Open data on universities – New fuel for transformation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

François van Schalkwyk at University World News: “Accessible, usable and relevant open data on South African universities makes it possible for a wide range of stakeholders to monitor, advise and challenge the transformation of South Africa’s universities from an informed perspective.

Some describe data as the new oil while others suggest it is a new form of capital or compare it to electricity. Either way, there appears to be a groundswell of interest in the potential of data to fuel development.

Whether the proliferation of data is skewing development in favour of globally networked elites or disrupting existing asymmetries of information and power, is the subject of ongoing debate. Certainly, there are those who will claim that open data, from a development perspective, could catalyse disruption and redistribution.

Open data is data that is free to use without restriction. Governments and their agencies, universities and their researchers, non-governmental organisations and their donors, and even corporations, are all potential sources of open data.

Open government data, as a public rather than a private resource, embedded in principles of universal access, participation and transparency, is touted as being able to restore the deteriorating levels of trust between citizens and their governments.

Open data promises to do so by making the decisions and processes of the state more transparent and inclusive, empowering citizens to participate and to hold public institutions to account for the distribution of public services and resources.

Benefits of open data

Open data has other benefits over its more cloistered cousins (data in private networks, big data, etc). By democratising access, open data makes possible the use of data on, for example, health services, crime, the environment, procurement and education by a range of different users, each bringing their own perspective to bear on the data. This can expose bias in the data or may improve the quality of the data by surfacing data errors. Both are important when data is used to shape government policies.

By removing barriers to reusing data such as copyright or licence-fees, tech-savvy entrepreneurs can develop applications to assist the public to make more informed decisions by making available easy-to-understand information on medicine prices, crime hot-spots, air quality, beneficial ownership, school performance, etc. And access to open research data can improve quality and efficiency in science.

Scientists can check and confirm the data on which important discoveries are based if the data is open, and, in some cases, researchers can reuse open data from other studies, saving them the cost and effort of collecting the data themselves.

‘Open washing’

But access alone is not enough for open data to realise its potential. Open data must also be used. And data is used if it holds some value for the user. Governments have been known to publish server rooms full of data that no one is interested in to support claims of transparency and supporting the knowledge economy. That practice is called ‘open washing’. …(More)”

Are innovation labs delivering on their promise?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Catherine Cheney at DEVEX: “Next month, a first-of-its-kind event will take place in Denmark, and it will draw on traditions and ways of living in one of the happiest countries in the world to unlock new perspectives on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Called UNLEASH, the new initiative will gather 1,000 young people from around the world in the capital city of Copenhagen. Then the participants will be transported to “folk high schools,” which are learning institutions in the countryside aimed at adult education. There, they will break into teams to tackle issues such as urban sustainability or education and ICT. The most promising ideas will have access to resources, including mentoring, angel investors and business plan development. Finally, all UNLEASH participants will be connected through an alumni network of individuals who come together at the annual event that will move country to country until 2030.

UNLEASH is a global innovation lab. It is just one of a growing number of innovation labs, which bring people together to develop and test new methods to address challenges across the global health, international development and humanitarian response sectors. But while the initiative sounds new and exciting, the description reads much like many other initiatives springing up around the SDGs: identifying innovative, scalable, implementable solutions, supporting disruptive ideas, and accelerating development impact.

As the global development sector seeks to take on global problems as complex as those captured by the SDGs, innovation will certainly be necessary. But with the growing number of innovation labs not translating as quickly as expected to real progress on the SDGs, some in the industry are also starting to ask tough questions: How can these initiatives go beyond generating ideas, transition into growing and scaling, then go on to changing entire systems in order to, for example, achieve SDG 1 to end poverty in all its forms by 2030? Experts tell Devex the road to success will not be an easy one, but those who have tested out and improved upon models of innovation in this sector are sharing what is working, what is not, and what needs to change….(More)”.

Government at a Glance 2017

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD: “Government at a Glance 2017 provides the latest available data on public administrations in OECD countries. Where possible, it also reports data for Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Lithuania, the Russian Federation, and South Africa. This edition contains new indicators on public sector emploympent, institutions, budgeting practices and procedures, regulatory governance, risk management and communication, open government data and public sector innovation. This edition also includes for the first time a number of scorecards comparing the level of access, responsiveness and quality of services in three key areas: health care, education and justice.

