Data-driven tools and techniques, particularly machine learning methods that underpin artificial intelligence, offer promise in improving healthcare systems and services. One of the companies aspiring to pioneer these advances is DeepMind Technologies Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Google conglomerate, Alphabet Inc. In 2016, DeepMind announced its first major health project: a collaboration with the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, to assist in the management of acute kidney injury. Initially received with great enthusiasm, the collaboration has suffered from a lack of clarity and openness, with issues of privacy and power emerging as potent challenges as the project has unfolded. Taking the DeepMind-Royal Free case study as its pivot, this article draws a number of lessons on the transfer of population-derived datasets to large private prospectors, identifying critical questions for policy-makers, industry and individuals as healthcare moves into an algorithmic age….(More)”
Digital Democracy in Belgium and the Netherlands. A Socio-Legal Analysis of Citizenlab.be and Consultatie.nl
Chapter by Koen Van Aeken in: Prins, C. et. al (eds.) Digital Democracy in a Globalized World (Edward Elgar, 2017), Forthcoming: “The research question is how technologies characterized by ubiquitous Web 2.0 interactivity may contribute to democracy. Following a case study design, two applications were evaluated: the Belgian CitizenLab, a mobile, social and local private application to support public decision making in cities, and the Dutch governmental website Internetconsultatie. Available data suggest that the Dutch consultation platform is mainly visited by the ‘usual suspects’ and lacks participatory functionalities. In contrast, CitizenLab explicitly aims at policy co-creation through broad participation. Its novelty, however, prevents making sound empirical statements.
A comprehensive conceptualization precedes the case studies. To avoid instrumentalist reduction, the social setting of the technologies is reconstructed. Since its constituents, embedding and expectations – initially represented as the nation state and representative democracy – are increasingly challenged, their transformations are consequently discussed. The new embedding emerges as a governance constellation; new expectations concern the participatory dimension of politics. Future assessments of technologies may benefit from this conceptualization….(More)”
Did artificial intelligence deny you credit?
People who apply for a loan from a bank or credit card company, and are turned down, are owed an explanation of why that happened. It’s a good idea – because it can help teach people how to repair their damaged credit – and it’s a federal law, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Getting an answer wasn’t much of a problem in years past, when humans made those decisions. But today, as artificial intelligence systems increasingly assist or replace people making credit decisions, getting those explanations has become much more difficult.
Traditionally, a loan officer who rejected an application could tell a would-be borrower there was a problem with their income level, or employment history, or whatever the issue was. But computerized systems that use complex machine learning models are difficult to explain, even for experts.
Consumer credit decisions are just one way this problem arises. Similar concerns exist in health care, online marketing and even criminal justice. My own interest in this area began when a research group I was part of discovered gender bias in how online ads were targeted, but could not explain why it happened.
All those industries, and many others, who use machine learning to analyze processes and make decisions have a little over a year to get a lot better at explaining how their systems work. In May 2018, the new European Union General Data Protection Regulation takes effect, including a section giving people a right to get an explanation for automated decisions that affect their lives. What shape should these explanations take, and can we actually provide them?
Identifying key reasons
One way to describe why an automated decision came out the way it did is to identify the factors that were most influential in the decision. How much of a credit denial decision was because the applicant didn’t make enough money, or because he had failed to repay loans in the past?
My research group at Carnegie Mellon University, including PhD student Shayak Sen and then-postdoc Yair Zick created a way to measure the relative influence of each factor. We call it the Quantitative Input Influence.
In addition to giving better understanding of an individual decision, the measurement can also shed light on a group of decisions: Did an algorithm deny credit primarily because of financial concerns, such as how much an applicant already owes on other debts? Or was the applicant’s ZIP code more important – suggesting more basic demographics such as race might have come into play?…(More)”
Fighting Corruption in Health Care? There’s an App for That
Akjibek Beishebaeva at Voices (OSF): “As an industry that relies heavily on approvals from government officials, the pharmaceutical field in places like Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan—which lack strong mechanisms for public oversight—is particularly susceptible to corruption.
The problem in those countries is exacerbated by the absence of any reliable system to monitor market prices for drugs. For example, a hospital manager bribed by a pharmaceutical representative could agree to procure a drug at a price 10 times higher than at a neighboring hospital. In addition, those medicines procured by the state and meant to be dispensed freely to patients often appear for sale at hospital-based pharmacies instead.
These aren’t victimless crimes. The most needy patients are often the first to suffer when funds are diverted away from lifesaving treatments and medicines.
