Global

Assessing Zuckerberg’s Idea That Facebook Could Help Citizens Re-Make Their Government

Curated on August 29, 2013August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Gregory Ferenstein in TechCrunch: “Mark Zuckerberg has a grand vision that Facebook will help citizens in developing countries decide their own governments. It’s a lofty and partially attainable goal. While Egypt probably won’t let citizens vote for their next president with a Like, it is theoretically possible to use Facebook to crowdsource expertise. Governments around the world are experimenting with radical online direct democracy, but it doesn’t always work out.

Very briefly, Zuckerberg laid out his broad vision for e-government to Wired’s Steven Levy, while defending Internet.org, a new consortium to bring broadband to the developing world.

“People often talk about how big a change social media had been for our culture here in the U.S. But imagine how much bigger a change it will be when a developing country comes online for the first time ever. We use things like Facebook to share news and keep in touch with our friends, but in those countries, they’ll use this for deciding what kind of government they want to have. Getting access to health care information for the first time ever.”

When he references “deciding … government,” Zuckerberg could be talking about voting, sharing ideas, or crafting a constitution. We decided to assess the possibilities of them all….
For citizens in the exciting/terrifying position to construct a brand-new government, American-style democracy is one of many options. Britain, for instance, has a parliamentary system and has no constitution. In other cases, a government may want to heed political scientists’ advice and develop a “consensus democracy,” where more than two political parties are incentivized to work collaboratively with citizens, business, and different branches of government to craft laws.
At least once, choosing a new style of democracy has been attempted through the Internet. After the global financial meltdown wrecked Iceland’s economy, the happy citizens of the grass-covered country decided to redo their government and solicit suggestions from the public (950 Icelanders chosen by lottery and general calls for ideas through social networks). After much press about Iceland’s “crowdsourced” constitution, it crashed miserably after most of the elected leaders rejected it.
Crafting law, especially a constitution, is legally complex; unless there is a systematic way to translate haphazard citizen suggestions into legalese, the results are disastrous.
“Collaborative drafting, at large scale, at low costs, and that is inclusive, is something that we still don’t know how to do,” says Tiago Peixoto, a World Bank Consultant on participatory democracy (and one of our Most Innovative People In Democracy).
Peixoto, who helps the Brazilian government conduct some of the world’s only online policymaking, says he’s optimistic that Facebook could be helpful, but he wouldn’t use it to draft laws just yet.
While technically it is possible for social networks to craft a new government, we just don’t know how to do it very well, and, therefore, leaders are likely to reject the idea. In other words, don’t expect Egypt to decide their future through Facebook likes.”

Mapping the Twitterverse

Curated on August 29, 2013August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Phys.org: “What does your Twitter profile reveal about you? More than you know, according to Chris Weidemann. The GIST master’s student has developed an application that follows geospatial footprints.
You start your day at your favorite breakfast spot. When your order of strawberry waffles with extra whipped cream arrives, it’s too delectable not to share with your Twitter followers. You snap a photo with your smartphone and hit send. Then, it’s time to hit the books.
You tweet your friends that you’ll be at the library on campus. Later that day, palm trees silhouette a neon-pink sunset. You can’t resist. You tweet a picture with the hashtag #ILoveLA.
You may not realize that when you tweet those breezy updates and photos of food, you are sharing information about your location.
Chris Weidemann, a graduate student in the Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIST) online master’s program at USC Dornsife, investigated just how much public geospatial data was generated by Twitter users and how their information—available through Twitter’s application programming interface (API)—could potentially be used by third parties. His study was published June 2013 in the International Journal of Geoinformatics…
Twitter has approximately 500 million active users, and reports show that 6 percent of users opt-in to allow the platform to broadcast their location using global positioning technology with each tweet they post. That’s about 30 million people sending geo-tagged data out into the Twitterverse. In their tweets, people can choose whether their information is displayed as a city and state, an address or pinpoint their precise latitude and longitude.
That’s only part of their geospatial footprint. Information contained in a post may reveal a user’s location. Depending upon how the account is set up, profiles may include details about their hometown, time zone and language.”

The Multistakeholder Model in Global Technology Governance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Curated on August 29, 2013August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New APSA 2013 Annual Meeting Paper by Nanette S. Levinson: “This paper examines two key but often overlooked analytic dimensions related to global technology governance: the roles of culture and cross-cultural communication processes and the broader framework of Multistakeholderism. Each of these dimensions has a growing tradition of research/conceptual frameworks that can inform the analysis of Internet governance and related complex and power-related processes that may be present in a multistakeholder setting. The use of the term ‘multistakeholder’ itself has grown exponentially in discussing Internet governance and related governance domains; yet there are few rigorous studies within Internet governance that treat actual multistakeholder processes, especially from a cross-cultural and comparative perspective.
Using research on cross-cultural communication and related factors (at small group, occupational, organizational, interorganizational or cross- sector, national, regional levels), this paper provides and uses an analytic framework, especially for the 2012 WCIT and 2013 WSIS 10 and World Telecommunications Policy Forum that goes beyond the rhetoric of ‘multistakeholder’ as a term. It includes an examination of variables found to be important in studies from environmental governance, public administration, and private sector partnership domains including trust, absorptive capacity, and power in knowledge transfer processes. “

Index: The Data Universe

Curated on August 22, 2013September 6, 2019 by admin

The Living Library Index – inspired by the Harper’s Index – provides important statistics and highlights global trends in governance innovation. This installment focuses on the data universe and was originally published in 2013.

