Decisions, Decisions, Decisions.

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

BSR Report on “Responsible Business Decision-Making Before, During, and After Public Health Emergencies: A Rights-Based Approach to Technology and Data Use…The COVID-19 public health emergency has surfaced important questions about the relationship between the right to privacy and other rights, such as the right to health, work, movement, expression, and assembly. Data and digital infrastructures can be used for many positive outcomes, such as facilitating “back to work” efforts, enhancing research into COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, and allowing the resumption of economic activity while also protecting public health.

However, these uses may also result in the infringement of privacy rights, new forms of discrimination, and harm to vulnerable groups. Some governments are using the emergency as an excuse to expand their power, leading to concerns that initiatives launched to address COVID-19 could become permanent forms of state surveillance.

As the providers of data, systems, and software, technology companies are often central in these public health emergency response efforts. For this reason, companies need to address the human rights risks associated with their involvement in disease response to avoid being connected to human rights violations.

This paper sets out the key elements of a human rights-based approach to the use of data and technology solutions during public health emergencies in today and tomorrow’s digital era, with a focus on the role of business and impacts to privacy.

These elements are primarily captured in a human rights-based decision-making framework for companies that can guide them through future public health emergencies. This framework can be found on page 5 of the report or can be downloaded separately.

COVID-19 is the first truly global pandemic of the modern age, but it won’t be the last. We hope this paper highlights lessons learned from COVID-19 that can be applied during the public health emergencies of the future….(More)”.

Between surveillance and recognition: Rethinking digital identity in aid

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Keren Weitzberg et al: “Identification technologies like biometrics have long been associated with securitisation, coercion and surveillance but have also, in recent years, become constitutive of a politics of empowerment, particularly in contexts of international aid. Aid organisations tend to see digital identification technologies as tools of recognition and inclusion rather than oppressive forms of monitoring, tracking and top-down control. In addition, practices that many critical scholars describe as aiding surveillance are often experienced differently by humanitarian subjects. This commentary examines the fraught questions this raises for scholars of international aid, surveillance studies and critical data studies. We put forward a research agenda that tackles head-on how critical theories of data and society can better account for the ambivalent dynamics of ‘power over’ and ‘power to’ that digital aid interventions instantiate….(More)”.

The fight against fake-paper factories that churn out sham science

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Holly Else & Richard Van Noorden at Nature: “When Laura Fisher noticed striking similarities between research papers submitted to RSC Advances, she grew suspicious. None of the papers had authors or institutions in common, but their charts and titles looked alarmingly similar, says Fisher, the executive editor at the journal. “I was determined to try to get to the bottom of what was going on.”

A year later, in January 2021, Fisher retracted 68 papers from the journal, and editors at two other Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) titles retracted one each over similar suspicions; 15 are still under investigation. Fisher had found what seemed to be the products of paper mills: companies that churn out fake scientific manuscripts to order. All the papers came from authors at Chinese hospitals. The journals’ publisher, the RSC in London, announced in a statement that it had been the victim of what it believed to be “the systemic production of falsified research”.

What was surprising about this was not the paper-mill activity itself: research-integrity sleuths have repeatedly warned that some scientists buy papers from third-party firms to help their careers. Rather, it was extraordinary that a publisher had publicly announced something that journals generally keep quiet about. “We believe that it is a paper mill, so we want to be open and transparent,” Fisher says.

The RSC wasn’t alone, its statement added: “We are one of a number of publishers to have been affected by such activity.” Since last January, journals have retracted at least 370 papers that have been publicly linked to paper mills, an analysis by Nature has found, and many more retractions are expected to follow.

Much of this literature cleaning has come about because, last year, outside sleuths publicly flagged papers that they think came from paper mills owing to their suspiciously similar features. Collectively, the lists of flagged papers total more than 1,000 studies, the analysis shows. Editors are so concerned by the issue that last September, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), a publisher-advisory body in London, held a forum dedicated to discussing “systematic manipulation of the publishing process via paper mills”. Their guest speaker was Elisabeth Bik, a research-integrity analyst in California known for her skill in spotting duplicated images in papers, and one of the sleuths who posts their concerns about paper mills online….(More)”.

Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Michael Heller and James Salzman: “A hidden set of rules governs who owns what–explaining everything from whether you can recline your airplane seat to why HBO lets you borrow a password illegally–and in this lively and entertaining guide, two acclaimed law professors reveal how things become “mine.”

“Mine” is one of the first words babies learn. By the time we grow up, the idea of ownership seems natural, whether buying a cup of coffee or a house. But who controls the space behind your airplane seat: you reclining or the squished laptop user behind? Why is plagiarism wrong, but it’s okay to knock-off a recipe or a dress design? And after a snowstorm, why does a chair in the street hold your parking space in Chicago, but in New York you lose the space and the chair?

Mine! explains these puzzles and many more. Surprisingly, there are just six simple stories that everyone uses to claim everything. Owners choose the story that steers us to do what they want. But we can always pick a different story. This is true not just for airplane seats, but also for battles over digital privacy, climate change, and wealth inequality. As Michael Heller and James Salzman show–in the spirited style of Freakonomics, Nudge, and Predictably Irrational–ownership is always up for grabs.

With stories that are eye-opening, mind-bending, and sometimes infuriating, Mine! reveals the rules of ownership that secretly control our lives….(More)”.

Reimagining the Role of Cities & City Diplomacy in the Multilateral Order

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by The Berggruen Institute: “The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the foreground the important role of cities in responding to global challenges. Through informal and established international networks, city leaders are connecting across borders and shaping the global pandemic response. City and municipal governments were some of the earliest to turn toward their peers to share information, collaborate, and identify solutions, even as national-level cooperation was often delayed or challenged. 

While the pandemic has revealed the necessity of international cooperation, it has also shown the limits of current systems, especially in how multilateral institutions learn from and meaningfully include city leadership. City and municipal governments occupy an increasingly visible and important position in international affairs, are already working together through city-to-city networks on many issues, and engage in international activities often described as “city diplomacy.” Looking forward, rapid population growth in urban areas means many global challenges and the responses to them will be concentrated in cities. Cities will be at the center of the global response to climate change, migration, violence and injustice, health security, economic inequality, and security. Yet the current international system was designed by countries for countries; it is not structured to channel city voices and lacks pathways for cities to influence global governance.

The Berggruen Institute, the Brookings Institution, the City of Los Angeles, and the United Nations Foundation co-organized a virtual workshop in July 2020 titled “The Rise of Urbanization and the Role of City Diplomacy in the Multilateral System” to explore these dynamics further. By bringing together current and former national diplomats, representatives of and diplomats in multilateral organizations, city directors of international affairs, and specialists in international relations under the Chatham House rule, the workshop aimed to reimagine how different levels of government can work together more effectively on issues of global governance. Together, these actors form a novel group to grapple with the issue of city voice in multilateralism. In particular, the group explored opportunities and challenges to building cooperation between cities and the current multilateral system and considered practical, researchable ideas for how the multilateral system might adapt to engage subnational actors to address global challenges….(More)”.

The Use of Mobility Data for Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New Report, Repository and set of Case Studies commissioned by the Open Data Institute: “…The GovLab and Cuebiq firstly assembled a repository of mobility data collaboratives related to Covid-19. They then selected five of these to analyse further, and produced case studies on each of the collaboratives (which you can find below in the ‘Key outputs’ section).

