Voice or chatter? Making ICTs work for transformative citizen engagement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Research Report Summary by Making All Voices Count: “What are the conditions in democratic governance that make information and communication technology (ICT)-mediated citizen engagement transformative? While substantial scholarship exists on the role of the Internet and digital technologies in triggering moments of political disruption and cascading upheavals, academic interest in the sort of deep change that transforms institutional cultures of democratic governance, occurring in ‘slow time’, has been relatively muted.

This study attempts to fill this gap. It is inspired by the idea of participation in everyday democracy and seeks to explore how ICT-mediated citizen engagement can promote democratic governance and amplify citizen voice.

ICT-mediated citizen engagement is defined by this study as comprising digitally-mediated information outreach, dialogue, consultation, collaboration and decision-making, initiated either by government or by citizens, towards greater government accountability and responsiveness.

The study involved empirical explorations of citizen engagement initiatives in eight sites – two in Asia (India and Philippines), one in Africa (South Africa), three in South America (Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay) and two in Europe (Netherlands and Spain).

This summary of the larger Research Report presents recommendations for how public policies and programmes can promote ICTs for citizen engagement and transformative citizenship.  In doing so it provides an overview of the discussion the authors undertake on three inter-related dimensions, namely:

  • calibrating digitally mediated citizen participation as a measure of political empowerment and equality
  • designing techno-public spaces as bastions of inclusive democracy
  • ensuring that the rule of law upholds democratic principles in digitally mediated governance…(More. Full research report)

How are Italian Companies Embracing Open Data?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
open-data-200-italy (1)Are companies embracing the use of open government data? How, why and what data is being leveraged? To answer these questions, the GovLab started a project three years ago, Open Data 500, to map and assess — in a comparative manner, across sectors and countries — the private sector’s use of open data to develop new products and services, and create social value.

Today we are launching Open Data 200 Italy, in partnership with Fondazione Bruno Kessler, which seeks to showcase the breadth and depth of companies using open data in Italy.

OD200 Italy is the first and only platform to map the use of open data by companies in Italy. …

Our findings show there is a growing ecosystem around open data in Italy that goes beyond traditional open data advocates. …

The OD200 Italy project shows the diversity of data being used, which makes it necessary to keep open data broad and sustained.…

“The merits and use of open data for businesses are often praised but not supported by evidence. OD200 Italy is a great contribution to the evidence base of who, how and why corporations are leveraging open data,” said Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder of The GovLab and Chief Research and Development Officer. “Policy makers, practitioners and researchers can leverage the data generated by this initiative to improve the supply and use of open data, or to generate new insights. As such, OD200 Italy is a new open data set on open data.”…(More)”.

Active Citizenship in Europe: Practices and Demands in the EU, Italy, Turkey and the UK

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Cristiano Bee: “…provides an overview of key issues in the debate concerning the emergence of active citizenship in Europe.

The specific focus of enquiry is the promotion of patterns of civic and political engagement and civic and political participation by the EU and the relative responses drawn by organizations of the civil society operating at the supranational level and in Italy, Turkey and the UK. More specifically, it addresses key debates on the engagement and participation of organized civil society across the permanent state of euro-crisis, considering the production of policy discourses along the continuum that characterized three subsequent and interrelated emergency situations (democratic, financial and migration crises) that have hit Europe since 2005. …(More)”.

Features of Parliamentary Websites in Selected Jurisdictions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by The Law Library of Congress, Global Legal Research Center: “In recent years, parliaments around the world have enhanced their websites in order to improve access to legislative information and other parliamentary resources. Innovative features allow constituents and researchers to locate and utilize detailed information on laws and lawmaking in various ways. These include tracking tools and alerts, apps, the use of open data technology, and different search functions. In order to demonstrate some of the developments in this area, staff from the Global Legal Research Directorate of the Law Library of Congress surveyed the official parliamentary websites of fifty countries from all regions of the world, plus the website of the European Parliament. In some cases, information on more than one website is provided where separate sites have been established for different chambers of the national parliament, bringing the total number of individual websites surveyed to seventy.

While the information on the parliamentary websites is primarily in the national language of the particular country, around forty of the individual websites surveyed were found to provide at least limited information in one or more other languages. The European Parliament website can be translated into any of the twenty-four official languages of the members of the European Union.

All of the parliamentary websites included in the survey have at least basic browse tools that allow users to view legislation in a list format, and that may allow for viewing in, for example, date or title order. All of the substantive websites also enable searching, often providing a general search box for the whole site at the top of each page as well as more advanced search options for different types of documents. Some sites provide various facets that can be used to further narrow searches.

Around thirty-nine of the individual websites surveyed provide users with some form of tracking or alert function to receive updates on certain documents (including proposed legislation), parliamentary news, committee activities, or other aspects of the website. This includes the ability to subscribe to different RSS feeds and/or email alerts.