How much data exists in the digital universe as of 2012: 2.7 zetabytes*
Increase in the quantity of Internet data from 2005 to 2012: +1,696%
Percent of the world’s data created in the last two years: 90
Number of exabytes (=1 billion gigabytes) created every day in 2012: 2.5; that number doubles every month
Percent of the digital universe in 2005 created by the U.S. and western Europe vs. emerging markets: 48 vs. 20
Percent of the digital universe in 2012 created by emerging markets: 36
Percent of the digital universe in 2020 predicted to be created by China alone: 21
How much information in the digital universe is created and consumed by consumers (video, social media, photos, etc.) in 2012: 68%
Percent of which enterprises have liability or responsibility for (copyright, privacy, compliance with regulations, etc.): 80
Amount included in the Obama Administration’s 2-12 Big Data initiative: over $200 million
Amount the Department of Defense is investing annually on Big Data projects as of 2012: over $250 million
Data created per day in 2012: 2.5 quintillion bytes
How many terabytes* of data collected by the U.S. Library of Congress as of April 2011: 235
How many terabytes of data collected by Walmart per hour as of 2012: 2,560, or 2.5 petabytes*
Projected growth in global data generated per year, as of 2011: 40%
Number of IT jobs created globally by 2015 to support big data: 4.4 million (1.9 million in the U.S.)
Potential shortage of data scientists in the U.S. alone predicted for 2018: 140,000-190,000, in addition to 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions
Time needed to sequence the complete human genome (analyzing 3 billion base pairs) in 2003: ten years
Time needed in 2013: one week
The world’s annual effective capacity to exchange information through telecommunication networks in 1986, 2007, and (predicted) 2013: 281 petabytes, 65 exabytes, 667 exabytes
Projected amount of digital information created annually that will either live in or pass through the cloud: 1/3
Increase in data collection volume year-over-year in 2012: 400%
Increase in number of individual data collectors from 2011 to 2012: nearly double (over 300 data collection parties in 2012)

*1 zetabyte = 1 billion terabytes | 1 petabyte = 1,000 terabytes | 1 terabyte = 1,000 gigabytes | 1 gigabyte = 1 billion bytes

Sources

Civic Innovation Fellowships Go Global

Curated on August 20, 2013May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Some thoughts from Panthea Lee from Reboot: “In recent years, civic innovation fellowships have shown great promise to improve the relationships between citizens and government. In the United States, Code for America and the Presidential Innovation Fellows have demonstrated the positive impact a small group of technologists can have working hand-in-hand with government. With the launch of Code for All, Code for Europe, Code4Kenya, and Code4Africa, among others, the model is going global.
But despite the increasing popularity of civic innovation fellowships, there are few templates for how a “Code for” program can be adapted to a different context. In the US, the success of Code for America has drawn from a wealth of tech talent eager to volunteer skills, public and private support, and the active participation of municipal governments. Elsewhere, new “Code for” programs are surely going to have to operate within a different set of capacities and constraints.”

Five myths about big data

Curated on August 17, 2013August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Samuel Arbesman, senior scholar at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the author of “The Half-Life of Facts” in the Washington Post: “Big data holds the promise of harnessing huge amounts of information to help us better understand the world. But when talking about big data, there’s a tendency to fall into hyperbole. It is what compels contrarians to write such tweets as “Big Data, n.: the belief that any sufficiently large pile of s— contains a pony.” Let’s deflate the hype.
1. “Big data” has a clear definition.
The term “big data” has been in circulation since at least the 1990s, when it is believed to have originated in Silicon Valley. IBM offers a seemingly simple definition: Big data is characterized by the four V’s of volume, variety, velocity and veracity. But the term is thrown around so often, in so many contexts — science, marketing, politics, sports — that its meaning has become vague and ambiguous….
2. Big data is new.
By many accounts, big data exploded onto the scene quite recently. “If wonks were fashionistas, big data would be this season’s hot new color,” a Reuters report quipped last year. In a May 2011 report, the McKinsey Global Institute declared big data “the next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity.”
It’s true that today we can mine massive amounts of data — textual, social, scientific and otherwise — using complex algorithms and computer power. But big data has been around for a long time. It’s just that exhaustive datasets were more exhausting to compile and study in the days when “computer” meant a person who performed calculations….
3. Big data is revolutionary.
In their new book, “Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think,”Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier compare “the current data deluge” to the transformation brought about by the Gutenberg printing press.
If you want more precise advertising directed toward you, then yes, big data is revolutionary. Generally, though, it’s likely to have a modest and gradual impact on our lives….
4. Bigger data is better.
In science, some admittedly mind-blowing big-data analyses are being done. In business, companies are being told to “embrace big data before your competitors do.” But big data is not automatically better.
Really big datasets can be a mess. Unless researchers and analysts can reduce the number of variables and make the data more manageable, they get quantity without a whole lot of quality. Give me some quality medium data over bad big data any day…
5. Big data means the end of scientific theories.
Chris Anderson argued in a 2008 Wired essay that big data renders the scientific method obsolete: Throw enough data at an advanced machine-learning technique, and all the correlations and relationships will simply jump out. We’ll understand everything.
But you can’t just go fishing for correlations and hope they will explain the world. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up with spurious correlations. Even more important, to contend with the “why” of things, we still need ideas, hypotheses and theories. If you don’t have good questions, your results can be silly and meaningless.
Having more data won’t substitute for thinking hard, recognizing anomalies and exploring deep truths.”

