Forecasting Freedom of Information – Why it faces problems—and how experts say they could be solved,

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by David Cuillier: “People must have access to reliable public information to make informed decisions and hold their elected officials accountable. Without transparent government at all levels—local, state and federal—representative democracy is threatened. For a generation, presidents of both parties have in different ways tightened controls on government information. “The natural progress of things,” Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation commissioned this study to better understand the landscape involving public access to government records by gathering information and insights from 336 freedom of information experts—journalists, advocates, record custodians, technology companies, scholars and others. In all, from December 2016 through January 2017, 108 experts were interviewed and 228 surveyed online. The study is not representative of journalists or society as a whole, but rather a cross section of those who deal with public record laws routinely. They are the active members, and in some cases the leaders, of America’s freedom of information community. Freedom of information is not decided only in Washington, D.C. All levels of government are involved, bringing into view a diversity of government officials. Our objective was to canvass experts to identify barriers to information access and possible solutions, looking broadly at the law, public education, networking and new technology. We found dissatisfaction, uncertainty and worry.

Key points:

1. MANY EXPERTS SAY ACCESS IS WORSE TODAY COMPARED WITH FOUR YEARS AGO: About half of the 228 experts surveyed online reported that access to state and local records has gotten worse during the past four years (41 percent said it stayed the same, and 13 percent said it has gotten better2 ), and 41 percent said access to federal records has worsened. “What I hear from reporters in Washington and my students is that exemptions are being used in way too many cases and delays are still very long,” said Leonard Downie, former Washington Post executive editor and current Weil Family Professor of Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. “I hope the door doesn’t get shut tighter.”

2. NEARLY 4 IN 10 SEE A RISE IN DENIALS: Though most respondents (57 percent) said denials have stayed the same during the past four years, 38 percent said they have been denied records at any level of government more frequently, and only 6 percent said denials have decreased. …

3. OVERWHELMINGLY, EXPERTS PREDICTED THAT ACCESS WILL GET WORSE: Nearly 9 out of 10 predicted that access to government will worsen because of the new presidential administration. “I think it’s going to be a backyard brawl,” said Ted Bridis, investigations editor for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C. Over the past several months, nonprofit organizations scrambled to save data purged from federal websites and listed the many restrictions placed on communications with the public.

This report lays out problems with freedom of information and synthesizes solutions aimed at making freedom of information laws work as their creators intended—as an open, honest way for the public to know what its government is doing….(More)”

Better Jobs Information Benefits Everyone

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Andrew Reamer in Issues: “Workers, employers, educators, and government officials all need access to more timely and more consistent middle-skills labor market data.

Economic growth and full employment require well-functioning labor markets—ones that enable workers to acquire skills that are in demand and employers to hire workers with necessary skills. Accurate and detailed information is essential to the functioning of a labor market that will make this possible.

To find a decent job in today’s economy, most workers need some level of specialized knowledge and skills, but it is not easy to figure out what specializations are in demand now and are likely to be needed in the future. Choosing poorly has long-term career consequences.

Unfortunately, the information needed to make good decisions, particularly concerning middle-skills jobs, either does not exist or is difficult to find. Neither Congress nor the executive branch has adequately fulfilled its responsibility to collect, organize, and make available reliable labor market information. A coordinated and adequately funded federal program to make this information available could provide enormous benefits to middle-skills workers and to employers as well as to a variety of other constituencies including students, educators, career and guidance counselors, state and federal policy makers, and researchers, all of whom play a role in creating an efficient labor market.

The needed information includes:

  • Occupational descriptions, including tasks performed and knowledge, skills, abilities, and training required.
  • Occupational demand and supply, current and projected, at the local, state, and national levels.
  • Employment outcomes of individual education and training programs and particular career pathways.
  • Extent of the match between existing talent pool and occupational and career options….(More)”.

Does digital democracy improve democracy?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Thamy Pogrebinschi at Open Democracy: “The advancement of tools of information and communications technology (ICT) has the potential to impact democracy nearly as much as any other area, such as science or education. The effects of the digital world on politics and society are still difficult to measure, and the speed with which these new technological tools evolve is often faster than a scholar’s ability to assess them, or a policymaker’s capacity to make them fit into existing institutional designs.

