International Humanitarian and Development Aid and Big Data Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Andrej Zwitter: “Modern technology and innovations constantly transform the world. This also applies to humanitarian action and development aid, for example: humanitarian drones, crowd sourcing of information, or the utility of Big Data in crisis analytics and humanitarian intelligence. The acceleration of modernization in these adjacent fields can in part be attributed to new partnerships between aid agencies and new private stakeholders that increasingly become active, such as individual crisis mappers, mobile telecommunication companies, or technological SMEs.

These partnerships, however, must be described as simultaneously beneficial as well as problematic. Many private actors do not subscribe to the humanitarian principles (humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality), which govern UN and NGO operations, or are not even aware of them. Their interests are not solely humanitarian, but may include entrepreneurial agendas. The unregulated use of data in humanitarian intelligence has already caused negative consequences such as the exposure of sensitive data about aid agencies and of victims of disasters.

This chapter investigates the emergent governance trends around data innovation in the humanitarian and development field. It takes a look at the ways in which the field tries to regulate itself and the utility of the humanitarian principles for Big Data analytics and data-driven innovation. It will argue that it is crucially necessary to formulate principles for data governance in the humanitarian context in order to ensure the safeguarding of beneficiaries that are particularly vulnerable. In order to do that, the chapter proposes to reinterpret the humanitarian principles to accommodate the new reality of datafication of different aspects of society…(More)”.

Escaping Paternalism: Rationality, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Mario J. Rizzo and Glen Whitman: “The burgeoning field of behavioral economics has produced a new set of justifications for paternalism. This book challenges behavioral paternalism on multiple levels, from the abstract and conceptual to the pragmatic and applied. Behavioral paternalism relies on a needlessly restrictive definition of rational behavior. It neglects nonstandard preferences, experimentation, and self-discovery. It relies on behavioral research that is often incomplete and unreliable. It demands a level of knowledge from policymakers that they cannot reasonably obtain. It assumes a political process largely immune to the effects of ignorance, irrationality, and the influence of special interests and moralists. Overall, behavioral paternalism underestimates the capacity of people to solve their own problems, while overestimating the ability of experts and policymakers to design beneficial interventions. The authors argue instead for a more inclusive theory of rationality in economic policymaking….(More)”.

What if you ask and they say yes? Consumers' willingness to disclose personal data is stronger than you think

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Grzegorz Mazurek and Karolina Małagocka at Business Horizons: “Technological progress—including the development of online channels and universal access to the internet via mobile devices—has advanced both the quantity and the quality of data that companies can acquire. Private information such as this may be considered a type of fuel to be processed through the use of technologies, and represents a competitive market advantage.

This article describes situations in which consumers tend to disclose personal information to companies and explores factors that encourage them to do so. The empirical studies and examples of market activities described herein illustrate to managers just how rewards work and how important contextual integrity is to customer digital privacy expectations. Companies’ success in obtaining client data depends largely on three Ts: transparency, type of data, and trust. These three Ts—which, combined, constitute a main T (i.e., the transfer of personal data)—deserve attention when seeking customer information that can be converted to competitive advantage and market success….(More)”.

The Information Trade: How Big Tech Conquers Countries, Challenges Our Rights, and Transforms Our World

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Alexis Wichowski: “… considers the unchecked rise of tech giants like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Tesla—what she calls “net states”— and their unavoidable influence in our lives. Rivaling nation states in power and capital, today’s net states are reaching into our physical world, inserting digital services into our lived environments in ways both unseen and, at times, unknown to us. They are transforming the way the world works, putting our rights up for grabs, from personal privacy to national security.  

Combining original reporting and insights drawn from more than 100 interviews with technology and government insiders, including Microsoft president Brad Smith, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the former Federal Trade Commission chair under President Obama, and the managing director of Jigsaw—Google’s Department of Counter-terrorism against extremism and cyber-attacks—The Information Trade explores what happens we give up our personal freedom and individual autonomy in exchange for an easy, plugged-in existence, and shows what we can do to control our relationship with net states before they irreversibly change our future….(More)“

Are these the 20 top multi-stakeholder processes in 2020 to advance a digital ecosystem for the planet?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by David Jensen, Karen Bakker and Christopher Reimer: “As outlined in our recent article, The promise and peril of a digital ecosystem for the planet, we propose that the ongoing digital revolution needs to be harnessed to drive a transformation towards global sustainability, environmental stewardship, and human well-being. Public, private and civil society actors must take deliberate action and collaborate to build a global digital ecosystem for the planet. A digital ecosystem that mobilizes hardware, software and digital infrastructures together with data analytics to generate dynamic, real-time insights that can power various structural transformations are needed to achieve collective sustainability.

The digital revolution must also be used to abolish extreme poverty and reduce inequalities that jeopardize social cohesion and stability. Often, these social inequalities are tied to and overlap with ecological challenges. Ultimately, then, we must do nothing less than direct the digital revolution for planet, people, prosperity and peace.

To achieve this goal, we must embed the vision of a fair digital ecosystem for the planet into all of the key multi-stakeholder processes that are currently unfolding. We aim to do this through two new articles on Medium: a companion article on Building a digital ecosystem for the planet: 20 substantive priorities for 2020, and this one. In the companion article, we identify three primary engagement tracks: system architecture, applications, and governance. Within these three tracks, we outline 20 priorities for the new decade. Building from these priorities, our focus for this article is to identify a preliminary list of the top 20 most important multi-stakeholder processes that we must engage and influence in 2020….(More).