After analysing these initiatives, Cuebiq and The GovLab then developed a synthesis report, which contains sections focused on:

  • Mobility data – what it is and how it can be used
  • Current practice – insights from five case studies
  • Prescriptive analysis – recommendations for the future

Findings and recommendations

Based on this analysis, the authors of the report recommend nine actions which have the potential to enable more effective, sustainable and responsible re-use of mobility data through data collaboration to support decision making regarding pandemic prevention, monitoring, and response:

  1. Developing and clarifying governance framework to enable the trusted, transparent, and accountable reuse of privately held data in the public interest under a clear regulatory framework
  2. Building capacity of organisations in the public and private sector to reuse and act on data through investments in training, education, and reskilling of relevant authorities; especially driving support for institutions in the Global South
  3. Establishing data stewards in organisations who can coordinate and collaborate with counterparts on using data in the public’s interest and acting on it.
  4. Establishing dedicated and sustainable CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) programs on data in organisations to coordinate and collaborate with counterparts on using and acting upon data in the public’s interest.
  5. Building a network of data stewards to coordinate and streamline efforts while promoting greater transparency; as well as exchange best practices and lessons learned.
  6. Engaging citizens about how their data is being used so clearly articulate how they want their data to be responsibly used, shared, and protected.
  7. Promoting technological innovation through collaboration between funders (eg governments and foundations) and researchers (eg data scientists) to develop and deploy useful, privacy-preserving technologies.
  8. Unlocking funds from a variety of sources to ensure projects are sustainable and can operate long term.
  9. Increase research and spur evidence gathering by publishing easily accessible research and creating dedicated centres to develop best practices.

This research begins to demonstrate the value that a handful of new data-sharing initiatives have had in the ongoing response to Covid-19. The pandemic isn’t yet over, and we will need to continue to assess and evaluate how data has been shared – both successfully and unsuccessfully – and who has benefited or been harmed in the process. More research is needed to highlight the lessons from this emergency that can be applied to future crises….(More)”.

Financing the Digital Public Goods Ecosystem

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA): “… we believe that digital public goods (DPGs) are essential to unlocking the full potential of digital technologies to enhance human welfare at scale. Their relevance to one or multiple sustainable development goals (SDGs), combined with their adoptability and adaptability, allows DPGs to strengthen international digital cooperation. Stakeholders can join forces to support solutions that address many of today’s greatest global challenges in critical areas such as health, education and climate change. DPGs are of particular importance for resource constrained countries looking to accelerate development through improving access to digital services.

Still, precisely due to their nature as “public goods” – which ensures that no one can prevent others from benefiting from them – DPGs can be difficult to fund through market mechanisms, and some of them should not have to prioritise generating profit….

Sustainably funded infrastructural DPGs can become a reliable core for broader ecosystems through community building:

  • For the Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP) core code management and evolution is fully funded by grants from a group of philanthropic and bilateral donors.** This enables the team responsible for managing and evolving the generic platform to focus exclusively on maximising utility for those the platform is designed to serve – in this case, countries in need of foundational digital identity systems.
  • Similarly backed by grant funding for core code development and maintenance, the team behind District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2) has prioritised community building within and between the 70+ countries that have adopted the software, enabling countries to share improvements and related innovations. This is best exemplified by Sri Lanka, the first country in the world to use DHIS2 for COVID-19 surveillance, who shared this groundbreaking innovation with the global DHIS2 community. Today, this system is operational in 38 countries and is under development in fourteen more.
  • The data exchange layer X-Road, which is publicly funded by NIIS members (currently Estonia and Finland), demonstrates how infrastructural DPGs can use community building to advance both the core technology and the  quality of downstream deployments. The X-Road Community connects a diverse group of individuals and allows anyone to contribute to the open-source technology. This community-based support and knowledge-sharing helps local vendors around the world build the expertise needed to provide quality services to stakeholders adopting the technology….(More)”.

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein: “Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients—or that two judges in the same courthouse give markedly different sentences to people who have committed the same crime. Suppose that different interviewers at the same firm make different decisions about indistinguishable job applicants—or that when a company is handling customer complaints, the resolution depends on who happens to answer the phone. Now imagine that the same doctor, the same judge, the same interviewer, or the same customer service agent makes different decisions depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. These are examples of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical.
 
