Revisiting the governance of privacy: Contemporary policy instruments in global perspective

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Colin J. Bennett and Charles D. Raab at Regulation & Governance: “The repertoire of policy instruments within a particular policy sector varies by jurisdiction; some “tools of government” are associated with particular administrative and regulatory traditions and political cultures. It is less clear how the instruments associated with a particular policy sector may change over time, as economic, social, and technological conditions evolve.

In the early 2000s, we surveyed and analyzed the global repertoire of policy instruments deployed to protect personal data. In this article, we explore how those instruments have changed as a result of 15 years of social, economic and technological transformations, during which the issue has assumed a far higher global profile, as one of the central policy questions associated with modern networked communications.

We review the contemporary range of transnational, regulatory, self‐regulatory, and technical instruments according to the same framework, and conclude that the types of policy instrument have remained relatively stable, even though they are now deployed on a global scale.

While the labels remain the same, however, the conceptual foundations for their legitimation and justification are shifting as greater emphases on accountability, risk, ethics, and the social/political value of privacy have gained purchase. Our analysis demonstrates both continuity and change within the governance of privacy, and displays how we would have tackled the same research project today.

As a broader case study of regulation, it highlights the importance of going beyond technical and instrumental labels. Change or stability of policy instruments does not take place in isolation from the wider conceptualizations that shape their meaning, purpose, and effect…(More)”.

The Role of Urban Living Labs in Entrepreneurship, Energy, and Governance of Smart Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Ana Pego and Maria do Rosário Matos Bernardo in Handbook of Research on Entrepreneurship and Marketing for Global Reach in the Digital Economy: “Urban living labs (ULL) are a new concept which involves users in innovation and development and are regarded as a way of meeting the innovation challenges faced by information and communication technology (ICT) service providers.

The chapter focuses on the role of urban living labs in entrepreneurship, energy and governance of smart cities, where it is performed the relationship between innovations, governance, and renewable energy. The methodology proposed will focus on content analysis and on the exploration of some European examples of implemented ULL, namely Amsterdam, Helsinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen. The contributions of the present research should be the consolidation of knowledge about the impact of ULL on innovation and development of smart cities regarding the concepts of renewable energy, smart governance and entrepreneurship….(More)”

What Can Satellite Imagery Tell Us About Obesity in Cities?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Emily Matchar at Smithsonian: “About 40 percent of American adults are obese, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) over 30. But obesity is not evenly distributed around the country. Some cities and states have far more obese residents than others. Why? Genetics, stress, income levels and access to healthy foods are play a role. But increasingly researchers are looking at the built environment—our cities—to understand why people are fatter in some places than in others.

New research from the University of Washington attempts to take this approach one step further by using satellite data to examine cityscapes. By using the satellite images in conjunction with obesity data, they hope to uncover which urban features might influence a city’s obesity rate.

The researchers used a deep learning network to analyze about 150,000 high-resolution satellite image of four cities: Los Angeles, Memphis, San Antonio and Seattle. The cities were selected for being from states with both high obesity rates (Texas and Tennessee) and low obesity rates (California and Washington). The network extracted features of the built environment: crosswalks, parks, gyms, bus stops, fast food restaurants—anything that might be relevant to health.

“If there’s no sidewalk you’re less likely to go out walking,” says Elaine Nsoesie, a professor of global health at the University of Washington who led the research.

The team’s algorithm could then see what features were more or less common in areas with greater and lesser rates of obesity. Some findings were predictable: more parks, gyms and green spaces were correlated with lower obesity rates. Others were surprising: more pet stores equaled thinner residents (“a high density of pet stores could indicate high pet ownership, which could influence how often people go to parks and take walks around the neighborhood,” the team hypothesized).

A paper on the results was recently published in the journal JAMA Network Open….(More)”.

