Smart city initiatives in Africa

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Eyerusalem Siba and Mariama Sow at Brookings: “…African countries are presently in the early stages of their urbanization process. Though Africa was the least urbanized region in the world in 2015—only 40 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s population lived in cities—it is now the second-fastest urbanizing region in the world (behind Asia). Population experts predict that by 2020, Africa will be on top. Given this rapid growth, now is the time for African policymakers to incorporate smart cities into their urbanization strategies….

Rwanda is one of the pioneers of smart city engineering in Africa. Modernizing Kigali is part of a wider effort by the Rwanda government to increase and simplify access to public services. The Irembo platform launched by the government, seeks to create e-government services to allow citizens to complete public processes online, such as registering for driving exams and requesting birth certificates.

In addition, the country is active in involving the private sector in its goal towards creating smart cities. In mid-May, the Rwandan government launched a partnership with Nokia and SRG in order to deploy smart city technology to “improve the lifestyle and social sustainability of [Rwandan] citizens.” The project involves investment in network connectivity and sensor deployment to improve public safety, waste management, utility management, and health care, among other functions.

Rwanda’s smart city rollout has not been perfect, though, proving that smart city development can hit some snags: For example, in 2016, the city started rolling out buses with free Wi-Fi and cashless payment service, but the buses have had connectivity issues related to the Korea-built technology’s inability to adapt to local conditions.

In addition, there has been criticism around the lack of inclusivity of certain smart cities projects. Kigali’s Smart Neighborhood project, Vision City, creates a tech-enabled neighborhood with solar powered street lamps and free Wi-Fi in the town square. Critics, though, state that the project ignored the socioeconomic realities of a city where 80 percent of its population lives in slums with monthly earnings below $240 (Vision City Homes cost $160,000). (Rwandan planners have responded stating that affordable housing will be built in the later phases of the project.)

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

As seen in the case of Rwanda, smart cities—while creating opportunities for innovation and better livelihoods—face challenges during and after their development. City planners and policymakers must keep the big picture in mind when promoting smart cities, emphasizing well-implemented infrastructure and citizen needs. Technology for technology’s sake will not create solutions to some of Africa’s cities biggest challenges, including high-cost, low-quality, and inaccessible services. Indeed, in a 2015 issue paper, UN-Habitat urges city planners to avoid viewing smart cities as the final product. In particular, UN-Habitat calls for smart cities to minimize transport needs, reduce service delivery costs, and maximize land use. These moves, among others, will ensure that the city reduces congestion, creates spaces dedicated to recreational uses, enhances service delivery, and, thus, improves its citizen’s quality of life…(More)”.

Out of the Syrian crisis, a data revolution takes shape

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Amy Maxmen in Nature: “…Whenever war, hurricanes or other disasters ravage part of the globe, one of the biggest problems for aid organizations is a lack of reliable data. People die because front-line responders don’t have the information they need to act efficiently. Doctors and epidemiologists plod along with paper surveys and rigid databases in crisis situations, watching with envy as tech companies expertly mine big data for comparatively mundane purposes.

Three years ago, one frustrated first-responder decided to do something about it. The result is an innovative piece of software called the Dharma Platform, which almost anyone can use to rapidly collect information and share, analyse and visualize it so that they can act quickly. And although public-health veterans tend to be sceptical of technological fixes, Dharma is winning fans. MSF and other organizations now use it in 22 countries. And so far, the Rise Fund, a ‘global impact fund’ whose board boasts U2 lead singer Bono, has invested US$14.3 million in the company behind it.

“I think Dharma is special because it has been developed by people who have worked in these chaotic situations,” says Jeremy Farrar, director of biomedical-funding charity the Wellcome Trust in London, “and it’s been road-tested and improved in the midst of reality.”

Now, the ultimate trial is in Syria: Salim, whose name has been changed in this story to protect him, started entering patient records into the Dharma Platform in March, and he is looking at health trends even as he shares his data securely with MSF staff in Amman.

It’s too soon to say that Dharma has transformed his hospital. And some aid organizations and governments may be reluctant to adopt it. But Aziz, who has deployed Dharma in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Turkey, is confident that it will usher in a wave of platforms that accelerate evidence-based responses in emergencies, or even in health care generally. “This is like the first version of the iPhone or Yahoo! Messenger,” he says. “Maybe something better will come along, but this is the direction we’re going in.”…(More)”

Our laws don’t do enough to protect our health data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 at the Conversation: “A particularly sensitive type of big data is medical big data. Medical big data can consist of electronic health records, insurance claims, information entered by patients into websites such as PatientsLikeMeand more. Health information can even be gleaned from web searches, Facebook and your recent purchases.

