If data is 21st century oil, could foundations be the right owners?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Felix Oldenburg at Alliance: “What are the best investments for a foundation? This important question is one many foundation professionals are revisiting in light of low interest rates, high market volatility, and fears of deep economic trouble ahead. While stories of success certainly exist and are worth learning from, even the notorious lack of data cannot obscure the inconvenient truth that the idea of traditional endowments is in trouble.

I would argue that in order to unleash the potential of foundations, we should turn the question around, perhaps back on its feet: For which assets are foundations the best owners?

In the still dawning digital age, one fascinating answer may stare you right in the face as you read this. How much is your personal data worth? Your social media information, search and purchase history, they are the source of much of the market value of the fastest growing sector of our time. A rough estimate of market valuation of the major social platforms divided by their active users arrives at more than $1,000 USD per user, not differentiating by location or other factors. This sum is more than the median per capita wealth in about half the world’s countries. And if the trend continues, this value may continue to grow – and with it the big question of how to put one of the most valuable resource of our time to use for the good of all.

Acting as guardians of digital commons, data-endowed foundations could negotiate conditions for the commercial use of its assets, and invest the income to create equal digital opportunities, power 21st century education, and fight climate change.

Foundation ownership in the data sector may sound like a wild idea at first. Yet foundations and their predecessors have played the role of purpose-driven owners of critical assets and infrastructures throughout history. Monasteries (called ‘Stifte’ in German, the root of the German word for foundations) have protected knowledge and education in libraries, and secured health care in hospitals. Trusts have created affordable much of the social housing in the exploding cities of the 19th century. The German Marshall Plan created an endowment for economic recovery that is still in existence today.

The proposition is simple: Independent ownership for the good of all, beyond the commercial or national interests of individual corporations of governments, in perpetuity. Acting as guardians of digital commons, data-endowed foundations could negotiate conditions for the commercial use of its assets, and invest the income to create equal digital opportunities, power 21st century education, and fight climate change. An ideal model of ownership would also include a form of governance exercised by the users themselves through digital participation and elections. A foundation really only relies on one thing, a stable frame of rights in its legal home country. This is far from a trivial condition, but again history shows how many foundations have survived depressions, wars, and revolutions….(More)”

UK passport photo checker shows bias against dark-skinned women

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Maryam Ahmed at BBC News: “Women with darker skin are more than twice as likely to be told their photos fail UK passport rules when they submit them online than lighter-skinned men, according to a BBC investigation.

One black student said she was wrongly told her mouth looked open each time she uploaded five different photos to the government website.

This shows how “systemic racism” can spread, Elaine Owusu said.

The Home Office said the tool helped users get their passports more quickly.

“The indicative check [helps] our customers to submit a photo that is right the first time,” said a spokeswoman.

“Over nine million people have used this service and our systems are improving.

“We will continue to develop and evaluate our systems with the objective of making applying for a passport as simple as possible for all.”

Skin colour

The passport application website uses an automated check to detect poor quality photos which do not meet Home Office rules. These include having a neutral expression, a closed mouth and looking straight at the camera.

BBC research found this check to be less accurate on darker-skinned people.

More than 1,000 photographs of politicians from across the world were fed into the online checker.

The results indicated:

  • Dark-skinned women are told their photos are poor quality 22% of the time, while the figure for light-skinned women is 14%
  • Dark-skinned men are told their photos are poor quality 15% of the time, while the figure for light-skinned men is 9%

Photos of women with the darkest skin were four times more likely to be graded poor quality, than women with the lightest skin….(More)”.

How Not to Kill People With Spreadsheets

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

David Gerard at Foreign Policy: “The U.K.’s response to COVID-19 is widely regarded as scattershot and haphazard. So how did they get here?

Excel is a top-of-the-line spreadsheet tool. A spreadsheet is good for quickly modeling a problem—but too often, organizations cut corners and press the cardboard-and-string mock-up into production, instead of building a robust and unique system based on the Excel proof of concept.

Excel is almost universally misused for complex data processing, as in this case—because it’s already present on your work computer and you don’t have to spend months procuring new software. So almost every business has at least one critical process that relies on a years-old spreadsheet set up by past staff members that nobody left at the company understands.

That’s how the U.K. went wrong. An automated process at Public Health England (PHE) transformed the incoming private laboratory test data (which was in text-based CSV files) into Excel-format files, to pass to the Serco Test and Trace teams’ dashboards.

Unfortunately, the process produced XLS files—an outdated Excel format that went extinct in 2003—which had a limit of 65,536 rows, rather than the around 1 million-row limit in the more recent XLSX format. With several lines of data per patient, this meant a sheet could only hold 1,400 cases. Further cases just fell off the end.

Technicians at PHE monitoring the dashboards noticed on Oct. 2 that not all data that had been sent in was making it out the other end. The data was corrected the next day, and PHE announced the issue the day after.

It’s not clear if the software at PHE was an Excel spreadsheet or an in-house program using the XLS format for data interchange—the latter would explain why PHE stated that replacing it might take months—but the XLS format would have been used on the assumption that Excel was universal.

