Springwise: “In the case of a sudden accident or health problem, a matter of seconds’ difference in the response times of emergency services can be the difference between saving a life and losing one. The irony is that there could even be trained first aiders nearby, but there’s usually no way of letting them know they’re needed. Now two apps — GoodSAM and PulsePoint — both let those with life-saving skills to receive alerts when an emergency happens close by.
The GoodSAM app comes in two versions — the Alerter and Responder. Those facing an emergency can use the Alerter app to instantly send a call for help to any responders in the vicinity, along with their exact location. At the same time, the country’s emergency number is also called. Those who have first aid or medical experience can download the Responder app, which pushes a notification to their device whenever someone needs help. If they’re unavailable, they can choose to reject the request and the Alerter will be notified. If accepted, the app offers a map and directions to the location of the incident and the two parties can communicate through an in-app messaging service.
Watch the video below for a demonstration of how the system works…
The PulsePoint Respond app works in much the same way, although is mainly focused on sudden cardiac arrests and those who can offer CPR resuscitation. Additionally, anyone in the community can use the app to track emergency activity in their neighborhood. Local authorities can also implement the PulsePoint system across their jurisdictions, with community outreach strategies and project management services included starting from USD 5,000….”
Brighter Futures Together
“Welcome to the Brighter Futures Together toolkit! It contains lots of information and ideas to help you improve and grow your community. It covers lots of issues like the environment, climate change, health, safety, and involving children and young people….
There are lots of factsheets on all sorts of issues and each factsheet features step-by-step advice, and explains where to go to get further help. You can look through each of the factsheets individually, click on a category on the right to browse the factsheets, or use the search function in the top left hand corner to find a particular factsheet. We hope you find it useful….
Map assets in your community…
Participatory budgeting in your community…”
Data-based Civic Participation
New workshop paper by C. A. Le Dantec in HCOMP 2014/Citizen + X: Workshop on Volunteer-based Crowdsourcing in Science, Public Health and Government, Pittsburgh, PA. November 2, 2014: “Within the past five years, a new form of technology -mediated public participation that experiments with crowdsourced data production in place of community discourse has emerged. Examples of this class of system include SeeClickFix, PublicStuff, and Street Bump, each of which mediate feedback about local neighborhood issues and help communities mobilize resources to address those issues. The experiments being playing out by this new class of services are derived from a form of public participation built on the ideas of smart cities where residents and physical environments are instrumented to provide data to improve operational efficiency and sustainability (Caragliu, Del Bo, and Nijkamp 2011). Ultimately, smart cities is the application to local government all the efficiencies that computing has always promised—efficiencies of scale, of productivity, of data—minus the messiness and contention of citizenship that play out through more traditional modes of public engagement and political discourse.
The question then, is what might it look like to incorporate more active forms of civic participation and issue advocacy in an app- and data-driven world? To begin to explore this question, my students and I have developed a smartphone app as part of a larger regional planning partnership with the City of Atlanta and the Atlanta Regional Commission. The app, called Cycle Atlanta, enables cyclists to record their ride data —where they have gone, why they went there, what kind of cyclist they are— in an effort to both generate data for planners developing new bicycling infrastructure and to broaden public participation and input in the creation of those plans…”
Forget GMOs. The Future of Food Is Data—Mountains of It
Cade Metz at Wired: “… Led by Dan Zigmond—who previously served as chief data scientist for YouTube, then Google Maps—this ambitious project aims to accelerate the work of all the biochemists, food scientists, and chefs on the first floor, providing a computer-generated shortcut to what Hampton Creek sees as the future of food. “We’re looking at the whole process,” Zigmond says of his data team, “trying to figure out what it all means and make better predictions about what is going to happen next.”
The project highlights a movement, spreading through many industries, that seeks to supercharge research and development using the kind of data analysis and manipulation pioneered in the world of computer science, particularly at places like Google and Facebook. Several projects already are using such techniques to feed the development of new industrial materials and medicines. Others hope the latest data analytics and machine learning techniques can help diagnosis disease. “This kind of approach is going to allow a whole new type of scientific experimentation,” says Jeremy Howard, who as the president of Kaggle once oversaw the leading online community of data scientists and is now applying tricks of the data trade to healthcare as the founder of Enlitic.