Emerging Labour Market Data Sources towards Digital Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET)

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Nikos Askitas, Rafik Mahjoubi, Pedro S. Martins, Koffi Zougbede for Paris21/OECD: “Experience from both technology and policy making shows that solutions for labour market improvements are simply choices of new, more tolerable problems. All data solutions supporting digital Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) will have to incorporate a roadmap of changes rather than an unrealistic super-solution. The ideal situation is a world in which labour market participants engage in intelligent strategic behavior in an informed, fair and sophisticated manner.

Labour market data captures transactions within labour market processes. In order to successfully capture such data, we need to understand the specifics of these market processes. Designing an ecosystem of labour market matching facilitators and rules of engagement for contributing to a lean and streamlined Logistics Management and Information System (LMIS) is the best way to create Big Data with context relevance. This is in contrast with pre-existing Big Data captured by global job boards or social media for which relevance is limited by the technology access gap and its variations across the developing world.

Network effects occur in technology and job facilitation, as seen in the developed world. Managing and instigating the right network effects might be crucial to avoid fragmented stagnation and inefficiency. This is key to avoid throwing money behind wrong choices that do not gain traction.

A mixed mode approach is possibly the ideal approach for developing countries. Mixing offline and online elements correctly will be crucial in bridging the technology access gap and reaping the benefits of digitisation at the same time.

Properly incentivising the various entities is critical for progression, and more specifically the private sector, which is significantly more agile and inventive, has “skin in the game” and a long-term commitment to the conditions in the field, has intimate knowledge of how to solve the the technology gap and brings a better understanding of the particular ambient context they are operating in. To summarise: Big Data starts small.

Managing expectations and creating incentives for the various stakeholders will be crucial in establishing digitally supported TVET. Developing the right business models will be crucial in the short term and beyond, and it will be the result of creating the right mix of technological and policy expertise with good knowledge of the situation on the ground….(More)”.

Multistakeholder Governance and Democracy: A Global Challenge

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Harris Gleckman: “Multistakeholder governance is proposed as the way forward in global governance. For some leaders in civil society and government who are frustrated with the lack of power of the UN system and multilateralism it is seen as an attractive alternative; others, particularly in the corporate world, see multistakeholder governance as offering a more direct hand and potentially a legitimate role in national and global governance.

This book examines how the development of multistakeholderism poses a challenge to multilateralism and democracy. Using a theoretical, historical perspective it describes how the debate on global governance evolved and what working principles of multilateralism are under threat. From a sociological perspective, the book identifies the organizational beliefs of multistakeholder groups and the likely change in the roles that leaders in government, civil society, and the private sector will face as they evolve into potential global governors. From a practical perspective, the book addresses the governance issues which organizations and individuals should assess before deciding to participate in or support a particular multistakeholder group.

Given the current emphasis on the participation of multiple actors in the Sustainable Development Goals, this book will have wide appeal across policy-making and professional sectors involved in negotiations and governance at all levels. It will also be essential reading for students studying applied governance….(More)”.

To turn the open data revolution from idea to reality, we need more evidence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Stefaan Verhulst at apolitical: “The idea that we are living in a data age — one characterised by unprecedented amounts of information with unprecedented potential — has  become mainstream. We regularly read “data is the new oil,” or “data is the most valuable commodity in the global economy.”

Doubtlessly, there is truth in these statements. But a major, often unacknowledged problem is how much data remains inaccessible, hidden in siloes and behind walls.

For close to a decade, the technology and public interest community has pushed the idea of open data. At its core, open data represents a new paradigm of information and information access.

Rooted in notions of an information commons — developed by scholars like Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom — and borrowing from the language of open source, open data begins from the premise that data collected from the public, often using public funds or publicly funded infrastructure, should also belong to the public — or at least, be made broadly accessible to those pursuing public-interest goals.

The open data movement has reached significant milestones in its short history. An ever-increasing number of governments across both developed and developing economies have released large datasets for the public’s benefit….

Similarly, a growing number of private companies have “Data Collaboratives” leveraging their data — with various degrees of limitations — to serve the public interest.