And even then, a system based on Excel-format files would have been an improvement over earlier systems—the system for keeping a count of COVID-19 cases in the U.K. was, as of May, still based on data handwritten on cards….

The process that went wrong was a workaround for a contract issue: The government’s contract with Deloitte to run the testing explicitly stipulated that the company did not have to report “Pillar 2” (general public testing) positive cases to PHE at all.

Since a test-and-trace system is not possible without this data, PHE set up feeds for the data anyway, as CSV text files directly from the testing labs. The data was then put into this system—the single system that serves as the bridge between testing and tracing, for all of England. PHE had to put in place technological duct tape to make a system of life-or-death importance work at all….

The Brookings Institution report Doomed: Challenges and solutions to government IT projects lists factors to consider when outsourcing government information technology. The outsourcing of tracking and tracing is an example where the government has assumed all of the risk, and the contractor assumes all of the profit. PHE did one thing that you should never do: It outsourced a core function. Running a call center or the office canteen? You can outsource it. Tracing a pandemic? You must run it in-house.

If you need outside expertise for a core function, use contractors working within a department. Competing with the private sector on pay can be an issue, but a meaningful project can be a powerful incentive….(More)”.

Scotland’s future vision discussed today in first Citizens’ Assembly

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Richard Mason: “The group of 100 broadly representative Scots have been meeting throughout the year to discuss some of the country’s major constitutional issues.

Members have been asked to consider three questions, the first of which is: “What kind of country are we seeking to build?”

The assembly will meet online to develop the vision, having examined issues such as finances and taxation, and discussed how decisions are taken for and about Scotland. A report of the meeting will be published on October 9

The other two parts of the Assembly’s remit – how to best overcome the challenges the country faces, including Brexit, and how to empower people to make “informed choices” about Scotland’s future – will be addressed in a final report by the end of the year.

Assembly convener Kate Wimpress said: “The meeting this weekend will see a group of people from all walks of life across Scotland come together to agree a shared vision of our country’s future.

“The Citizens’ Assembly’s vision for Scotland will help give a roadmap for the country at an uncertain and difficult time.

“Our members have worked hard together across the months, and it’s exciting to witness their efforts now coming to fruition.”

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced the creation of the Citizens’ Assembly and outlined its remit, but she stressed it would be independent from Government following criticism it was set up to garner independence support.

Constitution Secretary Michael Russell said the Scottish Government is spending £1.37 million to fund six assembly meetings, which were held in person before moving online following the coronavirus lockdown….(More)”

Transparency and Secrecy in European Democracies: Contested Trade-offs

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Dorota Mokrosinska: This edited volume offers a critical discussion of the trade-offs between transparency and secrecy in the actual political practice of democratic states in Europe. As such, it answers to a growing need to systematically analyse the problem of secrecy in governance in this political and geographical context.

Focusing on topical cases and controversies in particular areas, the contributors reflect on the justification and limits of the use of secrecy in democratic governance, register the social, cultural, and historical factors that inform this process and explore the criteria used by European legislators and policy-makers, both at the national and supranational level, when balancing interests on the sides of transparency and secrecy, respectively.

This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of security studies, political science, European politics/studies, law, history, political philosophy, public administration, intelligence studies, media and communication studies, and information technology sciences….(More)”.

How to fix the GDPR’s frustration of global biomedical research

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jasper Bovenberg, David Peloquin, Barbara Bierer, Mark Barnes, and Bartha Maria Knoppers at Science: “Since the advent of the European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, the biomedical research community has struggled to share data with colleagues and consortia outside the EU, as the GDPR limits international transfers of personal data. A July 2020 ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) reinforced obstacles to sharing, and even data transfer to enable essential research into coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been restricted in a recent Guidance of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB). We acknowledge the valid concerns that gave rise to the GDPR, but we are concerned that the GDPR’s limitations on data transfers will hamper science globally in general and biomedical science in particular (see the text box) (1)—even though one stated objective of the GDPR is that processing of personal data should serve humankind, and even though the GDPR explicitly acknowledges that the right to the protection of personal data is not absolute and must be considered in relation to its function in society and be balanced against other fundamental rights. We examine whether there is room under the GDPR for EU biomedical researchers to share data from the EU with the rest of the world to facilitate biomedical research. We then propose solutions for consideration by either the EU legislature, the EU Commission, or the EDPB in its planned Guidance on the processing of health data for scientific research. Finally, we urge the EDPB to revisit its recent Guidance on COVID-19 research….(More)“.

Why we must break the constraints of the industrial model of government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Max Beverton Palmer at the New Statesman: “…In practice, governments must shift from delivering what they always have to ensuring people’s needs are met in the best possible way. This should open up delivery to partners from both the private and charity sectors, where they can provide a better service that delivers better value to citizens, and much greater engagement with the public.

To manage this shift, leaders will need to resolve three key trade-offs.

