Azmak Okan et al in the Journal “Big Data”: “Until now, most large-scale studies of humans have either focused on very specific domains of inquiry or have relied on between-subjects approaches. While these previous studies have been invaluable for revealing important biological factors in cardiac health or social factors in retirement choices, no single repository contains anything like a complete record of the health, education, genetics, environmental, and lifestyle profiles of a large group of individuals at the within-subject level. This seems critical today because emerging evidence about the dynamic interplay between biology, behavior, and the environment point to a pressing need for just the kind of large-scale, long-term synoptic dataset that does not yet exist at the within-subject level. At the same time that the need for such a dataset is becoming clear, there is also growing evidence that just such a synoptic dataset may now be obtainable—at least at moderate scale—using contemporary big data approaches. To this end, we introduce the Kavli HUMAN Project (KHP), an effort to aggregate data from 2,500 New York City households in all five boroughs (roughly 10,000 individuals) whose biology and behavior will be measured using an unprecedented array of modalities over 20 years. It will also richly measure environmental conditions and events that KHP members experience using a geographic information system database of unparalleled scale, currently under construction in New York. In this manner, KHP will offer both synoptic and granular views of how human health and behavior coevolve over the life cycle and why they evolve differently for different people. In turn, we argue that this will allow for new discovery-based scientific approaches, rooted in big data analytics, to improving the health and quality of human life, particularly in urban contexts….(More)”
Syria refugees tap in to legal advice by text
Hannah Kuchler in the Financial Times: “Syrian refugees can now access free legal advice by text message after a Palestinian start-up launched a service in Turkey, which it hopes to expand to reach refugees across Europe.
Refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria can receive legal guidance via their mobile phones on everything from whether they have the right to work to education services available for their children, after Souktel, a small start-up partnered with the American Bar Association.
The 30-person start-up employs both former humanitarian workers from Oxfam and USAID, who understand the problems faced by refugees, and software engineers who tackle the challenge of sorting, tagging and translating enquiries which are then sent to a team of Turkish lawyers.
Jacob Korenblum, president and chief executive of Souktel, said more than 10,000 individuals have used the service since it launched less than three weeks ago, with lawyers busy answering a steady stream of questions.
“Given the strength and rapid interest in this service and the uptake since its launch, we want to scale into Greece and other European countries to meet the same need,” he said. “This is very much becoming a pan-European problem at the very least.”…
The American Bar Association approached Souktel and asked them to build a service that could offer remote legal support and uses funds from international donors to pay the company….
Smartphones — or even basic mobile phones — have fast become one of the easiest ways of communicating for the poor or dispossessed. Even when basic infrastructure has failed, people are able to access information and connect with relatives abroad via their devices.
Mr Korenblum, a Canadian former aid worker, helped found Souktel after he saw young people in Palestine relying on their mobile devices when working there 10 years ago. The company has built similar services on behalf of humanitarian organisations working in other areas — including the UK’s department for international development in Gaza, Iraq and Somalia, among other places…(More)”
Civic engagement platform brings the town meeting online
Springwise: “Citizens may have the ability to express enthusiasm or disgust for government policies online, but these opinions are only as valuable as the ears they reach. We recently saw Balancing Act offer citizens the ability to view and play around with their city’s budget, providing governments with a better understanding of the wants and needs of their constituents. Now, CitizenLab is another civic engagement platform, which is bringing the town meeting into the digital age — providing a space for citizens to communicate with their government, and for governments to ‘citizensource’ opinions on their policies.
To begin, participants visit the platform and enter their city. This will take them to a collection of ‘labs’ — categories such as education, health and public spaces. They can then post new ideas, join existing conversations and upvote interesting topics. Local governments can then use the platform as a resource to discover the priorities of its citizens. They can respond directly to discussions and consult the public opinion on important issues. Governments can also acknowledge the most vital issues raised by taking them to city council for discussion. The platform is designed to host positive ideas, rather than raise issues.
Website: www.citizenlab.co“
Our World in Data
“Life around the world is changing rapidly – here you find the data visualizations that show you how. Poverty, violence, health, education, the environment and much more. Our World In Data covers a wide range of topics and visualizes the empirical evidence of how living standards changed over the last decades, centuries, and millennia. A web publication authored by Max Roser. (work in progress)”
How Startups Are Transforming the Smart City Movement
Jason Shueh at GovTech: “Remember the 1990s visions of the future? Those first incantations of the sweeping “smart city,” so technologically utopian and Tomorrowland-ish in design? The concept and solutions were pitched by tech titans like IBM and Cisco, cost obscene amounts of money, and promised equally outlandish levels of innovation.
