international development

6 Jurisdictions Tackling Homelessness with Technology

Curated on June 12, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Zack Quaintance in GovernmentTechnology: “Public servants who work to reduce homelessness often have similar lists of challenges.

The most common of these are data sharing between groups involved with the homeless, the ability to track interactions between individuals and outreach providers, and a system that makes it easier to enter information about the population. Recently, we spoke with more than a half-dozen government officials who are involved with the homeless, and while obstacles and conditions varied among cities, all agreed that their work would be much easier with better tech-based solutions for the problems cited above.

These officials, however, were uniformly optimistic that such solutions were becoming more readily available — solutions with potential to solve the logistical hurdles that most often hamstring government, community and nonprofit efforts to help the homeless find jobs, residences and medical care. Some agencies, in fact, have already had success implementing tech as components in larger campaigns, while others are testing new platforms that may bolster organization and efficiency.

Below are a few brief vignettes that detail some — but far from all — ongoing governmental efforts to use tech to aid and reduce the homeless population.

1. BERGEN COUNTY, N.J.

One of the best examples of government using tech to address homelessness can be found in Bergen County, N.J., where officials recently certified their jurisdiction as first in the nation to end chronic homelessness. READ MORE

2. AURORA, COLO.

Aurora, Colo., in the Denver metropolitan, area uses the Homeless Management Information System required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, but those involved with addressing homelessness there have also developed tech-based efforts that are specifically tailored to the area’s needs. READ MORE

4. NEW YORK CITY

New York City is rolling out an app called StreetSmart, which enables homelessness outreach workers in all five boroughs to communicate and log data seamlessly in real time while in the field. With StreetSmart, these workers will be able to enter that information into a single citywide database as they collect it. READ MORE… (Full article)“

Design and Implementation of Behavioral Informatics Interventions

Curated on June 8, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Liliana Laranjo, Annie Lau and Enrico Coiera in Cognitive Informatics in Health and Biomedicine: “The growing burden of chronic disease is drawing unprecedented attention to the importance of optimizing lifestyle behaviors. Interventions to promote behavior change seem promising, but their full potential can be missed when they are not easily disseminated or accessible to a larger audience. The ability of technology to address these issues, as well as to facilitate the tailoring of interventions, has led to the growing popularity of the field of behavioral informatics (BI).

Behavioral informatics interventions are designed to support patients and healthy consumers in modifying behaviors to improve health, with the help of computers, the Internet, mobile phones, wireless devices, or social media, among other technologies. To date, BI interventions have been applied in several health domains, from the promotion of healthy lifestyle behaviors to mental health and chronic disease self-management.

The effectiveness and impact of BI interventions are largely dependent on their meaningful design, development, evaluation, and implementation. Key elements for success include: performing a comprehensive observation and framing of the particular behavioral challenge within context; recognizing the relevant behavior change theories, models and techniques; having a deep understanding of user characteristics and needs; involving users throughout design and development; and refining the design through user-centred evaluation.

Due to the rapid pace of technology development, the evaluation of interventions and translation of research to practice are met with particular challenges. Innovative methodologies and implementation strategies are increasingly required to bring to fruition the potential of BI interventions in delivering cost-effective, personalized interventions, with broad scalability….(More)”.

Digital Service Teams: Challenges and Recommendations for Government

Curated on June 1, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Ines Mergel: “The British government successfully pioneered the use of a national, semi-independent “surge team” to tackle large-scale technology-driven challenges facing it. The U.S. federal government adapted this approach to improve the success of its own operations in 2014, titling its top-level team as the “U.S. Digital Service.” It then created a small internal software development and service organization, dubbed “18F,” to support both USDS and individual agencies. And individual agencies are creating their own internal digital service teams, as well.

Dr. Mergel interviews leaders and users of digital service teams in the US and internationally to learn how they operate, and the challenges they faced in creating a private sector-like “start up” culture within government to foster innovation and top-level tech talent. Her report identifies six challenges, and offers recommendations on actions that both digital service leaders and policy makers can take to ensure the sustainability and scaling of this novel approach in government….(More)”.

Information for the People: Tunisia Embraces Open Government, 2011–2016

Curated on May 30, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Case study by Tristan Dreisback at Innovations for Successful Societies: “In January 2011, mass demonstrations in Tunisia ousted a regime that had tolerated little popular participation, opening the door to a new era of transparency. The protesters demanded an end to the secrecy that had protected elite privilege. Five months later, the president issued a decree that increased citizen access to government data and formed a steering committee to guide changes in information practices, building on small projects already in development. Advocates in the legislature and the public service joined with civil society leaders to support a strong access-to-information policy, to change the culture of public administration, and to secure the necessary financial and technical resources to publish large quantities of data online in user-friendly formats. Several government agencies launched their own open-data websites. External pressure, coupled with growing interest from civil society and legislators, helped keep transparency reforms on the cabinet office agenda despite frequent changes in top leadership. In 2016, Tunisia adopted one of the world’s strongest laws regarding access to information. Although members of the public did not put all of the resources to use immediately, the country moved much closer to having the data needed to improve access to services, enhance government performance, and support the evidence-based deliberation on which a healthy democracy depended…(More)”

