How Open Is University Data?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Daniel Castro  at GovTech: “Many states now support open data, or data that’s made freely available without restriction in a nonproprietary, machine-readable format, to increase government transparency, improve public accountability and participation, and unlock opportunities for civic innovation. To date, 10 states have adopted open data policies, via executive order or legislation, and 24 states have built open data portals. But while many agencies have joined the open data movement, state colleges and universities have largely ignored this opportunity. To remedy this, policymakers should consider how to extend open data policies to state colleges and universities.

There are many potential benefits of open data for higher education. First, it can help prospective students and their parents better understand the value of different degree programs. One way to control rising higher ed costs is to create more informed consumers. The feds are already pushing for such changes. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan called for schools to make more information publicly available about the costs of obtaining a college degree, and the White House launched the College Scorecard, an online tool to compare data about the average tuition cost, size of loan payments and loan default rate for different schools.

But students deserve more detailed information. Prospective students should be able to decide where to attend and what to study based on historical data like program costs, percentage of students completing the program and how long they take to do so, and what kind of earning power they have after graduating.

Second, open data can aid better fiscal oversight and accountability of university operations. In 2014, states provided about $76 billion in support for higher ed, yet few colleges and universities have adopted open data policies to increase the transparency of their budgets. Contrast this with California cities like Oakland, Palo Alto and Los Angeles, which created online tools to let others explore and visualize their budgets. Additional oversight, including from the public, could help reduce fraud, waste and abuse in higher education, save taxpayers money and create more opportunities for public participation in state budgeting.

Third, open data can be a valuable resource for producing innovations that make universities a better place to work and study. Large campuses are basically small cities, and many cities have found open data useful for improving public safety and optimizing transportation services. Universities hold much untapped data: course catalogs, syllabi, bus schedules, campus menus, campus directories, faculty evaluations, etc. Creating portals to release these data sets and building application programming interfaces to access this information would give developers direct access to data that students, faculty, alumni and other stakeholders could use to build apps and services to improve the college experience….(More)”

The Power of Heuristics

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

ideas42: “People are presented with many choices throughout their day, from what to have for lunch to where to go on vacation to how much money to save for emergencies. In many situations, this ability to choose enhances our lives. However, having too many choices can sometimes feel like a burden, especially if the choices are complex or the decisions we’re making are important. In these instances, we often make poor decisions, or sometimes even fail to choose at all. This can create real problems, for example when people fail to save enough for retirement or don’t make the right choices when it comes to staying healthy.
So why is it that so much effort has been spent trying to improve decision-making by giving people even more information about the choices available – often complicating the choice even further?
In a new paper by ideas42, ideas42 co-founder Antoinette Schoar of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and ideas42’s Saugato Datta argue that this approach of providing more information to help individuals make better decisions is flawed, “since it does not take into account the psychological or behavioral barriers that prevent people from making better decisions.” The solution, they propose, is using effective rules of thumb, or ‘heuristics’, to “enable people to make ‘reasonably good’ decisions without needing to understand all the complex nuances of the situation.” The paper explores the effectiveness of heuristics as a tool to simplify information during decision-making and help people follow through on their intentions. The authors offer powerful examples of effective heuristics-based methods in three domains: financial education, agriculture, and medicine….(More)”

Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Tina Nabatchi, and Matt Leighninger: “…Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy explores the theory and practice of public participation in decision-making and problem-solving. It examines how public participation developed over time to include myriad thick, thin, and conventional opportunities, occurring in both face-to-face meetings and online settings. The book explores the use of participation in various arenas, including education, health, land use, and state and federal government. It offers a practical framework for thinking about how to engage citizens effectively, and clear explanations of participation scenarios, tactics, and designs. Finally, the book provides a sensible approach for reshaping our participation infrastructure to meet the needs of public officials and citizens.
The book is filled with illustrative examples of innovative participatory activities, and numerous sources for more information. This important text puts the spotlight on the need for long-term, cross-sector, participation planning, and provides guidance for leaders, citizens, activists, and others who are determined to improve the ways that participation and democracy function. Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy:

  • Helps students and practitioners understand the history, theory, and practice  of public participation
  • Contains a wealth of case studies that explore the application of public participation in different settings
  • Covers vital issues such as education, health, land use, and state and federal government
  • Has accompanying instructor resources, such as PowerPoint slides, discussion questions, sample assignments, case studies and research from www.participedia.net, and classroom activities. …(more)”

Governance in the Information Era

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New book edited by Erik W. Johnston:” Policy informatics is addressing governance challenges and their consequences, which span the seeming inability of governments to solve complex problems and the disaffection of people from their governments. Policy informatics seeks approaches that enable our governance systems to address increasingly complex challenges and to meet the rising expectations of people to be full participants in their communities. This book approaches these challenges by applying a combination of the latest American and European approaches in applying complex systems modeling, crowdsourcing, participatory platforms and citizen science to explore complex governance challenges in domains that include education, environment, and health.(More)

