Can crowdsourcing decipher the roots of armed conflict?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Stephanie Kanowitz at GCN: “Researchers at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Texas at Dallas are proving that there’s accuracy, not just safety, in numbers. The Correlates of War project, a long-standing effort that studies the history of warfare, is now experimenting with crowdsourcing as a way to more quickly and inexpensively create a global conflict database that could help explain when and why countries go to war.

The goal is to facilitate the collection, dissemination and use of reliable data in international relations, but a byproduct has emerged: the development of technology that uses machine learning and natural language processing to efficiently, cost-effectively and accurately create databases from news articles that detail militarized interstate disputes.

The project is in its fifth iteration, having released the fourth set of Militarized Dispute (MID) Data in 2014. To create those earlier versions, researchers paid subject-matter experts such as political scientists to read and hand code newswire articles about disputes, identifying features of possible militarized incidents. Now, however, they’re soliciting help from anyone and everyone — and finding the results are much the same as what the experts produced, except the results come in faster and with significantly less expense.

As news articles come across the wire, the researchers pull them and formulate questions about them that help evaluate the military events. Next, the articles and questions are loaded onto the Amazon Mechanical Turk, a marketplace for crowdsourcing. The project assigns articles to readers, who typically spend about 10 minutes reading an article and responding to the questions. The readers submit the answers to the project researchers, who review them. The project assigns the same article to multiple workers and uses computer algorithms to combine the data into one annotation.

A systematic comparison of the crowdsourced responses with those of trained subject-matter experts showed that the crowdsourced work was accurate for 68 percent of the news reports coded. More important, the aggregation of answers for each article showed that common answers from multiple readers strongly correlated with correct coding. This allowed researchers to easily flag the articles that required deeper expert involvement and process the majority of the news items in near-real time and at limited cost….(more)”

Disclosing or obscuring? The politics of transparency in global climate governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Aarti Gupta and Michael Mason: “Transparency is increasingly evoked within public and private climate governance arrangements as a key means to enhance accountability and improve environmental outcomes. We review assumed links between transparency, accountability and environmental sustainability here, by identifying four rationales underpinning uptake of transparency in governance. We label these democratization, technocratization, marketization and privatization, and assess how they shape the scope and practices of climate disclosure, and to what effect. We find that all four are discernible in climate governance, yet the technocratic and privatization rationales tend to overtake the originally intended (more inclusive, and more public-good oriented) democratization and marketization rationales for transparency, particularly during institutionalization of disclosure systems. This reduces transparency’s potential to enhance accountability or trigger more environmentally sustainable outcomes….(More)”

Finding the Missing Millions Can Help Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 and Mariana Dahan in the Huffington Post: “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, approved in September, takes a holistic approach to development and presents no less than 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In committing to the goals and associated targets, the international community has agreed to a more ambitious development compact — that of ending poverty, protecting the planet while “leaving no one behind”.

Despite this ambition, we may not know who precisely is being left out of our development programs or how to more effectively target our intended beneficiaries.

A staggering 2.4 billion people today lack any form of recognized identity (ID), including some 625 million children, aged 0-14 years, whose births have never been registered with a civil authority. Only 19 out of 198 economies provide a unique ID at birth and use this consistently in civil identification and public services.

The Center for Global Development recently organized an event titled “Identity and the SDGs: How Finding the Missing Millions Can Help Achieve Development Goals”. While intending to speak about SDG target 16.9 on legal identity for all, including birth registration, by 2030, it became obvious that the importance of robust identification goes beyond its intrinsic value: it also enables the achievement of many other SDGs, such as financial inclusion, reduced corruption, gender equality, access to health services and appropriate social protection schemes.

Global initiatives, such as the World Bank Group’s Identification for Development (ID4D) agenda, a cross-institutional and multi-sectoral effort, aim to “make everyone count.” They will build new alliances and reshape existing development strategies in the areas of identification and civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS). On the latter, the World Bank, with a number of partners – including UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, and several bilateral donors — is launching the Global Financing Facility for Every Woman Every Child, which includes financing aimed at strengthening and expanding ID platforms of CRVS systems….

Finally, the international community should establish the right monitoring mechanisms and indicators to measure whether we are on track to achieving the SDGs. This target for universal identity will be especially critical as a means of monitoring and achieving the SDGs as a whole. As the saying goes, what is not counted doesn’t count and what is not measured cannot be managed and thus measuring progress towards global targets is a fundamental component of meeting the ambitious goals we have set….(More)”

