Where the right to know comes from


Michael Schudson in Columbia Journalism Review: “…what began as an effort to keep the executive under check by the Congress became a law that helped journalists, historians, and ordinary citizens monitor federal agencies. Nearly 50 years later, it may all sound easy and obvious. It was neither. And this burst of political engagement is rarely, if ever, mentioned by journalists themselves as an exception to normal “acts of journalism.”

But how did it happen at all? In 1948, the American Society of Newspaper Editors set up its first-ever committee on government restrictions on the freedom to gather and publish news. It was called the “Committee on World Freedom of Information”—a name that implied that limiting journalists’ access or straightforward censorship was a problem in other countries. The committee protested Argentina’s restrictions on what US correspondents could report, censorship in Guatemala, and—closer to home—US military censorship in occupied Japan.

When the ASNE committee turned to the problem of secrecy in the US government in the early 1950s, it chose to actively criticize such secrecy, but not to “become a legislative committee.” Even in 1953, when ASNE leaders realized that significant progress on government secrecy might require federal legislation, they concluded that “watching all such legislation” would be an important task for the committee, but did not suggest taking a public position.

Representative Moss changed this. Moss was a small businessman who had served several terms in the California legislature before his election to Congress in 1952. During his first term, he requested some data from the Civil Service Commission about dismissals of government employees on suspicion of disloyalty. The commission flatly turned him down. “My experience in Washington quickly proved that you had a hell of a time getting any information,” Moss recalled. Two years later, a newly re-elected Moss became chair of a House subcommittee on government information….(More)”

Can non-Western democracy help to foster political transformation?


Richard Youngs at Open Democracy: “…many non-Western countries are showing signs of a newly-vibrant civic politics, organized in ways that are not centered on NGOs but on more loosely structured social movements in participatory forms of democracy where active citizenship is crucial—not just structured or formal, representative democratic institutions. Bolivia is a good example.

Many Western governments were skeptical about President Evo Morales’ political project, fearing that he would prove to be just as authoritarian as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. But some Western donors (including Germany and the European Union) have already increased their support to indigenous social movements in Bolivia because they’ve become a vital channel of influence and accountability between government and society.

Secondly, it’s clear that the political dimensions of democracy will be undermined if economic conditions and inequalities are getting worse, so democracy promotion efforts need to be delinked from pressures to adopt neo-liberal economic policies. Western interests need to do more to prove that they are not supporting democracy primarily as a means to further their economic interest in ‘free markets.’ That’s why the European Union is supporting a growing number of projects designed to build up social insurance schemes during the early phases of democratic transitions. European diplomats, at least, say that they see themselves as supporters of social and economic democracy.

Donors are becoming more willing to support the role of labor unions in pro-democracy coalition-building; and to protect labor standards as a crucial part of political transitions in countries as diverse as Tunisia, Georgia, China, Egypt and Ecuador. But they should do more to assess how the embedded structures of economic power can undermine the quality of democratic processes. Support for civil society organizations that are keen on exploring heterodox economic models should also be stepped up.

Thirdly, non-Western structures and traditions can help to reduce violent conflict successfully. Tribal chiefs, traditional decision-making circles and customary dispute resolution mechanisms are commonplace in Africa and Asia, and have much to teach their counterparts in the West. In Afghanistan, for example, international organizations realized that the standard institutions of Western liberal democracy were gaining little traction, and were probably deepening rather than healing pre-existing divisions, so they’ve started to support local-level deliberative forums instead.

Something similar is happening in the Balkans, where the United States and the European Union are giving priority to locally tailored, consensual power-sharing arrangements. The United Nations is working with customary justice systems in Somalia. And in South Sudan and Kenya, donors have worked with tribal chiefs and supported traditional authorities to promote a better understanding of human rights and gender justice issues. These forms of power-sharing and ‘consensual communitarianism’ can be quite effective in protecting minorities while also encouraging dialogue and deliberation.

