Essay by Ilya Somin in Special issue on Is Smaller Government Smarter Government? of Cato Unbound: ” Democracy is supposed to be rule of the people, by the people, and for the people. But in order to rule effectively, the people need political knowledge. If they know little or nothing about government, it becomes difficult to hold political leaders accountable for their performance. Unfortunately, public knowledge about politics is disturbingly low. In addition, the public also often does a poor job of evaluating the political information they do know. This state of affairs has persisted despite rising education levels, increased availability of information thanks to modern technology, and even rising IQ scores. It is mostly the result of rational behavior, not stupidity. Such widespread and persistent political ignorance and irrationality strengthens the case for limiting and decentralizing the power of government….
Political ignorance in America is deep and widespread. The current government shutdown fight provides some good examples. Although Obamacare is at the center of that fight and much other recent political controversy, 44% percent of the public do not even realize it is still the law. Some 80 percent, according to a recent Kaiser survey, say they have heard “nothing at all” or “only a little” about the controversial insurance exchanges that are a major part of the law….
Some people react to data like the above by thinking that the voters must be stupid. Butpolitical ignorance is actually rational for most of the public, including most smart people. If your only reason to follow politics is to be a better voter, that turns out not be much of a reason at all. That is because there is very little chance that your vote will actually make a difference to the outcome of an election (about 1 in 60 million in a presidential race, for example).2 For most of us, it is rational to devote very little time to learning about politics, and instead focus on other activities that are more interesting or more likely to be useful. As former British Prime Minister Tony Blair puts it, “[t]he single hardest thing for a practising politician to understand is that most people, most of the time, don’t give politics a first thought all day long. Or if they do, it is with a sigh…. before going back to worrying about the kids, the parents, the mortgage, the boss, their friends, their weight, their health, sex and rock ‘n’ roll.”3 Most people don’t precisely calculate the odds that their vote will make a difference. But they probably have an intuitive sense that the chances are very small, and act accordingly.
In the book, I also consider why many rationally ignorant people often still bother to vote.4 The key factor is that voting is a lot cheaper and less time-consuming than studying political issues. For many, it is rational to take the time to vote, but without learning much about the issues at stake….
Political ignorance is far from the only factor that must be considered in deciding the appropriate size, scope, and centralization of government. For example, some large-scale issues, such as global warming, are simply too big to be effectively addressed by lower-level governments or private organizations. Democracy and Political Ignorance is not a complete theory of the proper role of government in society. But it does suggest that the problem of political ignorance should lead us to limit and decentralize government more than we would otherwise.”
See also: Ilya Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013)
Defining Open Data
Open Knowledge Foundation Blog: “Open data is data that can be freely used, shared and built-on by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose. This is the summary of the full Open Definition which the Open Knowledge Foundation created in 2005 to provide both a succinct explanation and a detailed definition of open data.
As the open data movement grows, and even more governments and organisations sign up to open data, it becomes ever more important that there is a clear and agreed definition for what “open data” means if we are to realise the full benefits of openness, and avoid the risks of creating incompatibility between projects and splintering the community.
Open can apply to information from any source and about any topic. Anyone can release their data under an open licence for free use by and benefit to the public. Although we may think mostly about government and public sector bodies releasing public information such as budgets or maps, or researchers sharing their results data and publications, any organisation can open information (corporations, universities, NGOs, startups, charities, community groups and individuals).
Read more about different kinds of data in our one page introduction to open data
There is open information in transport, science, products, education, sustainability, maps, legislation, libraries, economics, culture, development, business, design, finance …. So the explanation of what open means applies to all of these information sources and types. Open may also apply both to data – big data and small data – or to content, like images, text and music!
So here we set out clearly what open means, and why this agreed definition is vital for us to collaborate, share and scale as open data and open content grow and reach new communities.
As the open data movement grows, and even more governments and organisations sign up to open data, it becomes ever more important that there is a clear and agreed definition for what “open data” means if we are to realise the full benefits of openness, and avoid the risks of creating incompatibility between projects and splintering the community.
