Dan Adams at the Boston Globe: “Earlier this year, Hopkinton resident Chris Bullock was deciding how to vote on a tax increase that would fund a new school. He wanted to know how much the town spent on education, and how that compared to other nearby towns — reasonable questions that any engaged voter might ask. But the information was surprisingly hard to find. Charts buried in the town’s 230-page annual report were inscrutable, the money scattered across various funds labeled with jargon. Even after piecing together a few figures, Bullock had no way to make sense of them.... (More >)
New frontiers in social innovation research
Geoff Mulgan: “Nesta has published a new book with Palgrave which contains an introduction by me and many important chapters from leading academics around the world. I hope that many people will read it, and think about it, because it challenges, in a highly constructive way, many of the rather tired assumptions of the London media/political elite of both left and right. The essay is by Roberto Mangabeira Unger, perhaps the world’s most creative and important contemporary intellectual. He is Professor of Law at Harvard (where he taught Obama); a philosopher and political theorist; author of one of the... (More >)
The Problem-Solving Process That Prevents Groupthink
Art Markman at Harvard Business Review: “There are two reasons most of us aren’t very good at creative problem solving. First, few people get training in how to be creative in their education. Second, few people understand group dynamics well enough to harness their power to help groups maximize their creativity. Resolving the first issue requires getting your employees to learn more about the way they think… a tall order for managers. The second issue, though, is well within your ability to change. A key element of creativity is bringing existing knowledge to bear on a new problem or... (More >)
The ‘data revolution’ will be open
Martin Tisne at Devex: “There is a huge amount of talk about a “data revolution.” The phrase emerged in the years preceding this September’s announcement of the Sustainable Development Goals, and has recently been strongly reaffirmed by the launch of a Global Partnership on Sustainable Development Data. The importance of data in measuring, assessing and verifying the new SDGs has been powerfully made and usually includes a mention of the data needing to be “open.” However, the role of “open” has not been clearly articulated. Fundamentally, the discussion focuses on the role of data (statistics, for example) in decision-making,... (More >)
Creating Value through Open Data
Press Release: “Capgemini Consulting, the global strategy and transformation consulting arm of the Capgemini Group, today published two new reports on the state of play of Open Data in Europe, to mark the launch of the European Open Data Portal. The first report addresses “Open Data Maturity in Europe 2015: Insights into the European state of play” and the second focuses on “Creating Value through Open Data: Study on the Impact of Re-use of Public Data Resources.” The countries covered by these assessments include the EU28 countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland – commonly referred to as the... (More >)
Beyond Distrust: How Americans View Their Government
Pew Research Center: “A year ahead of the presidential election, the American public is deeply cynical about government, politics and the nation’s elected leaders in a way that has become quite familiar. Currently, just 19% say they can trust the government always or most of the time,among the lowest levels in the past half-century. Only 20% would describe government programs as being well-run. And elected officials are held in such low regard that 55% of the public says “ordinary Americans” would do a better job of solving national problems. Yet at the same time, most Americans have a lengthy... (More >)
Open government data: Out of the box
The Economist on “The open-data revolution has not lived up to expectations. But it is only getting started… The app that helped save Mr Rich’s leg is one of many that incorporate government data—in this case, supplied by four health agencies. Six years ago America became the first country to make all data collected by its government “open by default”, except for personal information and that related to national security. Almost 200,000 datasets from 170 outfits have been posted on the data.gov website. Nearly 70 other countries have also made their data available: mostly rich, well-governed ones, but also... (More >)
The War on Campus Sexual Assault Goes Digital
Natasha Singer in the New York Times: “As the problem of sexual assault on college campuses has become a hot-button issue for school administrators and federal education regulators, one question keeps coming up: Why don’t more students report attacks? According to a recent study of 27 schools, about one-quarter of female undergraduates and students who identified as queer or transgender said they had experienced nonconsensual sex or touching since entering college, but most of the students said they did not report it to school officials or support services. Some felt the incidents weren’t serious enough. Others said they did... (More >)
Open Data as Open Educational Resources: Case studies of emerging practice
Book edited by Javiera Atenas and Leo Havemann: “…is the outcome of a collective effort that has its origins in the 5th Open Knowledge Open Education Working Group call, in which the idea of using Open Data in schools was mentioned. It occurred to us that Open Data and open educational resources seemed to us almost to exist in separate open worlds. We decided to seek out evidence in the use of open data as OER, initially by conducting a bibliographical search. As we could not find published evidence, we decided to ask educators if they were in fact,... (More >)
Predictive policing is ‘technological racism’
Shaun King at the New York Daily News: “The future is here. For years now, the NYPD, the Miami PD, and many police departments around the country have been using new technology that claims it can predict where crime will happen and where police should focus their energies in order. They call it predictive policing. Months ago, I raised several red flags to such software because it does not appear to properly account for the presence of racism or racial profiling in how it predicts where crimes will be committed. See, these systems claim to predict where crimes will... (More >)
