The world watches Reykjavik’s digital democracy experiment

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Joshua Jacobs at the Financial Times: “When Iceland’s banks collapsed and mistrust of politicians soared during the 2008 financial crisis, two programmers thought software could help salvage the country’s democracy. They created Your Priorities, a platform that allows citizens to suggest laws, policies and budget measures, which can then be voted up or down by other users. “

We thought: If we manage somehow to connect regular citizens with government then we create a dialogue that will ultimately result in better decisions,” says Robert Bjarnason, chief executive of Citizens Foundation, the company that created Your Priorities. Mr Bjarnason and his fellow co-founder of Citizens Foundation, Gunnar Grimsson, used the software to create a policy website called Better Reykjavik just before the city’s 2010 elections.

Jon Gnarr, Reykjavik’s then mayor, encouraged people to use the platform to give him policy suggestions and he committed to funding the top 10 ideas each month. Seven years on, Better Reykjavik has some 20,000 users and 769 of their ideas have been approved by the city council. These include increasing financial support for the city’s homeless, converting a former power station into a youth centre, introducing gender-neutral toilets and naming a street after Darth Vader, the character from Star Wars.

Your Priorities has also been tested in other countries, including Estonia, Australia, Scotland, Wales, Norway and Malta. In Estonia, seven proposals have become law, including one limiting donations from companies to political parties and another that requires the national parliament to debate any proposal with more than 1,000 votes.

The software is part of a global trend for people to seek more influence over their politicians. In Australia, for example, the MiVote app allows people to vote on issues being debated in parliament.

…At times, the portal can become a “crazy sounding board” Mr Svansson concedes. The Reykjavik council has put in quality controls to filter out hare-brained proposals, although Mr Bjarnason says he has had to remove inappropriate content only a handful of times….During Iceland’s parliamentary elections last month, 10 out of 11 political parties published their election pitches on Your Priorities, allowing voters to comment on policies and propose new ones. This interactive manifesto website attracted 22,000 visitors.

Testing the efficacy of platforms such as Your Priorities is perhaps easier in Reykjavik — population 123,000 — than in larger cities. Even so, integrating the site into the council’s policymaking apparatus has been slower than Mr Bjarnason had foreseen. “Everything takes a long time and sometimes it is like you are swimming in syrup,” he says. “Still, it has been a really good experience working with the city.”…(More).

When Data Science Destabilizes Democracy and Facilitates Genocide

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Rachel Thomas in Fast.AI on “What is the ethical responsibility of data scientists?”…What we’re talking about is a cataclysmic change… What we’re talking about is a major foreign power with sophistication and ability to involve themselves in a presidential election and sow conflict and discontent all over this country… You bear this responsibility. You’ve created these platforms. And now they are being misused, Senator Feinstein said this week in a senate hearing. Who has created a cataclysmic change? Who bears this large responsibility? She was talking to executives at tech companies and referring to the work of data scientists.

Data science can have a devastating impact on our world, as illustrated by inflammatory Russian propaganda being shown on Facebook to 126 million Americans leading up to the 2016 election (and the subject of the senate hearing described above) or by lies spread via Facebook that are fueling ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Over half a million Rohinyga have been driven from their homes due to systematic murder, rape, and burning. Data science is foundational to Facebook’s newsfeed, in determining what content is prioritized and who sees what….

The examples of bias in data science are myriad and include:

You can do awesome and meaningful things with data science (such as diagnosing cancer, stopping deforestation, increasing farm yields, and helping patients with Parkinson’s disease), and you can (often unintentionally) enable terrible things with data science, as the examples in this post illustrate. Being a data scientist entails both great opportunity, as well as great responsibility, to use our skills to not make the world a worse place. Ultimately, doing data science is about humans, not just the users of our products, but everyone who will be impacted by our work. (More)”.

The Pnyx and the Agora

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Richard Sennett at ReadingDesign: “I am not going to speak about the present, but about the past: about the foundations on which our democracy is based. These foundations were rooted in cities, in their civic spaces. We need to remember this history to think about how democratic cities should be made today.

A democracy supposes people can consider views other than their own. This was Aristotle’s notion in the Politics. He thought the awareness of difference occurs only in cities, since the every city is formed by synoikismos, a drawing together of different families and tribes, of competing economic interests, of natives with foreigners.