To tackle this issue, last year the Soros Foundation–Kyrgyzstan and the International Renaissance Foundation jointly conducted the Health Data Hackathon in the Yssyk-Kul region of Kyrgyzstan. Two teams from Ukraine and three teams from Kyrgyzstan—consisting of coders, journalists, and activists—took part. Their goal was to find innovative solutions to address corruption in public procurements and access to health services for vulnerable populations.
Over the two-and-a-half-day effort, one of the Ukrainian teams developed a prototype for a software application to improve the e-tendering platform for all public procurement in Ukraine—ProZorro.
ProZorro itself revolutionized the tender process when it first launched in 2015. It combined a centralized database of online markets and was made accessible to the public. Journalists, activists, and patients today can log in to the system and scrutinize tenders approved by the government. The transparency provided by the system has already shown savings of more than a billion UAH (US$37 million). However, the database is huge and can be tricky to navigate without training.
The application developed at the hackathon makes it even easier to monitor the purchase prices of medicines in Ukraine. Specfically, it will allow users to automatically and instantly compare prices for the same products—a process which previously took many days of manual effort.
The application also offers a more intuitive interface and improved search functionality that will help further reduce corruption and save money—savings that can be redirected towards treatments for people living with HIV, cancer, and hepatitis C. The team is now testing the software and working with the government to introduce it early this year.
Another team came up with the idea to let patients monitor supplies of medicine at facilities in real time. If a hospital representative says that a patient needs to buy drugs that should be readily available, for example, the patient can check online and hold the hospital accountable if the medicines are meant to be provided for free. The tool, called WikiLiky, has already been implemented in the Sumy region of Ukraine.
Likewise, one of the Kyrgyz teams looked at price monitoring in their own country, focusing on the inefficient and mistake-prone acquisition process. For instance, the name of one drug might be misspelled in several different ways, making it difficult to track prices accurately. The team redesigned the functionality of the government e-procurement portal called Codifier, creating uniformity across the system of names, dosages, and other medical specifications….(More)”
Big data helps Belfort, France, allocate buses on routes according to demand
Bruce Brown in Digital Trends: “As modern cities smarten up, the priority for many will be transportation. Belfort, a mid-sized French industrial city of 50,000, serves as proof of concept for improved urban transportation that does not require the time and expense of covering the city with sensors and cameras.
Working with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and GFI Informatique, the Board of Public Transportation of Belfort overhauled bus service management of the city’s 100-plus buses. The project entailed a combination of ID cards, GPS-equipped card readers on buses, and big data analysis. The collected data was used to measure bus speed from stop to stop, passenger flow to observe when and where people got on and off, and bus route density. From start to finish, the proof of concept project took four weeks.
Using the TCS Intelligent Urban Exchange system, operations managers were able to detect when and where about 20 percent of all bus passengers boarded and got off on each city bus route. Utilizing big data and artificial intelligence the city’s urban planners were able to use that data analysis to make cost-effective adjustments including the allocation of additional buses on routes and during times of greater passenger demand. They were also able to cut back on buses for minimally used routes and stops. In addition, the system provided feedback on the effect of city construction projects on bus service….
Going forward, continued data analysis will help the city budget wisely for infrastructure changes and new equipment purchases. The goal is to put the money where the needs are greatest rather than just spending and then waiting to see if usage justified the expense. The push for smarter cities has to be not just about improved services, but also smart resource allocation — in the Belfort project, the use of big data showed how to do both….(More)”
Just Change: How to Collaborate for Lasting Impact
Book by Tynesia Boyea-Robinson: “… is a collection of stories and case studies to evolve the way we think about and approach systemic causes of inequities facing low-income communities, particularly communities of color. The book successfully addresses:
- Cross-sector collaboration as a requirement for sustainable social change;
- Moving away from siloed programs with single-focused solutions to building systems and infrastructures that improve inequities at the population-level; and
- Reframing how to think about and measure success in order to achieve scale and impact.
Read about leaders across the country who have successfully created sustainable, long-lasting solutions to address key root causes of inequities in their communities:
- How the Detroit Corridor Initiative, Cincinnati, and Minneapolis-St Paul used shared results for successful cross-sector partnerships
- How Nexus Community Partners in Minneapolis changed how they collaborate with the community they’re serving towards a more authentic community engagement
- How Best Start for Kids in Seattle/King County effectively used cross-sector partnerships
- How Camden City in New Jersey partnered with Campbell’s Soup for better health outcomes
Discover tested tools and strategies to implement change in your own communities, such as:
- How the Model Behavior, Align Resources, Catalyze Change (MAC) framework harnesses intrinsic motivation for behavior change
- How the Data Inventory helps you figure out what data needs to be collected and how to get it
- Four components of creating effective shared results that will drive your cross-sector partnership towards success…(More)”.