Zigmond’s project is the first major effort to apply “big data” to the development of food, and though it’s only just getting started—with some experts questioning how effective it will be—it could spur additional research in the field. The company may license its database to others, and Hampton Creek founder and CEO Josh Tetrick says it may even open source the data, so to speak, freely sharing it with everyone. “We’ll see,” says Tetrick, a former college football linebacker who founded Hampton Creek after working on economic and social campaigns in Liberia and Kenya. “That would be in line with who we are as a company.”…
Initially, Zigmond and his team will model protein interactions on individual machines, using tools like the R programming language (a common means of crunching data) and machine learning algorithms much like those that recommend products on Amazon.com. As the database expands, they plan to arrange for much larger and more complex models that run across enormous clusters of computer servers, using the sort of sweeping data-analysis software systems employed by the likes of Google. “Even as we start to get into the tens and hundreds of thousands and millions of proteins,” Zigmond says, “it starts to be more than you can handle with traditional database techniques.”
In particular, Zigmond is exploring the use of deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence that goes beyond ordinary machine learning. Google is using deep learning to drive the speech recognition system in Android phones. Microsoft is using it to translate Skype calls from one language to another. Zigmond believes it can help model the creation of new foods….”
Zigmond’s project is the first major effort to apply “big data” to the development of food, and though it’s only just getting started—with some experts questioning how effective it will be—it could spur additional research in the field. The company may license its database to others, and Hampton Creek founder and CEO Josh Tetrick says it may even open source the data, so to speak, freely sharing it with everyone. “We’ll see,” says Tetrick, a former college football linebacker who founded Hampton Creek after working on economic and social campaigns in Liberia and Kenya. “That would be in line with who we are as a company.”…
Initially, Zigmond and his team will model protein interactions on individual machines, using tools like the R programming language (a common means of crunching data) and machine learning algorithms much like those that recommend products on Amazon.com. As the database expands, they plan to arrange for much larger and more complex models that run across enormous clusters of computer servers, using the sort of sweeping data-analysis software systems employed by the likes of Google. “Even as we start to get into the tens and hundreds of thousands and millions of proteins,” Zigmond says, “it starts to be more than you can handle with traditional database techniques.”
In particular, Zigmond is exploring the use of deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence that goes beyond ordinary machine learning. Google is using deep learning to drive the speech recognition system in Android phones. Microsoft is using it to translate Skype calls from one language to another. Zigmond believes it can help model the creation of new foods….”
Announcing New U.S. Open Government Commitments on the Third Anniversary of the Open Government Partnership
US White House Fact Sheet: “Three years ago, President Obama joined with the leaders of seven other nations to launch the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international partnership between governments and civil society to promote transparency, fight corruption, energize civic engagement, and leverage new technologies to open up governments worldwide. The United States and other founding countries pledged to transform the way that governments serve their citizens in the 21st century. Today, as heads of state of OGP participating countries gather at the UN General Assembly, this partnership has grown from 8 to 65 nations and hundreds of civil society organizations around the world. These countries are embracing the challenge by taking steps in partnership with civil society to increase the ability of citizens to engage their governments, access government data to fuel entrepreneurship and innovation, and promote accountability….
The United States is committed to continuing to lead by example in OGP. Since assuming office, President Obama has prioritized making government more open and accountable and has taken substantial steps to increase citizen participation, collaboration with civil society, and transparency in government. The United States will remain a global leader of international efforts to promote transparency, stem corruption and hold to account those who exploit the public’s trust for private gain. Yesterday, President Obama announced several steps the United States is taking to deepen our support for civil society globally.
Today, to mark the third anniversary of OGP, President Obama is announcing four new and expanded open government initiatives that will advance our efforts through the end of 2015.
1. Promote Open Education to Increase Awareness and Engagement
Open education is the open sharing of digital learning materials, tools, and practices that ensures free access to and legal adoption of learning resources. The United States is committed to open education and will:
- Raise open education awareness and identify new partnerships. The U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy will jointly host a workshop on challenges and opportunities in open education internationally with stakeholders from academia, industry, and government.