A framework for analyzing digital volunteer contributions in emergent crisis response efforts

Curated on May 29, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Chul Hyun Park and Erik W Johnston in New Media and Society: “Advances in information, communication, and computational technologies allow digital volunteer networks formed by concerned publics across the globe to contribute to an effective response to disasters and crises. Digital volunteer networks are event-centric and emergent networks. Currently, the literature is sharply growing in the fields of communication, computer science, emergency management, and geography. This article aims to assess the current status of the literature and suggest a comprehensive conceptual framework of digital volunteer networks in response to disasters and crises. This framework is based on a traditional input–process–output model consisting of three dimensions: the disaster and crisis context, a voluntary response process, and outputs and outcomes. We also discuss challenges of digital volunteer networks for crisis response. This article is expected to contribute to the development of related theories and hypotheses and practical strategies for managing digital volunteer networks…(More)”,

Digital platforms and democracy

Curated on May 24, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Ricard Espelt and Monica Garriga at Open Democracy: “The impact of digital platforms in recent years affects all areas and all sorts of organizations: from production to consumption, from political parties to social movements, from business to public administration, trade unions, universities or the mass media. The disruption they generate is cross-section and intergenerational. Undoubtedly, their outstanding assets – at least from a discursive point of view –, are self-management and disintermediation. Today, through technology, people can participate actively in processes related to any particular activity. This is why we often talk about digital platforms as tools for democratizing participation, overcoming as they do the traditional tyranny of space and time. If we analyze them in detail, however, and look at the organizations that promote them, we realize that the improvement in citizen involvement tends to vary, sometimes considerably, as does the logic behind their approach…..

La Teixidora, a democratic digital platform

Being aware now of the risks of partial evaluation of the impact of technology and the key elements to be considered in analyzing it, let us return to our starting point: democratizing participation. Given the importance of local assessment of global digital tools, let us now see the case of the multimedia platform La Teixidora, which allows us to synthesize the aspects which, in our opinion, shape democratic participation.

Platform cooperativism or open cooperativism, whether it focuses on the social strength of cooperative values or on the need to reappropriate common goods, calls for a detailed critical review of the local activity of its digital platforms.

This initiative, launched in 2016 in Barcelona, organizes in real time a collaborative structure with the aim of mapping distributed knowledge generated in different parts of the city during conferences, meetings, workshops and other offline meeting formats related to technopolitics and the commons. To do this, it appropriates several open source tools (collaborative editor, wiki, content storage spaces) and uses a Creative Commons license which, while recognizing authorship, allows anyone to adapt the contents and even use them commercially. Two significant apps illustrate the value of its functionalities in relation to democratizing participation:

In March 2016 La Teixidora covered, with a team of some twenty people, a debate on Collaborative Economy (Economies Col·laboratives Procomuns). The classified data were then transferred to the Decidim Barcelona platform, which has helped to define, through a broad participatory process, the Municipal Action Plan of the Barcelona City Council.
At the same time, the tool has been used to monitor the fifteen teams which have been following the economic development program La Comunificadora, whose aim is the promotion of social transformation projects and the advancement of entrepreneurship. Through La Teixidora, the participants have been able to establish a space for exchanging knowledge among them, with the mentors, with the city service managers and with citizens in general. All its contents are open and reusable.

In short, through this platform, both processes have been able not only to contribute proposals, but also to form an open learning space. And by mapping participation, which makes these processes – both of which are promoted by the Public Administration – transparent and accountable, thus improving their democratic quality. At the same time, the information and the learning from their use are helping to redesign the technological platform itself and adapt it to the needs of the communities involved….(More)”.

Eliminating the Human

Curated on May 24, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

David Byrne: I have a theory that much recent tech development and innovation over the last decade or so has had an unspoken overarching agenda—it has been about facilitating the need for LESS human interaction. It’s not a bug—it’s a feature. We might think Amazon was about selling us books we couldn’t find locally—and it was and what a brilliant idea—but maybe it was also just as much about eliminating human interaction. I see a pattern emerging in the innovative technology that has gotten the most attention, gets the bucks and often, no surprise, ends up getting developed and implemented. What much of this technology seems to have in common is that it removes the need to deal with humans directly. The tech doesn’t claim or acknowledge this as its primary goal, but it seems to often be the consequence. I’m sort of thinking maybe it is the primary goal. There are so many ways imagination can be manifested in the technical sphere. Many are wonderful and seem like social goods, but allow me a little conspiracy mongering here—an awful lot of them have the consequence of lessening human interaction.

