Public Sector Tech: New tools for the new normal

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Special issue by ZDNet exploring “how new technologies like AI, cloud, drones, and 5G are helping government agencies, public organizations, and private companies respond to the events of today and tomorrow…:

Why Coming Up With Effective Interventions To Address COVID-19 Is So Hard

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Neil Lewis Jr.: “It has been hard to measure the effects of the novel coronavirus. Not only is COVID-19 far-reaching — it’s touched nearly every corner of the globe at this point — but its toll on society has also been devastating. It is responsible for the deaths of over 905,000 people around the world, and more than 190,000 people in the United States alone. The associated economic fallout has been crippling. In the U.S., more people lost their jobs in the first three months of the pandemic than in the first two years of the Great Recession. Yes, there are some signs the economy might be recovering, but the truth is, we’re just beginning to understand the pandemic’s full impact, and we don’t yet know what the virus has in store for us.

This is all complicated by the fact that we’re still figuring out how best to combat the pandemic. Without a vaccine readily available, it has been challenging to get people to engage in enough of the behaviors that can help slow the virus. Some policy makers have turned to social and behavioral scientists for guidance, which is encouraging because this doesn’t always happen. We’ve seen many universities ignore the warnings of behavioral scientists and reopen their campuses, only to have to quickly shut them back down.

But this has also meant that there are a lot of new studies to wade through. In the field of psychology alone, between Feb. 10 and Aug. 30, 541 papers about COVID-19 were uploaded to the field’s primary preprint server, PsyArXiv. With so much research to wade through, it’s hard to know what to trust — and I say that as someone who makes a living researching what types of interventions motivate people to change their behaviors.

As I tell my students, if you want to use behavioral science research to address real-world problems, you have to look very closely at the details. Often, a simple question like, “What research should policy makers and practitioners use to help combat the pandemic?” is surprisingly difficult to answer.

For starters, there are often key differences between the lab (or the people and situations some social scientists typically study as part of our day-to-day research) and the real world (or the people and situations policy-makers and practitioners have in mind when crafting interventions).

Take, for example, the fact that social scientists tend to study people from richer countries that are generally highly educated, industrialized, democratic and in the Western hemisphere. And some social scientific fields (e.g., psychology) focus overwhelmingly on whiter, wealthier and more highly educated groups of people within those nations.

This is a major issue in the social sciences and something that researchers have been talking about for decades. But it’s important to mention now, too, as Black and brown people have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus — they are dying at much higher rates than white people and working more of the lower-paying “essential” jobs that expose them to greater risks. Here you can start to see very real research limitations creep in: The people whose lives have been most adversely affected by the virus have largely been excluded from the studies that are supposed to help them. When samples and the methods used are not representative of the real world, it becomes very difficult to reach accurate and actionable conclusions….(More)”.

Global citizen deliberation on genome editing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by John S. Dryzek et al at Science: “Genome editing technologies provide vast possibilities for societal benefit, but also substantial risks and ethical challenges. Governance and regulation of such technologies have not kept pace in a systematic or internationally consistent manner, leaving a complex, uneven, and incomplete web of national and international regulation (1). How countries choose to regulate these emergent technologies matters not just locally, but globally, because the implications of technological developments do not stop at national boundaries. Practices deemed unacceptable in one country may find a more permissive home in another: not necessarily through national policy choice, but owing to a persistent national legal and regulatory void that enables “ethics dumping” (2)—for example, if those wanting to edit genes to “perfect” humans seek countries with little governance capacity. Just as human rights are generally recognized as a matter of global concern, so too should technologies that may impinge on the question of what it means to be human. Here we show how, as the global governance vacuum is filled, deliberation by a global citizens’ assembly should play a role, for legitimate and effective governance….(More)”.

Ethical Challenges and Opportunities Associated With the Ability to Perform Medical Screening From Interactions With Search Engines

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Viewpoint by Elad Yom-Tov and Yuval Cherlow: “Recent research has shown the efficacy of screening for serious medical conditions from data collected while people interact with online services. In particular, queries to search engines and the interactions with them were shown to be advantageous for screening a range of conditions including diabetes, several forms of cancer, eating disorders, and depression. These screening abilities offer unique advantages in that they can serve a broad strata of the society, including people in underserved populations and in countries with poor access to medical services. However, these advantages need to be balanced against the potential harm to privacy, autonomy, and nonmaleficence, which are recognized as the cornerstones of ethical medical care. Here, we discuss these opportunities and challenges, both when collecting data to develop online screening services and when deploying them. We offer several solutions that balance the advantages of these services with the ethical challenges they pose….(More)”.

Privacy in Pandemic: Law, Technology, and Public Health in the COVID-19 Crisis

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Tiffany C. Li: “The COVID-19 pandemic has caused millions of deaths and disastrous consequences around the world, with lasting repercussions for every field of law, including privacy and technology. The unique characteristics of this pandemic have precipitated an increase in use of new technologies, including remote communications platforms, healthcare robots, and medical AI. Public and private actors are using new technologies, like heat sensing, and technologically-influenced programs, like contact tracing, alike in response, leading to a rise in government and corporate surveillance in sectors like healthcare, employment, education, and commerce. Advocates have raised the alarm for privacy and civil liberties violations, but the emergency nature of the pandemic has drowned out many concerns.