Since their early inception, digital tools and widespread access to the internet have been changing the traditional means of participation in politics, making them more effective. Electoral processes have become more transparent and effective in several countries where the paper ballot has been substituted for electronic voting machines. Petition-signing became a widespread and powerful tool as individual citizens no longer needed to be bothered out in the streets to sign a sheet of paper, but could instead be simultaneously reached by the millions via e-mail and have their names added to virtual petition lists in seconds. Protests and demonstrations have also been immensely revitalized in the internet era. In the last few years, social networks like Facebook and WhatsApp have proved to be a driving-force behind democratic uprisings, by mobilizing the masses, invoking large gatherings, and raising awareness, as was the case of the Arab Spring.

While traditional means of political participation can become more effective by reducing the costs of participation with the use of ICT tools, one cannot yet assure that it would become less subject to distortion and manipulation. In the most recent United States’ elections, computer scientists claimed that electronic voting machines may have been hacked, altering the results in the counties that relied on them. E-petitions can also be easily manipulated, if safe identification procedures are not put in place. And in these times of post-facts and post-truths, protests and demonstrations can result from strategic partisan manipulation of social media, leading to democratic instability as has recently occurred in Brazil. Nevertheless, the distortion and manipulation of these traditional forms of participation were also present before the rise of ICT tools, and regardless, even if the latter do not solve these preceding problems, they may manage to make political processes more effective anyway.

The game-changer for democracy, however, is not the revitalization of the traditional means of political participation like elections, petition-signing and protests through digital tools. Rather, the real change on how democracy works, governments rule, and representation is delivered comes from entirely new means of e-participation, or the so-called digital democratic innovations. While the internet may boost traditional forms of political participation by increasing the quantity of citizens engaged, democratic innovations that rely on ICT tools may change the very quality of participation, thus in the long-run changing the nature of democracy and its institutions….(More)”

UK’s Digital Strategy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Executive Summary: “This government’s Plan for Britain is a plan to build a stronger, fairer country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few. …Our digital strategy now develops this further, applying the principles outlined in the Industrial Strategy green paper to the digital economy. The UK has a proud history of digital innovation: from the earliest days of computing to the development of the World Wide Web, the UK has been a cradle for inventions which have changed the world. And from Ada Lovelace – widely recognised as the first computer programmer – to the pioneers of today’s revolution in artificial intelligence, the UK has always been at the forefront of invention. …

Maintaining the UK government as a world leader in serving its citizens online

From personalised services in health, to safer care for the elderly at home, to tailored learning in education and access to culture – digital tools, techniques and technologies give us more opportunities than ever before to improve the vital public services on which we all rely.

The UK is already a world leader in digital government,7 but we want to go further and faster. The new Government Transformation Strategy published on 9 February 2017 sets out our intention to serve the citizens and businesses of the UK with a better, more coherent experience when using government services online – one that meets the raised expectations set by the many other digital services and tools they use every day. So, we will continue to develop single cross-government platform services, including by working towards 25 million GOV.UK Verify users by 2020 and adopting new services onto the government’s GOV.UK Pay and GOV.UK Notify platforms.

We will build on the ‘Government as a Platform’ concept, ensuring we make greater reuse of platforms and components across government. We will also continue to move towards common technology, ensuring that where it is right we are consuming commodity hardware or cloud-based software instead of building something that is needlessly government specific.

We will also continue to work, across government and the public sector, to harness the potential of digital to radically improve the efficiency of our public services – enabling us to provide a better service to citizens and service users at a lower cost. In education, for example, we will address the barriers faced by schools in regions not connected to appropriate digital infrastructure and we will invest in the Network of Teaching Excellence in Computer Science to help teachers and school leaders build their knowledge and understanding of technology. In transport, we will make our infrastructure smarter, more accessible and more convenient for passengers. At Autumn Statement 2016 we announced that the National Productivity Investment Fund would allocate £450 million from 2018-19 to 2020-21 to trial digital signalling technology on the rail network. And in policing, we will enable police officers to use biometric applications to match fingerprint and DNA from scenes of crime and return results including records and alerts to officers over mobile devices at the crime scene.

