The Engineers and the Political System

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Aaron Timms at the Los Angeles Review of Books: “Engineers enjoy a prestige in China that connects them to political power far more directly than in the United States. ….America, by contrast, has historically been governed by lawyers. That remains true today: there are 218 lawyers in Congress and 208 former businesspeople, according to the Congressional Research Service, but only eight engineers. (Science is even more severely underrepresented, with just three members in the House.) It’s unlikely that that balance will tilt meaningfully in favor of STEM-ers in the near term. But in another sense, the growing cultural capital of the engineers will inevitably translate to political power, whatever its form.

The engineering profession today is broad, much broader than it was in 1921 when Thorstein Veblen published The Engineers and the Price System, his classic pamphlet on industrial sabotage and government by technocrats. Engineering has outgrown the four traditional branches (chemical, civil, electrical, mechanical) to include all the professions in which the laws of mathematics and science are applied to real-world problems…..In a way that was never the case for previous generations, engineering today is politics, and politics engineering. Power is coming for the engineers, but are the engineers ready for power?

…tech smarts do not port easily to politics. However violently Silicon Valley pushes the story that it’s here to fix things for all of us, building an algorithm and coming up with intelligent ways to improve society are not the same thing. The triumph of the engineers is that they’ve managed to convince so many people otherwise.

This victory is more than simply economic or mechanical; engineering has also come to permeate the language of politics itself. Zuckerberg’s doe-eyed both-sidesism is the latest expression of the idea, nourished through the Clinton years and the height of the evidence-based policy movement, that facts offer the surest solution to knotty political problems. This is, we already know, a temple built on sand, ignoring as it does the intractably political nature of politics; hence the failure of “figures” and “facts” and “evidence” to do anything to shift positions on gun reform or voter fraud. But it’s a temple with enduring bipartisan appeal, and the engineers have come along at the right moment to give it a fresh lick of paint. If thinking like an engineer is the new way to do business, engineerialism, in politics, is the new centrism — rule by experts remarketed for the innovation age. It might be generations before a Veblenian technocrat calls the White House home, but no presidency can match the power engineers already have — a power to define progress, a power without check….(More)”.

The Illusion of Freedom in the Digital Age

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Mark Leonard at Project Syndicate: “Over the last few weeks, media around the world have been saturated with stories about how technology is destroying politics. In autocracies like China, the fear is of ultra-empowered Big Brother states, like that in George Orwell’s 1984. In democracies like the United States, the concern is that tech companies will continue to exacerbate political and social polarization by facilitating the spread of disinformation and creating ideological “filter bubbles,” leading to something resembling Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World….

Big tech companies, worth more than some countries’ GDP, seek to maximize profits, not social welfare. Yet, at a time when attention is supplanting money as the most valuable commodity, the impact of their decisions is far-reaching. James Williams, a Google engineer turned academic, argues that the digital age has unleashed fierce competition for our attention, and few have benefited more than Trump, who is for the Internet what Ronald Reagan was for television….

In the digital age, the biggest danger is not that technology will put free and autocratic societies increasingly at odds with one another. It is that the worst fears of both Orwell and Huxley will become manifest in both types of system, creating a different kind of dystopia. With many of their deepest desires being met, citizens will have the illusion of freedom and empowerment. In reality, their lives, the information they consume, and the choices they make will be determined by algorithms and platforms controlled by unaccountable corporate or government elites….(More)”.

Smart city initiatives in Africa

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Eyerusalem Siba and Mariama Sow at Brookings: “…African countries are presently in the early stages of their urbanization process. Though Africa was the least urbanized region in the world in 2015—only 40 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s population lived in cities—it is now the second-fastest urbanizing region in the world (behind Asia). Population experts predict that by 2020, Africa will be on top. Given this rapid growth, now is the time for African policymakers to incorporate smart cities into their urbanization strategies….

Rwanda is one of the pioneers of smart city engineering in Africa. Modernizing Kigali is part of a wider effort by the Rwanda government to increase and simplify access to public services. The Irembo platform launched by the government, seeks to create e-government services to allow citizens to complete public processes online, such as registering for driving exams and requesting birth certificates.