Migration tracking is a mess
Huub Dijstelbloem in Nature: “As debates over migration, refugees and freedom of movement intensify, technologies are increasingly monitoring the movements of people. Biometric passports and databases containing iris scans or fingerprints are being used to check a person’s right to travel through or stay within a territory. India, for example, is establishing biometric identification for its 1.3 billion citizens.
But technologies are spreading beyond borders. Security policies and humanitarian considerations have broadened the landscape. Drones and satellite images inform policies and direct aid to refugees. For instance, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), maps refugee camps in Jordan and elsewhere with its Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT; see www.unitar.org/unosat/map/1928).
Three areas are in need of research, in my view: the difficulties of joining up disparate monitoring systems; privacy issues and concerns over the inviolability of the human body; and ‘counter-surveillance’ deployed by non-state actors to highlight emergencies or contest claims that governments make.
Ideally, state monitoring of human mobility would be bound by ethical principles, solid legislation, periodical evaluations and the checks and balances of experts and political and public debates. In reality, it is ad hoc. Responses are arbitrary, fuelled by the crisis management of governments that have failed to anticipate global and regional migration patterns. Too often, this results in what the late sociologist Ulrich Beck called organized irresponsibility: situations of inadequacy in which it is hard to blame a single actor.
Non-governmental organizations, activists and migrant groups are using technologies to register incidents and to blame and shame states. For example, the Forensic Architecture research agency at Goldsmiths, University of London, has used satellite imagery and other evidence to reconstruct the journey of a boat that left Tripoli on 27 March 2011 with 72 passengers. A fortnight later, it returned to the Libyan coast with just 9 survivors. Although the boat had been spotted by several aircraft and vessels, no rescue operation had been mounted (go.nature.com/2mbwvxi). Whether the states involved can be held accountable is still being considered.
In the end, technologies to monitor mobility are political tools. Their aims, design, use, costs and consequences should be developed and evaluated accordingly….(More)”.
UK’s Digital Strategy
Executive Summary: “This government’s Plan for Britain is a plan to build a stronger, fairer country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few. …Our digital strategy now develops this further, applying the principles outlined in the Industrial Strategy green paper to the digital economy. The UK has a proud history of digital innovation: from the earliest days of computing to the development of the World Wide Web, the UK has been a cradle for inventions which have changed the world. And from Ada Lovelace – widely recognised as the first computer programmer – to the pioneers of today’s revolution in artificial intelligence, the UK has always been at the forefront of invention. …
Maintaining the UK government as a world leader in serving its citizens online
From personalised services in health, to safer care for the elderly at home, to tailored learning in education and access to culture – digital tools, techniques and technologies give us more opportunities than ever before to improve the vital public services on which we all rely.
The UK is already a world leader in digital government,7 but we want to go further and faster. The new Government Transformation Strategy published on 9 February 2017 sets out our intention to serve the citizens and businesses of the UK with a better, more coherent experience when using government services online – one that meets the raised expectations set by the many other digital services and tools they use every day. So, we will continue to develop single cross-government platform services, including by working towards 25 million GOV.UK Verify users by 2020 and adopting new services onto the government’s GOV.UK Pay and GOV.UK Notify platforms.
We will build on the ‘Government as a Platform’ concept, ensuring we make greater reuse of platforms and components across government. We will also continue to move towards common technology, ensuring that where it is right we are consuming commodity hardware or cloud-based software instead of building something that is needlessly government specific.
We will also continue to work, across government and the public sector, to harness the potential of digital to radically improve the efficiency of our public services – enabling us to provide a better service to citizens and service users at a lower cost. In education, for example, we will address the barriers faced by schools in regions not connected to appropriate digital infrastructure and we will invest in the Network of Teaching Excellence in Computer Science to help teachers and school leaders build their knowledge and understanding of technology. In transport, we will make our infrastructure smarter, more accessible and more convenient for passengers. At Autumn Statement 2016 we announced that the National Productivity Investment Fund would allocate £450 million from 2018-19 to 2020-21 to trial digital signalling technology on the rail network. And in policing, we will enable police officers to use biometric applications to match fingerprint and DNA from scenes of crime and return results including records and alerts to officers over mobile devices at the crime scene.
Read more about digital government.
Unlocking the power of data in the UK economy and improving public confidence in its use
As part of creating the conditions for sustainable growth, we will take the actions needed to make the UK a world-leading data-driven economy, where data fuels economic and social opportunities for everyone, and where people can trust that their data is being used appropriately.
