How Software is Eating the World and Reprogramming Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jaime Gómez Ramírez at Open Mind: “Democracy, the government of the majority typically through elected representatives, is undergoing a major crisis. Human societies have experimented with democracy since at least the fifth century BC in the polis of Athens. Whether democracy is scalable is an open question that could help understand the current mistrust in democratic institutions and the rise of populism. The majority rule is a powerful narrative that is fed every few years with elections. In Against elections, the cultural historian Van Reybrouck claims that elections were never meant to make democracy possible, rather the opposite, it was a tool designed for those in power to prevent “the rule of the mob”. Elections created a new elite and power remained in the hands of a minority, but this time endowed with democratic legitimacy….

The 2008 financial crisis have changed the perception of, the once taken for granted, complementary nature of democracy and capitalism. The belief that capitalism and democracy go hand by hand is not credible anymore. The concept of nation is a fiction in need of a continuous stock of intergenerational believers. The nation state successfully assimilated heterogeneous groups of people under a common language and shared cultural values. But this seems today a rather fragile foundation to resist the centrifugal forces that financial capitalism impinges upon the social fabric.

Nation states will not collapse over night, but they are an industrial era device in a digital world. To do not fall into obsolescence they will need to change their operative system. Since the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen coined the phrase “software is eating the world” the logic of financial capitalism has accelerated this trend. Five software companies: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet (FANG) equal more than 10 per cent percent of the S&P 500 cap. Todays dominant industries in entertainment, retail, telecom, marketing companies and others are software companies. Software is also taking a bigger share in industries that traditionally exist in the physical space like automakers and energy. Education and health care have shown more resistance to software-based entrepreneurial change but a very profound transformation is underway. This is already visible with the growing popularity of MOOCs and personalized health monitoring systems.

Software-based business not only have up trending market share but more importantly, software can reprogram the world. The internet of things will allow to have full connectivity of smart devices in an economy with massive deflationary costs in computing. Computing might even become free. This has profound consequences for business, industry and most importantly, for how citizens want to organize society and governance.

The most promising technological innovation in years is the blockchain technology, an encrypted and distributed ledger system. Blockchain is an universal and freely accessible repository of documents including property and insurance contracts, publicly auditable, and resistant to special group interests manipulation and corruption. New kinds of governance models and services could be tested and implemented using the blockchain. The time is ripe for fundamental software-based transformation in governance. Democracy and free society will ignore this at its own peril…(More)”.

“Nudge units” – where they came from and what they can do

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Zeina Afif at the Worldbank: “You could say that the first one began in 2009, when the US government recruited Cass Sunstein to head The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to streamline regulations. In 2010, the UK established the first Behavioural Insights Unit (BIT) on a trial basis, under the Cabinet Office. Other countries followed suit, including the US, Australia, Canada, Netherlands, and Germany. Shortly after, countries such as India, Indonesia, Peru, Singapore, and many others started exploring the application of behavioral insights to their policies and programs. International institutions such as the World Bank, UN agencies, OECD, and EU have also established behavioral insights units to support their programs. And just this month, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland launched its own Behavioral Economics Unit.

The Future
As eMBeD, the behavioral science unit at the World Bank, continues to support governments across the globe in the implementation of their units, here are some common questions we often get asked.

What are the models for a Behavioral Insights Unit in Government?
As of today, over a dozen countries have integrated behavioral insights with their operations. While there is not one model to prescribe, the setup varies from centralized or decentralized to networked….

In some countries, the units were first established at the ministerial level. One example is MineduLab in Peru, which was set up with eMBeD’s help. The unit works as an innovation lab, testing rigorous and leading research in education and behavioral science to address issues such as teacher absenteeism and motivation, parents’ engagement, and student performance….

What should be the structure of the team?
Most units start with two to four full-time staff. Profiles include policy advisors, social psychologists, experimental economists, and behavioral scientists. Experience in the public sector is essential to navigate the government and build support. It is also important to have staff familiar with designing and running experiments. Other important skills include psychology, social psychology, anthropology, design thinking, and marketing. While these skills are not always readily available in the public sector, it is important to note that all behavioral insights units partnered with academics and experts in the field.