In addition, the country is active in involving the private sector in its goal towards creating smart cities. In mid-May, the Rwandan government launched a partnership with Nokia and SRG in order to deploy smart city technology to “improve the lifestyle and social sustainability of [Rwandan] citizens.” The project involves investment in network connectivity and sensor deployment to improve public safety, waste management, utility management, and health care, among other functions.

Rwanda’s smart city rollout has not been perfect, though, proving that smart city development can hit some snags: For example, in 2016, the city started rolling out buses with free Wi-Fi and cashless payment service, but the buses have had connectivity issues related to the Korea-built technology’s inability to adapt to local conditions.

In addition, there has been criticism around the lack of inclusivity of certain smart cities projects. Kigali’s Smart Neighborhood project, Vision City, creates a tech-enabled neighborhood with solar powered street lamps and free Wi-Fi in the town square. Critics, though, state that the project ignored the socioeconomic realities of a city where 80 percent of its population lives in slums with monthly earnings below $240 (Vision City Homes cost $160,000). (Rwandan planners have responded stating that affordable housing will be built in the later phases of the project.)

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

As seen in the case of Rwanda, smart cities—while creating opportunities for innovation and better livelihoods—face challenges during and after their development. City planners and policymakers must keep the big picture in mind when promoting smart cities, emphasizing well-implemented infrastructure and citizen needs. Technology for technology’s sake will not create solutions to some of Africa’s cities biggest challenges, including high-cost, low-quality, and inaccessible services. Indeed, in a 2015 issue paper, UN-Habitat urges city planners to avoid viewing smart cities as the final product. In particular, UN-Habitat calls for smart cities to minimize transport needs, reduce service delivery costs, and maximize land use. These moves, among others, will ensure that the city reduces congestion, creates spaces dedicated to recreational uses, enhances service delivery, and, thus, improves its citizen’s quality of life…(More)”.

Does protest really work in cosy democracies?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Steve Crawshaw at LSE Impact Blog: “…If it is possible for peaceful crowds to force the collapse of the Berlin Wall or to unseat a Mubarak, how easy it should it be for protesters to persuade a democratically elected leader to retreat from “mere” bad policy? In truth, not easy at all. Two million marched in the UK against the Iraq War in 2003 – and it made not a blind bit of difference with Tony Blair’s determination to proceed with a war that the UN Secretary-General described as illegal. Blair was re-elected, two years later.

After the inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2017, millions took part in the series of Women’s Marches in the United States and around the world. It seemed – it was – a powerful defining moment. And yet, at least in the short-term, those remarkable protests were water off the presidential duck’s back. His response was mockery. In some respects, Trump could afford to mock. A man who has received 63 million votes is in a stronger position than the unelected leader who has to threaten or use violence to stay in power.

And yet.

One thing that protest in an authoritarian and a democratic context have in common is that the impact of protest – including delayed impact – remains uncertain, both for those who protest and those who are protested against.

Vaclav Havel argued that it was worth “living in truth” – speaking truth to power – even without any certainty of outcome. “Those that say individuals are not capable of changing anything are only looking for excuses.” In that context, what is perhaps most unacceptable is to mock those who take risks, and seek change. Lord Charles Powell, former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, for example explained to the umbrella protesters in Hong Kong in 2013 that they were foolish and naive. They should, he told them, learn to live with the “small black cloud” of anti-democratic pressures from Beijing. The protesters failed to heed Powell’s complacent message. In the words of Joshua Wong, on his way back to jail earlier in 2017: “You can lock up our bodies, but not our minds.”

Scepticism and failure are linked, as the Egyptian activist Asmaa Mahfouz made clear in a powerful video which helped trigger the uprising in 2011. The 26-year-old declared: ‘”Whoever says it is not worth it because there will only be a handful or people, I want to tell him, “You are the reason for this.” Sitting at home and just watching us on the news or Facebook leads to our humiliation.’ The video went viral. Millions went out. The rest was history.

Even in a democracy, that same it-can’t-be-done logic sucks us in more often, perhaps, than we realize….(More)”.

China harnesses big data to buttress the power of the state

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

James Kynge in the Financial Times: “…Over the period of “reform and opening” since the late 1970s, China has generally sought to “bide its time and hide its strength”. But no longer. At the congress, Xi Jinping, the president, presented “socialism with Chinese characteristics” as a “a new choice” for developing nations to follow. But what lends heft to this globalist intent are technological advances that are already invigorating the Chinese economy and may also help to address some of the historic failings of the country’s polity.