Such data can be used for beneficial purposes by medical researchers, public health authorities, and healthcare administrators. For example, they can use it to study medical treatments, combat epidemics and reduce costs. But others who can obtain medical big data may have more selfish agendas.

I am a professor of law and bioethics who has researched big data extensively. Last year, I published a book entitled Electronic Health Records and Medical Big Data: Law and Policy.

I have become increasingly concerned about how medical big data might be used and who could use it. Our laws currently don’t do enough to prevent harm associated with big data.

What your data says about you

Personal health information could be of interest to many, including employers, financial institutions, marketers and educational institutions. Such entities may wish to exploit it for decision-making purposes.

For example, employers presumably prefer healthy employees who are productive, take few sick days and have low medical costs. However, there are laws that prohibit employers from discriminating against workers because of their health conditions. These laws are the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. So, employers are not permitted to reject qualified applicants simply because they have diabetes, depression or a genetic abnormality.

However, the same is not true for most predictive information regarding possible future ailments. Nothing prevents employers from rejecting or firing healthy workers out of the concern that they will later develop an impairment or disability, unless that concern is based on genetic information.

What non-genetic data can provide evidence regarding future health problems? Smoking status, eating preferences, exercise habits, weight and exposure to toxins are all informative. Scientists believe that biomarkers in your blood and other health details can predict cognitive decline, depression and diabetes.

Even bicycle purchases, credit scores and voting in midterm elections can be indicators of your health status.

Gathering data

How might employers obtain predictive data? An easy source is social media, where many individuals publicly post very private information. Through social media, your employer might learn that you smoke, hate to exercise or have high cholesterol.

Another potential source is wellness programs. These programs seek to improve workers’ health through incentives to exercise, stop smoking, manage diabetes, obtain health screenings and so on. While many wellness programs are run by third party vendors that promise confidentiality, that is not always the case.

In addition, employers may be able to purchase information from data brokers that collect, compile and sell personal information. Data brokers mine sources such as social media, personal websites, U.S. Census records, state hospital records, retailers’ purchasing records, real property records, insurance claims and more. Two well-known data brokers are Spokeo and Acxiom.

Some of the data employers can obtain identify individuals by name. But even information that does not provide obvious identifying details can be valuable. Wellness program vendors, for example, might provide employers with summary data about their workforce but strip away particulars such as names and birthdates. Nevertheless, de-identified information can sometimes be re-identified by experts. Data miners can match information to data that is publicly available….(More)”.

Priceless? A new framework for estimating the cost of open government reforms

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New paper by Praneetha Vissapragada and Naomi Joswiak: “The Open Government Costing initiative, seeded with funding from the World Bank, was undertaken to develop a practical and actionable approach to pinpointing the full economic costs of various open government programs. The methodology developed through this initiative represents an important step towards conducting more sophisticated cost-benefit analyses – and ultimately understanding the true value – of open government reforms intended to increase citizen engagement, promote transparency and accountability, and combat corruption, insights that have been sorely lacking in the open government community to date. The Open Government Costing Framework and Methods section (Section 2 of this report) outlines the critical components needed to conduct cost analysis of open government programs, with the ultimate objective of putting a price tag on key open government reform programs in various countries at a particular point in time. This framework introduces a costing process that employs six essential steps for conducting a cost study, including (1) defining the scope of the program, (2) identifying types of costs to assess, (3) developing a framework for costing, (4) identifying key components, (5) conducting data collection and (6) conducting data analysis. While the costing methods are built on related approaches used for analysis in other sectors such as health and nutrition, this framework and methodology was specifically adapted for open government programs and thus addresses the unique challenges associated with these types of initiatives. Using the methods outlined in this document, we conducted a cost analysis of two case studies: (1) ProZorro, an e-procurement program in Ukraine; and (2) Sierra Leone’s Open Data Program….(More)”

Intellectual Property for the Twenty-First-Century Economy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Essay by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Dean Baker and Arjun Jayadev: “Developing countries are increasingly pushing back against the intellectual property regime foisted on them by the advanced economies over the last 30 years. They are right to do so, because what matters is not only the production of knowledge, but also that it is used in ways that put the health and wellbeing of people ahead of corporate profits….When the South African government attempted to amend its laws in 1997 to avail itself of affordable generic medicines for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, the full legal might of the global pharmaceutical industry bore down on the country, delaying implementation and extracting a high human cost. South Africa eventually won its case, but the government learned its lesson: it did not try again to put its citizens’ health and wellbeing into its own hands by challenging the conventional global intellectual property (IP) regime….(More)”.