Read more about digital government.

Unlocking the power of data in the UK economy and improving public confidence in its use

As part of creating the conditions for sustainable growth, we will take the actions needed to make the UK a world-leading data-driven economy, where data fuels economic and social opportunities for everyone, and where people can trust that their data is being used appropriately.

Data is a global commodity and we need to ensure that our businesses can continue to compete and communicate effectively around the world. To maintain our position at the forefront of the data revolution, we will implement the General Data Protection Regulation by May 2018. This will ensure a shared and higher standard of protection for consumers and their data.

Read more about data….(More)”

Americans have lost faith in institutions. That’s not because of Trump or ‘fake news.’

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Bill Bishop in the Washington Post: “…Trust in American institutions, however, has been in decline for some time. Trump is merely feeding on that sentiment.

The leaders of once-powerful institutions are desperate to resurrect the faith of the people they serve. They act like they have misplaced a credit card and must find the number so that a replacement can be ordered and then FedEx-ed, if possible overnight.

But that delivery truck is never coming. The decline in trust isn’t because of what the press (or politicians or scientists) did or didn’t do. Americans didn’t lose their trust because of some particular event or scandal. And trust can’t be regained with a new app or even an outbreak of competence. To believe so is to misunderstand what was lost.

In 1964, 3 out of 4 Americans trusted their government to do the right thing most of the time. By 1976, that number had dropped to 33 percent. It was a decline that political scientist Walter Dean Burnham described as “among the largest ever recorded in opinion surveys.”…

Everything about modern life works against community and trust. Globalization and urbanization put people in touch with the different and the novel. Our economy rewards initiative over conformity, so that the weight of convention and tradition doesn’t squelch the latest gizmo from coming to the attention of the next Bill Gates. Whereas parents in the 1920s said it was most important for their children to be obedient, that quality has declined in importance, replaced by a desire for independence and autonomy. Widespread education gives people the tools to make up their own minds. And technology offers everyone the chance to be one’s own reporter, broadcaster and commentator.

We have become, in Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s description, “artists of our own lives,” ignoring authorities and booting traditions while turning power over to the self. The shift in outlook has been all-encompassing. It has changed the purpose of marriage (once a practical arrangement, now a means of personal fulfillment). It has altered the relationship between citizens and the state (an all-volunteer fighting force replacing the military draft). It has transformed the understanding of art (craftsmanship and assessment are out; free-range creativity and self-promotion are in). It has even inverted the orders of humanity and divinity (instead of obeying a god, now we choose one).

People enjoy their freedoms. There’s no clamoring for a return to gray flannel suits and deferential housewives. Constant social retooling and choice come with costs, however. Without the authority and guidance of institutions to help order their lives, many people feel overwhelmed and adrift. “Depression is truly our modern illness,” writes French sociologist Alain Ehrenberg, with rates 20 to 30 times what they were just two generations ago.

Sustained collective action has also become more difficult. Institutions are turning to behavioral “nudges,” hoping to move an increasingly suspicious public to do what once could be accomplished by command or law. As groups based on tradition and consistent association dwindle, they are being replaced by “event communities,” temporary gatherings that come and go without long-term commitment (think Burning Man). The protests spawned by Trump’s election are more about passion than organization and focus. Today’s demonstrations are sometimes compared to civil-rights-era marches, but they have more in common with L.A.’s Sunset Strip riots of 1966, when more than 1,000 young people gathered to object to a 10 p.m. curfew. “There’s something happening here,” goes the Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth,” commemorating the riots. “What it is ain’t exactly clear.” In our new politics, expression is a purpose itself….(More)”.

Restoring Trust in Expertise

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Minouche Shafik at Project Syndicate: “…public confidence in experts is at a crossroads. With news becoming more narrowly targeted to individual interests and preferences, and with people increasingly choosing whom to trust and follow, the traditional channels for sharing expertise are being disrupted. Who needs experts when you have Facebook, Google, Mumsnet, and Twitter?

Actually, we all do. Over the course of human history, the application of expertise has helped tackle disease, reduce poverty, and improve human welfare. If we are to build on this progress, we need reliable experts to whom the public can confidently turn.