The ability to watch live or recorded proceedings of different parliaments, including debates within the relevant chamber as well as committee hearings, is a common feature of the parliamentary websites surveyed. Fifty-eight of the websites surveyed featured some form of video, including links to dedicated YouTube channels, specific pages where users can browse and search for embedded videos, and separate video services or portals that are linked to or viewable from the main site. Some countries also make videos available on dedicated mobile-friendly sites or apps, including Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. In total, apps containing parliamentary information are provided in just fourteen of the countries surveyed. In comparison, the parliamentary websites of thirty countries are available in mobile-friendly formats, enabling easy access to information and different functionalities using smartphones and tablets.

The table also provides information on some of the additional special features available on the surveyed websites. Examples include dedicated sites or pages that provide educational information about the parliament for children (Argentina, El Salvador, Germany, Israel, Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey); calendar functions, including those that allow users to save information to their personal calendars or otherwise view information about different types of proceedings or events (available on at least twenty websites); and open data portals or other features that allow information to be downloaded in bulk for reuse or analysis, including through the use of APIs (application programming interfaces) (at least six countries)….(More)”.

Fly on the Facebook Wall: How UNHCR Listened to Refugees on Social Media

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 at Social Media for Good: “In “From a Refugee Perspective” UNHCR shows how to conduct meaningful, qualitative social media monitoring in a humanitarian crisis.

From A Refugee PerspectiveBetween March and December 2016 the project team (one project manager, one Pashto and Dari speaker, two native Arabic speakers and an English copy editor) monitored Facebook conversations related to flight and migration in the Afghan and Arabic speaking communities.

To do this, the team created Facebook accounts, joined relevant Facebook groups and summarised their findings in weekly monitoring reports to UNHCR staff and other interested people. I received these reports every week while working as the UNHCR team leader for the Communicating with Communities team in Greece and found them very useful since they gave me insights into what were some of the burning issues that week.

The project did not monitor Twitter because Twitter was not widely used by the communities.

In “From a Refugee Perspective” UNHCR has now summarised their findings from the ten-month project. The main thing I really liked about this project is that UNHCR invested the resources for proper qualitative social media monitoring, as opposed to the purely quantitative analyses that we see so often and which rarely go beyond keyword counting. To complement the social media information, the team held focus group and other discussions with refugees who had arrived in Europe. Among other things, these discussion provided information on how the refugees and migrants are consuming and exchanging information (related: see this BBC Media Action report).

Of course, this type of research is much more resource intensive than what most organisations have in mind when they want to do social media monitoring, but this report shows that additional resources can also result in more meaningful information.

Smuggling prices

Smuggling prices according to monitored Facebook page. Source: From A Refugee Perspective

Monitoring the conversations on Facebook enabled the team to track trends, such as the rise and fall of prices that smugglers asked for different routes (see image). In addition, it provided fascinating insights into how smugglers are selling their services online….(More)”

The Digital Footprint of Europe’s Refugees

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Pew Research Center: “Migrants leaving their homes for a new country often carry a smartphone to communicate with family that may have stayed behind and to help search for border crossings, find useful information about their journey or search for details about their destination. The digital footprints left by online searches can provide insight into the movement of migrants as they transit between countries and settle in new locations, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of refugee flows between the Middle East and Europe.1

Refugees from just two Middle Eastern countries — Syria and Iraq — made up a combined 38% of the record 1.3 million people who arrived and applied for asylum in the European Union, Norway and Switzerland in 2015 and a combined 37% of the 1.2 million first-time asylum applications in 2016. Most Syrian and Iraqi refugees during this period crossed from Turkey to Greece by sea, before continuing on to their final destinations in Europe.

Since many refugees from Syria and Iraq speak Arabic as their native, if not only, language, it is possible to identify key moments in their migration by examining trends in internet searches conducted in Turkey using Arabic, as opposed to the dominant Turkic languages in that country. For example, Turkey-based searches for the word “Greece” in Arabic closely mirror 2015 and 2016 fluctuations in the number of refugees crossing the Aegean Sea to Greece. The searches also provide a window into how migrants planned to move across borders — for example, the search term “Greece” was often combined with “smuggler.” In addition, an hourly analysis of searches in Turkey shows spikes in the search term “Greece” during early morning hours, a typical time for migrants making their way across the Mediterranean.

Comparing online searches with migration data

This report’s analysis compares data from internet searches with government and international agency refugee arrival and asylum application data in Europe from 2015 and 2016. Internet searches were captured from Google Trends, a publicly-available analytical tool that standardizes search volume by language and location over time. The analysis examines searches in Arabic, done in Turkey and Germany, for selected words such as “Greece” or “German” that can be linked to migration patterns. For a complete list of search terms employed, see the methodology. Google releases hourly, daily and weekly search data.