Developing Global Norms for Sharing Data and Results during Public Health Emergencies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Kayvon Modjarrad et al in PLOS Med: “…When a new or re-emergent pathogen causes a major outbreak, rapid access to both raw and analysed data or other pertinent research findings becomes critical to developing a rapid and effective public health response. Without the timely exchange of information on clinical, epidemiologic, and molecular features of an infectious disease, informed decisions about appropriate responses cannot be made, particularly those that relate to fielding new interventions or adapting existing ones. Failure to share information in a timely manner can have disastrous public health consequences, leading to unnecessary suffering and death. The 2014–2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa revealed both successful practices and important deficiencies within existing mechanisms for information sharing. For example, trials of two Ebola vaccine candidates (ChAd3-ZEBOV and rVSV-ZEBOV) benefited greatly from an open collaboration between investigators and institutions in Africa, Europe, and North America . These teams, coordinated by the WHO, were able to generate and exchange critical data for the development of urgently needed, novel vaccines along faster timelines than have ever before been achieved. Similarly, some members of the genome sequencing community made viral sequence data publicly available within days of accessing samples , thus adhering to their profession’s long-established principles of rapid, public release of sequence data in any setting. In contrast, the dissemination of surveillance data early in the epidemic was comparatively slow, and in some cases, the criteria for sharing were unclear.

In recognition of the need to streamline mechanisms of data dissemination—globally and in as close to real-time as possible—the WHO held a consultation in Geneva, Switzerland, on 1–2 September 2015 to advance the development of data sharing norms, specifically in the context of public health emergencies….

preservation of global health requires prioritization of and support for international collaboration. These and other principles were affirmed at the consultation (Table 1) and codified into a consensus statement that was published on the WHO website immediately following the meeting (http://www.who.int/medicines/ebola-treatment/data-sharing_phe/en/). A more comprehensive set of principles and action items was made available in November 2015, including the consensus statement made by the editorial staff of journals that attended the meeting (http://www.who.int/medicines/ebola-treatment/blueprint_phe_data-share-results/en/). The success of prior initiatives to accelerate timelines for reporting clinical trial results has helped build momentum for a broader data sharing agenda. As the quick and transparent dissemination of information is the bedrock of good science and public health practice, it is important that the current trends in data sharing carry over to all matters of acute public health need. Such a global norm would advance the spirit of open collaboration, simplify current mechanisms of information sharing, and potentially save many lives in subsequent outbreaks….(More)”

 

Democracy Reinvented: Participatory Budgeting and Civic Innovation in America

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Hollie Russon Gilman: “Democracy Reinvented is the first comprehensive academic treatment of participatory budgeting in the United States, situating it within a broader trend of civic technology and innovation. This global phenomenon, which has been called “revolutionary civics in action” by the New York Times, started in Brazil in 1989 but came to America only in 2009.  Participatory budgeting empowers citizens to identify community needs, work with elected officials to craft budget proposals, and vote on how to spend public funds.

Democracy Reinvented places participatory budgeting within the larger discussion of the health of U.S. democracy and focuses on the enabling political and institutional conditions.  Author and former White House policy adviser Hollie Russon Gilman presents theoretical insights, in-depth case studies, and interviews to offer a compelling alternative to the current citizen disaffection and mistrust of government. She offers policy recommendations on how to tap online tools and other technological and civic innovations to promote more inclusive governance.

While most literature tends to focus on institutional changes without solutions, this book suggests practical ways to empower citizens to become change agents. Democracy Reinvented also includes a discussion on the challenges and opportunities that come with using digital tools to re-engage citizens in governance….(More)”

Digital Weberianism: Towards a reconceptualization of bureaucratic social order in the digital age

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Working Paper by Chris Muellerleile & Susan Robertson: “The social infrastructures that the global economy relies upon are becoming dependent on digital code, big data, and algorithms. At the same time the digital is also changing the very nature of economic and social institutions. In this paper we attempt to make sense of the relationships between the emergence of digitalism, and transformations in both capitalism, and the ways that capitalism is regulated by digitized social relations. We speculate that the logic, rationalities, and techniques of Max Weber’s bureau, a foundational concept in his theory of modernity, helps explain the purported efficiency, objectivity, and rationality of digital technologies. We argue that digital rationality constitutes a common thread of social infrastructure that is increasingly overdetermining the nature of sociality. We employ the example of the smart city and the digitizing university to expose some of the contradictions of digital order, and we end by questioning what digital order might mean after the end of modernity….(More)”

The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Axel Bruns, Gunn Enli, Eli Skogerbo, Anders Olof Larsson, Christian Christensen: “Social media are now widely used for political protests, campaigns, and communication in developed and developing nations, but available research has not yet paid sufficient attention to experiences beyond the US and UK. This collection tackles this imbalance head-on, compiling cutting-edge research across six continents to provide a comprehensive, global, up-to-date review of recent political uses of social media.

Drawing together empirical analyses of the use of social media by political movements and in national and regional elections and referenda, The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics presents studies ranging from Anonymous and the Arab Spring to the Greek Aganaktismenoi, and from South Korean presidential elections to the Scottish independence referendum. The book is framed by a selection of keystone theoretical contributions, evaluating and updating existing frameworks for the social media age….(More)”

What Citizens Can Teach Civil Servants About Open Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 and  in Governing: “An open government is one that is transparent, participatory and collaborative. But moving from traditional government operating behind closed doors to more open institutions, where civil servants work together with citizens to create policies and solve problems, demands new skills and sensibilities.