Restoring confidence requires, first, that those describing themselves as “experts” embrace uncertainty. Rather than pretending to be certain and risk frequently getting it wrong, commentators should be candid about uncertainty. Over the long term, such an approach will rebuild credibility. A good example of this is the use of “fan charts” in forecasts produced by the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), which show the wide range of possible outcomes for issues such as inflation, growth, and unemployment.

Yet conveying uncertainty increases the complexity of a message. This is a major challenge. It is easy to tweet “BoE forecasts 2% growth.” The fan chart’s true meaning – “If economic circumstances identical to today were to prevail on 100 occasions, the MPC’s best collective judgment is that the mature estimate of GDP growth would lie above 2% on 50 occasions and below 2% on 50 occasions” – doesn’t even fit within Twitter’s 140-character limit.

This underscores the need for sound principles and trustworthy practices to become more widespread as technology changes the way we consume information. Should journalists and bloggers be exposed for reporting or recirculating falsehoods or rumors? Perhaps principles and practices widely used in academia – such as peer review, competitive processes for funding research, transparency about conflicts of interests and financing sources, and requirements to publish underlying data – should be adapted and applied more widely to the world of think tanks, websites, and the media….

Schools and universities will have to do more to educate students to be better consumers of information. Striking research by the Stanford History Education Group, based on tests of thousands of students across the US, described as “bleak” their findings about young people’s ability to evaluate information they encounter online. Fact-checking websites appraising the veracity of claims made by public figures are a step in the right direction, and have some similarities to peer review in academia.

Listening to the other side is crucial. Social media exacerbates the human tendency of groupthink by filtering out opposing views. We must therefore make an effort to engage with opinions that are different from our own and resist algorithmic channeling to avoid difference. Perhaps technology “experts” could code algorithms that burst such bubbles.

Finally, the boundary between technocracy and democracy needs to be managed more carefully. Not surprisingly, when unelected individuals steer decisions that have huge social consequences, public resentment may not be far behind. Problems often arise when experts try to be politicians or politicians try to be experts. Clarity about roles – and accountability when boundaries are breached – is essential.

We need expertise more than ever to solve the world’s problems. The question is not how to manage without experts, but how to ensure that expertise is trustworthy. Getting this right is vital: if the future is not to be shaped by ignorance and narrow-mindedness, we need knowledge and informed debate more than ever before….(More)”.

Innovation in Education Through Crowdsourcing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Meghna Tare in TriplePundit: “….UNESCO tapped into online crowdsourcing to help achieve Education for All. The project on crowdsourcing girls’ education in Ethiopia and Tanzania launched in July 2011 took a community-based approach to lowering drop-out rates in secondary schools in those countries.

Funded by the Packard Foundation, within the framework of UNESCO’s global partnership for girls’ and women’s education, it encouraged girls and their communities to propose solutions to obstacles preventing girls from completing secondary education. The process introduced a fresh approach to designing education policies

One of the groups that benefits tremendously from crowdsourcing in education is the faculty. Teachers and professors can share lesson plans with each other and find new and innovative ways to share material with students. They can brainstorm together to create a database of resources and best practices that benefit their institution – and then share that information with other schools as well. They can give feedback and offer assistance in further developing curriculum. Finally, faculty can use peer evaluations to help with grading practices and to receive feedback on their teaching styles

Crowdsourcing is also an important method to improve the way education is conducted by teachers and received by students. With crowdsourcing projects, colleges and universities can use collective brainpower and energy to complete what they can’t do on their own, going beyond their budgets and time constraints.

From transcribing ancient documents and increasing class participation to collecting data for research and documenting campus crime, these college crowdsourcing projects are downright awe-inspiring.

  • Columbia University used crowdsourcing of ideas to dramatically enhance the student experience. By allowing students to suggest ideas in the “What to Fix Colombia” community, the school received feedback and implemented changes that made a significant difference in how students operate at school. Some of the low-hanging fruit ideas included small things like revised gate hours and a new mailbox notification system….(More)”

Crowdsourcing Expertise

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Simons Foundation: “Ever wish there was a quick, easy way to connect your research to the public?