As these brief examples show, different countries can both offer and receive ideas about democratic transformation regardless of geography, though this is never straightforward. It involves finding a balance between defending genuinely-universal norms on the one hand, and encouraging democratic experimentation on the other. This is a thin line to walk, and it requires, for example, recognition that the basic precepts of liberal democracy are not synonymous with what can be seen as an amoral individualism, particularly in highly religious communities.

Pro-democracy reformers and civic groups in non-Western countries often take international organizations to task for pushing too hard on questions of ‘Western liberal rights’ rather than supporting variations to the standard, individualist template, even where tribal structures and traditional conflict-resolution mechanisms work reasonably well. This has led to resistance against international support in places as diverse as Libya, Mali and Pakistan…..

Academic critical theorists argue that Western democracy promoters fail to take alternative models of democracy on board because they would endanger their own geostrategic and economic interests….(More)”

How the USGS uses Twitter data to track earthquakes


Twitter Blog: “After the disastrous Sichuan earthquake in 2008, people turned to Twitter to share firsthand information about the earthquake. What amazed many was the impression that Twitter was faster at reporting the earthquake than the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the official government organization in charge of tracking such events.

This Twitter activity wasn’t a big surprise to the USGS. The USGS National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) processes about 2,000 realtime earthquake sensors, with the majority based in the United States. That leaves a lot of empty space in the world with no sensors. On the other hand, there are hundreds of millions of people using Twitter who can report earthquakes. At first, the USGS staff was a bit skeptical that Twitter could be used as a detection system for earthquakes – but when they looked into it, they were surprised at the effectiveness of Twitter data for detection.

USGS staffers Paul Earle, a seismologist, and Michelle Guy, a software developer, teamed up to look at how Twitter data could be used for earthquake detection and verification. By using Twitter’s Public API, they decided to use the same time series event detection method they use when detecting earthquakes. This gave them a baseline for earthquake-related chatter, but they decided to dig in even further. They found that people Tweeting about actual earthquakes kept their Tweets really short, even just to ask, “earthquake?” Concluding that people who are experiencing earthquakes aren’t very chatty, they started filtering out Tweets with more than seven words. They also recognized that people sharing links or the size of the earthquake were significantly less likely to be offering firsthand reports, so they filtered out any Tweets sharing a link or a number. Ultimately, this filtered stream proved to be very significant at determining when earthquakes occurred globally.

USGS Modeling Twitter Data to Detect Earthquakes

While I was at the USGS office in Golden, Colo. interviewing Michelle and Paul, three earthquakes happened in a relatively short time. Using Twitter data, their system was able to pick up on an aftershock in Chile within one minute and 20 seconds – and it only took 14 Tweets from the filtered stream to trigger an email alert. The other two earthquakes, off Easter Island and Indonesia, weren’t picked up because they were not widely felt…..

The USGS monitors for earthquakes in many languages, and the words used can be a clue as to the magnitude and location of the earthquake. Chile has two words for earthquakes: terremotoand temblor; terremoto is used to indicate a bigger quake. This one in Chile started with people asking if it was a terremoto, but others realizing that it was a temblor.

As the USGS team notes, Twitter data augments their own detection work on felt earthquakes. If they’re getting reports of an earthquake in a populated area but no Tweets from there, that’s a good indicator to them that it’s a false alarm. It’s also very cost effective for the USGS, because they use Twitter’s Public API and open-source software such as Kibana and ElasticSearch to help determine when earthquakes occur….(More)”

The multiple meanings of open government data: Understanding different stakeholders and their perspectives


Paper by Felipe Gonzalez-Zapata, and Richard Heeks in Government Information Quarterly: “As a field of practice and research that is fast-growing and a locus for much attention and activity, open government data (OGD) has attracted stakeholders from a variety of origins. They bring with them a variety of meanings for OGD. The purpose of this paper is to show how the different stakeholders and their different perspectives on OGD can be analyzed in a given context. Taking Chile as an OGD exemplar, stakeholder analysis is used to identify and categorize stakeholder groups in terms of their relative power and interest as either primary (in this case, politicians, public officials, public sector practitioners, international organizations) or secondary (civil society activists, funding donors, ICT providers, academics). Stakeholder groups sometimes associated with OGD but absent from significant involvement in Chile – such as private sector- and citizen-users – are also identified.

