education

Europe Should Promote Data for Social Good

Curated on October 3, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Daniel Castro at Center for Data Innovation: “Changing demographics in Europe are creating enormous challenges for the European Union (EU) and its member states. The population is getting older, putting strain on the healthcare and welfare systems. Many young people are struggling to find work as economies recover from the 2008 financial crisis. Europe is facing a swell in immigration, increasingly from war-torn Syria, and governments are finding it difficult to integrate refugees and other migrants into society.These pressures have already propelled permanent changes to the EU. This summer, a slim majority of British voters chose to leave the Union, and many of those in favor of Brexit cited immigration as a motive for their vote.

Europe needs to find solutions to these challenges. Fortunately, advances in data-driven innovation that have helped businesses boost performance can also create significant social benefits. They can support EU policy priorities for social protection and inclusion by better informing policy and program design, improving service delivery, and spurring social innovations. While some governments, nonprofit organizations, universities, and companies are using data-driven insights and technologies to support disadvantaged populations, including unemployed workers, young people, older adults, and migrants, progress has been uneven across the EU due to resource constraints, digital inequality, and restrictive data regulations. renewed European commitment to using data for social good is needed to address these challenges.

This report examines how the EU, member-states, and the private sector are using data to support social inclusion and protection. Examples include programs for employment and labor-market inclusion, youth employment and education, care for older adults, and social services for migrants and refugees. It also identifies the barriers that prevent European countries from fully capitalizing on opportunities to use data for social good. Finally, it proposes a number of actions policymakers in the EU should take to enable the public and private sectors to more effectively tackle the social challenges of a changing Europe through data-driven innovation. Policymakers should:

Support the collection and use of relevant, timely data on the populations they seek to better serve;
Participate in and fund cross-sector collaboration with data experts to make better use of data collected by governments and non-profit organizations working on social issues;
Focus government research funding on data analysis of social inequalities and require grant applicants to submit plans for data use and sharing;
Establish appropriate consent and sharing exemptions in data protection regulations for social science research; and
Revise EU regulations to accommodate social-service organizations and their institutional partners in exploring innovative uses of data….(More)”

Innovations in Open Grantmaking

Curated on September 29, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New Report by Andrew Young, Andrew Miller and Beth Simone Noveck at GrantCraft: “Of its $4.1 trillion fiscal year 2016 budget, the U.S. federal government and its grantmaking agencies will give out billions of dollars in the form of grants to states, localities, and individuals, supporting a dizzying array of activities, from scientific research and economic development to arts, culture, and education.

Grantmaking, in short, plays a vital role in helping our government, our researchers, and our communities confront 21st-century challenges. Despite grantmaking’s importance, we have a decidedly 20th-century system in place for deciding how we make these billions of dollars of crucial public investments. To make the most of limited funding—and help build confidence in the ability of public investments to make a positive difference—it is essential for our government agencies to try more innovative approaches to designing, awarding, and measuring their grantmaking activities.

Innovations in Open Grantmaking seeks to provide inspiration and early proof of concept regarding innovative practices at every stage of the grantmaking process. The examples and lessons included can act as suggested guidelines for future research and experimentation around more openly and effectively providing access to public money…(More)”

Twitter, UN Global Pulse announce data partnership

Curated on September 27, 2016July 19, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

PressRelease: “Twitter and UN Global Pulse today announced a partnership that will provide the United Nations with access to Twitter’s data tools to support efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted by world leaders last year.

Every day, people around the world send hundreds of millions of Tweets in dozens of languages. This public data contains real-time information on many issues including the cost of food, availability of jobs, access to health care, quality of education, and reports of natural disasters. This partnership will allow the development and humanitarian agencies of the UN to turn these social conversations into actionable information to aid communities around the globe.

“The Sustainable Development Goals are first and foremost about people, and Twitter’s unique data stream can help us truly take a real-time pulse on priorities and concerns — particularly in regions where social media use is common — to strengthen decision-making. Strong public-private partnerships like this show the vast potential of big data to serve the public good,” said Robert Kirkpatrick, Director of UN Global Pulse.