Data is a global commodity and we need to ensure that our businesses can continue to compete and communicate effectively around the world. To maintain our position at the forefront of the data revolution, we will implement the General Data Protection Regulation by May 2018. This will ensure a shared and higher standard of protection for consumers and their data.
Watchdog to launch inquiry into misuse of data in politics
Jamie Doward, Carole Cadwalladr and Alice Gibbs in The Guardian: “The UK’s privacy watchdog is launching an inquiry into how voters’ personal data is being captured and exploited in political campaigns, cited as a key factor in both the Brexit and Trump victories last year.
The intervention by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) follows revelations in last week’s Observer that a technology company part-owned by a US billionaire played a key role in the campaign to persuade Britons to vote to leave the European Union.
It comes as privacy campaigners, lawyers, politicians and technology experts express fears that electoral laws are not keeping up with the pace of technological change.
“We are conducting a wide assessment of the data-protection risks arising from the use of data analytics, including for political purposes, and will be contacting a range of organisations,” an ICO spokeswoman confirmed. “We intend to publicise our findings later this year.”
The ICO spokeswoman confirmed that it had approached Cambridge Analytica over its apparent use of data following the story in the Observer. “We have concerns about Cambridge Analytica’s reported use of personal data and we are in contact with the organisation,” she said….
In the US, companies are free to use third-party data without seeking consent. But Gavin Millar QC, of Matrix Chambers, said this was not the case in Europe. “The position in law is exactly the same as when people would go canvassing from door to door,” Millar said. “They have to say who they are, and if you don’t want to talk to them you can shut the door in their face.That’s the same principle behind the data protection act. It’s why if telephone canvassers ring you, they have to say that whole long speech. You have to identify yourself explicitly.”…
Dr Simon Moores, visiting lecturer in the applied sciences and computing department at Canterbury Christ Church University and a technology ambassador under the Blair government, said the ICO’s decision to shine a light on the use of big data in politics was timely.
“A rapid convergence in the data mining, algorithmic and granular analytics capabilities of companies like Cambridge Analytica and Facebook is creating powerful, unregulated and opaque ‘intelligence platforms’. In turn, these can have enormous influence to affect what we learn, how we feel, and how we vote. The algorithms they may produce are frequently hidden from scrutiny and we see only the results of any insights they might choose to publish.” …(More)”
Digital Democracy: The Tools Transforming Political Engagement
Paper by Julie Simon, Theo Bass, Victoria Boelman and Geoff Mulgan: “… shares lessons from Nesta’s research into some of the pioneering innovations in digital democracy which are taking place across Europe and beyond.
Key findings
- Digital democracy is a broad concept and not easy to define. The paper provides a granular approach to help encompass its various activities and methods (our ‘typology of digital democracy’).
- Many initiatives exist simply as an app, or web page, driven by what the technology can do, rather than by what the need is.
- Lessons from global case studies describe how digital tools are being used to engage communities in more meaningful political participation, and how they are improving the quality and legitimacy of decision-making.
- Digital democracy is still young. Projects must embed better methods for evaluation of their goals if the field is to grow.
Thanks to digital technologies, today we can bank, read the news, study for a degree, and chat with friends across the world – all without leaving the comfort of our homes. But one area that seems to have remained impervious to these benefits is our model of democratic governance, which has remained largely unchanged since it was invented in the 20th century.
New experiments are showing how digital technologies can play a critical role in engaging new groups of people, empowering citizens and forging a new relationship between cities and local residents, and parliamentarians and citizens.
At the parliamentary level, including in Brazil and France, experiments with new tools are enabling citizens to contribute to draft legislation. Political parties such as Podemos in Spain and the Icelandic Pirate Party are using tools such as Loomio, Reddit and Discourse to enable party members and the general public to deliberate and feed into policy proposals. Local governments have set up platforms to enable citizens to submit ideas and information, rank priorities and allocate public resources…..
Lessons from the innovators
- Develop a clear plan and process: Pioneers in the field engage people meaningfully by giving them a clear stake; they conduct stakeholder analysis; operate with full transparency; and access harder-to-reach groups with offline methods.
- Get the necessary support in place: The most successful initiatives have clear-backing from lawmakers; they also secure the necessary resources to promote to the process properly (PR and advertising), as well as the internal systems to manage and evaluate large numbers of ideas.
- Choose the right tools: The right digital tools help to improve the user-experience and understanding of the issue, and can help remove some of the negative impacts of those who might try to damage or ‘game’ the process….(More)”