Four different perspectives on open government data – bureaucratic, political, technological, and economic – are identified from a literature review. Template analysis is used to analyze text – OGD-related reports, conference presentations, and interviews in Chile – in terms of those perspectives. This shows bureaucratic and political perspectives to be more dominant than the other two, and also some presence for a politico-economic perspective not identified from the original literature review. The information value chain is used to identify a “missing middle” in current Chilean OGD perspectives: a lack of connection between a reality of data provision and an aspiration of developmental results. This pattern of perspectives can be explained by the capacities and interests of key stakeholders, with those in turn being shaped by Chile’s history, politics, and institutions….(More)”

Openness an Essential Building Block for Inclusive Societies


 (Mexico) in the Huffington Post: “The international community faces a complex environment that requires transforming the way we govern. In that sense, 2015 marks a historic milestone, as 193 Member States of the United Nations will come together to agree on the adoption of the 2030 Agenda. With the definition of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we will set an ambitious course toward a better and more inclusive world for the next 15 years.

The SDGs will be established just when governments deal with new and more defiant challenges, which require increased collaboration with multiple stakeholders to deliver innovative solutions. For that reason, cutting-edge technologies, fueled by vast amounts of data, provide an efficient platform to foster a global transformation and consolidate more responsive, collaborative and open governments.

Goal 16 seeks to promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies by ensuring access to public information, strengthening the rule of law, as well as building stronger and more accountable institutions. By doing so, we will contribute to successfully achieve the rest of the 2030 Agenda objectives.

During the 70th United Nations General Assembly, the 11 countries of the Steering Committee of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), along with civil-society leaders, will gather to acknowledge Goal 16 as a common target through a Joint Declaration: Open Government for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. As the Global Summit of OGP convenes this year in Mexico City, on October 28th and 29th, my government will call on all 65 members to subscribe to this fundamental declaration.

The SDGs will be reached only through trustworthy, effective and inclusive institutions. This is why Mexico, as current chair of the OGP, has committed to promote citizen participation, innovative policies, transparency and accountability.

Furthermore, we have worked with a global community of key players to develop the international Open Data Charter (ODC), which sets the founding principles for a greater coherence and increased use of open data across the world. We seek to recognize the value of having timely, comprehensive, accessible, and comparable data to improve governance and citizen engagement, as well as to foster inclusive development and innovation….(More)”

How Morocco Formed a Citizen Powered Constitution and Now Everyone Can Too


Jocelyn Fong at FeedbackLabs: “What if citizens could write the constitution for the society in which they live?

Legislation Lab — a new product of GovRight launched this spring — asks just this question. Dedicated to increasing public awareness and discussion of upcoming legislation, the platform offers citizens easy access to legislation and provides a participatory model to collect their feedback. Citizens can read through drafted legislation, compare it internationally, and then vote, comment, and propose changes to the very language itself — citizens can re-write the fundamental systems and laws that govern their lives.

The world of feedback sees new tools emerging all the time, with only some built to address an actual need. The makers of Legislation Lab are building on years of experience and know that the demand for such radical, open governance not only exists, it thrives.

In the wake of mass demonstrations calling for political reform in Morrocco, Tarik Nesh-Nash (Ashoka Fellow and GovRight co-founder/CEO) launched Reforme.ma to collect the opinions of average Moroccan citizens on proposed changes to the constitution. Little did he know that he would be tapping into a groundswell of citizens eager and determined to share their voices. Within two months, Reforme.ma had over 200,000 visitors from diverse backgrounds, representing all regions of the country. Those 200,000 visitors made over 10,000 comments and proposals to the constitution — 40% of which were included in the new, official draft. In July 2011, Moroccan citizens voted in a referendum and overwhelmingly approved the new constitution.