“We are incredibly proud to partner with the UN in support of the Sustainable Development Goals,” said Chris Moody, Twitter’s VP of Data Services. “Twitter data provides a live window into the public conversations that communities around the world are having, and we believe that the increased potential for research and innovation through this partnership will further the UN’s efforts to reach the Sustainable Development Goals.”

Organizations and business around the world currently use Twitter data in many meaningful ways, and this unique data source enables them to leverage public information at scale to better inform their policies and decisions. These partnerships enable innovative uses of Twitter data, while protecting the privacy and safety of Twitter users.

UN Global Pulse’s new collaboration with Twitter builds on existing R&D that has shown the power of social media for social impact, like measuring the impact of public health campaigns, tracking reports of rising food prices, or prioritizing needs after natural disasters….(More)”

Being a Scholar in the Digital Era

Curated on September 21, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

CONTENTS:

Introduction: Transformations;
Being a Scholar (Activist) Then and Now;
Opening Education, Linking It to Community;
Acting Up, Opening Knowledge;
Training Scholars for the Digital Era;
Measuring Scholarly Impact;
The Future of Being a Scholar….(More)”

More African governments are enacting open data policies but still aren’t willing to share information

Curated on September 14, 2016July 19, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Joshua Masinde at Quartz Africa: “Working as a data journalist and researcher in Uganda, Lydia Namubiru does not remember a moment she had an easy time accessing official government data in the execution of her work. She has had to literally beg for such information from officials with little success.

In June this year, she approached the Uganda Bureau of Statistics seeking a nationally representative sample of micro data from the country’s 2014 census. Despite frequent calls and emails, she is still waiting for the information from the bureau several months down the line….

It doesn’t have to be that way of course. In neighboring Kenya there’s much optimism there’ll be a different attitude to open data. Last month civil society activists and supporters of open data celebrated the government signing the Access to Information bill into law. It comes after many years of lobbying….

Despite well-earned reputations of authoritarianism and conservative attitudes to governance, it turns out more African governments are opening up to their citizens in the guise of espousing transparency and accountability in the conduct of their affairs.

However, in truth, a government saying it’s allowing citizens to access data or information is very different from the actual practice of enabling that access. For the most part, several governments’ open data initiatives often serve far more mundane purposes and may not be the data that citizens really want—the kind that potentially exposes corruption or laxity in public service…

“Countries that have embraced open data have seen real savings in public spending and improved efficiency in services. Nowhere is this more vital than in our nations – many of which face severe health and education crises,” Nnenna Nwakanma, Africa regional coordinator at World Wide Web Foundation,points out.

What is more prevalent now is what some open data advocates call ‘open washing’, which is described as a real threat to the open data movement according to the World Wide Web Foundation. By ‘open washing’, governments merely enact open data policies but do not follow through to full implementation. Others simply put in place strong freedom of information and right to information laws but do not really let the citizens take full advantage of the open data. This could, however, be as a result of institutional shortcomings, internal bureaucracies or lack of political will.

As the initiatives towards open data gather steam, challenges such as government agencies being unwilling to release official information as well as state bureaucracies are still prominent. Many governments are also only keen on releasing information that will not portray them as ‘naked’ but that which they feel will project them in positive light. But, as to whether laws will make governments more open, even with the information that citizens really need, is a matter of conjecture. For Namubiru, open data should be a culture that grows more subtly than by way of just passing laws for the sake of it.

“If they release enough packets of data on what they consider neutral or positive information, the storytellers will still be able to connect the dots.”…(More)”

What is being done with open government data?