It was a drive — as idealistic as it was expedient — to spark a new industry that infused cities with data, analytics, sensors and clean energy. Two-and-a-half decades later, the smart city market has evolved. Its solutions are more pragmatic and its benefits more potent. Evidence brims inSingapore, where officials boast that they can predict traffic congestion an hour in advance with 90 percent accuracy. Similarly, in Chicago, the city has embraced analytics to estimate rodent infestations and prioritizerestaurant inspections. These of course are a few standouts, but as many know, the movement is highly diverse and runs its fingers through cities and across continents.
And yet what’s not as well-known is what’s happened in the last few years. The industry appears to be undergoing another metamorphosis, one that takes the ingenuity inspired by its beginnings and reimagines it with the help of do-it-yourself entrepreneurs….
Asked for a definition, Abrahamson centered his interpretation on tech that enhances quality of life. With the possible exception of health care, finance and education — systems large enough to merit their own categories, Abrahamson explains smart cities by highlighting investment areas at Urban.us. Specific areas are packaged as follows:
Mobility and Logistics: How cities move people and things to, from and within cities.
Built Environment: The public and private spaces in which citizens work and live.
Utilities: Critical resources including water, waste and energy.
Service Delivery: How local governments provide services ranging from public works to law enforcement….
Who’s Investing?
….Here is a sampling of a few types, with examples of their startup investments.
General Venture Capitalists
a16z (Andreessen Horowitz) – Mapillary and Moovit
Specialty Venture Capitalists
Fontinalis – Lyft, ParkMe, LocoMobi
Black Coral Capital – Digital Lumens, Clean Energy Collective, newterra
Govtech Fund – AmigoCloud, Mark43, MindMixer
Corporate Venture Capitalists
Google Ventures – Uber, Skycatch, Nest
Motorola Solutions Venture Capital – CyPhy Works and SceneDoc
BMW i Ventures – Life360 and ChargePoint
Impact/Social Investors
Omidyar Network – SeeClickFix and Nationbuilder
Knight Foundation – Public Stuff, Captricity
Kapor Capital – Uber, Via, Blocpower
Global platform launched to promote positive plagiarism among foundations
Ellie Ward at PioneersPost: “A group of leading foundations and NGOs, including the Rockefeller Foundation, Oxfam and the Skoll Foundation have launched a peer-to-peer platform to make solving pressing social issues easier.
Sphaera (pronounced s’faira) is a peer-to-peer online platform that will collate the knowledge of funders and practitioners working to solve social and environmental issues around the world.
Organisations will share their evidence-based solutions and research within the portal, which will then repurpose the information into tools, processes and frameworks that can be used by others. In theory a solution that helps fishermen log their catch could be repurposed for healthcare workers to track and improve treatment of contagious disease. …”Sphaera makes it easy to discover, share and remix solutions. We put the collective, practical knowledge of what works – in health, finance, conservation, education, in every sector relevant to wellbeing – at the fingertips of practitioners everywhere. Our hope is that together we are better, faster, and more effective in tackling the urgent problems of our time.”
Arthur Wood, founding partner of Total Impact Capital and a global leader in social finance, said: “With the birth of cloud technology we have seen a plethora of models changing the way we use, share, purchase and allocate resources. From AirBNB to Uber, folks are now asking why this trend has had zero impact in Philanthropy.”
Wood explained that Sphaera is “designed to liberate the silos of individual project knowledge and to leverage that expertise and knowledge to create scale and collaboration across the philanthropic landscape… Or simply stated, how can a great idea in one stovepipe be shared to the benefit of all?” (More)“
White House debuts open source tool for visualizing government work across the country
Wired: “Data is immensely powerful. The trick lies in organizing the stuff. The good news is that so many organizations are now offering tools that help with this—and so many of these tools are open source.
The White House is among the many who are tapping into this trend. Today, the administration revealed a new tool meant to help anyone visualize government work across the country. Built in partnership with more than 15 Federal agencies, it’s basically a huge map of the country—with data layers you can select or deselect—that lets you see where certain community-based initiatives are gaining ground.
“This new approach focuses on the direction that cities and small towns want to go rather than the laundry list of programs the government has,” a representative from the White House Office of Management and Budget tells WIRED.
The initiatives include My Brother’s Keeper, a program designed to help residents succeed in education, in their careers, and beyond; Climate Action Champions, a program aimed to help local leaders address climate change issues; and Promise Zones, which hopes to increase economic security and expand educational opportunities within the community. The map also includes demographic information, on things like US Census data on counties of persistent poverty and data from Harvard about upward economic mobility by county.
“From the start, [the map] has been built in the open, and source code is available on GitHub,” the White House says, inviting data enthusiasts to make use of the map—which the administration also promised would get the benefit of regular data updates.”