First, states must be able to give up control to encourage innovation while protecting quality and in-house capacity. They must create new frameworks to assess where to encourage more open policymaking and delivery and where to double down on the competencies and infrastructure only they can provide. Technology can help here, creating new levers to protect the public interest by governing services’ access to government platforms and datasets akin to app store guidelines.

Second, states must reorganise around scale economies underpinned by technology while moving delivery closer to people’s lives. They should provide the foundations that allow new services to operate, while letting go of controlling the last mile of service delivery. A better way forward is a more collaborative approach that encourages communities, charities and companies to design more tailored services on top of public-controlled infrastructure, enabling people to choose those which best meet their needs.

Third, governments must be able to better listen, engage with and adapt to peoples’ views without descending into mob-rule. A core part of product and service design both in business and in the public sector is iterating delivery according to user needs, but the feedback loops in policymaking are comparably non-existent. New tools can help leaders understand the plurality of public opinions and address the growing disconnect between public institutions and those they represent.

MaxGetting from the status quo to this more open model will be challenging. But action in four priority areas should provide a starting point: infrastructure, organisation, competition and engagement….(More)”

RESIST Counter Disinformation Toolkit

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

UK Government: “This toolkit will help support the dissemination of reliable, truthful information that underpins our democracy. RESIST stands for (Recognise disinformation, Early warning, Situational Insight, Impact analysis, Strategic communication, Track outcomes).

This toolkit will:

  • build your resilience to the threat of disinformation
  • give you guidance on how to identify a range of different types of disinformation consistently and effectively
  • help you prevent and tackle the spread of disinformation
  • enable you to develop a response when disinformation affects your organisation’s ability to do its job or represents a threat to the general public.

The toolkit promotes a consistent approach to the threat and provides 6 steps to follow.

RESIST Disinformation: a toolkit

The purpose of this toolkit is to help you prevent the spread of disinformation. It will enable you to develop a response when disinformation affects your organisation’s ability to do its job, the people who depend on your services, or represents a threat to the general public.

What is disinformation?

Disinformation is the deliberate creation and/or sharing of false information with the intention to deceive and mislead audiences. The inadvertent sharing of false information is referred to as misinformation.

Who is this toolkit for?

Government and public sector communications professionals, as well as policy officers, senior managers and special advisers….(More)”

Amsterdam and Helsinki launch algorithm registries to bring transparency to public deployments of AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Khari Johnson at Venture Beat: “Amsterdam and Helsinki today launched AI registries to detail how each city government uses algorithms to deliver services, some of the first major cities in the world to do so. An AI Register for each city was introduced in beta today as part of the Next Generation Internet Policy Summit, organized in part by the European Commission and the city of Amsterdam. The Amsterdam registry currently features a handful of algorithms, but it will be extended to include all algorithms following the collection of feedback at the virtual conference to lay out a European vision of the future of the internet, according to a city official.

Each algorithm cited in the registry lists datasets used to train a model, a description of how an algorithm is used, how humans utilize the prediction, and how algorithms were assessed for potential bias or risks. The registry also provides citizens a way to give feedback on algorithms their local government uses and the name, city department, and contact information for the person responsible for the responsible deployment of a particular algorithm. A complete algorithmic registry can empower citizens and give them a way to evaluate, examine, or question governments’ applications of AI.

In a previous development in the U.S., New York City created an automated decision systems task force in 2017 to document and assess city use of algorithms. At the time it was the first city in the U.S. to do so. However, following the release of a report last year, commissioners on the task force complained about a lack of transparency and inability to access information about algorithms used by city government agencies….

In a statement accompanying the announcement, Helsinki City Data project manager Pasi Rautio said the registry is also aimed at increasing public trust in the kinds of artificial intelligence “with the greatest possible openness.”…(More)”.

Automation in government: Harnessing technology to transform customer experience

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Matthias Daub, Tony D’Emidio, Zaana Howard, and Seckin Ungur at McKinsey: “Who knew that one could develop warm feelings for a German Federal Employment Agency chatbot? If you own a business and wish to apply for state funds to supplement your employees’ reduced salaries, then UDO will fill in the application form for you. “Let’s go!” the digital assistant declares, launching into a series of questions. The system displays reassuring expertise; the queries—about the size of your workforce, the extent of the reduction in working hours, and so on—are simple, clear, and sensitive to previous responses, and the interface offers soothing blue tones and rounded edges. UDO goes on to ask why the workers are on reduced hours: for economic reasons, such as the cancellation of a large order due to the coronavirus, or because of an unavoidable event, such as a measure to mitigate the spread of the pandemic? And by now, a powerful and comforting thought may well arise in the citizen’s mind: UDO really cares.

In this article, we argue that smart use of automation can enable governments to provide outstanding levels of customer experience, driven by innovations that are as sensitive to people as they are to technology. We begin by considering the challenges and rewards of enhancing customer experience for governments. Then we discuss the benefits to governments of using automation to improve customer experience. Finally, we turn from why to how, identifying three key practices common to successful automation initiatives in public services….(More)”.