Open government data: Out of the box

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The Economist on “The open-data revolution has not lived up to expectations. But it is only getting started…

The app that helped save Mr Rich’s leg is one of many that incorporate government data—in this case, supplied by four health agencies. Six years ago America became the first country to make all data collected by its government “open by default”, except for personal information and that related to national security. Almost 200,000 datasets from 170 outfits have been posted on the data.gov website. Nearly 70 other countries have also made their data available: mostly rich, well-governed ones, but also a few that are not, such as India (see chart). The Open Knowledge Foundation, a London-based group, reckons that over 1m datasets have been published on open-data portals using its CKAN software, developed in 2010.

E-Gov’s Untapped Potential for Cutting the Public Workforce

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Robert D. Atkinson at Governing: “Since the flourishing of the Internet in the mid-1990s, e-government advocates have promised that information technology not only would make it easier to access public services but also would significantly increase government productivity and lower costs. Compared to the private sector, however, this promise has remained largely unfulfilled, in part because of a resistance to employing technology to replace government workers.

It’s not surprising, then, that state budget directors and budget committees usually look at IT as a cost rather than as a strategic investment that can produce a positive financial return for taxpayers. Until governments make a strong commitment to using IT to increase productivity — including as a means of workforce reduction — it will remain difficult to bring government into the 21st-century digital economy.

The benefits can be sizeable. My organization, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, estimates that if states focus on using IT to drive productivity, they stand to save more than $11 billion over the next five years. States can achieve these productivity gains in two primary ways:

First, they can use e-government to substitute for person-to-person interactions. For example, by moving just nine state services online — from one-stop business registration to online vehicle-license registration — Utah reduced the need for government employees to interact with citizens, saving an average of $13 per transaction.

And second, they can use IT to optimize performance and cut costs. In 2013, for example, Pennsylvania launched a mobile app to streamline the inspection process for roads and bridges, reducing the time it took for manual data entry. Inspectors saved about 15 minutes per survey, which added up to a savings of over $550,000 in 2013.

So if technology can cut costs, why has e-government not lived up to its original promise? One key reason is that most state governments have focused first and foremost on using IT to improve service quality and access rather than to increase productivity. In part, this is because boosting productivity involves reducing headcount, and state chief information officers and other policymakers often are unwilling to openly advocate for using technology in this way for fear that it will generate opposition from government workers and their unions. This is why replacing labor with modern IT tools has long been the third rail for the public-sector IT community.

This is not necessarily the case in some other nations that have moved to aggressively deploy IT to reduce headcount. The first goal of the Danish Agency for Digitisation’s strategic plan is “a productive and efficient public sector.” To get there, the agency plans to focus on automation of public administrative procedures. Denmark even introduced a rule in which all communications with government need to be done electronically, eliminating telephone receptionists at municipal offices. Likewise, the United Kingdom’s e-government strategy set a goal of increasing productivity by 2.5 percent, including through headcount cuts.

Another reason e-government has not lived up to its full promise is that many state IT systems are woefully out of date, especially compared to the systems the corporate sector uses. But if CIOs and other advocates of modern digital government are going to be able to make their case effectively for resources to bring their technology into the 21st century, they will need to make a more convincing bottom-line case to appropriators. This argument should be about saving money, including through workforce reduction.

Policymakers should base this case not just on savings for government but also for the state’s businesses and citizens….(More)”

Questioning Smart Urbanism: Is Data-Driven Governance a Panacea?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Alice Tang at the Chicago Policy Review: “In the era of data explosion, urban planners are increasingly relying on real-time, streaming data generated by “smart” devices to assist with city management. “Smart cities,” referring to cities that implement pervasive and ubiquitous computing in urban planning, are widely discussed in academia, business, and government. These cities are characterized not only by their use of technology but also by their innovation-driven economies and collaborative, data-driven city governance. Smart urbanism can seem like an effective strategy to create more efficient, sustainable, productive, and open cities. However, there are emerging concerns about the potential risks in the long-term development of smart cities, including political neutrality of big data, technocratic governance, technological lock-ins, data and network security, and privacy risks.

In a study entitled, “The Real-Time City? Big Data and Smart Urbanism,” Rob Kitchin provides a critical reflection on the potential negative effects of data-driven city governance on social development—a topic he claims deserves greater governmental, academic, and social attention.

In contrast to traditional datasets that rely on samples or are aggregated to a coarse scale, “big data” is huge in volume, high in velocity, and diverse in variety. Since the early 2000s, there has been explosive growth in data volume due to the rapid development and implementation of technology infrastructure, including networks, information management, and data storage. Big data can be generated from directed, automated, and volunteered sources. Automated data generation is of particular interest to urban planners. One example Kitchin cites is urban sensor networks, which allow city governments to monitor the movements and statuses of individuals, materials, and structures throughout the urban environment by analyzing real-time data.