Announcing Project Open Data from Cloudant Labs

Curated on August 16, 2013May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Yuriy Dybskiy from Cloudant: “There has been an emerging pattern over the last few years of more and more government datasets becoming available for public access. Earlier this year, the White House announced official policy on such data – Project Open Data.

Available resources

Here are four resources on the topic:

Tim Berners-Lee: Open, Linked Data for a Global Community – [10 min video]
Rufus Pollock: Open Data – How We Got Here and Where We’re Going – [24 min video]
Open Knowledge Foundation Datasets – http://data.okfn.org/data
Max Ogden: Project dat – collaborative data – [github repo]

One of the main challenges is access to the datasets. If only there were a database that had easy access to its data baked right in it.
Luckily, there is CouchDB and Cloudant, which share the same APIs to access data via HTTP. This makes for a really great option to store interesting datasets.

Cloudant Open Data

Today we are happy to announce a Cloudant Labs project – Cloudant Open Data!
Several datasets are available at the moment, for example, businesses_sf – data regarding businesses registered in San Francisco and sf_pd_incidents – a collection of incident reports (criminal and non-criminal) made by the San Francisco Police Department.
We’ll add more, but if you have one you’d like us to add faster – drop us a line at [email protected]
Create an account and play with these datasets yourself”

Internet Governance is Our Shared Responsibility

Curated on August 15, 2013August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New paper by Vint Cerf, Patrick Ryan and Max Senges Senges: “This essay looks at the the different roles that multistakeholder institutions play in the Internet governance ecosystem. We propose a model for thinking of Internet governance within the context of the Internet’s layered model. We use the example of the negotiations in Dubai in 2102 at the World Conference on International Telecommunications as an illustration for why it is important for different institutions within the governance system to focus on their respective areas of expertise (e.g., the ITU, ICANN, and IGF). Several areas of conflict (a “tussle”) are reviewed, such as the desire to promote more broadband infrastructure, a topic that is in the remit of the International Telecommunications Union, but also the recurring desire of countries like Russia and China to use the ITU to regulate content and restrict free expression on the Internet through onerous cybersecurity and spam provisions. We conclude that it is folly to try and regulate all these areas through an international treaty, and encourage further development of mechanisms for global debate like the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).”

Citizen-Centered Governance: The Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics and the Evolution of CRM in Boston

Curated on August 9, 2013December 6, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New Paper by Susan P. Crawford and Dana Walters (Berkman Center Research Publication No. 17): “Over the last three years, the Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, the innovative, collaborative ethos within City Hall fostered by Mayor Menino and his current chief of staff, Mitchell Weiss, and Boston’s launch of a CRM system and its associated Citizens Connect smartphone app have all attracted substantial media attention. In particular, the City of Boston’s strategy to put citizen engagement and participation at the center of its efforts, implemented by Chris Osgood and Nigel Jacob as co-chairs of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, has drawn attention to the potential power of collaboration and technology to transform citizens’ connections to their government and to each other. Several global developments have combined to make Boston’s collaborative efforts interesting: First, city managers around the world confront shrinking budgets and diminishing trust in the role of government; second, civic entrepreneurs and technology innovators are pressuring local governments to adopt new forms of engagement with citizens; and third, new digital tools are emerging that can help make city services both more visible and more effective. Boston’s experience in pursuing partnerships that facilitate opportunities for engaging citizens may provide scalable (and disruptive) lessons for other cities.

During the summer of 2013, in anticipation of Mayor Menino’s retirement in January 2014, Prof. Susan Crawford and Project Assistant Dana Walters carried out a case study examining the ongoing evolution of the Boston Mayor’s Hotline into a platform for civic engagement. We chose this CRM focus because the initial development of the system provides a concrete example of how leaders in government can connect to local partners and citizens. In the course of this research, we interviewed 21 city employees and several of their partners outside government, and gathered data about the use of the system.

We found a traditional technology story—selection and integration of CRM software, initial performance management using that software, development of ancillary channels of communication, initial patterns of adoption and use—that reflects the commitment of Mayor Menino to personalized constituent service. We also found that that commitment, his long tenure, and the particular personalities of the people on the New Urban Mechanics team make this both a cultural story as well as a technology story. Here are the highlights…”