Updating Wikipedia should be part of all doctors’ jobs

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Gwinyai Masukume et al at StatNews: “When the Ebola pandemic erupted in West Africa in 2014, the English-language Wikipedia articles on Ebola were overhauled and versions were created or updated in more than 100 other languages. These pages would go on to be viewed at least 89 million times in 2014, and were the most used online sources for Ebola information in each of the four most affected countries. The work done by these authors, editors, and translators was crucial to educating the public on this devastating disease.

Medicine changes rapidly. Wikipedia, the world’s most viewed medical resource, should, too. Unfortunately, it sometimes lags behind. As we write this, pages on Ebola in African languages spoken in countries affected by the disease, such as Hausa and Fula, have either not been updated since the crisis in 2014 or are rudimentary with under 220 words.

We strongly believe that the medical community has a responsibility to keep this online encyclopedia up to date. It owes it to the people who turn to Wikipedia 4.9 billion times every year for medical information, many of whom live in low- to middle-income countries with sparse access to medical information. We follow through on this belief with action: each of us has been writing and updating Wikipedia articles on medicine and health for several years. Unfortunately, there is little incentive for busy biomedical and research professionals to spend their time editing, translating, and updating these pages….(More)”.

The application of crowdsourcing approaches to cancer research: a systematic review

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Young Ji Lee, Janet A. Arida, and Heidi S. Donovan at Cancer Medicine: “Crowdsourcing is “the practice of obtaining participants, services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, especially via the Internet.” (Ranard et al. J. Gen. Intern. Med. 29:187, 2014) Although crowdsourcing has been adopted in healthcare research and its potential for analyzing large datasets and obtaining rapid feedback has recently been recognized, no systematic reviews of crowdsourcing in cancer research have been conducted. Therefore, we sought to identify applications of and explore potential uses for crowdsourcing in cancer research. We conducted a systematic review of articles published between January 2005 and June 2016 on crowdsourcing in cancer research, using PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, PsychINFO, and Embase. Data from the 12 identified articles were summarized but not combined statistically. The studies addressed a range of cancers (e.g., breast, skin, gynecologic, colorectal, prostate). Eleven studies collected data on the Internet using web-based platforms; one recruited participants in a shopping mall using paper-and-pen data collection. Four studies used Amazon Mechanical Turk for recruiting and/or data collection. Study objectives comprised categorizing biopsy images (n = 6), assessing cancer knowledge (n = 3), refining a decision support system (n = 1), standardizing survivorship care-planning (n = 1), and designing a clinical trial (n = 1). Although one study demonstrated that “the wisdom of the crowd” (NCI Budget Fact Book, 2017) could not replace trained experts, five studies suggest that distributed human intelligence could approximate or support the work of trained experts. Despite limitations, crowdsourcing has the potential to improve the quality and speed of research while reducing costs. Longitudinal studies should confirm and refine these findings….(More)”

what3words

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

what3words: “Street addresses worldwide are inaccurate, unreliable and don’t exist at all in many places. Poor addressing is expensive and frustrating, hampers economic growth and development, restricts social mobility and affects lives.

Inaccurate addressing limits businesses and frustrates customers

Street addresses can usually identify a building, but aren’t accurate enough to help a courier or taxi driver find the correct entrance. This results in delayed or failed deliveries, and numerous ‘where are you’ phone calls.

There’s no human-friendly way to give a location to a machine

As personal devices, autonomous vehicles and the IoT streamline the way we live, we have an increasing need to communicate very accurate location. Addresses are too broad to direct a drone or an autonomous car, whilst GPS coordinates are complicated and prone to input mistakes.

Billions of people worldwide have no reliable address at all

Without an address, people struggle to access health and education services, register land and vote. Many of these people live in rapidly expanding cities, or informal settlements….

what3words is the simplest way to talk about any precise location. Our system has divided the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and assigned each one a unique address made of just 3 words. Now everyone and everywhere has a reliable address….(More)”.