- Pilot new models for using open educational resources to support learning. The State Department will conduct three pilots overseas by December 2015 that use open educational resources to support learning in formal and informal learning contexts. The pilots’ results, including best practices, will be made publicly available for interested educators.
- Launch an online skills academy. The Department of Labor (DOL), with cooperation from the Department of Education, will award $25 million through competitive grants to launch an online skills academy in 2015 that will offer open online courses of study, using technology to create high-quality, free, or low-cost pathways to degrees, certificates, and other employer-recognized credentials.
2. Deliver Government Services More Effectively Through Information Technology
The Administration is committed to serving the American people more effectively and efficiently through smarter IT delivery. The newly launched U.S. Digital Service will work to remove barriers to digital service delivery and remake the experience that people and businesses have with their government. To improve delivery of Federal services, information, and benefits, the Administration will:
- Expand digital service delivery expertise in government. Throughout 2015, the Administration will continue recruiting top digital talent from the private and public sectors to expand services across the government. These individuals —who have expertise in technology, procurement, human resources, and financing —will serve as digital professionals in a number of capacities in the Federal government, including the new U.S. Digital Service and 18F digital delivery team within the U.S. General Services Administration, as well as within Federal agencies. These teams will take best practices from the public and private sectors and scale them across agencies with a focus on the customer experience.
- Build digital services in the open. The Administration will expand its efforts to build digital services in the open. This includes using open and transparent processes intended to better understand user needs, testing pilot digital projects, and designing and developing digital services at scale. In addition, building on the recently published Digital Services Playbook, the Administration will continue to openly publish best practices on collaborative websites that enable the public to suggest improvements.
- Adopt an open source software policy. Using and contributing back to open source software can fuel innovation, lower costs, and benefit the public. No later than December 31, 2015, the Administration will work through the Federal agencies to develop an open source software policy that, together with the Digital Services Playbook, will support improved access to custom software code developed for the Federal government.
3. Increase Transparency in Spending
The Administration has made an increasing amount of Federal spending data publicly available and searchable, allowing nationwide stakeholders to perform analysis of Federal spending. The Administration will build on these efforts by committing to:
- Improve USAspending.gov. In 2015, the Administration will launch a refreshed USAspending.gov website that will improve the site’s design and user experience, including better enabling users to explore the data using interactive maps and improving the search functionality and application programming interface.
- Improve accessibility and reusability of Federal financial data. In 2015, as part of implementation of the DATA Act,[2] the Administration will work to improve the accessibility and reusability of Federal financial data by issuing data element definition standards and standards for exchanging financial data. The Administration, through the Office of Management and Budget, will leverage industry data exchange standards to the extent practicable to maximize the sharing and utilization of Federal financial data.
- Explore options for visualization and publication of additional Federal financial data. The Administration, through the Treasury Department, will use small-scale pilots to help explore options for visualizing and publishing Federal financial data from across the government as required by the DATA Act.
- Continue to engage stakeholders. The Administration will continue to engage with a broad group of stakeholders to seek input on Federal financial transparency initiatives including DATA Act implementation, by hosting town hall meetings, conducting interactive workshops, and seeking input via open innovation collaboration tools.
4. Use Big Data to Support Greater Openness and Accountability
President Obama has recognized the growing importance of “big data” technologies for our economy and the advancement of public good in areas such as education, energy conservation, and healthcare. The Administration is taking action to ensure responsible uses of big data to promote greater openness and accountability across a range of areas and sectors. As part of the work it is doing in this area, the Administration has committed to:
- Enhance sharing of best practices on data privacy for state and local law enforcement. Federal agencies with expertise in law enforcement, privacy, and data practices will seek to enhance collaboration and information sharing about privacy best practices among state and local law enforcement agencies receiving Federal grants.
