Berlin Declaration on Digital Society and Value-based Digital Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

European Commission: “…The Declaration follows up on the success of the Tallinn Declaration on eGovernment, which endorsed the key principles for digital public services put forward in the eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020. The Berlin Declaration takes the user-centricity principles formulated in the Tallinn Declaration a step further by strengthening the pioneering role of public administrations in driving a value-based digital transformation of our European societies.

The Declaration acknowledges the public sector as an essential element for the European Single Market and a driving force for new and innovative technological solutions for public services and societal challenges. It emphasises that public authorities at all levels must lead by example to strengthen the tenets of the European Union.

To do so it sets out seven key principles with related policy action lines and national and EU level:

  1. Validity and respect of fundamental rights and democratic values in the digital sphere;
  2. Social participation and digital inclusion to shape the digital world;
  3. Empowerment and digital literacy, allowing all citizens to participate in the digital sphere;
  4. Trust and security in digital government interactions, allowing everyone to navigate the digital world safely, authenticate and be digitally recognised within the EU conveniently;
  5. Digital sovereignty and interoperability, as a key in ensuring the ability of citizens and public administrations to make decisions and act self-determined in the digital world;
  6. Human-centred systems and innovative technologies in the public sector, strengthening its pioneering role in the research on secure and trustworthy technology design;
  7. A resilient and sustainable digital society, preserving our natural foundations of life in line with the Green Deal and using digital technologies to enhance the sustainability of our health systems….(More)”.

Why Predictive Algorithms are So Risky for Public Sector Bodies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Madeleine Waller and Paul Waller: “This paper collates multidisciplinary perspectives on the use of predictive analytics in government services. It moves away from the hyped narratives of “AI” or “digital”, and the broad usage of the notion of “ethics”, to focus on highlighting the possible risks of the use of prediction algorithms in public administration. Guidelines for AI use in public bodies are currently available, however there is little evidence these are being followed or that they are being written into new mandatory regulations. The use of algorithms is not just an issue of whether they are fair and safe to use, but whether they abide with the law and whether they actually work.

Particularly in public services, there are many things to consider before implementing predictive analytics algorithms, as flawed use in this context can lead to harmful consequences for citizens, individually and collectively, and public sector workers. All stages of the implementation process of algorithms are discussed, from the specification of the problem and model design through to the context of their use and the outcomes.

Evidence is drawn from case studies of use in child welfare services, the US Justice System and UK public examination grading in 2020. The paper argues that the risks and drawbacks of such technological approaches need to be more comprehensively understood, and testing done in the operational setting, before implementing them. The paper concludes that while algorithms may be useful in some contexts and help to solve problems, it seems those relating to predicting real life have a long way to go to being safe and trusted for use. As “ethics” are located in time, place and social norms, the authors suggest that in the context of public administration, laws on human rights, statutory administrative functions, and data protection — all within the principles of the rule of law — provide the basis for appraising the use of algorithms, with maladministration being the primary concern rather than a breach of “ethics”….(More)”

Data Readiness: Lessons from an Emergency

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The DELVE Initiative:  “Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic has required rapid decision-making in changing circumstances. Those decisions and their effects on the health and wealth of the nation can be better informed with data. Today, technologies that can acquire data are pervasive. Data is continually produced by devices like mobile phones, payment points and road traffic sensors. This creates opportunities for nowcasting of important metrics such as GDP, population movements and disease prevalence, which can be used to design policy interventions that are targeted to the needs of specific sectors or localities. The data collected as a by-product of daily activities is different to epidemiological or other population research data that might be used to drive the decisions of state. These new forms of data are happenstance, in that they are not originally collected with a particular research or policy question in mind but are created through the normal course of events in our digital lives, and our interactions with digital systems and services.

This happenstance data pertains to individual citizens and their daily activities. To be useful it needs to be anonymized, aggregated and statistically calibrated to provide meaningful metrics for robust decision making while managing concerns about individual privacy or business value. This process necessitates particular technical and domain expertise that is often found in academia, but it must be conducted in partnership with the industries, and public sector organisations, that collect or generate the data and government authorities that take action based on those insights. Such collaborations require governance mechanisms that can respond rapidly to emerging areas of need, a common language between partners about how data is used and how it is being protected, and careful stewardship to ensure appropriate balancing of data subjects’ rights and the benefit of using this data. This is the landscape of data readiness; the availability and quality of the UK nation’s data dictates our ability to respond in an agile manner to evolving events….(More)”.