Open can apply to information from any source and about any topic. Anyone can release their data under an open licence for free use by and benefit to the public. Although we may think mostly about government and public sector bodies releasing public information such as budgets or maps, or researchers sharing their results data and publications, any organisation can open information (corporations, universities, NGOs, startups, charities, community groups and individuals).
Read more about different kinds of data in our one page introduction to open data
There is open information in transport, science, products, education, sustainability, maps, legislation, libraries, economics, culture, development, business, design, finance …. So the explanation of what open means applies to all of these information sources and types. Open may also apply both to data – big data and small data – or to content, like images, text and music!
So here we set out clearly what open means, and why this agreed definition is vital for us to collaborate, share and scale as open data and open content grow and reach new communities.
What is Open?
The full Open Definition provides a precise definition of what open data is. There are 2 important elements to openness:
- Legal openness: you must be allowed to get the data legally, to build on it, and to share it. Legal openness is usually provided by applying an appropriate (open) license which allows for free access to and reuse of the data, or by placing data into the public domain.
- Technical openness: there should be no technical barriers to using that data. For example, providing data as printouts on paper (or as tables in PDF documents) makes the information extremely difficult to work with. So the Open Definition has various requirements for “technical openness,” such as requiring that data be machine readable and available in bulk.”…
When the Government Shuts, Even Web Sites Go Down
The New York Times: “When the federal government last shutdown in 1995, most agencies and departments had either no presence on the Internet or a very basic Web site. Since then, agency Web sites have become the primary public face of the government for most Americans who do not live in or near Washington. So it’s perhaps not surprising that the decision by agencies such as NASA and the Library of Congress to take down their sites this week has gotten a lot of attention.
In keeping with the senseless nature of the shutdown, some Web sites are down while others are still up. The Federal Trade Commission, for instance, has blocked access to its site. It has posted a notice online saying that it’s closed indefinitely as are its systems for people to register complaints or enter telephone numbers on the do-not call list. By contrast, the Department of Education has left its site up with a notice informing visitors that it will not be updated during the shutdown. Sites for the White House, Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service, are being updated at least in part. (Here’s a pretty comprehensive list of which sites are up and which are not.)
Each department and agency has had to decide what to do with its Web site based on its interpretation of federal laws and rules. In a memo (PDF) written last month, the Office of Management and Budget offered some guidance to officials trying to figure out what to do. ..In further keeping with the truly bizarre nature of government shutdowns, the O.M.B. also reminded government officials that they should pay no attention to whether it will cost more to shut down their Web site than it does to keep it going.”
See also: Blacked Out Government Websites Available Through Wayback Machine
New book: "Crowdsourcing"
New book by Jean-Fabrice Lebraty, Katia Lobre-Lebraty on Crowdsourcing: “Crowdsourcing is a relatively recent phenomenon that only appeared in 2006, but it continues to grow and diversify (crowdfunding, crowdcontrol, etc.). This book aims to review this concept and show how it leads to the creation of value and new business opportunities.
Chapter 1 is based on four examples: the online-banking sector, an informative television channel, the postal sector and the higher education sector. It shows that in the current context, for a company facing challenges, the crowd remains an untapped resource. The next chapter presents crowdsourcing as a new form of externalization and offers definitions of crowdsourcing. In Chapter 3, the authors attempt to explain how a company can create value by means of a crowdsourcing operation. To do this, authors use a model linking types of value, types of crowd, and the means by which these crowds are accessed.
Chapter 4 examines in detail various forms that crowdsourcing may take, by presenting and discussing ten types of crowdsourcing operation. In Chapter 5, the authors imagine and explore the ways in which the dark side of crowdsourcing might be manifested and Chapter 6 offers some insight into the future of crowdsourcing.
