Stories of Innovative Democracy at Local Level

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Special Issue of Field Actions Science Reports published in partnership with CIVICUS, coordinated by Dorothée Guénéheux, Clara Bosco, Agnès Chamayou and Henri Rouillé d’Orfeuil: “This special issue presents many and varied field actions, such as the promotion of the rights of young people, the resolution of the conflicts of agropastoral activities, or the process of participatory decisionmaking on community budgetary allocations, among many others. It addresses projects developed all over the world, on five continents, and covering both the northern and southern hemispheres. The legitimate initial queries and doubts that assailed those who started this publication as regards its feasibility, have been swept away by the enthusiasm and the large number of papers that have been sent in….”

 

How Wikipedia Data Is Revolutionizing Flu Forecasting

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Emerging Technology From the arXiv: “This time last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta launched a competition to find the best way to forecast the characteristics of the 2013-2014 influenza season using data gathered from the internet. Today, Kyle Hickmann from Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico and a few pals reveal the results of their model which used real-time data from Wikipedia to forecast the ground truth data gathered by the CDC that surfaces about two weeks later.

They say their model has the potential to transform flu forecasting from a black art to a modern science as well-founded as weather forecasting.
Flu takes between 3,000 and 49,000 lives each year in the U.S. so an accurate forecast can have a significant impact on the way society prepares for the epidemic. The current method of monitoring flu outbreaks is somewhat antiquated. It relies on a voluntary system in which public health officials report the percentage of patients they see each week with influenza-like illnesses. This is defined as the percentage of people with a temperature higher than 100 degrees, a cough and no other explanation other than flu.
These numbers give a sense of the incidence of flu at any instant but the accuracy is clearly limited. They do not, for example, account for people with flu who do not seek treatment or people with flu-like symptoms who seek treatment but do not have flu.
There is another significant problem. The network that reports this data is relatively slow. It takes about two weeks for the numbers to filter through the system so the data is always weeks old.
That’s why the CDC is interested in finding new ways to monitor the spread of flu in real time. Google, in particular, has used the number of searches for flu and flu-like symptoms to forecast flu in various parts of the world. That approach has had considerable success but also some puzzling failures. One problem, however, is that Google does not make its data freely available and this lack of transparency is a potential source of trouble for this kind of research.
So Hickmann and co have turned to Wikipedia. Their idea is that the variation in numbers of people accessing articles about flu is an indicator of the spread of the disease. And since Wikipedia makes this data freely available to any interested party, it is an entirely transparent source that is likely to be available for the foreseeable future….
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1410.7716 : Forecasting the 2013–2014 Influenza Season using Wikipedia”

Research Handbook On Transparency

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New book edited by Padideh Ala’i and Robert G. Vaughn: ‘”Transparency” has multiple, contested meanings. This broad-ranging volume accepts that complexity and thoughtfully contrasts alternative views through conceptual pieces, country cases, and assessments of policies–such as freedom of information laws, whistleblower protections, financial disclosure, and participatory policymaking procedures.’
– Susan Rose-Ackerman, Yale University Law School, US
In the last two decades transparency has become a ubiquitous and stubbornly ambiguous term. Typically understood to promote rule of law, democratic participation, anti-corruption initiatives, human rights, and economic efficiency, transparency can also legitimate bureaucratic power, advance undemocratic forms of governance, and aid in global centralization of power. This path-breaking volume, comprising original contributions on a range of countries and environments, exposes the many faces of transparency by allowing readers to see the uncertainties, inconsistencies and surprises contained within the current conceptions and applications of the term….
The expert contributors identify the goals, purposes and ramifications of transparency while presenting both its advantages and shortcomings. Through this framework, they explore transparency from a number of international and comparative perspectives. Some chapters emphasize cultural and national aspects of the issue, with country-specific examples from China, Mexico, the US and the UK, while others focus on transparency within global organizations such as the World Bank and the WTO. A number of relevant legal considerations are also discussed, including freedom of information laws, financial disclosure of public officials and whistleblower protection…”