Each indicator in the publication is presented in a user-friendly format, consisting of graphs and/or charts illustrating variations across countries and over time, brief descriptive analyses highlighting the major findings conveyed by the data, and a methodological section on the definition of the indicator and any limitations in data comparability. A database containing qualitative and quantitative indicators on government is available on line. It is updated twice a year as new data are released. The database, countries fact sheets and other online supplements can be found at www.oecd.org/gov/govataglance.htm.”

Political Inequality in Affluent Democracies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 for the SSRC: “A key characteristic of a democracy,” according to Robert Dahl, is “the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals.” Much empirical research over the past half century, most of it focusing on the United States, has examined the relationship between citizens’ policy preferences and the policy choices of elected officials. According to Robert Shapiro, this research has generated “evidence for strong effects of public opinion on government policies,” providing “a sanguine picture of democracy at work.”

In recent years, however, scholars of American politics have produced striking evidence that the apparent “strong effects” of aggregate public opinion in these studies mask severe inequalities in responsiveness. As Martin Gilens put it, “The American government does respond to the public’s preferences, but that responsiveness is strongly tilted toward the most affluent citizens. Indeed, under most circumstances, the preferences of the vast majority of Americans appear to have essentially no impact on which policies the government does or doesn’t adopt.”

One possible interpretation of these findings is that the American political system is anomalous in its apparent disregard for the preferences of middle-class and poor people. In that case, the severe political inequality documented there would presumably be accounted for by distinctive features of the United States, such as its system of private campaign finance, its weak labor unions, or its individualistic political culture. But, what if severe political inequality is endemic in affluent democracies? That would suggest that fiddling with the political institutions of the United States to make them more like Denmark’s (or vice versa) would be unlikely to bring us significantly closer to satisfying Dahl’s standard of democratic equality. We would be forced to conclude either that Dahl’s standard is fundamentally misguided or that none of the political systems commonly identified as democratic comes anywhere close to meriting that designation.

Analyzing policy responsiveness

“I have attempted to test the extent to which policymakers in a variety of affluent democracies respond to the preferences of their citizens considered as political equals.”

To address this question, I have attempted to test the extent to which policymakers in a variety of affluent democracies respond to the preferences of their citizens considered as political equals. My analyses focus on the relationship between public opinion and government spending on social welfare programs, including pensions, health, education, and unemployment benefits. These programs represent a major share of government spending in every affluent democracy and, arguably, an important source of public well-being. Moreover, social spending figures prominently in the comparative literature on the political impact of public opinion in affluent democracies, with major scholarly works suggesting that it is significantly influenced by citizens’ preferences.

My analyses employ data on citizens’ views about social spending and the welfare state from three major cross-national survey projects—the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), the World Values Survey (WVS), and the European Values Survey (EVS). In combination, these three sources provide relevant opinion data from 160 surveys conducted between 1985 and 2012 in 30 countries, including most of the established democracies of Western Europe and the English-speaking world and some newer democracies in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia. I examine shifts in (real per capita) social spending in the two years following each survey. Does greater public enthusiasm for the welfare state lead to increases in social spending, other things being equal? And, more importantly here, do the views of low-income people have the same apparent influence on policy as the views of affluent people?…(More)”.

Intelligent sharing: unleashing the potential of health and care data in the UK to transform outcomes

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Future Care Capital: “….Data is often referred to as the ‘new oil’ – the 21st century raw material which, when hitched to algorithmic refinement, may be mined for insight and value – and ‘data flows’ are said to have exerted a greater impact upon global growth than traditional goods flows in recent years (Manyika et al, 2016). Small wonder, then, that governments around the world are endeavouring to strike a balance between individual privacy rights and protections on the one hand, and organisational permissions to facilitate the creation of social, economic and environmental value from broad-ranging data on the other: ‘data rights’ are now of critical importance courtesy of technological advancements. The tension between the two is particularly evident where health and care data in the UK is concerned. Individuals are broadly content with anonymised data from their medical records being used for public benefit but are, understandably, anxious about the implications of the most intimate aspects of their lives being hacked or, else, shared without their knowledge or consent….