Contents
1. A Turbulent and Paradoxical Environment.
2. Crowdsourcing: A New Form of Externalization.
3. Crowdsourcing and Value Creation.
4. Forms of Crowdsourcing.
5. The Dangers of Crowdsourcing.
6. The Future of Crowdsourcing.”
Riding the Waves or Caught in the Tide? Navigating the Evolving Information Environment
IFLA Trend Report: “In the global information environment, time moves quickly and there’s an abundance of commentators trying to keep up. With each new technological development, a new report emerges assessing its impact on different sectors of society. The IFLA Trend Report takes a broader approach and identifies five high level trends shaping the information society, spanning access to education, privacy, civic engagement and transformation. Its findings reflect a year’s consultation with a range of experts and stakeholders from different disciplines to map broader societal changes occurring, or likely to occur in the information environment.
The IFLA Trend Report is more than a single document – it is a selection of resources to help you understand where libraries fit into a changing society.
From Five Key Trends Which Will Change Our Information Environment:
Trend 1:
New Technologies Will Both Expand and Limit Who Has Access to Information…
Trend 2:
Online Education Will Democratise and Disrupt Global Learning…
Trend 3:
The Boundaries of Privacy and Data Protection Will Be Redefined…
Trend 4:
Hyper-Connected Societies Will Listen to and Empower New Voices and Groups…In hyper-connected societies more opportunities for collective action are being realised – enabling the rise of new voices and promoting the growth of single-issue movements at the expense of traditional political parties. Open government initiatives and access to public sector data are leading to more transparency and citizen-focused public services.
Trend 5:
The Global Information Economy Will Be Transformed by New Technologies…”
Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better
New book by Clive Thompson: “It’s undeniable—technology is changing the way we think. But is it for the better? Amid a chorus of doomsayers, Clive Thompson delivers a resounding “yes.” The Internet age has produced a radical new style of human intelligence, worthy of both celebration and analysis. We learn more and retain it longer, write and think with global audiences, and even gain an ESP-like awareness of the world around us. Modern technology is making us smarter, better connected, and often deeper—both as individuals and as a society.
In Smarter Than You Think Thompson shows that every technological innovation—from the written word to the printing press to the telegraph—has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. We panic that life will never be the same, that our attentions are eroding, that culture is being trivialized. But as in the past, we adapt—learning to use the new and retaining what’s good of the old.”
Cyberpsychology and New Media
A thematic reader, edited by Andrew Power, Grainne Kirwan: “Cyberpsychology is the study of human interactions with the internet, mobile computing and telephony, games consoles, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and other contemporary electronic technologies. The field has grown substantially over the past few years and this book surveys how researchers are tackling the impact of new technology on human behaviour and how people interact with this technology.
Examining topics as diverse as online dating, social networking, online communications, artificial intelligence, health-information seeking behaviour, education online, online therapies and cybercrime, Cyberpsychology and New Media book provides an in-depth overview of this burgeoning field, and allows those with little previous knowledge to gain an appreciation of the diversity of the research being undertaken in the area.”
Nudge Nation: A New Way to Prod Students Into and Through College
Ben Wildavsky at EducationSector: “Thanks in part to Thaler and Sunstein’s work, the power of nudges has become well-established—including on many college campuses, where students around the country are beginning the fall semester. While online education and software-driven pedagogy on college campuses have received a good deal of attention, a less visible set of technology-driven initiatives also has gained a foothold: behavioral nudges designed to keep students on track to succeed. Just as e-commerce entrepreneurs have drawn on massive troves of consumer data to create algorithms for firms such as Netflix and Amazon, which unbundle the traditional storefront consumer experience through customized, online delivery, architects of campus technology nudges also rely on data analytics or data mining to improve the student experience.
By giving students information-driven suggestions that lead to smarter actions, technology nudges are intended to tackle a range of problems surrounding the process by which students begin college and make their way to graduation.
New approaches are certainly needed….
There are many reasons for low rates of persistence and graduation, including financial problems, the difficulty of juggling non-academic responsibilities such as work and family, and, for some first-generation students, culture shock. But academic engagement and success are major contributors. That’s why colleges are using behavioral nudges, drawing on data analytics and behavioral psychology, to focus on problems that occur along the academic pipeline:
• Poor student organization around the logistics of going to college
• Unwise course selections that increase the risk of failure and extend time to degree
• Inadequate information about academic progress and the need for academic help
• Unfocused support systems that identify struggling students but don’t directly engage with them
• Difficulty tapping into counseling services
These new ventures, whether originating within colleges or created by outside entrepreneurs, are doing things with data that just couldn’t be done in the past—creating giant databases of student course records, for example, to find patterns of success and failure that result when certain kinds of students take certain kinds of courses.”