The U.S. team, originally called the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, is staffed mostly by seconded academic faculty, researchers, and other departmental staff. MineduLab in Peru partnered with leading experts, including the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), Fortalecimiento de la Gestión de la Educación (FORGE), Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), and the World Bank….(More)”

Linux Foundation Debuts Community Data License Agreement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit advancing professional open source management for mass collaboration, today announced the Community Data License Agreement(CDLA) family of open data agreements. In an era of expansive and often underused data, the CDLA licenses are an effort to define a licensing framework to support collaborative communities built around curating and sharing “open” data.

Inspired by the collaborative software development models of open source software, the CDLA licenses are designed to enable individuals and organizations of all types to share data as easily as they currently share open source software code. Soundly drafted licensing models can help people form communities to assemble, curate and maintain vast amounts of data, measured in petabytes and exabytes, to bring new value to communities of all types, to build new business opportunities and to power new applications that promise to enhance safety and services.

The growth of big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has allowed people to extract unprecedented levels of insight from data. Now the challenge is to assemble the critical mass of data for those tools to analyze. The CDLA licenses are designed to help governments, academic institutions, businesses and other organizations open up and share data, with the goal of creating communities that curate and share data openly.

For instance, if automakers, suppliers and civil infrastructure services can share data, they may be able to improve safety, decrease energy consumption and improve predictive maintenance. Self-driving cars are heavily dependent on AI systems for navigation, and need massive volumes of data to function properly. Once on the road, they can generate nearly a gigabyte of data every second. For the average car, that means two petabytes of sensor, audio, video and other data each year.

Similarly, climate modeling can integrate measurements captured by government agencies with simulation data from other organizations and then use machine learning systems to look for patterns in the information. It’s estimated that a single model can yield a petabyte of data, a volume that challenges standard computer algorithms, but is useful for machine learning systems. This knowledge may help improve agriculture or aid in studying extreme weather patterns.

And if government agencies share aggregated data on building permits, school enrollment figures, sewer and water usage, their citizens benefit from the ability of commercial entities to anticipate their future needs and respond with infrastructure and facilities that arrive in anticipation of citizens’ demands.

“An open data license is essential for the frictionless sharing of the data that powers both critical technologies and societal benefits,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of The Linux Foundation. “The success of open source software provides a powerful example of what can be accomplished when people come together around a resource and advance it for the common good. The CDLA licenses are a key step in that direction and will encourage the continued growth of applications and infrastructure.”…(More)”.

Humanizing technology

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Kaliya Young at Open Democracy: “Can we use the internet to enhance deep human connection and support the emergence of thriving communities in which everyone’s needs are met and people’s lives are filled with joy and meaning?….

Our work on ‘technical’ technologies won’t generate broad human gains unless we invest an equal amount of time, energy and resources in the development of social and emotional technologies that drive how our whole society is organized and how we work together. I think we are actually on the cusp of having the tools, understanding and infrastructure to make that happen, without all our ideas and organizing being intermediated by giant corporations. But what does that mean in practice?

I think two things are absolutely vital.

First of all, how do we connect all the people and all the groups that want to align their goals in pursuit of social justice, deep democracy, and the development of new economies that share wealth and protect the environment? How are people supported to protect their own autonomy while also working with multiple other groups in processes of joint work and collective action?

One key element of the answer to that question is to generate a digital identity that is not under the control of a corporation, an organization or a government.

I have been co-leading the community surrounding the Internet Identity Workshop for the last 12 years. After many explorations of the techno-possibility landscape we have finally made some breakthroughs that will lay the foundations of a real internet-scale infrastructure to support what are called ‘user-centric’ or ‘self-sovereign’ identities.

This infrastructure consists of a network with two different types of nodes—people and organizations—with each individual being able to join lots of different groups. But regardless of how many groups they join, people will need a digital identity that is not owned by Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Google or Facebook. That’s the only way they will be able to control their own autonomous interactions on the internet. If open standards are not created for this critical piece of infrastructure then we will end up in a future where giant corporations control all of our identities. In many ways we are in this future now.