- Ensure privacy protection for big data analyses in health. Big data introduces new opportunities to advance medicine and science, improve health care, and support better public health. To ensure that individual privacy is protected while capitalizing on new technologies and data, the Administration, led by the Department of Health and Human Services, will: (1) consult with stakeholders to assess how Federal laws and regulations can best accommodate big data analyses that promise to advance medical science and reduce health care costs; and (2) develop recommendations for ways to promote and facilitate research through access to data while safeguarding patient privacy and autonomy.
- Expand technical expertise in government to stop discrimination. U.S. Government departments and agencies will work to expand their technical expertise to identify outcomes facilitated by big data analytics that may have a discriminatory impact on protected classes. …”
OSHA Will Put Workplace Safety Data Online as 'Nudge' to Employers
Josh Eidelson at Bloomberg BusinessWeek: “Starting in January, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration will require employers to notify the government within 24 hours every time someone loses an eye, suffers an amputation, or gets admitted to the hospital with an injury sustained at work. The agency estimates that tens of thousands of injuries go unreported. “Workplace injuries and fatalities are absolutely preventable,” Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said in early September. “These new requirements will help OSHA focus its resources and hold employers accountable for preventing them.”
The rule replaces regulations that require companies to report only incidents that result in three or more hospitalizations—“catastrophes,” in agency parlance. (Workplace deaths will still have to be reported within 8 hours.) OSHA head David Michaels, an assistant secretary in the Department of Labor, announced on Sept. 11 that the injury data will be made public on OSHA’s website.
The site already includes information on worker fatalities and catastrophes….
OSHA is one of several federal agencies taking the name-and-shame approach. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering a plan to begin online posting of first-person narratives culled from consumer complaints about banks, credit card companies, and payday lenders. Other agencies already put recall and complaint information online, including the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. OSHA’s smaller sibling agency, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, lists on its website workplace incidents like fires that could have harmed someone but didn’t.
The idea is that people increasingly accustomed to looking up product reviews on Amazon.com and restaurant reviews on Yelp might do the same when they choose an employer, car, or credit card company. “Exposing problems early can help other consumers avoid similar problems before they become victims, too,” CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in July. “The market could react to problems as they occur, not years later.”…”
Social Collective Intelligence
New book edited by Daniele Miorandi, Vincenzo Maltese, Michael Rovatsos, Anton Nijholt, and James Stewart: “The book focuses on Social Collective Intelligence, a term used to denote a class of socio-technical systems that combine, in a coordinated way, the strengths of humans, machines and collectives in terms of competences, knowledge and problem solving capabilities with the communication, computing and storage capabilities of advanced ICT.
Social Collective Intelligence opens a number of challenges for researchers in both computer science and social sciences; at the same time it provides an innovative approach to solve challenges in diverse application domains, ranging from health to education and organization of work.
The book will provide a cohesive and holistic treatment of Social Collective Intelligence, including challenges emerging in various disciplines (computer science, sociology, ethics) and opportunities for innovating in various application areas.
By going through the book the reader will gauge insight and knowledge into the challenges and opportunities provided by this new, exciting, field of investigation. Benefits for scientists will be in terms of accessing a comprehensive treatment of the open research challenges in a multidisciplinary perspective. Benefits for practitioners and applied researchers will be in terms of access to novel approaches to tackle relevant problems in their field. Benefits for policy-makers and public bodies representatives will be in terms of understanding how technological advances can support them in supporting the progress of society and economy…”
France Announces An Ambitious New Data Strategy
Romain Dillet at TechCrunch: “After four long months of speculations and political maneuvering, the French Government finally announced that France is getting its first Chief Data Officer….
First, it’s all about pursuing Etalab’s work when it comes to open data. The small team acted as a startup and quickly iterated on its central platform and multiple side projects. It came up with pragmatic solutions to complicated public issues, such as public health data or fiscal policy simulation. France is now the fourth country in the United Nations e-government survey.
Now, the CDO will have even more official and informal legitimacy to ask other ministries to release data sets. It’s not just about following open government theories — it’s not just about releasing public data to serve the public interest. The team can also simulate new policies before they are implemented, and share recommendations with the ministries working on these new policies.
When a new policy is written, the Government should evaluate all the ins and outs of it before implementation. Citizens should expect no less from their government.