Beyond the Jailhouse Cell: How Data Can Inform Fairer Justice Policies
Alexis Farmer at DataDrivenDetroit: “Government-provided open data is a value-added approach to providing transparency, analytic insights for government efficiency, innovative solutions for products and services, and increased civic participation. Two of the least transparent public institutions are jails and prisons. The majority of population has limited knowledge about jail and prison operations and the demographics of the jail and prison population, even though the costs of incarceration are substantial. The absence of public knowledge about one of the many establishments public tax dollars support can be resolved with an open data approach to criminal justice. Increasing access to administrative jail information enables communities to collectively and effectively find solutions to the challenges the system faces….
The data analysis that compliments open data practices is a part of the formula for creating transformational policies. There are numerous ways that recording and publishing data about jail operations can inform better policies and practices:
1. Better budgeting and allocation of funds. By monitoring the rate at which dollars are expended for a specific function, data allows for administrations to ensure accurate estimates of future expenditures.
2. More effective deployment of staff. Knowing the average daily population and annual average bookings can help inform staffing decisions to determine a total need of officers, shift responsibilities, and room arrangements. The population information also helps with facility planning, reducing overcrowding, controlling violence within the facility, staffing, determining appropriate programs and services, and policy and procedure development.
3. Program participation and effectiveness. Gauging the amount of inmates involved in jail work programs, educational training services, rehabilitation/detox programs, and the like is critical to evaluating methods to improve and expand such services. Quantifying participation and effectiveness of these programs can potentially lead to a shift in jail rehabilitating services.
4. Jail suicides. “The rate of jail suicides is about three times the rate of prison suicides.” Jails are isolating spaces that separate inmates from social support networks, diminish personal control, and often lack mental health resources. Most people in jail face minor charges and spend less time incarcerated due to shorter sentences. Reviewing the previous jail suicide statistics aids in pinpointing suicide risk, identifying high-risk groups, and ultimately, prescribing intervention procedures and best practices to end jail suicides.
5. Gender and race inequities. It is well known that Black men are disproportionately incarcerated, and the number of Black women in jails and prisons has rapidly increased . It is important to view this disparity as it reflects to the demographics of the total population of an area. Providing data that show trends in particular crimes committed by race and gender data might lead to further analysis and policy changes in the root causes of these crimes (poverty, employment, education, housing, etc.).
6. Prior interaction with the juvenile justice system. The school-to-prison pipeline describes the systematic school discipline policies that increase a student’s interaction with the juvenile justice system. Knowing how many incarcerated persons that have been suspended, expelled, or incarcerated as a juvenile can encourage schools to examine their discipline policies and institute more restorative justice programs for students. It would also encourage transitional programs for formerly incarcerated youth in order to decrease recidivism rate among young people.
7. Sentencing reforms. Evaluating the charges on which a person is arrested, the length of stay, average length of sentences, charges for which sentences are given, and the length of time from the first appearance to arraignment and trial disposition can inform more just and balanced sentencing laws enforced by the judicial branch….(More)”
Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots
Book description: “Robots are poised to transform today’s society as completely as the Internet did twenty years ago. Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times science writer John Markoff argues that we must decide to design ourselves into our future, or risk being excluded from it altogether.
In the past decade, Google introduced us to driverless cars; Apple debuted Siri, a personal assistant that we keep in our pockets; and an Internet of Things connected the smaller tasks of everyday life to the farthest reaches of the Web. Robots have become an integral part of society on the battlefield and the road; in business, education, and health care. Cheap sensors and powerful computers will ensure that in the coming years, these robots will act on their own. This new era offers the promise of immensely powerful machines, but it also reframes a question first raised more than half a century ago, when the intelligent machine was born. Will we control these systems, or will they control us?
In Machines of Loving Grace, John Markoff offers a sweeping history of the complicated and evolving relationship between humans and computers. In recent years, the pace of technological change has accelerated dramatically, posing an ethical quandary. If humans delegate decisions to machines, who will be responsible for the consequences? As Markoff chronicles the history of automation, from the birth of the artificial intelligence and intelligence augmentation communities in the 1950s and 1960s, to the modern-day brain trusts at Google and Apple in Silicon Valley, and on to the expanding robotics economy around Boston, he traces the different ways developers have addressed this fundamental problem and urges them to carefully consider the consequences of their work. We are on the brink of the next stage of the computer revolution, Markoff argues, and robots will profoundly transform modern life. Yet it remains for us to determine whether this new world will be a utopia. Moreover, it is now incumbent upon the designers of these robots to draw a bright line between what is human and what is machine.
