. Citizens of these older democracies have increasingly lost faith in their political institutions; Northerners cherish their human rights and free elections, but are clearly looking for something more. Meanwhile, in the global South, new regimes based on a similar formula of rights and elections have proven fragile and difficult to sustain. And in Brazil, India and other Southern countries, participatory budgeting and other valuable democratic innovations have emerged. The stage is set for a more equitable, global conversation about what we mean by democracy.
How can we adjust our democratic formulas so that they are more sustainable, powerful, fulfilling – and, well, democratic? Some of the parts of this equation may come from the development of online tools and platforms that help people to engage with their governments, with organisations and institutions, and with each other. Often referred to collectively as ‘civic technology’ or ‘civic tech’, these tools can help us map public problems, help citizens generate solutions, gather input for government, coordinate volunteer efforts, and help neighbours remain connected. If we want to create democracies in which citizens have meaningful roles in shaping public decisions and solving public problems, we should be asking a number of questions about civic tech, including:
- How can online tools best support new forms of democracy?
- What are the examples of how this has happened?
- What are some variables to consider in comparing these examples?
- How can we learn from each other as we move forward?
This background note has been developed to help democratic innovators explore these questions and examine how their work can provide answers….(More)”
Are we too obsessed with data?
Lauren Woodman of Nethope:” Data: Everyone’s talking about it, everyone wants more of it….
Still, I’d posit that we’re too obsessed with data. Not just us in the humanitarian space, of course, but everyone. How many likes did that Facebook post get? How many airline miles did I fly last year? How many hours of sleep did I get last week?…
The problem is that data by itself isn’t that helpful: information is.
We need to develop a new obsession, around making sure that data is actionable, that it is relevant in the context in which we work, and on making sure that we’re using the data as effectively as we are collecting it.
In my talk at ICT4D, I referenced the example of 7-Eleven in Japan. In the 1970s, 7-Eleven in Japan became independent from its parent, Southland Corporation. The CEO had to build a viable business in a tough economy. Every month, each store manager would receive reams of data, but it wasn’t effective until the CEO stripped out the noise and provided just four critical data points that had the greatest relevance to drive the local purchasing that each store was empowered to do on their own.
Those points – what sold the day before, what sold the same day a year ago, what sold the last time the weather was the same, and what other stores sold the day before – were transformative. Within a year, 7-Eleven had turned a corner, and for 30 years, remained the most profitable retailer in Japan. It wasn’t about the Big Data; it was figuring out what data was relevant, actionable and empowered local managers to make nimble decisions.
For our sector to get there, we need to do the front-end work that transforms our data into information that we can use. That, after all, is where the magic happens.
A few examples provide more clarity as to why this is so critical.
We know that adaptive decision-making requires access to real-time data. By knowing what is happening in real-time, or near-real-time, we can adjust our approaches and interventions to be most impactful. But to do so, our data has to be accessible to those that are empowered to make decisions. To achieve that, we have to make investments in training, infrastructure, and capacity-building at the organizational level. But in the nonprofit sector, such investments are rarely supported by donors and beyond the limited unrestricted funding available to most most organizations. As a result, the sector has, so far, been able to take only limited steps towards effective data usage, hampering our ability to transform the massive amounts of data we have into useful information.
Another big question about data, and particularly in the humanitarian space, is whether it should be open, closed or somewhere in between. Privacy is certainly paramount, and for types of data, the need for close protection is very clear. For many other data, however, the rules are far less clear. Every country has its own rules about how data can and cannot be used or shared, and more work is needed to provide clarity and predictability so that appropriate data-sharing can evolve.
And perhaps more importantly, we need to think about not just the data, but the use cases. Most of us would agree, for example, that sharing information during a crisis situation can be hugely beneficial to the people and the communities we serve – but in a world where rules are unclear, that ambiguity limits what we can do with the data we have. Here again, the context in which data will be used is critically important.
Finally, all of in the sector have to realize that the journey to transforming data into information is one we’re on together. We have to be willing to give and take. Having data is great; sharing information is better. Sometimes, we have to co-create that basis to ensure we all benefit….(More)”