At a larger scale, this nomination is very significant for the French Government. For years, its digital strategy was mostly about finding the best way to communicate through the Internet. But when it came to creating new policies, computers couldn’t help them.
Also announced today, the Government is modernizing and unifying its digital platform between all its ministries and services — it’s never too late. The CDO team will work closely with the DISIC to design this platform — it should be a multi-year project.
Finally, the Government will invest $160 million (€125 million) to innovate in the public sector when it makes sense. In other words, the government will work with private companies (and preferably young innovative companies) to improve the infrastructure that powers the public sector.
France is the first European country to get a Chief Data Officer…”
Smart Inclusive Cities: How New Apps, Big Data, and Collaborative Technologies Are Transforming Immigrant Integration
New report by Meghan Benton for the Migration Policy Institute: “The spread of smartphones—cellphones with high-speed Internet access and geolocation technology—is transforming urban life. While many smartphone apps are largely about convenience, policymakers are beginning to explore their potential to address social challenges from disaster response to public health. And cities, in North America and Europe alike, are in the vanguard in exploring creative uses for these apps, including how to improve engagement.
For disadvantaged and diverse populations, accessing city services through a smartphone can help overcome language or literacy barriers and thus increase interactions with city officials. For those with language needs, smartphones allow language training to be accessed anywhere and at any time. More broadly, cities have begun mining the rich datasets that smartphones collect, to help attune services to the needs of their whole population. A new crop of social and civic apps offer new tools to penetrate hard-to-reach populations, including newly arrived and transient groups.
While these digital developments offer promising opportunities for immigrant integration efforts, smartphone apps’ potential to address social problems should not be overstated. In spite of potential shortcomings, since immigrant integration requires a multipronged policy response, any additional tools—especially inexpensive ones—should be examined.
This report explores the kinds of opportunities smartphones and apps are creating for the immigrant integration field. It provides a first look at the opportunities and tradeoffs that smartphones and emerging technologies offer for immigrant integration, and how they might deepen—or weaken—city residents’ sense of belonging…” (Download Report)
Prizes for Saving: The Social Mobility Case
Stuart Butler at Brookings: “The American Savings Promotion Act (H.R. 3374), a bipartisan bill passed by the House of Representatives this week (yes, it does sometimes happen) could lift economic mobility in America by boosting savings, especially in lower income neighborhoods. The bill removes legal impediments to banks and thrift institutions offering “prize-linked savings” products (PLS). There’s a companion bill awaiting action in the Senate.
Building personal savings is a critical element in moving up the economic ladder. A cushion of capital can tide a household over a setback, such as unexpected health costs, and help mobility in a positive way, such as moving across town for a better job. Developing the habit of saving, even in a small scale, is connected to other positive behaviors, such as completing college….
All Should Seek Prizes (For Saving)
Prize-linked savings (PLS) accounts aim to entice people into saving more. Unlike traditional savings accounts, which now pay out a fraction of one percent interest, institutions offering PLS pool the interest from all accounts, hold a drawing and distribute the accumulated interest as “prizes”, from a few dollars to a million or more. It appeals to the gambler’s instinct, like a lottery. But unlike a lottery, a “loser” still ends up with a bundle of savings.
PLS accounts have a long history and there are versions in several countries. The United Kingdom has been a leader, establishing national premium bonds in 1957, dubbed “savings with a thrill.” The bonds pay no interest, but each year bond-holders have chances of winning from the equivalent of a few dollars to about $1.5 million. Roughly one-third of Britons own the bonds, with a disproportionate number of modest-income individuals and first-time savers as bondholders.
Moving to Prize-Linked Savings
Some U.S. states have opened the door through state laws that permit credit unions to open PLS accounts. For instance, in 2009 a group of Michigan credit unions established “Save to Win” accounts, with monthly prizes ranging up to thousands of dollars, that successfully attracted non-traditional savers. Federally-charted financial institutions have so far been prevented from offering PLS accounts by unduly wide statutes and regulations, aimed mainly at organized crime. The new bill would curb the impact of those laws and enable PLS accounts to flourish. Let’s hope the Senate follows suit.”