Google does not release the actual number of searches conducted but provides a metric capturing the relative change in searches over a specified time period. The metric ranges from 0 to 100 and indicates low- or high-volume search activity for the time period. Predicting or deciphering human behavior from the analysis of internet searches has limitations and remains experimental. But, internet search data does offer a potentially promising way to explore migration flows crossing international borders.

Migration data cited in this report come from two sources. The first is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which provides data on new arrivals into Greece on a monthly basis. The second is first-time asylum applications from Eurostat, Europe’s statistical agency. Since both Syrian and Iraqi asylum seekers have had fairly high acceptance rates in Europe, it is likely that most Syrian and Iraqi migrants entering during 2015 and 2016 were counted by UNHCR and applied for asylum with European authorities.

The unique circumstances of this Syrian and Iraqi migration — the technology used by refugees, the large and sudden movement of refugees and language groups in transit and destination countries — presents a unique opportunity to integrate the analysis of online searches and migration data. The conditions that permit this type of analysis may not apply in other circumstances where migrants are moving between countries….(More)”

Social Network for Doctors to Transform Medical Crowdsourcing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “SERMO, a global social network for physicians has expanded its footprint globally to revolutionize medical crowdsourcing. SERMO is now open to physicians on all seven continents, delivering on its promise from day one to unite physicians from every corner of the globe, ensuring the free flow of expert information amongst physicians.

Now available in more than 150 countries, physicians from both rural and urban areas, in developed and developing nations, can be exposed to the same expertise from their peers, providing an even higher level of care to their patients.

According to one orthopedic surgeon from Greece, SERMO offers “Exciting doctor interactions, is very helpful with difficult cases and always prompts us with very interesting social topics and discussions. It is a form of collective intelligence that allows individuals to achieve more than they could on their own.”

Combined with last month’s Drug Ratings launch, physicians will now be able to evaluate prescription drugs, in addition to communicating with peers and solving tough patient cases. These tools are revolutionizing the way physicians exchange and obtain information, as well as offer personalized care to their patients. With over 300,000 drug ratings gathered since the beta launch began last year, Ratings enables doctors globally to share prescription drug treatment experiences with their peers, transforming how physicians around the world make prescribing decisions in their daily practice.

SERMO’s membership has grown from 130,000 in 2012, when SERMO merged with WorldOne, to 650,000 total members prior to today’s expansion – now, the network includes close to 800,000 physicians….(More)”.

What next for digital social innovation? Realising the potential of people and technology to tackle social challenges

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Matt Stokes et al at nesta: “This report, and accompanying guide, produced as part of the DSI4EU project, maps the projects and organisations using technology to tackle social challenges across Europe, and explores the barriers to the growth of digital social innovation.

Key findings

  • There are almost 2,000 organisations and over 1,000 projects involved in digital social innovation (DSI) across Europe, with the highest concentration of activity in Western and Southern Europe.
  • Despite this activity, there are relatively few examples of DSI initiatives delivering impact at scale. The growth of DSI is being held back by barriers at the system level and at the level of individual projects.
  • Projects and organisations involved in DSI are still relatively poorly connected to each other. There is a pressing need to grow strong networks within and across countries and regions to boost collaboration and knowledge-sharing.
  • The growth of DSI is being held back by lack of funding and investment across the continent, especially outside Western Europe, and structural digital skills shortages.
  • Civil society organisations and the public sector have been slow to adopt DSI, despite the opportunity it offers them to deliver better services at a lower cost, although there are emerging examples of good practice from across Europe.
  • Practitioners struggle to engage citizens and users, understand and measure the impact of their digital social innovations, and plan for growth and sustainability.

Across Europe, thousands of people, projects and organisations are using digital technologies to tackle social challenges in fields like healthcare, education, employment, democratic participation, migration and the environment. We call this phenomenon digital social innovation.

Through crowdmapping DSI across Europe, we find that there are almost 2,000 organisations and over 1,000 projects using open and collaborative technologies to tackle social challenges. We complement this analysis by piloting experimental data methods such as Twitter analysis to understand in further depth the distribution of DSI across Europe. You can explore the data on projects and organisations on digitalsocial.eu.

However, despite widespread activity, few initiatives have grown to deliver impact at scale, to be institutionalised, or to become “the new normal”.

In this research, we find that weak networks between stakeholders, insufficient funding and investment, skills shortages, and slow adoption by public sector and established civil society organisations is holding back the growth of DSI…(More)”.