Unleashing the Power of Data to Serve the American People

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

“Memorandum: Unleashing the Power of Data to Serve the American People
To: The American People
From: Dr. DJ Patil, Deputy U.S. CTO for Data Policy and Chief Data Scientist

….While there is a rich history of companies using data to their competitive advantage, the disproportionate beneficiaries of big data and data science have been Internet technologies like social media, search, and e-commerce. Yet transformative uses of data in other spheres are just around the corner. Precision medicine and other forms of smarter health care delivery, individualized education, and the “Internet of Things” (which refers to devices like cars or thermostats communicating with each other using embedded sensors linked through wired and wireless networks) are just a few of the ways in which innovative data science applications will transform our future.

The Obama administration has embraced the use of data to improve the operation of the U.S. government and the interactions that people have with it. On May 9, 2013, President Obama signed Executive Order 13642, which made open and machine-readable data the new default for government information. Over the past few years, the Administration has launched a number of Open Data Initiatives aimed at scaling up open data efforts across the government, helping make troves of valuable data — data that taxpayers have already paid for — easily accessible to anyone. In fact, I used data made available by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to improve numerical methods of weather forecasting as part of my doctoral work. So I know firsthand just how valuable this data can be — it helped get me through school!

Given the substantial benefits that responsibly and creatively deployed data can provide to us and our nation, it is essential that we work together to push the frontiers of data science. Given the importance this Administration has placed on data, along with the momentum that has been created, now is a unique time to establish a legacy of data supporting the public good. That is why, after a long time in the private sector, I am returning to the federal government as the Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Data Policy and Chief Data Scientist.

Organizations are increasingly realizing that in order to maximize their benefit from data, they require dedicated leadership with the relevant skills. Many corporations, local governments, federal agencies, and others have already created such a role, which is usually called the Chief Data Officer (CDO) or the Chief Data Scientist (CDS). The role of an organization’s CDO or CDS is to help their organization acquire, process, and leverage data in a timely fashion to create efficiencies, iterate on and develop new products, and navigate the competitive landscape.

The Role of the First-Ever U.S. Chief Data Scientist

Similarly, my role as the U.S. CDS will be to responsibly source, process, and leverage data in a timely fashion to enable transparency, provide security, and foster innovation for the benefit of the American public, in order to maximize the nation’s return on its investment in data.

So what specifically am I here to do? As I start, I plan to focus on these four activities:

…(More)”

Medical Wikis Dedicated to Clinical Practice: A Systematic Review

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New paper by Alexandre Brulet et al:  “Wikis may give clinician communities the opportunity to build knowledge relevant to their practice. The only previous study reviewing a set of health-related wikis, without specification of purpose or audience, globally showed a poor reliability…. Our aim was to review medical wiki websites dedicated to clinical practices…..Among 25 wikis included, 11 aimed at building an encyclopedia, five a textbook, three lessons, two oncology protocols, one a single article, and three at reporting clinical cases. Sixteen wikis were specialized with specific themes or disciplines. Fifteen wikis were using MediaWiki software as-is, three were hosted by online wiki farms, and seven were purpose-built. Except for one MediaWiki-based site, only purpose-built platforms managed detailed user disclosures. ….The 25 medical wikis we studied present various limitations in their format, management, and collaborative features. Professional medical wikis may be improved by using clinical cases, developing more detailed transparency and editorial policies, and involving postgraduate and continuing medical education learners….(More)”

A lot of private-sector data is also used for public good

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Josh New in Computerworld: “As the private sector continues to invest in data-driven innovation, the capacity for society to benefit from this data collection grows as well. Much has been said about how the private sector is using the data it collects to improve corporate bottom lines, but positive stories about how that data contributes to the greater public good are largely unknown.
This is unfortunate, because data collected by the private sector is being used in a variety of important ways, including to advance medical research, to help students make better academic decisions and to provide government agencies and nonprofits with actionable insights. However, overzealous actions by government to restrict the collection and use of data by the private sector are likely to have a chilling effect on such data-driven innovation.
Companies are working to advance medical research with data sharing. Personal genetics company 23andMe, which offers its customers inexpensive DNA test kits, has obtained consent from three-fourths of its 800,000 customers to donate their genetic information for research purposes. 23andMe has partnered with pharmaceutical companies, such as Genentech and Pfizer, to advance genomics research by providing scientists with the data needed to develop new treatments for diseases like Crohn’s and Parkinson’s. The company has also worked with researchers to leverage its network of customers to recruit patients for clinical trials more effectively than through previous protocols.
Private-sector data is also helping students make more informed decisions about education. With the cost of attending college rising, data that helps make this investment worthwhile is incredibly valuable. The social networking company LinkedIn has built tools that provide prospective college students with valuable information about their potential career path, field of study and choice of school. By analyzing the education tracks and careers of its users, LinkedIn can offer students critical data-driven insights into how to make the best out of the enormous and costly decision to go to college. Through LinkedIn’s higher-education tools, students now have an unprecedented resource to develop data-supported education and career plans….(More)”