This is where something called ‘Shared Ledger Technology’ or SLT comes in—more commonly known as ‘blockchain’ or ‘distributed ledger technology.’  SLT represents a huge innovation in terms of databases that can be read by anyone and which are highly resistant to tampering—meaning that data cannot be erased or changed once entered. At the moment there’s a lot of work going on to design the encryption key management that’s necessary to support the creation and operation of these unique private channels of connection and communication between individuals and organizations. The Sovrin Foundation has built an SLT specifically for digital identity key management, and has donated the code required to the HyperLeger Foundation under ‘project Indy.’…

To put it simply, technical technologies are easier to turn in the direction of democracy and social justice if they are developed and applied with social and emotional intelligence. Combining all three together is the key to using technology for liberating ends….(More)”.

These 16 companies want to make technology work for everyone

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

MIT Sloan School Press Release: “One company helps undocumented people create a digital identity. Another uses artificial intelligence to help students transition to college. Yet another provides free training to budding tech pros.

These organizations are just a few of the many that are using technology to solve problems and help people all over the world — and they are all finalists in the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy’s second annual Inclusive Innovation Challenge. During a time of great technological innovation, many people are not benefiting from this progress. The challenge is recognizing companies that are using technology to improve opportunities for working people…..

Here are the finalists:

AdmitHub
Did you know that of the students who have been admitted to college each spring, 14 percent don’t actually attend come fall? Or that of those who do attend, 48 percent haven’t graduated six years later. Boston-based AdmitHub created a virtual assistant powered by artificial intelligence to help students navigate the financial, academic, and social situations that accompany going to college, and they do it all through text messaging, communicating with students on their terms and easing the transition to college.

African Renewable Energy Distributor Ltd.
This company has developed solar-powered, portable kiosks where people can charge their phones, access Wi-Fi, or access an intranet while offline. Using a micro franchise business model, the Rwanda-based company hopes to empower women and people with disabilities who can run the kiosks.

AID:Tech
More than two billion people worldwide have no legal identity, something that is necessary for accessing public and financial services. Aid:Tech aims to end that, by providing a platform for undocumented people to create a digital ID using blockchain so that every transaction is secure and traceable. Aid:Tech is based out of Dublin, with offices in New York and London….(More)”

Inside the Lab That’s Quantifying Happiness

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Rowan Jacobsen at Outside: “In Mississippi, people tweet about cake and cookies an awful lot; in Colorado, it’s noodles. In Mississippi, the most-tweeted activity is eating; in Colorado, it’s running, skiing, hiking, snowboarding, and biking, in that order. In other words, the two states fall on opposite ends of the behavior spectrum. If you were to assign a caloric value to every food mentioned in every tweet by the citizens of the United States and a calories-burned value to every activity, and then totaled them up, you would find that Colorado tweets the best caloric ratio in the country and Mississippi the worst.

Sure, you’d be forgiven for doubting people’s honesty on Twitter. On those rare occasions when I destroy an entire pint of Ben and Jerry’s, I most assuredly do not tweet about it. Likewise, I don’t reach for my phone every time I strap on a pair of skis.

And yet there’s this: Mississippi has the worst rate of diabetes and heart disease in the country and Colorado has the best. Mississippi has the second-highest percentage of obesity; Colorado has the lowest. Mississippi has the worst life expectancy in the country; Colorado is near the top. Perhaps we are being more honest on social media than we think. And perhaps social media has more to tell us about the state of the country than we realize.

That’s the proposition of Peter Dodds and Chris Danforth, who co-direct the University of Vermont’s Computational Story Lab, a warren of whiteboards and grad students in a handsome brick building near the shores of Lake Champlain. Dodds and Danforth are applied mathematicians, but they would make a pretty good comedy duo. When I stopped by the lab recently, both were in running clothes and cracking jokes. They have an abundance of curls between them and the wiry energy of chronic thinkers. They came to UVM in 2006 to start the Vermont Complex Systems Center, which crunches big numbers from big systems and looks for patterns. Out of that, they hatched the Computational Story Lab, which sifts through some of that public data to discern the stories we’re telling ourselves. “It took us a while to come up with the name,” Dodds told me as we shotgunned espresso and gazed into his MacBook. “We were going to be the Department of Recreational Truth.”

This year, they teamed up with their PhD student Andy Reagan to launch the Lexicocalorimeter, an online tool that uses tweets to compute the calories in and calories out for every state. It’s no mere party trick; the Story Labbers believe the Lexicocalorimeter has important advantages over slower, more traditional methods of gathering health data….(More)”.