Despite such initiatives, many open data projects (and data collaboratives) remain fledgling. The field has trouble scaling projects beyond initial pilots. In addition, many potential stakeholders — private sector and government “owners” of data, as well as public beneficiaries — remain sceptical of open data’s value. Such limitations need to be overcome if open data and its benefits are to spread. We need hard evidence of its impact.

Ironically, the field is held back by an absence of good data on open data — that is, a lack of reliable empirical evidence that could guide new initiatives.

At the GovLab, a do-tank at New York University, we study the impact of open data. One of our overarching conclusions is that we need a far more solid evidence base to move open data from being a good idea to reality.

What do we know? Several initiatives undertaken at the GovLab offer insight. Our ODImpactwebsite now includes more than 35 detailed case studies of open government data projects. These examples provide powerful evidence not only that open data can work but also about howit works….

We have also launched an Open Data Periodic Table to better understand what conditions predispose an open data project toward success or failure. For example, having a clear problem definition, as well as the capacity and culture to carry out open data projects, are vital. Successful projects also build cross-sector partnerships around open data and its potential uses and establish practices to assess and mitigate risks, and have transparent and responsive governance structures….(More)”.

The rush for data risks growing the North-South divide

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Laura Mann and Gianluca Lazzolino at SciDevNet: “Across the world, tech firms and software developers are embedding digital platforms into humanitarian and commercial infrastructures. There’s Jembi and Hello Doctor for the healthcare sector, for example; SASSA and Tamween for social policy; and M-farm, i-Cow, Esoko among many others for agriculture.

While such systems proliferate, it is time we asked some tough questions about who is controlling this data, and for whose benefit. There is a danger that ‘platformisation’ widens the knowledge gap between firms and scientists in poorer countries and those in more advanced economies.

Digital platforms serve three purposes. They improve interactions between service providers and users; gather transactional data about those users; and nudge them towards behaviours, activities and products considered ‘virtuous’, profitable, or valued — often because they generate more data. This data  can be extremely valuable to policy-makers interested in developing interventions, to researchers exploring socio-economic trends and to businesses seeking new markets.

But the development and use of these platforms are not always benign.

Knowledge and power

Digital technologies are knowledge technologies because they record the personal information, assets, behaviour and networks of the people that use them.

Knowledge has a somewhat gentle image of a global good shared openly and evenly across the world. But in reality, it is competitive.
Simply put, knowledge shapes economic rivalry between rich and poor countries. It influences who has power over the rules of the economic game, and it does this in three key ways.

First, firms can use knowledge and technology to become more efficient and competitive in what they do. For example, a farmer can choose to buy technologically enhanced seeds, inputs such as fertilisers, and tools to process their crop.

This technology transfer is not automatic — the farmer must first invest time to learn how to use these tools.  In this sense, economic competition between nations is partly about how well-equipped their people are in using technology effectively.

The second key way in which knowledge impacts global economic competition depends on looking at development as a shift from cut-throat commodity production towards activities that bring higher profits and wages.

In farming, for example, development means moving out of crop production alone into a position of having more control over agricultural inputs, and more involvement in distributing or marketing agricultural goods and services….(More)”.

Legitimacy in Global Governance: Sources, Processes, and Consequences

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Jonas Tallberg, Karin Backstrand, and Jan Aart Scholte: “Legitimacy is central for the capacity of global governance institutions to address problems such as climate change, trade protectionism, and human rights abuses. However, despite legitimacy’s importance for global governance, its workings remain poorly understood. That is the core concern of this volume: to develop an agenda for systematic and comparative research on legitimacy in global governance. In complementary fashion, the chapters address different aspects of the overarching question: whether, why, how, and with what consequences global governance institutions gain, sustain, and lose legitimacy?

The volume makes four specific contributions. First, it argues for a sociological approach to legitimacy, centered on perceptions of legitimate global governance among affected audiences. Second, it moves beyond the traditional focus on states as the principal audience for legitimacy in global governance and considers a full spectrum of actors from governments to citizens. Third, it advocates a comparative approach to the study of legitimacy in global governance, and suggests strategies for comparison across institutions, issue areas, countries, societal groups, and time. Fourth, the volume offers the most comprehensive treatment so far of the sociological legitimacy of global governance, covering three broad analytical themes: (1) sources of legitimacy, (2) processes of legitimation and delegitimation, and (3) consequences of legitimacy…(More)”.