With the huge amount of streaming data collected by smart infrastructure, many city governments use real-time analysis to manage different aspects of city operations. There has been a recent trend in centralizing data streams into a single hub, integrating all kinds of surveillance and analytics. These one-stop data centers make it easier for analysts to cross-reference data, spot patterns, identify problems, and allocate resources. The data are also often accessible by field workers via operations platforms. In London and some other cities, real-time data are visualized on “city dashboards” and communicated to citizens, providing convenient access to city information.

However, the real-time city is not a flawless solution to all the problems faced by city managers. The primary concern is the politics of big, urban data. Although raw data are often perceived as neutral and objective, no data are free of bias; the collection of data is a subjective process that can be shaped by various confounding factors. The presentation of data can also be manipulated to answer a specific question or enact a particular political vision….(More)”

The Power of Nudges, for Good and Bad

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Richard H. Thaler in the New York Times: “Nudges, small design changes that can markedly affect individual behavior, have been catching on. These techniques rely on insights from behavioral science, and when used ethically, they can be very helpful. But we need to be sure that they aren’t being employed to sway people to make bad decisions that they will later regret.

Whenever I’m asked to autograph a copy of “Nudge,” the book I wrote with Cass Sunstein, the Harvard law professor, I sign it, “Nudge for good.” Unfortunately, that is meant as a plea, not an expectation.

Three principles should guide the use of nudges:

■ All nudging should be transparent and never misleading.

■ It should be as easy as possible to opt out of the nudge, preferably with as little as one mouse click.

■ There should be good reason to believe that the behavior being encouraged will improve the welfare of those being nudged.
As far as I know, the government teams in Britain and the United States that have focused on nudging have followed these guidelines scrupulously. But the private sector is another matter. In this domain, I see much more troubling behavior.

For example, last spring I received an email telling me that the first prominent review of a new book of mine had appeared: It was in The Times of London. Eager to read the review, I clicked on a hyperlink, only to run into a pay wall. Still, I was tempted by an offer to take out a one-month trial subscription for the price of just £1. As both a consumer and producer of newspaper articles, I have no beef with pay walls. But before signing up, I read the fine print. As expected, I would have to provide credit card information and would be automatically enrolled as a subscriber when the trial period expired. The subscription rate would then be £26 (about $40) a month. That wasn’t a concern because I did not intend to become a paying subscriber. I just wanted to read that one article.

But the details turned me off. To cancel, I had to give 15 days’ notice, so the one-month trial offer actually was good for just two weeks. What’s more, I would have to call London, during British business hours, and not on a toll-free number. That was both annoying and worrying. As an absent-minded American professor, I figured there was a good chance I would end up subscribing for several months, and that reading the article would end up costing me at least £100….

These examples are not unusual. Many companies are nudging purely for their own profit and not in customers’ best interests. In a recent column in The New York Times, Robert Shiller called such behavior “phishing.” Mr. Shiller and George Akerlof, both Nobel-winning economists, have written a book on the subject, “Phishing for Phools.”

Some argue that phishing — or evil nudging — is more dangerous in government than in the private sector. The argument is that government is a monopoly with coercive power, while we have more choice in the private sector over which newspapers we read and which airlines we fly.

I think this distinction is overstated. In a democracy, if a government creates bad policies, it can be voted out of office. Competition in the private sector, however, can easily work to encourage phishing rather than stifle it.

One example is the mortgage industry in the early 2000s. Borrowers were encouraged to take out loans that they could not repay when real estate prices fell. Competition did not eliminate this practice, because it was hard for anyone to make money selling the advice “Don’t take that loan.”

As customers, we can help one another by resisting these come-ons. The more we turn down questionable offers like trip insurance and scrutinize “one month” trials, the less incentive companies will have to use such schemes. Conversely, if customers reward firms that act in our best interests, more such outfits will survive and flourish, and the options available to us will improve….(More)

Government as a Platform: a historical and architectural analysis

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Bendik Bygstad and Francis D’Silva: “A national administration is dependent on its archives and registers, for many purposes, such as tax collection, enforcement of law, economic governance, and welfare services. Today, these services are based on large digital infrastructures, which grow organically in volume and scope. Building on a critical realist approach we investigate a particularly successful infrastructure in Norway called Altinn, and ask: what are the evolutionary mechanisms for a successful “government as a platform”? We frame our study with two perspectives; a historical institutional perspective that traces the roots of Altinn back to the Middle Ages, and an architectural perspective that allows for a more detailed analysis of the consequences of digitalization and the role of platforms. We offer two insights from our study: we identify three evolutionary mechanisms of national registers, and we discuss a future scenario of government platforms as “digital commons”…(More)”

Open Data: Six Stories About Impact in the UK

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Laura Bacon at Omidyar Network: “In 2010, the year the United Kingdom launched its open data portal, a Transparency & Accountability Initiative report highlighted both the promise and potential of open data to improve services and create economic growth.