In Noise, Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein show the detrimental effects of noise in many fields, including medicine, law, economic forecasting, forensic science, bail, child protection, strategy, performance reviews, and personnel selection. Wherever there is judgment, there is noise. Yet, most of the time, individuals and organizations alike are unaware of it. They neglect noise. With a few simple remedies, people can reduce both noise and bias, and so make far better decisions….(More)”.

Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and, Francis de Véricourt: “The essential tool that will enable humanity to find the best way through a forest of looming problems is defined in Framers by internationally renowned authors Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Francis de Véricourt. From pandemics to populism, AI to ISIS, wealth inequity to climate change, humanity faces unprecedented challenges that threaten our very existence.
 
To frame is to make a mental model that enables us to see patterns, predict how things will unfold, and make sense of new situations. Frames guide the decisions we make and the results we attain. People have long focused on traits like memory and reasoning leaving framing all but ignored. But with computers becoming better at some of those cognitive tasks, framing stands out as a critical function—and only humans can do it. This book is the first guide to mastering this innate human ability.
 
Illustrating their case with compelling examples and the latest research, authors Cukier, Mayer-Schönberger and de Véricourt examine:
 
·       Why advice to “think outside the box” is useless.
·       How Spotify beat Apple by reframing music as an experience.
·       What the historic 1976 Israeli commando raid on Entebbe that rescued over 100 hostages can tell us about how to frame.
·       How the #MeToo twitter hashtag reframed the perception of sexual assault.
·       The disaster of framing Covid-19 as equivalent to seasonal flu, and how framing it akin to SARS delivered New Zealand from the pandemic.
 
Framers shows how framing is not just a way to improve how we make decisions in the era of algorithms—but why it will be a matter of survival for humanity in a time of societal upheaval and machine prosperity….(More)”.

The mysterious user editing a global open-source map in China’s favor

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Vittoria Elliott and Nilesh Christopher Late last year, Nick Doiron spotted an article in The New York Times, detailing how China had built a village along the contested border with neighboring Bhutan. Doiron is a mapping aficionado and longtime contributor to OpenStreetMap (OSM), an open-source mapping platform that relies on an army of unpaid volunteers, just as Wikipedia does. Governments, universities, humanitarian groups, and companies like Amazon, Grab, Baidu, and Facebook all use data from OSM, making it an important tool that underpins ride-hailing apps and other technologies used by millions of people.

After reading the article, Doiron went to add new details about the Chinese village to OSM, which he expected would be missing. But when he zoomed in on the area, he made a peculiar discovery: Someone else had already documented the settlement before it was reported in the Times, and they had included granular details that Doiron couldn’t find anywhere else.

“They mapped the outlines of the buildings,” Doiron said, labeling one as a kindergarten, one as a police station, and another as a radio station. Even if the mysterious person had bought a satellite image from a private company, “I don’t know how they could have had that specific kind of information,” Doiron said.

That wasn’t the only thing that struck Doiron as strange. The user had also made the changes under the name NM$L, Chinese slang for the insult “Your mom is dead,” and linked to a Chinese rap music label that shares the same name. An accompanying bio hinted at their motives: “Safeguarding national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity is the common obligation of all Chinese people, including compatriots in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan,” it read.

“Most people on OpenStreetMap don’t even have anything in their profile,” said Doiron. “It’s not like a social media site.”

As he looked deeper, Doiron discovered that NM$L had made several other edits, many of them along China’s border and in contested territories. The account had added changes to the Spratly Islands, an archipelago that an international tribunal ruled in 2016 was not part of China’s possible territorial claims, though it has continued to develop in the area. The account also drew along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that separates Indian and Chinese territory in the disputed Himalayan border region, which the two countries fought a war over in 1962.

What, Doiron wondered, is going on here? 

Anyone can contribute to OSM, which makes the site democratic and open, but also leaves it vulnerable to the politics and perspectives of its individual contributors. This wasn’t the first time Doiron had heard of a user making edits in a certain country’s favor. “I know there are pro-India accounts that have added things like military checkpoints from the India perspective,” he said….(More)”.