Curated on September 8, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

An exploratory analysis of public uses of New York City open data by Karen Okamoto in Webology: “In 2012, New York City Council passed legislation to make government data open and freely available to the public. By approving this legislation, City Council was attempting to make local government more transparent, accountable, and streamlined in its operations. It was also attempting to create economic opportunities and to encourage the public to identify ways in which to improve government and local communities. The purpose of this study is to explore public uses of New York City open data. Currently, more than 1300 datasets covering broad areas such as health, education, transportation, public safety, housing and business are available on the City’s Open Data Portal. This study found a plethora of maps, visualizations, tools, apps and analyses made by the public using New York City open data. Indeed, open data is inspiring a productive range of creative reuses yet questions remain concerning how useable the data is for users without technical skills and resources….(More)”

Discrimination by Design

Curated on September 8, 2016May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Lena Groeger at ProPublica: “A few weeks ago, Snapchat released a new photo filter. It appeared alongside many of the other such face-altering filters that have become a signature of the service. But instead of surrounding your face with flower petals or giving you the nose and ears of a Dalmatian, the filter added slanted eyes, puffed cheeks and large front teeth. A number of Snapchat users decried the filter as racist, saying it mimicked a “yellowface” caricature of Asians. The company countered that they meant to represent anime characters and deleted the filter within a few hours.

“Snapchat is the prime example of what happens when you don’t have enough people of color building a product,” wrote Bay Area software engineer Katie Zhu in an essay she wrote about deleting the app and leaving the service. In a tech world that hires mostly white men, the absence of diverse voices means that companies can be blind to design decisions that are hurtful to their customers or discriminatory.A Snapchat spokesperson told ProPublica that the company has recently hired someone to lead their diversity recruiting efforts.

A Snapchat spokesperson told ProPublica that the company has recently hired someone to lead their diversity recruiting efforts.

But this isn’t just Snapchat’s problem. Discriminatory design and decision-making affects all aspects of our lives: from the quality of our health care and education to where we live to what scientific questions we choose to ask. It would be impossible to cover them all, so we’ll focus on the more tangible and visual design that humans interact with every day.

You can’t talk about discriminatory design without mentioning city planner Robert Moses, whose public works projects shaped huge swaths of New York City from the 1930s through the 1960s. The physical design of the environment is a powerful tool when it’s used to exclude and isolate specific groups of people. And Moses’ design choices have had lasting discriminatory effects that are still felt in modern New York.

A notorious example: Moses designed a number of Long Island Parkway overpasses to be so low that buses could not drive under them. This effectively blocked Long Island from the poor and people of color who tend to rely more heavily on public transportation. And the low bridges continue to wreak havoc in other ways: 64 collisions were recorded in 2014 alone (here’s a bad one).

The design of bus systems, railways, and other forms of public transportation has a history riddled with racial tensions and prejudiced policies. In the 1990s the Los Angeles’ Bus Riders Union went to court over the racial inequity they saw in the city’s public transportation system. The Union alleged that L.A.’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority spent “a disproportionately high share of its resources on commuter rail services, whose primary users were wealthy non-minorities, and a disproportionately low share on bus services, whose main patrons were low income and minority residents.” The landmark case was settled through a court-ordered consent decree that placed strict limits on transit funding and forced the MTA to invest over $2 billion in the bus system.

Of course, the design of a neighborhood is more than just infrastructure. Zoning laws and regulations that determine how land is used or what schools children go to have long been used as a tool to segregate communities. All too often, the end result of zoning is that low-income, often predominantly black and Latino communities are isolated from most of the resources and advantages of wealthy white communities….(More)”

Website Provides Data, Tools for K-12 Educators

Curated on September 7, 2016May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

US Census: “As many kids across the nation go back to school this month, we are excited to roll out a new U.S. Census Bureau program, “Statistics in Schools,” aimed at making a real and positive difference in American education….The new website provides data, tools and teacher-friendly activities to K-12 educators in math, history, and social studies as well as the newly added subjects of geography and sociology. We also doubled the number of tools on the website; resulting in more than 100 resources from which teachers can choose, including:

Maps and historical documents — historical and current maps as well as photos, cartoons and census records.
News articles — examples of census data applied to current events in the news. Videos — the importance of statistics and how data relates to students today.
Games — test your students’ knowledge in our population bracketology game.
Infographics and data visualizations — census data presented visually; many linked to a classroom activity.
Searchable data tools that reveal population statistics by sex, age, ethnicity and race.
Activities organized by grade, education standard and subject.
Information to help teachers explain the Census Bureau to students….