Impact through Engagement: Co-production of administrative data research

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Elizabeth Nelson and Frances Burns: “The Administrative Data Research Centre Northern Ireland (ADRC NI) is a research partnership between Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University to facilitate access to linked administrative data for research purposes for public benefit and for evidence-based policy development. This requires a social licence extended by publics which is maintained by a robust approach to engagement and involvement.

Public engagement is central to the ADRC NI’s approach to research. Research impact is pursued and secured through robust engagement and co-production of research with publics and key stakeholders. This is done by focusing on data subjects (the cohort of people whose lives make up the datasets, placing value on experts by experience outside of academic knowledge, and working with public(s) as key data advocates, through project steering committees and targeted events with stakeholders. The work is led by a dedicated Public Engagement, Communications and Impact Manager.

While there are strengths and weaknesses to the ADRC NI approach, examples of successful partnerships and clear pathways to impact demonstrate its utility and ability to amplify the positive impact of administrative data research. Working with publics as data use becomes more ubiquitous in a post-COVID-19 world will become more critical. ADRC NI’s model is a potential way forward….(More)”.

See also Special Issue on Public Involvement and Engagement by the International Journal of Population Data Science.

UK response to pandemic hampered by poor data practices

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report for the Royal Society: “The UK is well behind other countries in making use of data to have a real time understanding of the spread and economic impact of the pandemic according to Data Evaluation and Learning for Viral Epidemics (DELVE), a multi-disciplinary group convened by the Royal Society.

The report, Data Readiness: Lessons from an Emergency, highlights how data such as aggregated and anonymised mobility and payment transaction data, already gathered by companies, could be used to give a more accurate picture of the pandemic at national and local levels.  That could in turn lead to improvements in evaluation and better targeting of interventions.

Maximising the value of big data at a time of crisis requires careful cooperation across the private sector, that is already gathering these data, the public sector, which can provide a base for aggregating and overseeing the correct use of the data and researchers who have the skills to analyse it for the public good.  This work needs to be developed in accordance with data protection legislation and respect people’s concerns about data security and privacy.

The report calls on the Government to extend the powers of the Office for National Statistics to enable them to support trustworthy access to ‘happenstance’ data – data that are already gathered but not for a specific public health purpose – and for the Government to fund pathfinder projects that focus on specific policy questions such as how we nowcast economic metrics and how we better understand population movements.

Neil Lawrence, DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge, Senior AI Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute and an author of the report, said: “The UK has talked about making better use of data for the public good, but we have had statements of good intent, rather than action.  We need to plan better for national emergencies. We need to look at the National Risk Register through the lens of what data would help us to respond more effectively. We have to learn our lessons from experiences in this pandemic and be better prepared for future crises.  That means doing the work now to ensure that companies, the public sector and researchers have pathfinder projects up and running to share and analyse data and help the government to make better informed decisions.”  

During the pandemic, counts of the daily flow of people from one place to another between more than 3000 districts in Spain have been available at the click of a button, allowing policy makers to more effectively understand how the movement of people contributes to the spread of the virus. This was based on a collaboration between the country’s three main mobile phone operators.  In France, measuring the impact of the pandemic on consumer spending on a daily and weekly scale was possible as a result of coordinated cooperation between the country’s national interbank network. 

Professor Lawrence added: “Mobile phone companies might provide a huge amount of anonymised and aggregated data that would allow us a much greater understanding of how people move around, potentially spreading the virus as they go.  And there is a wealth of other data, such as from transport systems. The more we understand about this pandemic, the better we can tackle it. We should be able to work together, the private and the public sectors, to harness big data for massive positive social good and do that safely and responsibly.”…(More)”

Review into bias in algorithmic decision-making

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Report by the Center for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) (UK): “Unfair biases, whether conscious or unconscious, can be a problem in many decision-making processes. This review considers the impact that an increasing use of algorithmic tools is having on bias in decision-making, the steps that are required to manage risks, and the opportunities that better use of data offers to enhance fairness. We have focused on the use of
algorithms in significant decisions about individuals, looking across four sectors (recruitment, financial services, policing and local government), and making cross-cutting recommendations that aim to help build the right systems so that algorithms improve, rather than worsen, decision-making…(More)”.