In the five years since, the UK’s progress in opening its data has been pioneering and swift, but not without challenges and questions about impact. It’s this qualified success that prompted us to commission this report in an effort to understand if the promise and potential of open data are being realized, and, specifically, to…

… explore and document open data’s social, cultural, political, and economic impact;

… shine a light on the range of sectors and ways in which open data can make a difference; and

… profile the open data value chain, including its supply, demand, use, and re-use.

The report’s author, Becky Hogge, finds that open data has had catalytic and significant impact and that time will likely reveal even further value. She also flags critical challenges and obstacles, including closed datasets, valuable data not currently being collected, and important privacy considerations….Download full report here.”

Crowdsourced pollution data via smartphones

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “Citizens in eleven cities in Europe were recently recruited to help crowdsource pollution measurements, as part of the large-scale research project iSPEX-EU. Participants used their smartphones, an app and a lens called a spectropolarimeter, to collect data about air quality across the continent, which will be used by iSPEX to make comprehensive maps.

The project ran for six weeks and saw thousands of measurements taken in Athens, Barcelona, Belgrade, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Manchester, Milan, Rome, and Toulouse. To contribute, citizens registered their interest, downloaded the free app and were sent an iSPEX lens. Then, on a clear day they placed the lens over their smartphone camera and photographed the sky in multiple directions. The app registered the location and direction of each picture and measured the light spectrum and the polarization of the light.
From the data, iSPEX are able to calculate how much fine dust — known as aerosols — there is in the atmosphere in that place and create a map showing levels of air pollution across Europe. The crowdsourced data can be used to aid government research by filling in any blank spaces and ensuring that the official data is honest.

We’ve seen attempts at similar projects before, such asSmart Citizen, but iSPEX EU benefits from the flexibility and simplicity of its tools. Smartphones have been successfully harnessed as scientific apparatus, enabling researchers to crowdsource data about issues including cancer and tree disease….(More)”

New traffic app and disaster prevention technology road tested

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Psych.org: “A new smartphone traffic app tested by citizens in Dublin, Ireland allows users to give feedback on traffic incidents, enabling traffic management centres to respond quicker when collisions and other incidents happen around the city. The ‘CrowdAlert’ app, which is now available for download, is one of the key components utilised in the EU-funded INSIGHT project and a good example of how smartphones and social networks can be harnessed to improve public services and safety.

‘We are witnessing an explosion in the quantity, quality, and variety of available information, fuelled in large part by advances in sensor networking, the availability of low-cost sensor-enabled devices and by the widespread adoption of powerful smart-phones,’ explains  coordinator professor Dimitrios Gunopulos from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. ‘These revolutionary technologies are driving the development and adoption of applications where mobile devices are used for continuous data sensing and analysis.’

The project also developed a novel citywide real-time traffic monitoring tool, the ‘INSIGHT System’, which was tested in real conditions in the Dublin City control room, along with nationwide disaster monitoring technologies. The INSIGHT system was shown to provide early warnings to experts at situation centres, enabling them to monitor situations in real-time, including disasters with potentially nation-wide impacts such as severe weather conditions, floods and subsequent knock-on events such as fires and power outages.

The project’s results will be of interest to public services, which have until now lacked the necessary infrastructure for handling and integrating miscellaneous data streams, including data from static and mobile sensors as well as information coming from social network sources, in real-time. Providing cities with the ability to manage emergency situations with enhanced capabilities will also open up new markets for network technologies….(More)”

Introducing Government as a Platform

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Peter Williams, Jan Gravesen and Trinette Brownhill in Government Executive: “Governments around the world are facing competitive pressures and expectations from their constituents that are prompting them to innovate and dissolve age-old structures. Many governments have introduced a digital strategy in which at least one of the goals is aimed at bringing their organizations closer to citizens and businesses.

To achieve this, ideally IT and data in government would not be constrained by the different functional towers that make up the organization, as is often the case. They would not be constrained by complex, monolithic application design philosophies and lengthy implementation cycles, nor would development be constrained by the assumption that all activity has to be executed by the government itself.