“Difference” today seems about identity — we think of race, gender, or class. Aristotle’s meant something more by difference; he included also the experience of doing different things, of acting in divergent ways which do not neatly fit together. The mixture in a city of action as well as identity is the foundation of its distinctive politics. Aristotle’s hope was that when a person becomes accustomed to a diverse, complex milieu he or she will cease reacting violently when challenged by something strange or contrary. Instead, this environment should create an outlook favourable to discussion of differing views or conflicting interests. Almost all modern urban planners subscribe to this Aristotelian principle. But if in the same space different persons or activities are merely concentrated, but each remains isolated and segregated, diversity loses its force. Differences have to interact.

Classical urbanism imagines two kinds of spaces in which this interaction could occur. One was the pnyx, an ampitheatre in which citizens listed to debates and took collective decisions; the other was the agora, the town square in which people were exposed to difference in a more raw, unmediated form….(More)”

Art And Science Of The Nudge – Innovation In Indian Policymaking

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Vinayak Dalmia at Swarajya: “In September last year, a news release stated that NITI Aayog, in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will help set up a “nudge unit”. The stated aim is to deepen the reach of certain flagship programmes including Swachh Bharat, Jan Dhan Yojana and Skill Development.

Mainstream publications have also begun to argue for the same. Since a lot of India’s social problems are behavioural in nature, subtle, inexpensive changes in the “environment” prove more effective than elaborate laws or policies. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself hinted at the psychological nature of ills such as gender violence and sanitation. Pratap Bhanu Mehta states – “social failure is as serious a matter as market failure”. The Prime Minister has started with moral persuasion on issues of cleanliness or giving up LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) subsidies. A formal and rigorous approach to some of these problems should be the next logical step.

Government and/or policymakers are in many ways architects designing “choices” and social environments we live in. As designers, they must leverage the fundamental truth that all actors and agents are psychological beings having less-than-perfect rationality. So, while behavioural science operates on the premise that the brain is prone to making mistakes, psychology can address the flaws and design smarter policies.

For example, open defecation is a big problem in India. It stands tangential to the Prime Minister’s Swachh Bharat dream. In spite of building toilets, in some cases, the usage rates are no more than 50 per cent. World Bank economist Nidhi Khurana has proposed communicating the harms of this behaviour as opposed to the benefits of using a toilet. In effect, she is suggesting the use of the theory of “loss aversion” which states that people value potential losses more than potential gains (on average, twice as much). Studies have also found that subtle changes in the sense of ownership bring significant improvements.

Noteworthy is the immunisation rate in Rajasthan. It increased after free lentils were given to women who brought their children to dispensaries. Colour-coded footprints in the Delhi Metro is borrowed from Copenhagen in order to institute better civic sense. In Kenya, weekly text reminders help ensure HIV patients adhere to medication schedules….(More)”.

Data’s big moment? Here’s what you need to know

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Opinion piece by Claire Melamed, and Mahamudu Bawumia: “Knowledge is power, and knowledge will empower humanity to tackle the most serious challenges of our time. We are all reliant on accurate knowledge to achieve the collective ambition of the Sustainable Development Goals, and the clock is ticking.

So let’s test your knowledge: A) Are boys or girls under 2 years old more likely to be stunted? B) Are slum-dwellers more likely to be young or old? C) What proportion of disabled people are unemployed? D) What proportion of migrants have birth certificates?

Answer — no one knows.

Data is the story of people’s lives in numbers. Data allows researchers, campaigners, and policymakers to understand how societies work, who gains, and who loses from changes and crises. If you’re not in the data, you’re not in the picture — and too many people are still uncounted. There’s a huge need for concerted efforts to uncover the realities of life for the “left behind” in 2017, and a coalition of partners have been working to disaggregate data on gender, race, age, disabilities, migratory status, and more.

But data has a PR problem. Much as it used to be fine to say “I hate mathematics,” today we all encounter people who think numbers are a distraction from the real business of helping people. But we cannot turn our backs on the greatest renewable resource of our time — the resource that will inform and guide humanity to both define and solve our problems….(More)”.

Citizen science volunteers driven by desire to learn

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

UoP News: “People who give up their time for online volunteering are mainly motivated by a desire to learn, a new study has found.

The research surveyed volunteers on ‘citizen science’ projects and suggests that this type of volunteering could be used to increase general knowledge of science within society.

The study, led by Dr Joe Cox from the Department of Economics and Finance, discovered that an appetite to learn more about the subject was the number one driver for online volunteers, followed by being part of a community. It also revealed that many volunteers are motivated by a desire for escapism.