Ebola and big data: Call for help

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The Economist: “WITH at least 4,500 people dead, public-health authorities in west Africa and worldwide are struggling to contain Ebola. Borders have been closed, air passengers screened, schools suspended. But a promising tool for epidemiologists lies unused: mobile-phone data.
When people make mobile-phone calls, the network generates a call data record (CDR) containing such information as the phone numbers of the caller and receiver, the time of the call and the tower that handled it—which gives a rough indication of the device’s location. This information provides researchers with an insight into mobility patterns. Indeed phone companies use these data to decide where to build base stations and thus improve their networks, and city planners use them to identify places to extend public transport.
But perhaps the most exciting use of CDRs is in the field of epidemiology. Until recently the standard way to model the spread of a disease relied on extrapolating trends from census data and surveys. CDRs, by contrast, are empirical, immediate and updated in real time. You do not have to guess where people will flee to or move. Researchers have used them to map malaria outbreaks in Kenya and Namibia and to monitor the public response to government health warnings during Mexico’s swine-flu epidemic in 2009. Models of population movements during a cholera outbreak in Haiti following the earthquake in 2010 used CDRs and provided the best estimates of where aid was most needed.
Doing the same with Ebola would be hard: in west Africa most people do not own a phone. But CDRs are nevertheless better than simulations based on stale, unreliable statistics. If researchers could track population flows from an area where an outbreak had occurred, they could see where it would be likeliest to break out next—and therefore where they should deploy their limited resources. Yet despite months of talks, and the efforts of the mobile-network operators’ trade association and several smaller UN agencies, telecoms firms have not let researchers use the data (see article).
One excuse is privacy, which is certainly a legitimate worry, particularly in countries fresh from civil war, or where tribal tensions exist. But the phone data can be anonymised and aggregated in a way that alleviates these concerns. A bigger problem is institutional inertia. Big data is a new field. The people who grasp the benefits of examining mobile-phone usage tend to be young, and lack the clout to free them for research use.”

Can Bottom-Up Institutional Reform Improve Service Delivery?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Working paper by Molina, Ezequiel: “This article makes three contributions to the literature. First, it provides new evidence of the impact of community monitoring interventions using a unique dataset from the Citizen Visible Audit (CVA) program in Colombia. In particular, this article studies the effect of social audits on citizens’ assessment of service delivery performance. The second contribution is the introduction a theoretical framework to understand the pathway of change, the necessary building blocks that are needed for social audits to be effective. Using this framework, the third contribution of this article is answering the following questions: i) under what conditions do citizens decide to monitor government activity and ii) under what conditions do governments facilitate citizen engagement and become more accountable.”

Traversing Digital Babel

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New book by Alon Peled: “The computer systems of government agencies are notoriously complex. New technologies are piled on older technologies, creating layers that call to mind an archaeological dig. Obsolete programming languages and closed mainframe designs offer barriers to integration with other agency systems. Worldwide, these unwieldy systems waste billions of dollars, keep citizens from receiving services, and even—as seen in interoperability failures on 9/11 and during Hurricane Katrina—cost lives. In this book, Alon Peled offers a groundbreaking approach for enabling information sharing among public sector agencies: using selective incentives to “nudge” agencies to exchange information assets. Peled proposes the establishment of a Public Sector Information Exchange (PSIE), through which agencies would trade information.
After describing public sector information sharing failures and the advantages of incentivized sharing, Peled examines the U.S. Open Data program, and the gap between its rhetoric and results. He offers examples of creative public sector information sharing in the United States, Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands, and Iceland. Peled argues that information is a contested commodity, and draws lessons from the trade histories of other contested commodities—including cadavers for anatomical dissection in nineteenth-century Britain. He explains how agencies can exchange information as a contested commodity through a PSIE program tailored to an individual country’s needs, and he describes the legal, economic, and technical foundations of such a program. Touching on issues from data ownership to freedom of information, Peled offers pragmatic advice to politicians, bureaucrats, technologists, and citizens for revitalizing critical information flows.”