Rheomesa. A New Global System for Catastrophe Prevention, Response & Recovery

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Andrew Doss, Jonas Bedford-Strohm and Leanne Erdberg Steadman: “This paper identifies three structural vacuums in catastrophe governance today that allow for the greatest risks humanity faces to be externalized from decision-making. To mitigate the impact of these risks, The Rheomesa (“fluid table”) provides (1) a deliberative decision-making process between currently siloed entities in various sectors managing the outcome of catastrophes, including government, the private sector, NGOs, IGOs, and hybrid entities, with (2) a prospective, long-term accountability and incentive mechanism that (3) comprehensively addresses the three interdependent tasks societies face surrounding catastrophes – prevention, response, and recovery….(More)”.

Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice.

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Todd Davis and Seeta Pena Gangadharan: “Can new technology enhance local, national, and global democracy? Online Deliberation is the first book that attempts to sample the full range of work on online deliberation, forging new connections between academic research, web designers, and practitioners.
Since the most exciting innovations in deliberation have occurred outside of traditional institutions, and those involved have often worked in relative isolation from each other, research conducted on this growing field has to this point neglected the full perspective of online participation. This volume, an essential read for those working at the crossroads of computer and social science, illuminates the collaborative world of deliberation by examining diverse clusters of Internet communities….(More)”.

The State of Open Humanitarian Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Centre for Humanitarian Data: “The goal of this report is to increase awareness of the data available for humanitarian response activities and to highlight what is missing, as measured through OCHA’s Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) platform. We want to recognize the valuable and long-standing contributions of data-sharing organizations. We also want to be more targeted in our outreach on what data is required to understand crises so that new actors might be compelled to join the platform. Data is not an end in itself but a critical ingredient to the analysis that informs decision making. With nearly 168 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in 2020 — the highest figure in decades — there is no time, or data, to lose…(More)”.

Data-driven elections

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction to Special Issue of Internet Policy Review by Colin J. Bennett and David Lyon: “There is a pervasive assumption that elections can be won and lost on the basis of which candidate or party has the better data on the preferences and behaviour of the electorate. But there are myths and realities about data-driven elections. I

t is time to assess the actual implications of data-driven elections in the light of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, and to reconsider the broader terms of the international debate. Political micro-targeting, and the voter analytics upon which it is based, are essentially forms of surveillance. We know a lot about how surveillance harms democratic values. We know a lot less, however, about how surveillance spreads as a result of democratic practices – by the agents and organisations that encourage us to vote (or not vote).

The articles in this collection, developed out of a workshop hosted by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia in April 2019, address the most central issues about data-driven elections, and particularly the impact of US social media platforms on local political institutions and cultures. The balance between rights to privacy, and the rights of political actors to communicate with the electorate, is struck in different ways in different jurisdictions depending on a complex interplay of various legal, political, and cultural factors. Collectively, the articles in this collection signal the necessary questions for academics and regulators in the years ahead….(More)”.

Making Public Transit Fairer to Women Demands Way More Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Flavie Halais at Wired: “Public transportation is sexist. This may be unintentional or implicit, but it’s also easy to see. Women around the world do more care and domestic work than men, and their resulting mobility habits are hobbled by most transport systems. The demands of running errands and caring for children and other family members mean repeatedly getting on and off the bus, meaning paying more fares. Strollers and shopping bags make travel cumbersome. A 2018 study of New Yorkers found women were harassed on the subway far more frequently than men were, and as a result paid more money to avoid transit in favor of taxis and ride-hail….

What is not measured is not known, and the world of transit data is still largely blind to women and other vulnerable populations. Getting that data, though, isn’t easy. Traditional sources like national censuses and user surveys provide reliable information that serve as the basis for policies and decisionmaking. But surveys are costly to run, and it can take years for a government to go through the process of adding a question to its national census.

Before pouring resources into costly data collection to find answers about women’s transport needs, cities could first turn to the trove of unconventional gender-disaggregated data that’s already produced. They include data exhaust, or the trail of data we leave behind as a result of our interactions with digital products and services like mobile phones, credit cards, and social media. Last year, researchers in Santiago, Chile, released a report based on their parsing of anonymized call detail records of female mobile phone users, to extract location information and analyze their mobility patterns. They found that women tended to travel to fewer locations than men, and within smaller geographical areas. When researchers cross-referenced location information with census data, they found a higher gender gap among lower-income residents, as poorer women made even shorter trips. And when using data from the local transit agency, they saw that living close to a public transit stop increased mobility for both men and women, but didn’t close the gender gap for poorer residents.

To encourage private companies to share such info, Stefaan Verhulst advocates for data collaboratives, flexible partnerships between data providers and researchers. Verhulst is the head of research and development at GovLab, a research center at New York University that contributed to the research in Santiago. And that’s how GovLab and its local research partner, Universidad del Desarollo, got access to the phone records owned by the Chilean phone company, Telefónica. Data collaboratives can enhance access to private data without exposing companies to competition or privacy concerns. “We need to find ways to access data according to different shades of openness,” Verhulst says….(More)”.