I suspect that we almost don’t notice this pattern because it’s hard to imagine what an alternative focus of tech development might be. Most of the news we get barraged with is about algorithms, AI, robots and self driving cars, all of which fit this pattern, though there are indeed many technological innovations underway that have nothing to do with eliminating human interaction from our lives. CRISPR-cas9 in genetics, new films that can efficiently and cheaply cool houses and quantum computing to name a few, but what we read about most and what touches us daily is the trajectory towards less human involvement. Note: I don’t consider chat rooms and product reviews as “human interaction”; they’re mediated and filtered by a screen.

I am not saying these developments are not efficient and convenient; this is not a judgement regarding the services and technology. I am simply noticing a pattern and wondering if that pattern means there are other possible roads we could be going down, and that the way we’re going is not in fact inevitable, but is (possibly unconsciously) chosen.

Here are some examples of tech that allows for less human interaction…

Lastly, “Social” media- social “interaction” that isn’t really social.

While the appearance on social networks is one of connection—as Facebook and others frequently claim—the fact is a lot of social media is a simulation of real social connection. As has been in evidence recently, social media actually increases divisions amongst us by amplifying echo effects and allowing us to live in cognitive bubbles. We are fed what we already like or what our similarly inclined friends like… or more likely now what someone has payed for us to see in an ad that mimics content. In this way, we actually become less connected except to those in our group…..

Many transformative movements in the past succeed based on leaders, agreed upon principles and organization. Although social media is a great tool for rallying people and bypassing government channels, it does not guarantee eventual success.

Social media is not really social—ticking boxes and having followers and getting feeds is NOT being social—it’s a screen simulation of human interaction. Human interaction is much more nuanced and complicated than what happens online. Engineers like things that are quantifiable. Smells, gestures, expression, tone of voice, etc. etc.—in short, all the various ways we communicate are VERY hard to quantify, and those are often how we tell if someone likes us or not….

To repeat what I wrote above—humans are capricious, erratic, emotional, irrational and biased in what sometimes seem like counterproductive ways. I’d argue that though those might seem like liabilities, many of those attributes actually work in our favor. Many of our emotional responses have evolved over millennia, and they are based on the probability that our responses, often prodded by an emotion, will more likely than not offer the best way to deal with a situation….

Our random accidents and odd behaviors are fun—they make life enjoyable. I’m wondering what we’re left with when there are fewer and fewer human interactions. Remove humans from the equation and we are less complete as people or as a society. “We” do not exist as isolated individuals—we as individuals are inhabitants of networks, we are relationships. That is how we prosper and thrive….(More)”.

Open Data Barometer 2016

Curated on May 23, 2017October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Data Barometer: “Produced by the World Wide Web Foundation as a collaborative work of the Open Data for Development (OD4D) network and with the support of the Omidyar Network, the Open Data Barometer (ODB) aims to uncover the true prevalence and impact of open data initiatives around the world. It analyses global trends, and provides comparative data on countries and regions using an in-depth methodology that combines contextual data, technical assessments and secondary indicators.

Covering 115 jurisdictions in the fourth edition, the Barometer ranks governments on:

Readiness for open data initiatives.
Implementation of open data programmes.
Impact that open data is having on business, politics and civil society.

After three successful editions, the fourth marks another step towards becoming a global policymaking tool with a participatory and inclusive process and a strong regional focus. This year’s Barometer includes an assessment of government performance in fulfilling the Open Data Charter principles.

The Barometer is a truly global and collaborative effort, with input from more than 100 researchers and government representatives. It takes over six months and more than 10,000 hours of research work to compile. During this process, we address more than 20,000 questions and respond to more than 5,000 comments and suggestions.

The ODB global report is a summary of some of the most striking findings. The full data and methodology is available, and is intended to support secondary research and inform better decisions for the progression of open data policies and practices across the world…(More)”.

Trust in Social Dilemmas

Curated on May 22, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Paul A.M. Van Lange, Bettina Rockenbach, and Toshio Yamagishi: “One of the key scientific challenges is the puzzle of human cooperation. Why do people cooperate with one another? What causes individuals to lend a helping hand to a stranger, even if it comes at a major cost to their own well-being? Why do people severely punish those who violate social norms and undermine the collective interest? Edited by Paul A.M. Van Lange, Bettina Rockenbach, and Toshio Yamagishi, Trust in Social Dilemmas carefully considers the role of trust in establishing, promoting, and maintaining overall human cooperation.

By exploring the impact of trust and effective cooperation on relationships, organizations, and communities, Trust in Social Dilemmas draws inspiration from the fact that social dilemmas, defined in terms of conflicts between self-interest and the collective interest, are omnipresent in today’s society. In capturing the breadth and relevance of trust to social dilemmas and human cooperation more generally, this book is structured in three effective parts for readers: the biology and development of trust; the importance of trust for groups and organizations; and how trust factors across the overall health of today’s society.

As Van Lange, Rockenbach, Yamagishi, and their team of expert contributors all explore in this compelling new volume, there is little doubt that trust and cooperation are intimately related in most – if not all – of our social dilemmas….(More)”.