New Technology and the Prevention of Violence and Conflict

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report edited by Francesco Mancini for the International Peace Institute: “In an era of unprecedented interconnectivity, this report explores the ways in which new technologies can assist international actors, governments, and civil society organizations to more effectively prevent violence and conflict. It examines the contributions that cell phones, social media, crowdsourcing, crisis mapping, blogging, and big data analytics can make to short-term efforts to forestall crises and to long-term initiatives to address the root causes of violence.
Five case studies assess the use of such tools in a variety of regions (Africa, Asia, Latin America) experiencing different types of violence (criminal violence, election-related violence, armed conflict, short-term crisis) in different political contexts (restrictive and collaborative governments).
Drawing on lessons and insights from across the cases, the authors outline a how-to guide for leveraging new technology in conflict-prevention efforts:
1. Examine all tools.
2. Consider the context.
3. Do no harm.
4. Integrate local input.
5. Help information flow horizontally.
6. Establish consensus regarding data use.
7. Foster partnerships for better results.”

Google’s Waze announces government data exchange program with 10 initial partners

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Josh Ong at TheNextWeb blog: “Waze today announced “Connected Citizens,” a new government partnership program that will see both parties exchange data in order to improve traffic conditions.

For the program, Waze will provide real-time anonymized crowdsourced traffic data to government departments in exchange for information on public projects like construction, road sensors, and pre-planned road closures.

The first 10 partners include:

  • Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • Barcelona, Spain and the Government of Catalonia
  • Jakarta, Indonesia
  • Tel Aviv, Israel
  • San Jose, Costa Rica
  • Boston, USA
  • State of Florida, USA
  • State of Utah, USA
  • Los Angeles County
  • The New York Police Department (NYPD)

Waze has also signed on five other government partners and has received applications from more than 80 municipal groups. The company ran an initial pilot program in Rio de Janeiro where it partnered with the city’s traffic control center to supplement the department’s sensor data with reports from Waze users.

At an event celebrating the launch, Di-Ann Eisnor, head of Growth at Waze noted that the data exchange will only include public alerts, such as accidents and closures.

“We don’t share anything beyond that, such as where individuals are located and who they are,” she said.

Eisnor also made it clear that Waze isn’t selling the data. GPS maker TomTom came under fire several years ago after customers learned that the company had sold their data to police departments to help find the best places to put speed traps.

“We keep [the data] clean by making sure we don’t have a business model around it,” Eisnor added.

Waze will requires that new Connected Citizens partners “prove their dedication to citizen engagement and commit to use Waze data to improve city efficiency.”…”

Paris awaits result of referendum on how to spend €20m of city budget

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

in The Guardian: “Given €20m (£15.5m) of taxpayers’ money, what would Parisians do to improve their city? The final answer is expected after voting closes on Wednesday in the French capital’s first “participatory budget”.
City-dwellers of all ages and nationalities were given the chance to choose from 15 projects, including walls of vegetation, pop-up swimming pools and mini “learning gardens” in schools. The most popular will be included in the 2015 city’s spending plan. Work will begin on them in January.
The city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, said allowing people to decide the destination of 5% of the city hall investment budget every year from now until 2020 was “handing the keys of the budget to the citizens”.
Parisians were given a week to vote, either online or at mairies (council buildings) in each of the city’s 20 arrondissements.
As voting ended on Wednesday, the most popular choices reflected concern with the environment and the shortage of green spaces in the city centre, and a desire to breathe new life into its gloomiest corners.
A €2m project to cover at least 40 “blind” walls with plants to cheer up local areas and create a “microclimate and biodiversity” had received the most votes.
The second most popular was a €1.5m scheme to use derelict and abandoned areas around and under the périphérique – the city’s ring road – for concerts, exhibitions, film projections and other community events.
Third was a €1m project to introduce “learning gardens” in all infant and primary schools….
There are similar “participative democracy” schemes in hundreds of cities, including Toronto, Canada, and Porto Alegre in Brazil, which was the first to introduce it, in 1989, as well as in smaller communes in France. However, nowhere else is believed to have allotted such a significant sum of public money.
Hidalgo said the idea was “a new tool for citizens to participate allowing all Parisians to propose and choose projects that will make the Paris of tomorrow. They can have a real effect on local life. I see it as a major democratic innovation.”