Open data for accountable governance: Is data literacy the key to citizen engagement?
Camilla Monckton at UNDP’s Voices of Eurasia blog: “How can technology connect citizens with governments, and how can we foster, harness, and sustain the citizen engagement that is so essential to anti-corruption efforts?
UNDP has worked on a number of projects that use technology to make it easier for citizens to report corruption to authorities:
- Serbia’s SMS corruption reporting in the health sector
- Montenegro’s ‘be responsible app’
- Kosovo’s online corruption reporting site kallxo.com
These projects are showing some promising results, and provide insights into how a more participatory, interactive government could develop.
At the heart of the projects is the ability to use citizen generated data to identify and report problems for governments to address….
Wanted: Citizen experts
As Kenneth Cukier, The Economist’s Data Editor, has discussed, data literacy will become the new computer literacy. Big data is still nascent and it is impossible to predict exactly how it will affect society as a whole. What we do know is that it is here to stay and data literacy will be integral to our lives.
It is essential that we understand how to interact with big data and the possibilities it holds.
Data literacy needs to be integrated into the education system. Educating non-experts to analyze data is critical to enabling broad participation in this new data age.
As technology advances, key government functions become automated, and government data sharing increases, newer ways for citizens to engage will multiply.
Technology changes rapidly, but the human mind and societal habits cannot. After years of closed government and bureaucratic inefficiency, adaptation of a new approach to governance will take time and education.
We need to bring up a generation that sees being involved in government decisions as normal, and that views participatory government as a right, not an ‘innovative’ service extended by governments.
What now?
In the meantime, while data literacy lies in the hands of a few, we must continue to connect those who have the technological skills with citizen experts seeking to change their communities for the better – as has been done in many a Social Innovation Camps recently (in Montenegro, Ukraine and Armenia at Mardamej and Mardamej Relaoded and across the region at Hurilab).
The social innovation camp and hackathon models are an increasingly debated topic (covered by Susannah Vila, David Eaves, Alex Howard and Clay Johnson).
On the whole, evaluations are leading to newer models that focus on greater integration of mentorship to increase sustainability – which I readily support. However, I do have one comment:
Social innovation camps are often criticized for a lack of sustainability – a claim based on the limited number of apps that go beyond the prototype phase. I find a certain sense of irony in this, for isn’t this what innovation is about: Opening oneself up to the risk of failure in the hope of striking something great?
In the words of Vinod Khosla:
“No failure means no risk, which means nothing new.”
As more data is released, the opportunity for new apps and new ways for citizen interaction will multiply and, who knows, someone might come along and transform government just as TripAdvisor transformed the travel industry.”
Political Scientists Acknowledge Need to Make Stronger Case for Their Field
Beth McMurtrie in The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Back in March, Congress limited federal support for political-science research by the National Science Foundation to projects that promote national security or American economic interests. That decision was a victory for Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma who has long aimed to eliminate all NSF grants for political science, arguing that unlike the hard sciences it rarely produces concrete benefits to society.
Congress’s action has led to soul searching within the discipline about how effective academics have been in conveying the value of their work to the public. It has also revived a longstanding debate among political scientists about the shift toward more statistically sophisticated, mathematically esoteric research, and its usefulness outside of academe. Those discussions were out front at the annual conference of the American Political Science Association, held here last week.
Rogers M. Smith, a political-science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was one of 13 members of a panel that discussed the controversy over NSF money for political-science studies. He put the problem bluntly: “We need to make a better case for ourselves.”
Few on the panel, in fact, seemed to think that political science had done a good job on that front. The association has created a task force—led by Arthur Lupia, a political-science professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor—to improve public perceptions of political science’s value. He said his colleagues could learn from organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which holds special sessions for the news media at its annual conference to explain the work of its members to the public.”