The next step in the program is perhaps the most exciting, as educators throughout the nation begin to leverage Statistics in Schools to enrich their curricula. I look forward to being on this journey with you and working toward improved statistical literacy for the next generation. Please stay in touch — we will be listening closely to learn what works, what could be improved, and how the Census Bureau can continue to help you….(More)”

For Quick Housing Data, Hit Craigslist

Curated on September 5, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Tanvi Misra at CityLab: “…housing researchers can use the Internet bulletin board for a more worthy purpose: as a source of fairly accurate, real-time data on the U.S. rental housing market.

A new paper in the Journal of Planning Education and Research analyzed 11 million Craigslist rental listings posted between May and July 2014 across the U.S. and found a treasure trove of information on regional and local housing trends. “Being able to track rental listings data from Craigslist is really useful for urban planners to take the pulse of [changing neighborhoods] much more quickly,” says Geoff Boeing, a researcher at University of California at Berkeley’s Urban Analytics Lab, who co-authored the paper with Paul Waddell, a Berkeley professor of planning and design.

Here are a couple of big takeaways from their deep dive down the CL rabbit hole:

Overall, Craigslist listings track with HUD data (except when they don’t)

The researchers compared median rents in different Craigslist domains (metropolitan areas, essentially) to the corresponding Housing and Urban Development median rents. In New Orleans and Oklahoma City, the posted and the official rents were very similar. But in other metros, they diverged significantly. In Las Vegas, for example, the Craigslist median rent was lower than the HUD median rent, but in New York, it was much, much higher.

“That’s important for local planners to be careful with because there are totally different cultures and ways that Craigslist is used in different cities,” Boeing explains. “The economies of the cities could very much affect how rentals are being posted. If they’re posting it higher [on Craigslist], they may negotiate down eventually. Or, if they’re posting it low, they could be expecting a bidding war with a bunch of tenants coming in.” …(More)”

Situation vacant: technology triathletes wanted

Curated on September 5, 2016May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Anne-Marie Slaughter in the Financial Times: “It is time to celebrate a new breed of triathletes, who work in technology. When I was dean in the public affairs school at Princeton, I would tell students to aim to work in the public, private and civic sectors over the course of their careers.

Solving public problems requires collaboration among government, business and civil society. Aspiring problem solvers need the culture and language of all three sectors and to develop a network of contacts in each.

The public problems we face, in the US and globally, require lawyers, economists and issue experts but also technologists. A lack of technologists capable of setting up HealthCare.gov, a website designed to implement the Affordable Care act, led President Barack Obama to create the US Digital Service, which deploys Swat tech teams to address specific problems in government agencies.

But functioning websites that deliver government services effectively are only the most obvious technological need for the public sector.

Government can reinvent how it engages with citizens entirely, for example by personalising public education with digital feedback or training jobseekers. But where to find the talent? The market for engineers, designers and project managers sees big tech companies competing for graduates from the world’s best universities.

Governments can offer only a fraction of those salaries, combined with a rigid work environment, ingrained resistance to innovation and none of the amenities and perks so dear to Silicon Valley .

Government’s comparative advantage, however, is mission and impact, which is precisely what Todd Park sells…Still, demand outstrips supply. ….The goal is to create an ecosystem for public interest technology comparable to that in public interest law. In the latter, a number of American philanthropists created role models, educational opportunities and career paths for aspiring lawyers who want to change the world.

That process began in the 1960s, and today every great law school has a public interest programme with scholarships for the most promising students. Many branches of government take on top law school graduates. Public interest lawyers coming out of government find jobs with think-tanks and advocacy organisations and take up research fellowships, often at the law schools that educated them. When they need to pay the mortgage or send their kids to college, they can work at large law firms with pro bono programmes….We need much more. Every public policy school at a university with a computer science, data science or technology design programme should follow suit. Every think-tank should also become a tech tank. Every non-governmental organisation should have at least one technologist on staff. Every tech company should have a pro bono scheme rewarding public interest work….(More)”