Online volunteering and crowdsourcing projects typically involve input from large numbers of contributors working individually but towards a common goal. This study surveyed 2000 people who volunteer for ‘citizen science’ projects hosted by Zooniverse, a collection of research projects that rely on volunteers to help scientists with the challenge of interpreting massive amounts of data….“What was interesting was that characteristics such as age, gender and level of education had no correlation with the amount of time people give up and the length of time they stay on a project. These participants were relatively highly educated compared with the rest of the population, but those with the highest levels of education do not appear to contribute the most effort and information towards these projects.”

The study noticed pronounced changes in how people are motivated at different stages of the volunteer process. While a desire to learn is the most important motivation among contributors at the early stages, the opportunities for social interaction and escapism become more important motivations at later stages….

He suggests that online volunteering and citizen science projects could incentivise participation by offering clearly defined opportunities for learning, while representing an effective way of increasing scientific literacy and knowledge within society….(More)”.

Innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

UNDP: “In 2014, UNDP, with the generous support of the Government of Denmark, established an Innovation Facility to improve service delivery and support national governments and citizens to tackle complex challenges.

The report ‘Spark, Scale, Sustain’ shares UNDP’s approach to innovation, over 40 case studies of innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals in practice and Features on Alternative Finance, Behavioral Insights, Data Innovation and Public Policy Labs.

Download the report to find out more about the innovation initiatives that are testing and scaling solutions to address challenges across five areas:

  • Eradicate Poverty, Leave No One Behind
  • Protect the Planet
  • Build Peaceful Societies, Prevent Violent Conflict
  • Manage Risk, Improve Disaster Response
  • Advance Gender Equality & Women’s Empowerment….(More)”.

NIH-funded team uses smartphone data in global study of physical activity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

National Institutes of Health: “Using a larger dataset than for any previous human movement study, National Institutes of Health-funded researchers at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, have tracked physical activity by population for more than 100 countries. Their research follows on a recent estimate that more than 5 million people die each year from causes associated with inactivity.

The large-scale study of daily step data from anonymous smartphone users dials in on how countries, genders, and community types fare in terms of physical activity and what results may mean for intervention efforts around physical activity and obesity. The study was published July 10, 2017, in the advance online edition of Nature.

“Big data is not just about big numbers, but also the patterns that can explain important health trends,” said Grace Peng, Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) program in Computational Modeling, Simulation and Analysis.

“Data science and modeling can be immensely powerful tools. They can aid in harnessing and analyzing all the personalized data that we get from our phones and wearable devices.”

Almost three quarters of adults in developed countries and half of adults in developing economies carry a smartphone. The devices are equipped with tiny accelerometers, computer chip that maintains the orientation of the screen, and can also automatically record stepping motions. The users whose data contributed to this study subscribed to the Azumio Argus app, a free application for tracking physical activity and other health behaviors….

In addition to the step records, the researchers accessed age, gender, and height and weight status of users who registered the smartphone app. They used the same calculation that economists use for income inequality — called the Gini index — to calculate activity inequality by country.

“These results reveal how much of a population is activity-rich, and how much of a population is activity-poor,” Delp said. “In regions with high activity inequality there are many people who are activity poor, and activity inequality is a strong predictor of health outcomes.”…

The researchers investigated the idea that making improvements in a city’s walkability — creating an environment that is safe and enjoyable to walk — could reduce activity inequality and the activity gender gap.

“If you must cross major highways to get from point A to point B in a city, the walkability is low; people rely on cars,” Delp said. “In cities like New York and San Francisco, where you can get across town on foot safely, the city has high walkability.”

Data from 69 U.S. cities showed that higher walkability scores are associated with lower activity inequality. Higher walkability is associated with significantly more daily steps across all age, gender, and body-mass-index categories.  However, the researchers found that women recorded comparatively less activity than men in places that are less walkable.

The study exemplifies how smartphones can deliver new insights about key health behaviors, including what the authors categorize as the global pandemic of physical inactivity….(More)”.

Government behavioural economics ‘nudge unit’ needs a shove in a new direction

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Andrew Frain and Randal Tame in The Conversation: “The Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government (BETA) or “nudge unit”, founded in 2015, is using behavioural economics in an effort to improve policy outcomes. The problem? Evidence shows it may be the wrong way to address major problems like inequality.

Put simply, behavioural economics is severely limited in its approach to inequality. Fortunately, other psychological approaches are better suited.

Behavioural economics is built on a particular tradition in psychology, sometimes called the American tradition. At its heart is a distinction between rational and irrational psychological processes.

These are often described in terms of two separate cognitive systems. One is a “slow” deliberate system where logic and reasoning prevails, and another is a “fast” automatic system where stereotypes and unconscious biases hold sway.