But Legislation Lab is only GovRight’s latest of many efforts to create channels for better e-governance. Previous endeavors have focused on open legal text, open budgeting, corruption reporting, and citizen-government direct communication — all of which have primarily focused on improving governance in North Africa.

In regions that do not have the history of vibrant democracy, Tariq believes these platforms all work together to create a more informed, engaged, and empowered citizenry–one who is able to participate fully in its government. “Including voice in our laws takes three steps. First, there’s access to information. Then, citizens have the capacity to monitor their government. The last tier is citizen participation in government.” It’s a step-by-step process of building transparency, and then accountability, such that citizens can be involved in the very decision-making that structures their day-to-day lives.

But Legislation Lab is not only relevant for countries transitioning to more democratic styles of governance. Though still in beta, the platform has been asked to replicate its model in Chile for an open consultation on the constitution; New York City has recently approached the organization to help include public opinion in the city’s upcoming housing policy changes. Especially with the platform’s real-time, automated data analysis broken down by demographics, both governments and civil society organizations are yearning to see what the platform can enable.

While global clients may be clammering to use the platform, Legislation Lab is finding that it’s more difficult to get other local citizens as engaged. “In Kurdistan, people are just excited this platform exists. In a more mature democracy, people don’t care,” Tarik explains. When citizens feel political fatigue from false promises and continued negligence, an online platform isn’t going to be a comprehensive fix….(More)”

Give me location data, and I shall move the world


Marta Poblet at the Conversation: “Behind the success of the new wave of location based mobile apps taking hold around the world is digital mapping. Location data is core to popular ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft, but also to companies such as Amazon or Domino’s Pizza, which are testing drones for faster deliveries.

Last year, German delivery firm DHL launched its first “parcelcopter” to send medication to the island of Juist in the Northern Sea. In the humanitarian domain, drones are also being tested for disaster relief operations.

Better maps can help app-led companies gain a competitive edge, but it’s hard to produce them at a global scale. …

A flagship base map for the past ten years has been OpenStreetMap (OSM), also known as the “Wikipedia of mapping”. With more than two million registered users, OpenStreetMap aims to create a free map of the world. OSM volunteers have been particularly active in mapping disaster-affected areas such as Haiti, the Philippines or Nepal. A recent study reports how humanitarian response has been a driver of OSM’s evolution, “in part because open data and participatory ideals align with humanitarian work, but also because disasters are catalysts for organizational innovation”….

Intense competition for digital maps also flags the start of the self-driving car race. Google is already testing its prototypes outside Silicon Valley and Apple has been rumoured to work on a secret car project code named Titan.

Uber has partnered with Carnegie Mellon and Arizona Universities to work on vehicle safety and cheaper laser mapping systems. Tesla is also planning to make its electric cars self-driving.

Legal and ethical challenges are not to be underestimated either. Most countries impose strict limits on testing self-driving cars on public roads. Similar limitations apply to the use of civilian drones. And the ethics of fully autonomous cars is still in its infancy. Autonomous cars probably won’t be caught texting, but they will still be confronted with tough decisions when trying to avoid potential accidents. Current research engages engineers and philosophers to work on how to assist cars when making split-second decisions that can raise ethical dilemmas….(More)”

Index: Crime and Criminal Justice Data


The Living Library Index – inspired by the Harper’s Index – provides important statistics and highlights global trends in governance innovation. This installment focuses on crime and criminal justice data and was originally published in 2015.

This index provides information about the type of crime and criminal justice data collected, shared and used in the United States. Because it is well known that data related to the criminal justice system is often times unreliable, or just plain missing, this index also highlights some of the issues that stand in the way of accessing useful and in-demand statistics.