The potential for health and care data to be transformative remains, and there is growing concern that opportunities to improve the use of health and care data in peoples’ interests are being missed….

we recommend additional support for digitisation efforts in social care settings. We call upon the Government to streamline processes associated with Information Governance (IG) modelling to help data sharing initiatives that traverse organisational boundaries. We also advocate for investment and additional legal safeguards to make more anonymised data sets available for research and innovation. Crucially, we recommend expediting the scope for individuals to contribute health and care data to sharing initiatives led by the public sector through promotion, education and pilot activities – so that data is deployed to transform public health and support the ‘pivot to prevention’.

In Chapter Two, we explore the rationale and scope for the UK to build upon emergent practice from around the world and become a global leader in ‘data philanthropy’ – to push at the boundaries of existing plans and programmes, and support the development of and access to unrivalled health and care data sets. We look at member-controlled ‘data cooperatives’ and what we’ve termed ‘data communities’ operated by trusted intermediaries. We also explore ‘data collaboratives’ which involve the private sector engaging in data philanthropy for public benefit. Here, we make recommendations about promoting a culture of data philanthropy through the demonstration of tangible benefits to participants and the wider public, and we call upon Government to assess the appetite and feasibility of establishing the world’s first National Health and Care Data Donor Bank….(More)”

 

Avoiding Garbage In – Garbage Out: Improving Administrative Data Quality for Research

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by : “In June, I presented the webinar, “Improving Administrative Data Quality for Research and Analysis”, for members of the Association of Public Data Users (APDU). APDU is a national network that provides a venue to promote education, share news, and advocate on behalf of public data users.

The webinar served as a primer to help smaller organizations begin to use their data for research. Participants were given the tools to transform their administrative data into “research-ready” datasets.

I first reviewed seven major issues for administrative data quality and discussed how these issues can affect research and analysis. For instance, issues with incorrect value formats, unit of analysis, and duplicate records can make the data difficult to use. Invalid or inconsistent values lead to inaccurate analysis results. Missing or outlier values can produce inaccurate and biased analysis results. All these issues make the data less useful for research.

Next, I presented concrete strategies for reviewing the data to identify each of these quality issues. I also discussed several tips to make the data review process easier, faster, and easy to replicate. Most importantly among these tips are: (1) reviewing everyvariable in the data set, whether you expect problems or not, and (2) relying on data documentation to understand how the data should look….(More)”.

Carnegie Mellon scientists use app to track foul odors in Pittsburgh

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Ashley Murray at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “If you smell something, say something. Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University want Pittsburghers to put their collective noses to the task and report foul smells using a mobile reporting application called Smell PGH.

Since the app launched last year, more than 1,300 users have reported foul smells more than 4,300 times — most of which they’ve described as “industrial,” “sulfur” or “woodsmoke.”

The app was developed at CMU’s Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment (CREATE) Lab.

“The app is really about the community,” said Beatrice Dias, project director at the CREATE Lab. “To show that you’re not alone in your negative experiences of pollution impact.”

Smartphone users can create a “smell report” within the app, which has the capability to alert the Allegheny County Health Department.

Health department spokeswoman Melissa Wade said the agency has received and followed-up on 3,000 reports generated from the app.

Users can also view a real-time map of all smell reports in and around the city. A new feature added last month allows users to go back in time and play a time-lapse animation of little colored triangles — green, yellow and red, symbolizing varying degrees of smell — that pop up and disappear as odors were reported….

“The goal is I’m trying to predict the smell in the next few hours, like a weather forecast,” Mr. Hsu said. “Let’s say today from 12 to 1 p.m. we have 10 smell reports. I can check not only the smell reports, but the data from other sensor stations around Pittsburgh, so I know during this hour what the reading is of all the air-quality related variables, like PM 2.5, like sulfur and nitrogen oxides, [and] the wind speed, the wind direction. There are a lot of parameters we need to consider.”…

Another goal of this citizen science initiative, Mr. Hsu said, is to improve communication between the public and governmental regulation agencies, like the health department.

“Before this technology if you smelled something bad, you might not be sure if this came from ambient air, your neighborhood or just traffic issues,” Mr. Hsu said. “But if you use the app, you can see a lot of your neighbors are reporting, too. And then maybe the government can use this to see the problems in a city.”…(More)”.