Smart or dumb? The real impact of India’s proposal to build 100 smart cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 in The Conversation: “In 2014, the new Indian government declared its intention to achieve 100 smart cities.

In promoting this objective, it gave the example of a large development in the island city of Mumbai, Bhendi Bazaar. There, 3-5 storey housing would be replaced with towers of between 40 to 60 storeys to increase density. This has come to be known as “vertical with a vengeance”.

We have obtained details of the proposed project from the developer and the municipal authorities. Using an extended urban metabolism model, which measures the impacts of the built environment, we have assessed its overall impact. We determined how the flows of materials and energy will change as a result of the redevelopment.

Our research shows that the proposal is neither smart nor sustainable.

Measuring impacts

The Indian government clearly defined what they meant with “smart”. Over half of the 11 objectives were environmental and main components of the metabolism of a city. These include adequate water and sanitation, assured electricity, efficient transport, reduced air pollution and resource depletion, and sustainability.

We collected data from various primary and secondary sources. This included physical surveys during site visits, local government agencies, non-governmental organisations, the construction industry and research.

We then made three-dimensional models of the existing and proposed developments to establish morphological changes, including building heights, street widths, parking provision, roof areas, open space, landscaping and other aspects of built form.

Demographic changes (population density, total population) were based on census data, the developer’s calculations and an assessment of available space. Such information about the magnitude of the development and the associated population changes allowed us to analyse the additional resources required as well as the environmental impact….

Case studies such as Bhendi Bazaar provide an example of plans for increased density and urban regeneration. However, they do not offer an answer to the challenge of limited infrastructure to support the resource requirements of such developments.

The results of our research indicate significant adverse impacts on the environment. They show that the metabolism increases at a greater rate than the population grows. On this basis, this proposed development for Mumbai, or the other 99 cities, should not be called smart or sustainable.

With policies that aim to prevent urban sprawl, cities will inevitably grow vertically. But with high-rise housing comes dependence on centralised flows of energy, water supplies and waste disposal. Dependency in turn leads to vulnerability and insecurity….(More)”.

How open data can help the Global South, from disaster relief to voter turnout

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Stefaan Verhulst and Andrew Young in The Conversation Global: “The modern era is marked by growing faith in the power of data. “Big data”, “open data”, and “evidence-based decision-making” have become buzzwords, touted as solutions to the world’s most complex and persistent problems, from corruption and famine to the refugee crisis.

While perhaps most pronounced in higher income countries, this trend is now emerging globally. In Africa, Latin America, Asia and beyond, hopes are high that access to data can help developing economies by increasing transparency, fostering sustainable development, building climate resiliency and the like.

This is an exciting prospect, but can opening up data actually make a difference in people’s lives?

Getting data-driven about data

The GovLab at New York University spent the last year trying to answer that question….

Our conclusion: the enthusiasm is justified – as long as it’s tempered with a good measure of realism, too. Here are our six major takeaways:

1. We need a framework – Overall, there is still little evidence to substantiate the enthusiastic claims that open data can foment sustainable development and transform governance. That’s not surprising given the early stage of most open data initiatives.

It may be early for impact evaluation, but it’s not too soon to develop a model that will eventually allow us to assess the impact of opening up data over time.

To that end, the GovLab has created an evidence-based framework that aims to better capture the role of open data in developing countries. The Open Data Logic Framework below focuses on various points in the open data value cycle, from data supply to demand, use and impact.

Logic model of open data. The GovLab

2. Open data has real promise – Based on this framework and the underlying evidence that fed into it, we can guardedly conclude that open data does in fact spur development – but only under certain conditions and within the right supporting ecosystem.

One well-known success took place after Nepal’s 2015 earthquake when open data helped NGOs map important landmarks such as health facilities and road networks, among other uses.

And in Colombia, the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture launched Aclímate Colombia, a tool that gives smallholder farmers data-driven insight into planting strategies that makes them more resilient to climate change….

3. Open data can improve people’s lives Examining projects in a number of sectors critical to development, including health, humanitarian aid, agriculture, poverty alleviation, energy and education, we found four main ways that data can have an impact….

4. Data can be an asset in development While these impacts are apparent in both developed and developing countries, we believe that open data can have a particularly powerful role in developing economies.