The data revolution is fusing with China’s party-state to create a potential “techno-tatorship”; a hybrid strain in which rigid political control can coexist with ample free-market flexibility….

First of all, he said, the big ecommerce companies, such as Alibaba, Tencent and JD.com, are obliged to share their data with central authorities such as the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the central bank. Then the PBoC shares the data with about 50 state-owned banks, creating a database that covers about 400m people, detailing their payment history, creditworthiness and even networks of social contacts, the official said.

“We have already seen that the number of bad debts being built up by households has come down sharply since we launched this system,” said the official. “People really care about their credit scores because those with bad scores have reduced access to financial services.”…
To be sure, data-centric approaches to governance can have shortcomings. The data can be ignored or manipulated by humans, or privileged institutions can lobby for special treatment using old fashioned political leverage. But some Chinese see a big opportunity. Economists Wang Binbin and Li Xiaoyan argue in a paper that the marriage of big data and central planning creates a potent new hybrid….(More)”.

Growing government innovation labs: an insider’s guide

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by UNDP and Futurgov: “Effective and inspirational labs exist in many highly developed countries. In Western Europe, MindLab (Denmark) and The Behavioural Insights Team (UK) push their governments to re-imagine public services. In Asia, the Innovation Bureau in Seoul, South Korea, co-designs better services with citizens.

However, this guide is aimed towards those working in the development context. The authors believe their collective experience of running labs in Eurasia, Asia and the Middle East is directly transferrable to other regions who face similar challenges, for example, moving from poverty to inequality, or from a recent history of democratisation towards more open government.

This report does not offer a “how-to” of innovation techniques — there are plenty of guides out there. Instead, we give the real story of how government innovation labs develop in regions like ours: organic and people-driven, often operating under the radar until safe to emerge. We share a truthful  examination of the twists and turns of seeding, starting up and scaling labs, covering the challenges we faced and our failures, as much as our successes. …(More)”.

Information Governance in Japan: Towards a Comparative Paradigm

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Kenji E. Kushida; Yuko Kasuya and Eiji Kawabata: “The history of human civilization has been about managing information, from hunting and gathering through contemporary times. In modern societies, information flows are central to how individuals and societies interact with governments, economies, and other countries. Despite this centrality of information, information governance—how information flows are managed—has not been a central concern of scholarship. We argue that it should be, especially now that digitization has dramatically altered the amount of information generated, how it can be transmitted, and how it can be used.

This book examines various aspects of information governance in Japan, utilizing comparative and historical perspectives. The aim is threefold: 1) to explore Japan’s society, politics, and economy through a critical but hitherto under-examined vantage that we believe cuts to the core of what modern societies are built with—information; 2) articulate a set of components which can be used to analyze other countries from the vantage of information governance; and 3) provide frameworks of reference to analyze each component.

This book is the product of a multidisciplinary, multinational collaboration between scholars based in the US and Japan. Each are experts in their own fields (economics, political science, information science, law, library science), and were brought together in two workshops to develop, explore, and analyze the conception and various of facets of information governance. This book is frontier research by proposing and taking this conception of information governance as a framework of analysis.

The introduction sets up the analysis by providing background and a framework for understanding the conception of information governance. Part I focuses on the management of government-held information. Part II examines information central to economic activity. Part III explores information flows crucial to politics and social life….(More)”.

The Death of Public Knowledge? How Free Markets Destroy the General Intellect

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Aeron Davis: “...argues for the value and importance of shared, publicly accessible knowledge, and suggests that the erosion of its most visible forms, including public service broadcasting, education, and the network of public libraries, has worrying outcomes for democracy.

With contributions from both activists and academics, this collection of short, sharp essays focuses on different aspects of public knowledge, from libraries and education to news media and public policy. Together, the contributors record the stresses and strains placed upon public knowledge by funding cuts and austerity, the new digital economy, quantification and target-setting, neoliberal politics, and inequality. These pressures, the authors contend, not only hinder democracies, but also undermine markets, economies, and social institutions and spaces everywhere.

Covering areas of international public concern, these polemical, accessible texts include reflections on the fate of schools and education, the takeover of public institutions by private interests, and the corruption of news and information in the financial sector. They cover the compromised Greek media during recent EU negotiations, the role played by media and political elites in the Irish property bubble, the compromising of government policy by corporate interests in the United States and Korea, and the squeeze on public service media in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the United States.