Tech Companies Should Speak Up for Refugees, Not Only High-Skilled Immigrants

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Mark Latonero at Harvard Business Review: “The Trump administration’s latest travel ban is back in U.S. federal court. The Fourth Circuit, based in Virginia, and Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, are hearing cases challenging the latest executive order banning immigrants and refugees from six Muslim majority countries from entering the United States. Joining the fray are 162 technology companies, whose lawyers collectively filed an amicus brief to both courts. Amazon, eBay, Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Uber are among the companies urging federal judges to rule against the executive order, detailing why it is unjust and how it would hurt their businesses.

While the 40-page brief is filled with arguments in support of immigration, it hardly speaks about refugees, except to note that those seeking protection should be welcomed. Any multinational company with a diverse workforce would be concerned about limits to international hiring and employee travel. But tech companies should also be concerned about the refugee populations that depend on their digital services for safety and survival.

In researching migration and the refugee crisis in Europe, my team and I interviewed over 140 refugees from Syria, and I’ve learned that technology has been crucial to those fleeing war and violence across the Middle East and North Africa. Services like Google Maps, Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype, and Western Union have helped refugees find missing loved ones or locate safe places to sleep. Mobile phones have been essential — refugees have even used them on sinking boats to call rescue officials patrolling the Mediterranean.

Refugees’ reliance on these platforms demonstrates what tech companies often profess: that innovation can empower people to improve their lives and society. Tech companies did not intend for their tools to facilitate one of the largest mass movements of refugees in history, but they have a responsibility to look out for the safety and security of the vulnerable consumers using their products.

Some tech companies have intervened directly in the refugee crisis. Google has created apps to help refugees in Greece find medical facilities and other services; Facebook promised to provide free Wi-Fi in U.N. refugee camps. A day after President Trump issued the first travel ban, which initially suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, Airbnb announced it would provide free housing to refugees left stranded….

The sector should extend these efforts by making sure its technologies aren’t used to target broad groups of people based on nationality or religion. Already the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) is asking for the social media accounts — even passwords — of visitors from other counties. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has filed complaints against the CPB, stating that Muslim American citizens have been subjected to enhanced screening that includes scrutiny of their social media accounts and cell phones.

Trump has talked about creating a database to identify and register Muslims in America, including refugees. A number of companies, including IBM, Microsoft, and Salesforce, have stated they will not help build a Muslim registry if asked by the government. In addition, a group of nearly 3,000 American tech employees signed an online pledge promising they would not develop data processing systems to help the U.S. government target individuals based on race, religion, or national origin….(More)”.

Blockchain 2.0: How it could overhaul the fabric of democracy and identity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Colm Gorey at SiliconRepublic: “…not all blockchain technologies need to be about making money. A recent report issued by the European Commission discussed the possible ways it could change people’s lives….
While many democratic nations still prefer a traditional paper ballot system to an electronic voting system over fears that digital votes could be tampered with, new technologies are starting to change that opinion.
One suggestion is blockchain enabled e-voting (BEV), which would take control from a central authority and put it back in the hands of the voter.
As a person’s vote would be timestamped with details of their last vote thanks to the encrypted algorithm, an illegitimate one would be spotted more easily by a digital system, or even those within digital-savvy communities.
Despite still being a fledgling technology, BEV has already begun working on the local scale of politics within Europe, such as the internal elections of political parties in Denmark.
But perhaps at this early stage, its actual use in governmental elections at a national level will remain limited, depending on “the extent to which it can reflect the values and structure of society, politics and democracy”, according to the EU….blockchain has also been offered as an answer to sustaining the public service, particularly with transparency of where people’s taxes are going.
One governmental concept could allow blockchain to form the basis for a secure method of distributing social welfare or other state payments, without the need for divisions running expensive and time-consuming fraud investigations.
Irish start-up Aid:Tech is one noticeable example that is working with Serbia to do just that, along with its efforts to use blockchain to create a transparent system for aid to be evenly distributed in countries such as Syria.
Bank of Ireland’s innovation manager, Stephen Moran, is certainly of the opinion that blockchain in the area of identity offers greater revolutionary change than BEV.
“By identity, that can cover everything from educational records, but can also cover the idea of a national identity card,” he said in conversation with Siliconrepublic.com….
But perhaps the wildest idea within blockchain – and one that is somewhat connected to governance – is that, through an amalgamation of smart contracts, it could effectively run itself as an artificially intelligent being.
Known as decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs), these are, in effect, entities that can run a business or any operation autonomously, allocating tasks or distributing micropayments instantly to users….
An example similar to the DAO already exists, in a crowdsourced blockchain online organisation run entirely on the open source platform Ethereum.
Last year, through the sheer will of its users, it was able to crowdfund the largest sum ever – $100m – through smart contracts alone.
If it appears confusing and unyielding, then you are not alone.
However, as was simply summed up by writer Leda Glyptis, blockchain is a force to be reckoned with, but it will be so subtle that you won’t even notice….(More)”.