By hosting a Wikipedia ‘edit-a-thon’ at a science conference, you can instantly share your research knowledge with millions while improving the science content on the most heavily trafficked and broadly accessible resource in the world. In 2016, in partnership with the Wiki Education Foundation, we helped launched the Wikipedia Year of Science, an ambitious initiative designed to better connect the work of scientists and students to the public. Here, we share some of what we learned.

The Simons Foundation — through its Science Sandbox initiative, dedicated to public engagement — co-hosted a series of Wikipedia edit-a-thons throughout 2016 at almost every major science conference, in collaboration with the world’s leading scientific societies and associations.

At our edit-a-thons, we leveraged the collective brainpower of scientists, giving them basic training on Wikipedia guidelines and facilitating marathon editing sessions — powered by free pizza, coffee and sometimes beer — during which they made copious contributions within their respective areas of expertise.

These efforts, combined with the Wiki Education Foundation’s powerful classroom model, have had a clear impact. To date, we’ve reached over 150 universities including more than 6,000 students and scientists. As for output, 6,306 articles have been created or edited, garnering more than 304 million views; over 2,000 scientific images have been donated; and countless new scientist-editors have been minted, many of whom will likely continue to update Wikipedia content. The most common response we got from scientists and conference organizers about the edit-a-thons was: “Can we do that again next year?”

That’s where this guide comes in.

Through collaboration, input from Wikipedians and scientists, and more than a little trial and error, we arrived at a model that can help you organize your own edit-a-thons. This informal guide captures our main takeaways and lessons learned….Our hope is that edit-a-thons will become another integral part of science conferences, just like tweetups, communication workshops and other recent outreach initiatives. This would ensure that the content of the public’s most common gateway to science research will continually improve in quality and scope.

Download: “Crowdsourcing Expertise: A working guide for organizing Wikipedia edit-a-thons at science conferences”

Education startup helps refugees earn university degree

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “Berlin-based Kiron works with refugee students to put together an online course of study, rigorous enough to provide entry into a partner university’s second year of study. Using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Kiron helps students master their new country’s language while studying basic prerequisites for a chosen university degree. Already working with more than 1,500 students in Germany, Kiron recently expanded into France.

With less than one percent of all refugees able to access higher education, MOOCs help get new students to the necessary level of knowledge for in-person university study. Kiron also provides off-line support including study buddy programs and career guidance. Once a participant completes the two-year online program, he or she has the opportunity to enroll for free (as a second year student) in one of Kiron’s partner university’s programs.

A number of projects are finding ways to use the talents of refugees to help them integrate into their country through knowledge-sharing and employment opportunities. Locals and refugees work together in this new Dutch ideas hub, and this French catering company hires refugee chefs….(More)”.

Thesis, antithesis and synthesis: A constructive direction for politics and policy after Brexit and Trump

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Geoff Mulgan at Nesta: “In the heady days of 1989, with communism collapsing and the Cold War seemingly over, the political theorist Francis Fukuyama declared that we were witnessing the “end of history” which had culminated in the triumph of liberal democracy and the free market.

Fukuyama was drawing on the ideas of German philosopher Georg Hegel, but of course, history didn’t come to an end, and, as recent events have shown, the Cold War was just sleeping, not dead.

Now, following the political convulsions of 2016, we’re at a very different turning point, which many are trying to make sense of. I want to suggest that we can again usefully turn to Hegel, but this time to his idea that history evolves in dialectical ways, with successive phases of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

This framework fits well with where we stand today.  The ‘thesis’ that has dominated mainstream politics for the last generation – and continues to be articulated shrilly by many proponents – is the claim that the combination of globalisation, technological progress and liberalisation empowers the great majority.

The antithesis, which, in part, fuelled the votes for Brexit and Trump, as well as the rise of populist parties and populist authoritarian leaders in Europe and beyond, is the argument that this technocratic combination merely empowers a minority and disempowers the majority of citizens.

A more progressive synthesis – which I will outline – then has to address the flaws of the thesis and the grievances of the antithesis, in fields ranging from education and health to democracy and migration, dealing head on with questions of power and its distribution: questions about who has power, and who feels powerful….(More)”