Why blockchain could be your next form of ID as a world citizen

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 at TechRepublic: “Blockchain is moving from banking to the refugee crisis, as Microsoft and Accenture on Monday announced a partnership to use the technology to provide a legal form of identification for 1.1 billion people worldwide as part of the global public-private partnership ID2020.

The two tech giants developed a prototype that taps Accenture’s blockchain capabilities and runs on Microsoft Azure. The tech tool uses a person’s biometric data, such as a fingerprint or iris scan, to unlock the record-keeping blockchain technology and create a legal ID. This will allow refugees to have a personal identity record they can access from an app on a smartphone to receive assistance at border crossings, or to access basic services such as healthcare, according to a press release.

The prototype is designed so that personally identifiable information (PII) always exists “off chain,” and is not stored in a centralized system. Citizens use their biometric data to access their information, and chose when to share it—preventing the system from being accessed by tyrannical governments that refugees are fleeing from, as ZDNet noted.

Accenture’s platform is currently used in the Biometric Identity Management System operated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which has enrolled more than 1.3 million refugees in 29 nations across Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. The system is predicted to support more than 7 million refugees from 75 countries by 2020, the press release noted.

“People without a documented identity suffer by being excluded from modern society,” said David Treat, a managing director in Accenture’s global blockchain business, in the press release. “Our prototype is personal, private and portable, empowering individuals to access and share appropriate information when convenient and without the worry of using or losing paper documentation.”

ID is key for accessing education, healthcare, voting, banking, housing, and other family benefits, the press release noted. ID2020’s goal is to create a secure, established digital ID system for all citizens worldwide….

Blockchain will likely play an increasing role in both identification and security moving forward, especially as it relates to the Internet of Things (IoT). For example, Telstra, an Australian telecommunications company, is currently experimenting with a combination of blockchain and biometric security for its smart home products, ZDNet reported….(More)”.

Handbook of Cyber-Development, Cyber-Democracy, and Cyber-Defense

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

“Living Reference Work” edited by Elias G. Carayannis, David F. J. Campbell, and Marios Panagiotis Efthymiopoulos: “This volume covers a wide spectrum of issues relating to economic and political development enabled by information and communication technology (ICT). Showcasing contributions from researchers, industry leaders and policymakers, this Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges and opportunities created by technological innovations that are profoundly affecting the dynamics of economic growth, promotion of democratic principles, and the protection of individual, national, and regional rights. Of particular interest is the influence of ICT on the generation and dissemination of knowledge, which, in turn, empowers citizens and accelerates change across all strata of society. Each essay features literature reviews and key references; definition of critical terms and concepts, case examples; implications for practice, policy and theory; and discussion of future directions. Representing such fields as management, political science, economics, law, psychology and education, the authors cover such timely topics as health care, energy and environmental policy, banking and finance, disaster recovery, investment in research and development, homeland security and diplomacy in the context of ICT and its economic, political and social impact…(More)”

Big data allows India to map its fight against human trafficking

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Nita Bhalla for Reuters: “An Indian charity is using big data to pinpoint human trafficking hot spots in a bid to prevent vulnerable women and girls vanishing from high-risk villages into the sex trade.

My Choices Foundation uses specially designed technology to identify those villages that are most at risk of modern slavery, then launches local campaigns to sound the alarm….

The analytics tool – developed by Australian firm Quantium – uses a range of factors to identify the most dangerous villages.It draws on India’s census, education and health data and factors such as drought risk, poverty levels, education and job opportunities to identify vulnerable areas….

There are an estimated 46 million people enslaved worldwide, with more than 18 million living in India, according to the 2016 Global Slavery Index. The Index was compiled by the Walk Free Foundation, a global organisation seeking to end modern slavery. Many are villagers lured by traffickers with the promise of a good job and an advance payment, only to find themselves or their children forced to work in fields or brick kilns, enslaved in brothels and sold into sexual slavery.

Almost 20,000 women and children were victims of human trafficking in India in 2016, a rise of nearly 25 percent from the previous year, according to government data.While India has strengthened its anti-trafficking policy in recent years, activists say a lack of public awareness remains one of the biggest impediments…(More)”.