Behavioural economics assumes that perceptions of groups (e.g. races, genders and nationalities) are driven by irrationality and that we should stop grouping people by stereotypes or labels. Rather, we should view them as individuals.

However, this rules out important inequality-busting techniques like collective protest, quotas, and affirmative action (favouring those who are marginalised in society). All of these rely on perceiving people as members of a group rather than individuals….

Inconvenient results

BETA recently published the findings of its Australian Public Service study into blind recruitment.

In that study, gender and ethnicity information was removed from descriptions of potential job candidates. It was a study designed to interrupt unconscious biases against women and ethnic minorities.

The results were surprising – blind recruitment made things worse for women and members of ethnic minorities. These results illustrate the limits of behavioural economics in action.

In the study, Australian Public Service managers participated in a hypothetical recruitment as selectors. Converse to expectations, when the gender of candidates was unknown (i.e. blind recruitment), the likelihood of being shortlisted decreased for women and increased for men. Indigenous women, in particular, were less likely to be shortlisted.

BETA interprets this as evidence of “subtle affirmative action taking place among reviewers”.

Here lies the challenge. On the one hand, the goal of de-identification was to eliminate the role of unconscious biases in recruitment, removing the influence of characteristics not relevant to potential performance on the job.

On the other hand, BETA tacitly accepts the identified affirmative action for women and ethnic minorities.

This is inconsistent. BETA is left advocating for blind recruitment to mitigate unconscious biases, but not when those biases lead to the outcomes they want. This is the trap of behavioural economics….(More)”.

Data for Development: The Case for Information, Not Just Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Daniela Ligiero at the Council on Foreign Relations: “When it comes to development, more data is often better—but in the quest for more data, we can often forget about ensuring we have information, which is even more valuable. Information is data that have been recorded, classified, organized, analyzed, interpreted, and translated within a framework so that meaning emerges. At the end of the day, information is what guides action and change.

The need for more data

In 2015, world leaders came together to adopt a new global agenda to guide efforts over the next fifteen years, the Sustainable Development Goals. The High-level Political Forum (HLPF), to be held this year at the United Nations on July 10-19, is an opportunity for review of the 2030 Agenda, and will include an in-depth analysis of seven of the seventeen goals—including those focused on poverty, health, and gender equality. As part of the HLPF, member states are encouraged to undergo voluntary national reviews of progress across goals to facilitate the sharing of experiences, including successes, challenges, and lessons learned; to strengthen policies and institutions; and to mobilize multi-stakeholder support and partnerships for the implementation of the agenda.

A significant challenge that countries continue to face in this process, and one that becomes painfully evident during the HLPF, is the lack of data to establish baselines and track progress. Fortunately, new initiatives aligned with the 2030 Agenda are working to focus on data, such as the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. There are also initiatives focus on collecting more and better data in particular areas, like gender data (e.g., Data2X; UN Women’s Making Every Girl and Woman Count). This work is important and urgently needed.

Data to monitor global progress on the goals is critical to keeping countries accountable to their commitments and allows countries to examine how they are doing across multiple, ambitious goals. However, equally important is the rich, granular national and sub-national level data that can guide the development and implementation of evidence-based, effective programs and policies. These kinds of data are also often lacking or of poor quality, in which case more data and better data is essential. But a frequently-ignored piece of the puzzle at the national level is improved use of the data we already have.

Making the most of the data we have

To illustrate this point, consider the Together for Girls partnership, which was built on obtaining new data where it was lacking and effectively translating it into information to change policies and programs. We are a partnership between national governments, UN agencies and private sector organizations working to break cycles of violence, with special attention to sexual violence against girls. …The first pillar of our work is focused on understanding violence against children within a country, always at the request of the national government. We do this through a national household survey – the Violence Against Children Survey (VACS), led by national governments, CDC, and UNICEF as part of the Together for Girls Partnership….

The truth is there is a plethora of data at the country level, generated by surveys, special studies, administrative systems, private sector, and citizens that can provide meaningful insights across all the development goals.

Connecting the dots

But data—like our programs’—often remain in silos. For example, data focused on violence against children is typically not top of mind for those working on women’s empowerment or adolescent health. Yet, as an example, the VACS can offer valuable information about how sexual violence against girls, as young as 13,is connected to adolescent pregnancy—or how one of the most common perpetrators of sexual violence against girls is a partner, a pattern that starts early and is a predictor for victimization and perpetration later in life.  However, these data are not consistently used across actors working on programs related to adolescent pregnancy and violence against women….(More)”.