Individually and collectively, these pieces spell out the importance of maintaining public, shared knowledge in all its forms, and offer a rallying cry for doing so, asserting the need for strong public, financial, and regulatory support….(More)”

Artificial Intelligence for Citizen Services and Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Hila Mehr: “From online services like Netflix and Facebook, to chatbots on our phones and in our homes like Siri and Alexa, we are beginning to interact with artificial intelligence (AI) on a near daily basis. AI is the programming or training of a computer to do tasks typically reserved for human intelligence, whether it is recommending which movie to watch next or answering technical questions. Soon, AI will permeate the ways we interact with our government, too. From small cities in the US to countries like Japan, government agencies are looking to AI to improve citizen services.

While the potential future use cases of AI in government remain bounded by government resources and the limits of both human creativity and trust in government, the most obvious and immediately beneficial opportunities are those where AI can reduce administrative burdens, help resolve resource allocation problems, and take on significantly complex tasks. Many AI case studies in citizen services today fall into five categories: answering questions, filling out and searching documents, routing requests, translation, and drafting documents. These applications could make government work more efficient while freeing up time for employees to build better relationships with citizens. With citizen satisfaction with digital government offerings leaving much to be desired, AI may be one way to bridge the gap while improving citizen engagement and service delivery.

Despite the clear opportunities, AI will not solve systemic problems in government, and could potentially exacerbate issues around service delivery, privacy, and ethics if not implemented thoughtfully and strategically. Agencies interested in implementing AI can learn from previous government transformation efforts, as well as private-sector implementation of AI. Government offices should consider these six strategies for applying AI to their work: make AI a part of a goals-based, citizen-centric program; get citizen input; build upon existing resources; be data-prepared and tread carefully with privacy; mitigate ethical risks and avoid AI decision making; and, augment employees, do not replace them.

This paper explores the various types of AI applications, and current and future uses of AI in government delivery of citizen services, with a focus on citizen inquiries and information. It also offers strategies for governments as they consider implementing AI….(More)”

How AI Is Crunching Big Data To Improve Healthcare Outcomes

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

PSFK: “The state of your health shouldn’t be a mystery, nor should patients or doctors have to wait long to find answers to pressing medical concerns. In PSFK’s Future of Health Report, we dig deep into the latest in AI, big data algorithms and IoT tools that are enabling a new, more comprehensive overview of patient data collection and analysis. Machine support, patient information from medical records and conversations with doctors are combined with the latest medical literature to help form a diagnosis without detracting from doctor-patient relations.

The impact of improved AI helps patients form a baseline for well-being and is making changes all across the healthcare industry. AI not only streamlines intake processes and reduces processing volume at clinics, it also controls input and diagnostic errors within a patient record, allowing doctors to focus on patient care and communication, rather than data entry. AI also improves pattern recognition and early diagnosis by learning from multiple patient data sets.

By utilizing deep learning algorithms and software, healthcare providers can connect various libraries of medical information and scan databases of medical records, spotting patterns that lead to more accurate detection and greater breadth of efficiency in medical diagnosis and research. IBM Watson, which has previously been used to help identify genetic markers and develop drugs, is applying its neural learning networks to help doctors correctly diagnose heart abnormalities from medical imaging tests. By scanning thousands of images and learning from correct diagnoses, Watson is able to increase diagnostic accuracy, supporting doctors’ cardiac assessments.

Outside of the doctor’s office, AI is also being used to monitor patient vitals to help create a baseline for well-being. By monitoring health on a day-to-day basis, AI systems can alert patients and medical teams to abnormalities or changes from the baseline in real time, increasing positive outcomes. Take xbird, a mobile platform that uses artificial intelligence to help diabetics understand when hypoglycemic attacks will occur. The AI combines personal and environmental data points from over 20 sensors within mobile and wearable devices to create an automated personal diary and cross references it against blood sugar levels. Patients then share this data with their doctors in order to uncover their unique hypoglycemic triggers and better manage their condition.

In China, meanwhile, web provider Baidu has debuted Melody, a chat-based medical assistant that helps individuals communicate their symptoms, learn of possible diagnoses and connect to medical experts….(More)”.