Data Collections: National Crime Statistics

  • Number of incident-based crime datasets created by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI): 2
    • Number of U.S. Statistical Agencies: 13
    • How many of those are focused on criminal justice: 1, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)
    • Number of data collections focused on criminal justice the BJS produces: 61
    • Number of federal-level APIs available for crime or criminal justice data: 1, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).
    • Frequency of the NCVS: annually
  • Number of Statistical Analysis Centers (SACs), organizations that are essentially clearinghouses for crime and criminal justice data for each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands: 53

Open data, data use and the impact of those efforts

  • Number of datasets that are returned when “criminal justice” is searched for on Data.gov: 417, including federal-, state- and city-level datasets
  • Number of datasets that are returned when “crime” is searched for on Data.gov: 281
  • The percentage that public complaints dropped after officers started wearing body cameras, according to a study done in Rialto, Calif.: 88
  • The percentage that reported incidents of officer use of force fell after officers started wearing body cameras, according to a study done in Rialto, Calif.: 5
  • The percent that crime decreased during an experiment in predictive policing in Shreveport, LA: 35  
  • Number of crime data sets made available by the Seattle Police Department – generally seen as a leader in police data innovation – on the Seattle.gov website: 4
    • Major crime stats by category in aggregate
    • Crime trend reports
    • Precinct data by beat
    • State sex offender database
  • Number of datasets mapped by the Seattle Police Department: 2:
      • 911 incidents
    • Police reports
  • Number of states where risk assessment tools must be used in pretrial proceedings to help determine whether an offender is released from jail before a trial: at least 11.

Police Data

    • Number of federally mandated databases that collect information about officer use of force or officer involved shootings, nationwide: 0
    • The year a crime bill was passed that called for data on excessive force to be collected for research and statistical purposes, but has never been funded: 1994
    • Number of police departments that committed to being a part of the White House’s Police Data Initiative: 21
    • Percentage of police departments surveyed in 2013 by the Office of Community Oriented Policing within the Department of Justice that are not using body cameras, therefore not collecting body camera data: 75

The criminal justice system

  • Parts of the criminal justice system where data about an individual can be created or collected: at least 6
    • Entry into the system (arrest)
    • Prosecution and pretrial
    • Sentencing
    • Corrections
    • Probation/parole
    • Recidivism

Sources

  • Crime Mapper. Philadelphia Police Department. Accessed August 24, 2014.

IMF Publishes Worldwide Government Revenue Database


IMF Press Release: “The IMF today published for the first time the World Revenue Longitudinal Dataset (WoRLD), which provides data on tax and non-tax revenues for 186 countries over the period 1990-2013. The database includes broad country coverage and time periods, and it is the result of combining in a consistent manner data from two other IMF publications — the IMF Government Finance Statistics and World Economic Outlook (WEO)– and drawing on the OECD’s Revenue Statistics and Revenue Statistics in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Vitor Gaspar, Director of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, said the purpose of releasing the database for general use is to “encourage and facilitate informed discussion and analysis of tax policy and administration for the full range of countries, the need for which was highlighted most recently during the Financing for Development conference in Addis Ababa.”

Constructing the database was a challenging exercise. An accompanying background note will be released in the coming weeks to explain the methodology. The database will be updated annually and will include information from IMF staff reports.

The database is available for download free of charge on the IMF e-Library data portal (http://data.imf.org/revenues).”

 

From Governmental Open Data Toward Governmental Open Innovation (GOI)


Chapter by Daniele Archibugi et al in The Handbook of Global Science, Technology, and Innovation: “Today, governments release governmental data that were previously hidden to the public. This democratization of governmental open data (OD) aims to increase transparency but also fuels innovation. Indeed, the release of governmental OD is a global trend, which has evolved into governmental open innovation (GOI). In GOI, governmental actors purposively manage the knowledge flows that span organizational boundaries and reveal innovation-related knowledge to the public with the aim to spur innovation for a higher economic and social welfare at regional, national, or global scale. GOI subsumes different revealing strategies, namely governmental OD, problem, and solution revealing. This chapter introduces the concept of GOI that has evolved from global OD efforts. It present a historical analysis of the emergence of GOI in four different continents, namely, Europe (UK and Denmark), North America (United States and Mexico), Australia, and China to highlight the emergence of GOI at a global scale….(More)”