Where data is scarce, as it often is in poorer countries, open data can lead to an inherently more equitable and democratic distribution of information and knowledge. This, in turn, may activate a wider range of expertise to address complex problems; it’s what we in the field call “open innovation”.

This quality can allow resource-starved developing economies to access and leverage the best minds around.

And because trust in government is quite low in many developing economies, the transparency bred of releasing data can have after-effects that go well beyond the immediate impact of the data itself…

5. The ingredients matter To better understand why some open data projects fail while others succeed, we created a “periodic table” of open data (below), which includes 27 enabling factors divided into five broad categories….

6. We can plan for impact Our report ends by identifying how development organisations can catalyse the release and use of open data to make a difference on the ground.

Recommendations include:

· Define the problem, understand the user, and be aware of local conditions;

· Focus on readiness, responsiveness and change management;

· Nurture an open data ecosystem through collaboration and partnerships;

· Have a risk mitigation strategy;

· Secure resources and focus on sustainability; and

· Build a strong evidence base and support more research.

Next steps

In short, while it may still be too early to fully capture open data’s as-of-yet muted impact on developing economies, there are certainly reasons for optimism.

Much like blockchain, drones and other much-hyped technical advances, it’s time to start substantiating the excitement over open data with real, hard evidence.

The next step is to get systematic, using the kind of analytical framework we present here to gain comparative and actionable insight into if, when and how open data works. Only by getting data-driven about open data can we help it live up to its potential….(More)“

Some Countries Like ‘Nudges’ More Than Others

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Cass Sunstein at Bloomberg: “All over the world, private and public institutions have been adopting “nudges” — interventions that preserve freedom of choice, but that steer people in a particular direction.

A GPS device nudges you. So does a reminder from your doctor, informing you that you have an appointment next Wednesday; an automatic enrollment policy from your employer, defaulting you into a 401(k) plan; and a calorie label at fast-food restaurants, telling you that a cheeseburger won’t be great for your waistline.

Recent evidence demonstrates that nudges can be amazingly effective — far more so, per dollar spent, than other tools, such as economic incentives. But a big question remains: Across different nations, do nudges have the same impact? Here’s a cautionary note.

One of the most famous success stories in the annals of nudging comes from the U.K. To encourage delinquent taxpayers to pay up, British officials simply informed them, by letter, that the overwhelming majority of British taxpayers pay their taxes on time.

It worked. Within just a few weeks, the letters produced millions of dollars in additional revenue. Consistent with standard findings in behavioral science, recipients of the letters didn’t like learning that they were deviating from the social norm. Like most of us, they didn’t want to be creeps or shirkers, and so they paid up.

For other nations, including the U.S., that was an intriguing finding. So our Department of Treasury tried the same approach. It sent letters to delinquent taxpayers, informing them (accurately) that 91 percent of American taxpayers pay on time. On the basis of the British data, the expectation was that a lot of people would be ashamed, and pay their taxes.

Except they didn’t. The U.S. Treasury didn’t get any more money.

How come? It’s reasonable to speculate that in the U.S., delinquent taxpayers just don’t care about the social norm. If they learn about it, they still aren’t motivated to pay.

This finding demonstrates that different groups can react very differently to nudges. It’s well known that when people are told that they are using more energy than their neighbors, they scale back — so that information is an effective nudge. But a study in California suggests that things are a bit more complicated….

In general, we don’t yet have a lot of evidence of international differences on the impact of nudges. But it would be surprising if such evidence doesn’t start to accumulate. Wherever people begin with strong preferences, and don’t like the direction in which they are being nudged, nudges are going to have a weaker effect.

For many nudges, that’s just fine. Actually, it’s part of the point….(More)”.

Open Governance as a Service

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Andrei Sambra and Lalana Kagal for the 2017 ACM on Web Science Conference: “This extended abstract discusses how public services can become more open and engage citizens more actively, by providing the local, public administration with the right tools. It calls for public services to think more creatively about how they can collaborate with the public to make better use of the energy and enthusiasm, as well as missing skills that people have and want to offer. It explores the challenges, both in terms of policy and technology, that public services face in mobilizing resources that are by nature voluntary. We intend to provide the governance tools that enable public services to leverage skills coming from the local community, and improve their autonomy, transparency and analytical tools required for true open governance….(More)”.