As more and more American public-sector leaders embrace the concept of openness as a positive force for governmental effectiveness, they would do well to look toward Brazil’s largest city, where an unusual experiment was just launched: an effort to use a variation on crowdsourcing to retrain Sao Paulo’s 150,000 civil servants. It’s described as the world’s largest open-government training program.

The program, known as Agents of Open Government – part of a wider city initiative called “Sao Paulo Aberta” (Open Sao Paulo) — aims to teach through peer-to-peer learning, where government employees learn from citizens. Twenty-four citizen-led courses that began last month are aimed not only at government employees and elected community representatives but also at social activists and the general population.

Sao Paolo is betting on the radical notion that learning can happen outside of formal civil-service training colleges. This initiative reflects a growing global trend toward recognizing that institutions can become smarter — more effective and efficient — by making use of the skills and experience of those outside of government.

Officials hope to have 25,000 participants over the course of the coming year. To encourage public employees’ participation, city workers who attend the courses gain credits in the municipal evaluation system that allow them to get pay raises….(More)”

To reduce economic inequality, do we need better democracy?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Matt Leighninger at Public Agenda: “When people have a say in the decisions that affect their lives, they will be better off economically as well as politically.

This idea has intrigued community development experts, foundation executives, public officials and academic researchers for many years. It has also animated some of the work people and governments are undertaking to address inequality, both in the United States and (especially) in the Global South.

But can a participatory democracy lead to greater economic opportunity? We are just beginning to amass evidence that this idea is true, understand how and why it works, and figure out how to make it happen better and faster.

Over the last two decades we have witnessed a quiet revolution in how governments and other institutions engage the public. Public officials, technologists, engagement practitioners, community organizers and other leaders have developed hundreds of projects, processes, tools and apps that boost engagement.

While they differ in many ways, these strategies and resources have one common thread: they treat citizens like adults rather than the clients (or children) of the state. They give people chances to connect, learn, deliberate, make recommendations, vote on budget or policy decisions, take action to solve public problems or all of the above. The principles behind these practices embody and enable greater political equality.

This wave of experimentation has produced inspiring outcomes in cities all over the world, but it has been particularly productive in Brazil and other parts of the Global South, where engagement has been built into the way that many cities operate. In these places, it is increasingly clear that when people have a legitimate voice in the institutions that govern their communities, and when they have support through various kinds of social and political networks, their economic fortunes improve.

The best-documented cases come from cities in Brazil, where Participatory Budgeting and other forms of engagement have been built into a much more robust “civic infrastructure” than we have in most American cities. In other words, people in these places have a wider variety of ways to participate on a broader range of issues and decisions. Their chances for engagement include online opportunities as well as face-to-face meetings. Many are social events as much as political ones: people participate because they get to see their neighbors and feel like they are part of a community, in addition to being able to weigh in on a public decision.

In these cities, the gap between rich and poor has narrowed, much more so than in similar cities without vibrant local democracies. In addition, governments are more likely to complete planned projects; public finances are better managed and less prone to corruption; people exhibit increased trust in public institutions and are more likely to pay their taxes; public expenditures are more likely to benefit low-income people; public health outcomes, such as the rate of infant mortality, have improved; and poverty has been reduced.

The connection between democratic innovation and greater economic equity raises many questions ripe for research:….(More)”

Open Data Index 2015

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Knowledge: “….This year’s Index showed impressive gains from non-OECD countries with Taiwan topping the Index and Colombia and Uruguay breaking into the top ten at four and seven respectively. Overall, the Index evaluated 122 places and 1586 datasets and determined that only 9%, or 156 datasets, were both technically and legally open.

The Index ranks countries based on the availability and accessibility of data in thirteen key categories, including government spending, election results, procurement, and pollution levels. Over the summer, we held a public consultation, which saw contributions from individuals within the open data community as well as from key civil society organisations across an array of sectors. As a result of this consultation, we expanded the 2015 Index to include public procurement data, water quality data, land ownership data and weather data; we also decided to removed transport timetables due to the difficulties faced when comparing transport system data globally.

Open Knowledge International began to systematically track the release of open data by national governments in 2013 with the objective of measuring if governments were releasing the key datasets of high social and democratic value as open data. That enables us to better understand the current state of play and in turn work with civil society actors to address the gaps in data release. Over the course of the last three years, the Global Open Data Index has become more than just a benchmark – we noticed that governments began to use the Index as a reference to inform their open data priorities and civil society actors began to use the Index advocacy tool to encourage governments to improve their performance in releasing key datasets.

Furthermore, indices such as the Global Open Data Index are not without their challenges. The Index measures the technical and legal openness of datasets deemed to be of critical democratic and social value – it does not measure the openness of a given government. It should be clear that the release of a few key datasets is not a sufficient measure of the openness of a government. The blurring of lines between open data and open government is nothing new and has been hotly debated by civil society groups and transparency organisations since the sharp rise in popularity of open data policies over the last decade. …Index at http://index.okfn.org/”