This Article is the first comprehensive account of privacy impacts related to technology and public health responses to the COVID-19 crisis. Many have written on the general need for better health privacy protections, education privacy protections, consumer privacy protections, and protections against government and corporate surveillance. However, this Article is the first comprehensive article to examine these problems of privacy and technology specifically in light of the pandemic, arguing that the lens of the pandemic exposes the need for both widescale and small-scale reform of privacy law. This Article approaches these problems with a focus on technical realities and social salience, and with a critical awareness of digital and political inequities, crafting normative recommendations with these concepts in mind.

Understanding privacy in this time of pandemic is critical for law and policymaking in the near future and for the long-term goals of creating a future society that protects both civil liberties and public health. It is also important to create a contemporary scholarly understanding of privacy in pandemic at this moment in time, as a matter of historical record. By examining privacy in pandemic, in the midst of pandemic, this Article seeks to create a holistic scholarly foundation for future work on privacy, technology, public health, and legal responses to global crises….(More)”

Statistics, lies and the virus: lessons from a pandemic

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Tim Hartford at the Financial Times: “Will this year be 1954 all over again? Forgive me, I have become obsessed with 1954, not because it offers another example of a pandemic (that was 1957) or an economic disaster (there was a mild US downturn in 1953), but for more parochial reasons. Nineteen fifty-four saw the appearance of two contrasting visions for the world of statistics — visions that have shaped our politics, our media and our health. This year confronts us with a similar choice.

The first of these visions was presented in How to Lie with Statistics, a book by a US journalist named Darrell Huff. Brisk, intelligent and witty, it is a little marvel of numerical communication. The book received rave reviews at the time, has been praised by many statisticians over the years and is said to be the best-selling work on the subject ever published. It is also an exercise in scorn: read it and you may be disinclined to believe a number-based claim ever again….

But they can — and back in 1954, the alternative perspective was embodied in the publication of an academic paper by the British epidemiologists Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill. They marshalled some of the first compelling evidence that smoking cigarettes dramatically increases the risk of lung cancer. The data they assembled persuaded both men to quit smoking and helped save tens of millions of lives by prompting others to do likewise. This was no statistical trickery, but a contribution to public health that is almost impossible to exaggerate…

As described in books such as Merchants of Doubt by Erik Conway and Naomi Oreskes, this industry perfected the tactics of spreading uncertainty: calling for more research, emphasising doubt and the need to avoid drastic steps, highlighting disagreements between experts and funding alternative lines of inquiry. The same tactics, and sometimes even the same personnel, were later deployed to cast doubt on climate science. These tactics are powerful in part because they echo the ideals of science.

It is a short step from the Royal Society’s motto, “nullius in verba” (take nobody’s word for it), to the corrosive nihilism of “nobody knows anything”.  So will 2020 be another 1954? From the point of view of statistics, we seem to be standing at another fork in the road.

The disinformation is still out there, as the public understanding of Covid-19 has been muddied by conspiracy theorists, trolls and government spin doctors.  Yet the information is out there too. The value of gathering and rigorously analysing data has rarely been more evident. Faced with a complete mystery at the start of the year, statisticians, scientists and epidemiologists have been working miracles. I hope that we choose the right fork, because the pandemic has lessons to teach us about statistics — and vice versa — if we are willing to learn…(More)”.

The Razor’s Edge: Liberalizing the Digital Surveillance Ecosystem

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by CNAS: “The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating global trends in digital surveillance. Public health imperatives, combined with opportunism by autocratic regimes and authoritarian-leaning leaders, are expanding personal data collection and surveillance. This tendency toward increased surveillance is taking shape differently in repressive regimes, open societies, and the nation-states in between.

China, run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is leading the world in using technology to enforce social control, monitor populations, and influence behavior. Part of maximizing this control depends on data aggregation and a growing capacity to link the digital and physical world in real time, where online offenses result in brisk repercussions. Further, China is increasing investments in surveillance technology and attempting to influence the patterns of technology’s global use through the export of authoritarian norms, values, and governance practices. For example, China champions its own technology standards to the rest of the world, while simultaneously peddling legislative models abroad that facilitate access to personal data by the state. Today, the COVID-19 pandemic offers China and other authoritarian nations the opportunity to test and expand their existing surveillance powers internally, as well as make these more extensive measures permanent.

Global swing states are already exhibiting troubling trends in their use of digital surveillance, including establishing centralized, government-held databases and trading surveillance practices with authoritarian regimes. Amid the pandemic, swing states like India seem to be taking cues from autocratic regimes by mandating the download of government-enabled contact-tracing applications. Yet, for now, these swing states appear responsive to their citizenry and sensitive to public agitation over privacy concerns.

Today, the COVID-19 pandemic offers China and other authoritarian nations the opportunity to test and expand their existing surveillance powers internally, as well as make these more extensive measures permanent.