After nearly forty years covering the tech industry, Markoff offers an unmatched perspective on the most drastic technology-driven societal shifts since the introduction of the Internet. Machines of Loving Grace draws on an extensive array of research and interviews to present an eye-opening history of one of the most pressing questions of our time, and urges us to remember that we still have the opportunity to design ourselves into the future—before it’s too late….(More)”
President Obama Signs Executive Order Making Presidential Innovation Fellows Program Permanent
White House Press Release: “My hope is this continues to encourage a culture of public service among our innovators, and tech entrepreneurs, so that we can keep building a government that’s as modern, as innovative, and as engaging as our incredible tech sector is. To all the Fellows who’ve served so far – thank you. I encourage all Americans with bold ideas to apply. And I can’t wait to see what those future classes will accomplish on behalf of the American people.” –- President Barack Obama
Today, President Obama signed an executive order that makes the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program a permanent part of the Federal government going forward. The program brings executives, entrepreneurs, technologists, and other innovators into government, and teams them up with Federal employees to improve programs that serve more than 150 million Americans.
The Presidential Innovation Fellows Program is built on four key principles:
- Recruit the best our nation has to offer: Fellows include entrepreneurs, startup founders, and innovators with experience at large technology companies and startups, each of whom leverage their proven skills and technical expertise to create huge value for the public.
- Partner with innovators inside government: Working as teams, the Presidential Innovation Fellows and their partners across the government create products and services that are responsive, user-friendly, and help to improve the way the Federal government interacts with the American people.
- Deploy proven private sector strategies: Fellows leverage best practices from the private sector to deliver better, more effective programs and policies across the Federal government.
- Focus on some of the Nation’s biggest and most pressing challenges: Projects focus on topics such as improving access to education, fueling job creation and the economy, and expanding the public’s ability to access their personal health data.
Additional Details on Today’s Announcements
The Executive Order formally establishes the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program within the General Services Administration (GSA), where it will continue to serve departments and agencies throughout the Executive Branch. The Presidential Innovation Fellow Program will be administered by a Director and guided by a newly-established Advisory Board. The Director will outline steps for the selection, hiring, and deployment of Fellows within government….
Fellows have partnered with leaders at more than 25 government agencies, delivering impressive results in months, not years, driving extraordinary work and innovative solutions in areas such as health care; open data and data science; crowd-sourcing initiatives; education; veterans affairs; jobs and the economy; and disaster response and recovery. Examples of projects include:
Open Data
When government acts as a platform, entrepreneurs, startups, and the private sector can build value-added services and tools on top of federal datasets supported by federal policies. Taking this approach, Fellows and agency stakeholders have supported the creation of new products and services focused on education, health, the environment, and social justice. As a result of their efforts and the agencies they have worked with:….
Jobs and the Economy
Fellows continue to work on solutions that will give the government better access to innovative tools and services. This is also helping small and medium-sized companies create jobs and compete for Federal government contracts….
Digital Government
The Presidential Innovation Fellows Program is a part of the Administration’s strategy to create lasting change across the Federal Government by improving how it uses technology. The Fellows played a part in launching 18F within the General Services Administration (GSA) and the U.S. Digital Services (USDS) team within the Office of Management and Budget….
Supporting Our Veterans
- …Built a one-stop shop for finding employment opportunities. The Veterans Employment Center was developed by a team of Fellows working with the Department of Veterans Affairs in connection with the First Lady’s Joining Forces Initiative and the Department of Labor. This is the first interagency website connecting Veterans, transitioning Servicemembers, and their spouses to meaningful employment opportunities. The portal has resulted in cost savings of over $27 million to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Education
- …More than 1,900 superintendents pledged to more effectively leverage education technology in their schools. Fellows working at the Department of Education helped develop the idea of Future Ready, which later informed the creation of the Future Ready District Pledge. The Future Ready District Pledge is designed to set out a roadmap to achieve successful personalized digital learning for every student and to commit districts to move as quickly as possible towards our shared vision of preparing students for success. Following the President’s announcement of this effort in 2014, more than 1,900 superintendents have signed this pledge, representing 14 million students.
Health and Patient Care
- More than 150 million Americans are able to access their health records online. Multiple rounds of Fellows have worked with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to expand the reach of theBlue Button Initiative. As a result, patients are able to access their electronic health records to make more informed decisions about their own health care. The Blue Button Initiative has received more than 600 commitments from organizations to advance health information access efforts across the country and has expanded into other efforts that support health care system interoperability….
Disaster Response and Recovery
- Communities are piloting crowdsourcing tools to assess damage after disasters. Fellows developed the GeoQ platform with FEMA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency that crowdsources photos of disaster-affected areas to assess damage over large regions. This information helps the Federal government better allocate critical response and recovery efforts following a disaster and allows local governments to use geospatial information in their communities…. (More)