Google, T-Mobile Tackle 911 Call Problem

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Sarah Krouse at the Wall Street Journal: “Emergency call operators will soon have an easier time pinpointing the whereabouts of Android phone users.

Google has struck a deal with T-Mobile US to pipe location data from cellphones with Android operating systems in the U.S. to emergency call centers, said Fiona Lee, who works on global partnerships for Android emergency location services.

The move is a sign that smartphone operating system providers and carriers are taking steps to improve the quality of location data they send when customers call 911. Locating callers has become a growing problem for 911 operators as cellphone usage has proliferated. Wireless devices now make 80% or more of the 911 calls placed in some parts of the U.S., according to the trade group National Emergency Number Association. There are roughly 240 million calls made to 911 annually.

While landlines deliver an exact address, cellphones typically register only an estimated location provided by wireless carriers that can be as wide as a few hundred yards and imprecise indoors.

That has meant that while many popular applications like Uber can pinpoint users, 911 call takers can’t always do so. Technology giants such as Google and Apple Inc. that run phone operating systems need a direct link to the technology used within emergency call centers to transmit precise location data….

Google currently offers emergency location services in 14 countries around the world by partnering with carriers and companies that are part of local emergency communications infrastructure. Its location data is based on a combination of inputs from Wi-Fi to sensors, GPS and a mobile network information.

Jim Lake, director at the Charleston County Consolidated 9-1-1 Center, participated in a pilot of Google’s emergency location services and said it made it easier to find people who didn’t know their location, particularly because the area draws tourists.

“On a day-to-day basis, most people know where they are, but when they don’t, usually those are the most horrifying calls and we need to know right away,” Mr. Lake said.

In June, Apple said it had partnered with RapidSOS to send iPhone users’ location information to 911 call centers….(More)”

Is Mass Surveillance the Future of Conservation?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Mallory Picket at Slate: “The high seas are probably the most lawless place left on Earth. They’re a portal back in time to the way the world looked for most of our history: fierce and open competition for resources and contested territories. Pirating continues to be a way to make a living.

It’s not a complete free-for-all—most countries require registration of fishing vessels and enforce environmental protocols. Cooperative agreements between countries oversee fisheries in international waters. But the best data available suggests that around 20 percent of the global seafood catch is illegal. This is an environmental hazard because unregistered boats evade regulations meant to protect marine life. And it’s an economic problem for fishermen who can’t compete with boats that don’t pay for licenses or follow the (often expensive) regulations. In many developing countries, local fishermen are outfished by foreign vessels coming into their territory and stealing their stock….

But Henri Weimerskirch, a French ecologist, has a cheap, low-impact way to monitor thousands of square miles a day in real time: He’s getting birds to do it (a project first reported by Hakai). Specifically, albatross, which have a 10-foot wingspan and can fly around the world in 46 days. The birds naturally congregate around fishing boats, hoping for an easy meal, so Weimerskirch is equipping them with GPS loggers that also have radar detection to pick up the ship’s radar (and make sure it is a ship, not an island) and a transmitter to send that data to authorities in real time. If it works, this should help in two ways: It will provide some information on the extent of the unofficial fishing operation in the area, and because the logger will transmit their information in real time, the data will be used to notify French navy ships in the area to check out suspicious boats.

His team is getting ready to deploy about 80 birds in the south Indian Ocean this November.
The loggers attached around the birds’ legs are about the shape and size of a Snickers. The south Indian Ocean is a shared fishing zone, and nine countries, including France (courtesy of several small islands it claims ownership of, a vestige of colonialism), manage it together. But there are big problems with illegal fishing in the area, especially of the Patagonian toothfish (better known to consumers as Chilean seabass)….(More)”