The Politics of Social Media Manipulation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

(Open Access) Book edited by Richard Rogers and Sabine Niederer: “Disinformation and so-called fake news are contemporary phenomena with rich histories. Disinformation, or the willful introduction of false information for the purposes of causing harm, recalls infamous foreign interference operations in national media systems. Outcries over fake news, or dubious stories with the trappings of news, have coincided with the introduction of new media technologies that disrupt the publication, distribution and consumption of news — from the so-called rumour-mongering broadsheets centuries ago to the blogosphere recently. Designating a news organization as fake, or <i>der Lügenpresse</i>, has a darker history, associated with authoritarian regimes or populist bombast diminishing the reputation of ‘elite media’ and the value of inconvenient truths. In a series of empirical studies, using digital methods and data journalism, the authors inquire into the extent to which social media have enabled the penetration of foreign disinformation operations, the widespread publication and spread of dubious content as well as extreme commentators with considerable followings attacking mainstream media as fake….(More)”

The new SkillsMatch platform tackles skills assessment and matches your skills with training

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

European Commission: “The European labour market requires new skills to meet the demands of the Digital Age. EU citizens should have the right training, skills and support to empower them to find quality jobs and improve their living standards.

‘Soft skills’ such as confidence, teamwork, self-motivation, networking, presentation skills, are considered important for the employability and adaptability of Europe’s citizens. Soft skills are essential for how we work together and influence the decisions we take every day and can be more important than hard skills in today’s workplaces. The lack of soft skills is often only discovered once a person is already working on the job.

The state-of-the-art SkillsMatch platform helps users to match and adapt their soft skills assets to the demands of the labour market. The project is the first to offer a fully comprehensive platform with style guide cataloguing 36 different soft skills and matching them with occupations, as well as training opportunities, offering a large number of courses to improve soft skills depending on the chosen occupation.

The platform proposes courses, such as organisation and personal development, entrepreneurship, business communication and conflict resolution. There is a choice of courses in Spanish and English. Moreover, the platform will also provide recognition of the new learning and skills (open badges)…(More)”.

Commission proposes measures to boost data sharing and support European data spaces

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Press Release: “To better exploit the potential of ever-growing data in a trustworthy European framework, the Commission today proposes new rules on data governance. The Regulation will facilitate data sharing across the EU and between sectors to create wealth for society, increase control and trust of both citizens and companies regarding their data, and offer an alternative European model to data handling practice of major tech platforms.

The amount of data generated by public bodies, businesses and citizens is constantly growing. It is expected to multiply by five between 2018 and 2025. These new rules will allow this data to be harnessed and will pave the way for sectoral European data spaces to benefit society, citizens and companies. In the Commission’s data strategy of February this year, nine such data spaces have been proposed, ranging from industry to energy, and from health to the European Green Deal. They will, for example, contribute to the green transition by improving the management of energy consumption, make delivery of personalised medicine a reality, and facilitate access to public services.

The Regulation includes:

  • A number of measures to increase trust in data sharing, as the lack of trust is currently a major obstacle and results in high costs.
  • Create new EU rules on neutrality to allow novel data intermediaries to function as trustworthy organisers of data sharing.
  • Measures to facilitate the reuse of certain data held by the public sector. For example, the reuse of health data could advance research to find cures for rare or chronic diseases.
  • Means to give Europeans control on the use of the data they generate, by making it easier and safer for companies and individuals to voluntarily make their data available for the wider common good under clear conditions….(More)”.

Geospatial Data Market Study

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Study by Frontier Economics: “Frontier Economics was commissioned by the Geospatial Commission to carry out a detailed economic study of the size, features and characteristics of the UK geospatial data market. The Geospatial Commission was established within the Cabinet Office in 2018, as an independent, expert committee responsible for setting the UK’s Geospatial Strategy and coordinating public sector geospatial activity. The Geospatial Commission’s aim is to unlock the significant economic, social and environmental opportunities offered by location data. The UK’s Geospatial Strategy (2020) sets out how the UK can unlock the full power of location data and take advantage of the significant economic, social and environmental opportunities offered by location data….

Like many other forms of data, the value of geospatial data is not limited to the data creator or data user. Value from using geospatial data can be subdivided into several different categories, based on who the value accrues to:

Direct use value: where value accrues to users of geospatial data. This could include government using geospatial data to better manage public assets like roadways.

Indirect use value: where value is also derived by indirect beneficiaries who interact with direct users. This could include users of the public assets who benefit from better public service provision.

Spillover use value: value that accrues to others who are not a direct data user or indirect beneficiary. This could, for example, include lower levels of emissions due to improvement management of the road network by government. The benefits of lower emissions are felt by all of society even those who do not use the road network.

As the value from geospatial data does not always accrue to the direct user of the data, there is a risk of underinvestment in geospatial technology and services. Our £6 billion estimate of turnover for a subset of geospatial firms in 2018 does not take account of these wider economic benefits that “spill over” across the UK economy, and generate additional value. As such, the value that geospatial data delivers is likely to be significantly higher than we have estimated and is therefore an area for potential future investment….(More)”.