Blockchain Could Help Us Reclaim Control of Our Personal Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Michael Mainelli at Harvard Business Review: “…numerous smaller countries, such as Singapore, are exploring national identity systems that span government and the private sector. One of the more successful stories of governments instituting an identity system is Estonia, with its ID-kaarts. Reacting to cyber-attacks against the nation, the Estonian government decided that it needed to become more digital, and even more secure. They decided to use a distributed ledger to build their system, rather than a traditional central database. Distributed ledgers are used in situations where multiple parties need to share authoritative information with each other without a central third party, such as for data-logging clinical assessments or storing data from commercial deals. These are multi-organization databases with a super audit trail. As a result, the Estonian system provides its citizens with an all-digital government experience, significantly reduced bureaucracy, and significantly high citizen satisfaction with their government dealings.

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have increased the awareness of distributed ledgers with their use of a particular type of ledger — blockchain — to hold the details of coin accounts among millions of users. Cryptocurrencies have certainly had their own problems with their wallets and exchanges — even ID-kaarts are not without their technical problems — but the distributed ledger technology holds firm for Estonia and for cryptocurrencies. These technologies have been working in hostile environments now for nearly a decade.

The problem with a central database like the ones used to house social security numbers, or credit reports, is that once it’s compromised, a thief has the ability to copy all of the information stored there. Hence the huge numbers of people that can be affected — more than 140 million people in the Equifax breach, and more than 50 million at Home Depot — though perhaps Yahoo takes the cake with more than three billion alleged customer accounts hacked.  Of course, if you can find a distributed ledger online, you can copy it, too. However, a distributed ledger, while available to everyone, may be unreadable if its contents are encrypted. Bitcoin’s blockchain is readable to all, though you can encrypt things in comments. Most distributed ledgers outside cryptocurrencies are encrypted in whole or in part. The effect is that while you can have a copy of the database, you can’t actually read it.

This characteristic of encrypted distributed ledgers has big implications for identity systems.  You can keep certified copies of identity documents, biometric test results, health data, or academic and training certificates online, available at all times, yet safe unless you give away your key. At a whole system level, the database is very secure. Each single ledger entry among billions would need to be found and then individually “cracked” at great expense in time and computing, making the database as a whole very safe.

Distributed ledgers seem ideal for private distributed identity systems, and many organizations are working to provide such systems to help people manage the huge amount of paperwork modern society requires to open accounts, validate yourself, or make payments.  Taken a small step further, these systems can help you keep relevant health or qualification records at your fingertips.  Using “smart” ledgers, you can forward your documentation to people who need to see it, while keeping control of access, including whether another party can forward the information. You can even revoke someone’s access to the information in the future….(More)”.

Paraguay’s transparency alchemists

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Story by the Open Contracting Partnership: “….The “Cocido de oro” scandal is seen as part of a well-organized and well-informed youth movement that has sprung up in Paraguay in recent years. An equally dramatic controversyinvolving alleged corruption and unfair staff appointments at one of the country’s top public universities led to the resignation of the Chancellor and other senior staff in September 2015. Mostly high school and university students, they are no longer willing to tolerate the waste and corruption in public spending — a hangover from 35 years of authoritarian rule. They expect their government to be more open and accountable, and public decision-making processes to be more inclusive and democratic.

Thanks to government initiatives that have sought to give citizens greater access to information about public institutions, these students, along with investigative journalists and other civil society groups, are starting to engage actively in civic affairs. And they are data-savvy, basing recommendations on empirical evidence about government policies and processes, how they are implemented, and whether they are working.

Leading the pack is the country’s public procurement office, which runs a portal that ranks among the most open government data sources in the world. Together with information about budgets, public bodies’ payrolls, and other government data, this is helping Paraguayans to tackle some of the biggest long-standing problems faced by the government, like graft, overpricing, nepotism and influence-peddling….

The government recognizes there’s still a long way to go in their quest to open up public data. Few institutions have opened their databases or publish their data on an open data portal, and use of the data that has been published is still limited, according to a report on the country’s third OGP Action Plan. Priority data sets aren’t accessible in ways that meet the needs of civil society, the report adds.

And yet, the tremors of a tectonic shift in transparency and accountability in Paraguay are already being felt. In a short time, armed with access to information, citizens have started engaging with how public money is and should be spent.

The government is now doubling down on its strategy of fostering public participation, using cutting-edge technology to increase citizens’ access to data about their state institutions. Health, education, and municipal-level government, and procurement spending across these areas are being prioritized….(More).