Open societies and democracies can demonstrate global surveillance trends similar to authoritarian regimes and swing states, including the expansion of digital surveillance in the name of public safety and growing private sector capabilities to collect and analyze data on individuals. Yet these trends toward greater surveillance still occur within the context of pluralistic, open societies that feature ongoing debates about the limits of surveillance. However, the pandemic stands to shift the debate in these countries from skepticism over personal data collection to wider acceptance. Thus far, the spectrum of responses to public surveillance reflects the diversity of democracies’ citizenry and processes….(More)”.

How to See What the World Is Teaching Us About COVID-19

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Karabi Acharya: “At the global learning team at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, it has been exciting to see people looking at what the world can teach us, whether that be how China is handling COVID-19, South Korea’s drive-through testing, or New Zealand’s elimination of the virus under Jacinda Ardern’s leadership. Yet in a survey conducted by Candid in early 2020 of foundations located in the US, 73 percent of respondents reported that their domestic grantmaking was rarely or not at all informed or inspired by ideas and solutions from around the globe and beyond US borders. 

These practices may be shifting. Those of us working in philanthropy, government, and social change are trying to learn as much about COVID-19 as possible, and that naturally includes looking abroad. Yet what will we actually see when we do? Too often, our vision is obscured by bias, and as we try to distinguish news from noise, good intentions are often not enough. We must ask ourselves critical questions, and train ourselves to overcome our biases.

Here are four ways to see the world in a new light, as we look to come out of the pandemic’s darkness:

Seeing Beyond the Familiar

COVID-19 has no borders and the same with good ideas. But too often, we are limited by what has been called the “country of origin effect,” a psychological effect in which people understand the quality and relevance of an object or idea by the country it comes from. In short, we tend to look for ideas from countries that are demographically, culturally, economically, or politically similar to us. In the US, this can mean we overvalue learning from Europe and undervalue learning from low- and middle-income countries.

Yet countries like Nigeria have much to teach us about contract tracing and mitigation from their experience eradicating the Ebola outbreak, just as Ghana’s innovative testing and taxation policies (including a three month tax holiday for health care workers) are balancing protecting health and the economy. In example after example of necessity being the mother of invention, African nations are leading the way in innovation: developing low-cost tests for under $1, using zipline drones to transport the tests to testing sites, and leveraging its cashless digital payment infrastructure to facilitate social distancing. Another often-ignored source of inspiration are Indigenous cultural practices, where ideas and practices centered around collective well-being can be instructive for us as we tackle issues of inequity arising out of COVID…

In other words, we look to other countries with the hope that doing so will change how we see our own, opening our imaginations to new ideas, solutions, and futures. This is only possible if we can overcome our biases that impair our ability to see the solutions around us. 

COVID-19 will be studied for generations to come. But what the world will learn will depend on what we were able to see today. Did we seek out solutions from every corner of the world? Did we bring on the journey those who would most benefit from what the world had to offer? Did we recognize the underlying conditions that exacerbate inequity or help overcome it? Was our imagination strong enough to see how we can create the kind of society that allows everyone the opportunity to live healthy and happier lives?…(More)”

Prioritizing COVID-19 tests based on participatory surveillance and spatial scanning

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by O.B Leal-Neto et al: “Participatory surveillance has shown promising results from its conception to its application in several public health events. The use of a collaborative information pathway provides a rapid way for the data collection on symptomatic individuals in the territory, to complement traditional health surveillance systems. In Brazil, this methodology has been used at the national level since 2014 during mass gatherings events since they have great importance for monitoring public health emergencies.

With the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the limitation of the main non-pharmaceutical interventions for epidemic control – in this case, testing and social isolation – added to the challenge of existing underreporting of cases and delay of notifications, there is a demand on alternative sources of up to date information to complement the current system for disease surveillance. Several studies have demonstrated the benefits of participatory surveillance in coping with COVID-19, reinforcing the opportunity to modernize the way health surveillance has been carried out. Additionally, spatial scanning techniques have been used to understand syndromic scenarios, investigate outbreaks, and analyze epidemiological risk, constituting relevant tools for health management. While there are limitations in the quality of traditional health systems, the data generated by participatory surveillance reveals an interesting application combining traditional techniques to clarify epidemiological risks that demand urgency in decision-making. Moreover, with the limitations of testing available, the identification of priority areas for intervention is an important activity in the early response to public health emergencies. This study aimed to describe and analyze priority areas for COVID-19 testing combining data from participatory surveillance and traditional surveillance for respiratory syndromes….(More)”.

Designing Nudges for Success in Health Care

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Joseph D. Harrison at AMA Journal of Ethics: “Nudges are subtle changes to the design of the environment or the framing of information that can influence our behaviors. There is significant potential to use nudges in health care to improve patient outcomes and transform health care delivery. However, these interventions must be tested and implemented using a systematic approach. In this article, we describe several ways to design nudges for success by focusing on optimizing and fitting them into the clinical workflow, engaging the right stakeholders, and rapid experimentation….(More)”.