Innovate or Stagnate

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum at Project Syndicate: “Companies, like people, grow old. They start life small and eager to survive, fueled by youthful energy and fresh ideas. They compete, expand, mature, and eventually, with few exceptions, fade into obscurity. The same is true of governments: they, too, can lose the hunger and ambition of youth and allow themselves to become complacent….

The key to corporations’ rejuvenation, civilizations’ evolution, and human development in general is simple: innovation. I am always amazed when governments think they are an exception to this rule. Innovation in government is not an intellectual luxury, a topic confined to seminars and panel discussions, or a matter only of administrative reforms. It is the recipe for human survival and development, the fuel for constant progress, and the blueprint for a country’s rise.

The first key to business-like innovation in government is a focus on skills. Top-tier companies continuously invest in their employees to provide them with the right skills for the marketplace. Governments must do the same, by constantly upgrading skills and nurturing innovation – among their own employees, across key sectors of the economy, and at the foundations of the education system. Governments that fail to equip new generations with the skills needed to become leaders for their time are condemning them to be led by other, more innovative societies….

The second key to transforming governments into engines of innovation is to shift the balance of investment toward intangibles, as in the private sector. Whereas more than 80% of the value of the Standard & Poor’s 500 consisted of tangible assets 40 years ago, today that ratio is reversed: more than 80% of the largest companies’ value is intangible – the knowledge and skills of their employees and the intellectual property embedded in their products.

Governments, too, should think strategically about shifting their spending away from tangible infrastructure like roads and buildings, and toward intangibles like education and research and development…. (More)”.

U.S. Public Participation Playbook

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
“The U.S. Public Participation Playbook is a resource for government managers to effectively evaluate and build better services through public participation using best practices and performance metrics.
Public participation—where citizens help shape and implement government programs—is a foundation of open, transparent, and engaging government services. From emergency management, town hall discussions and regulatory development to science and education, better engagement with those who use public services can measurably improve those services for everyone.
Developing a U.S. Public Participation Playbook is an open government priority included in both the first and second U.S. Open Government National Action Plans as part of the United States effort to increase public integrity in government programs. This resource reflects the commitment of the government and civic partners to measurably improve participation programs, and is designed using the same inclusive principles that it champions.
How is the playbook structured?

We needed to create a resource that combines best practices and suggested performance metrics for public servants to use to evaluate and build better services — to meet this need, based on discussions with federal managers and stakeholders, we identified five main categories that should be addressed in all programs, whether digital or offline. Within each category we identified 12 unifying plays to start with, each including a checklist to consider, resources and training. We then provide suggested performance metrics for each main category.
This is only the beginning, however, and we hope the plays will quickly expand and enrich. The U.S. Public Participation Playbook was not just designed for a more open government — it was designed collaboratively through a more open government…(More)”

With a Few Bits of Data, Researchers Identify ‘Anonymous’ People

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

in the New York Times: “Even when real names and other personal information are stripped from big data sets, it is often possible to use just a few pieces of the information to identify a specific person, according to a study to be published Friday in the journal Science.

In the study, titled “Unique in the Shopping Mall: On the Reidentifiability of Credit Card Metadata,” a group of data scientists analyzed credit card transactions made by 1.1 million people in 10,000 stores over a three-month period. The data set contained details including the date of each transaction, amount charged and name of the store.

Although the information had been “anonymized” by removing personal details like names and account numbers, the uniqueness of people’s behavior made it easy to single them out.

In fact, knowing just four random pieces of information was enough to reidentify 90 percent of the shoppers as unique individuals and to uncover their records, researchers calculated. And that uniqueness of behavior — or “unicity,” as the researchers termed it — combined with publicly available information, like Instagram or Twitter posts, could make it possible to reidentify people’s records by name.

“The message is that we ought to rethink and reformulate the way we think about data protection,” said Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, a graduate student in computational privacy at the M.I.T. Media Lab who was the lead author of the study. “The old model of anonymity doesn’t seem to be the right model when we are talking about large-scale metadata.”

The analysis of large data sets containing details on people’s behavior holds great potential to improve public health, city planning and education.

But the study calls into question the standard methods many companies, hospitals and government agencies currently use to anonymize their records. It may also give ammunition to some technologists and privacy advocates who have challenged the consumer-tracking processes used by advertising software and analytics companies to tailor ads to so-called anonymous users online….(More).”