Instead, applications would be created rapidly and cheaply, and modules would be shared as reusable blocks of code and integrated data. It would be relatively straightforward to integrate data from multiple departments to enable a focus on the complex needs of, say, a single parent who is diabetic and a student. Delivery would be facilitated in the manner best required, or preferred, by the citizen. Third parties would also be able to access these modules of code and data to build higher value government services that multiple agencies would then buy into. The code would run on a cloud infrastructure that maximizes the efficiency in which processing resources are used.

GaaP an organized set of ideas and principles that allows organizations to approach these ideals. It allows governments to institute more efficient sharing of IT resources as well as unlock data and functionality via application programming interfaces to allow third parties to build higher value citizen services. In doing so, security plays a crucial role protecting the privacy of constituents and enterprise assets.

We see increasingly well-established examples of GaaP services in many parts of the world. The notion has significantly influenced strategic thinking in the UK, Australia, Denmark, Canada and Singapore. In particular, it has evolved in a deliberate way in the UK’s Government Data Services, building on the Blairite notion of “joined up government”; in Australia’s e-government strategy and its myGov program; and as a significant influencer in Singapore’s entire approach to building its “smarter nation” infrastructure.

Collaborative Government

GaaP assumes a transformational shift in efficiency, effectiveness and transparency, in which agencies move toward a collaborative government and away from today’s siloed approach. That collaboration may be among agencies, but also with other entities (nongovernmental organizations, the private sector, citizens, etc.).

GaaP’s focus on collaboration enables public agencies to move away from their traditional towered approach to IT and increasingly make use of shared and composable services offered by a common – usually a virtualized, cloud-enabled – platform. This leads to more efficient use of development resources, platforms and IT support. We are seeing examples of this already with a group of townships in New York state and also with two large Spanish cities that are embarking on this approach.

While efficient resource and service sharing is central to the idea of GaaP, it is not sufficient. The idea is that GaaP must allow app developers, irrespective of whether they are citizens, private organizations or other public agencies, to develop new value-added services using published government data and APIs. In this sense, the platform becomes a connecting layer between public agencies’ systems and data on the one hand, and private citizens, organizations and other public agencies on the other.

In its most fundamental form, GaaP is able to:

  • Consume data and government services from existing departmental systems.
  • Consume syndicated services from platform-as-a-service or software-as-a-service providers in the public marketplace.
  • Securely unlock these data and services and allow third parties –citizens, private organizations or other agencies – to combine services and data into higher-order services or more citizen-centric or business-centric services.

It is the openness, the secure interoperability, and the ability to compose new services on the basis of existing services and data that define the nature of the platform.

The Challenges

At one time, the challenge of creating a GaaP structure would have been technology: Today, it is governance….(More)”

What we can learn from the failure of Google Flu Trends

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

David Lazer and Ryan Kennedy at Wired: “….The issue of using big data for the common good is far more general than Google—which deserves credit, after all, for offering the occasional peek at their data. These records exist because of a compact between individual consumers and the corporation. The legalese of that compact is typically obscure (how many people carefully read terms and conditions?), but the essential bargain is that the individual gets some service, and the corporation gets some data.

What is left out that bargain is the public interest. Corporations and consumers are part of a broader society, and many of these big data archives offer insights that could benefit us all. As Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, has said, “We must remember that technology remains a tool of humanity.” How can we, and corporate giants, then use these big data archives as a tool to serve humanity?

Google’s sequel to GFT, done right, could serve as a model for collaboration around big data for the public good. Google is making flu-related search data available to the CDC as well as select research groups. A key question going forward will be whether Google works with these groups to improve the methodology underlying GFT. Future versions should, for example, continually update the fit of the data to flu prevalence—otherwise, the value of the data stream will rapidly decay.

This is just an example, however, of the general challenge of how to build models of collaboration amongst industry, government, academics, and general do-gooders to use big data archives to produce insights for the public good. This came to the fore with the struggle (and delay) for finding a way to appropriately share mobile phone data in west Africa during the Ebola epidemic (mobile phone data are likely the best tool for understanding human—and thus Ebola—movement). Companies need to develop efforts to share data for the public good in a fashion that respects individual privacy.

There is not going to be a single solution to this issue, but for starters, we are pushing for a “big data” repository in Boston to allow holders of sensitive big data to share those collections with researchers while keeping them totally secure. The UN has its Global Pulse initiative, setting up collaborative data repositories around the world. Flowminder, based in Sweden, is a nonprofit dedicated to gathering mobile phone data that could help in response to disasters. But these are still small, incipient, and fragile efforts.

The question going forward now is how build on and strengthen these efforts, while still guarding the privacy of individuals and the proprietary interests of the holders of big data….(More)”