Data Mining Reveals a Global Link Between Corruption and Wealth

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Emerging Technology From the arXiv: “Social scientists have never understood why some countries are more corrupt than others. But the first study that links corruption with wealth could help change that…One question that social scientists and economists have long puzzled over is how corruption arises in different cultures and why it is more prevalent in some countries than others. But it has always been difficult to find correlations between corruption and other measures of economic or social activity.
Michal Paulus and Ladislav Kristoufek at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, have for the first time found a correlation between the perception of corruption in different countries and their economic development.
The data they use comes from Transparency International, a nonprofit campaigning organisation based in Berlin, Germany, and which defines corruption as the misuse of public power for private benefit. Each year, this organization publishes a global list of countries ranked according to their perceived levels of corruption. The list is compiled using at least three sources of information but does not directly measure corruption, because of the difficulties in gathering such data.
Instead, it gathers information from a wide range of sources such as the African Development Bank and the Economist Intelligence Unit. But it also places significant weight on the opinions of experts who are asked to assess corruption levels.
The result is the Corruption Perceptions Index ranking countries between 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). In 2014, Denmark occupied of the top spot as the world’s least corrupt nation while Somalia and North Korea prop up the table in an unenviable tie for the most corrupt countries on the planet.
Paulus and Kristoufek use this data to search for find clusters of countries that share similar properties using a new generation of cluster-searching algorithms. And they say that the 134 countries they study fall neatly into four groups which are clearly correlated with the wealth of the nations within them….Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1502.00104  Worldwide Clustering Of The Corruption Perception”

Untangling Complexity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Jacqueline Wallace at civicquarterly.com : “The next phase of the digital revolution will be defined by products and services that facilitate shared understanding, allowing concerted participation around complex issues. In working to show the way, civic designers will need to call upon the powers of systems research, design research, social science, and open data….
Creating next-gen civic applications will require designers to embody a systems-based approach to civic participation, marrying systems-based research, user-centered design, social science, and data. This article chronicles my own experience leveraging these tools to facilitate shared understand amongst my community vis. a vis. the Kinder Morgan pipeline….
I believe the contention around the pipeline evinces a bigger problem in our civic sphere: While individual issues such as the Kinder Morgan pipeline continue to absorb a great deal of energy from citizens, user-centered designers must use their unique skillset to address these issues more broadly. Because we’re not only failing our fellow citizens; we’re failing our representatives as well. In the words of digital strategist and civic design advocate Mike Connery: “there has been almost zero investment in giving our representatives the tools they need to understand feedback from citizens.”
The opportunity is two-fold. As previously stated, there is a need to develop tools that support citizens and representatives to understand and engage with complex social issues. There is also a need to develop processes, processes that cultivate our abilities to understand policy development in order to more efficiently spend our tax dollars. Writing about a recent project that used social science methods to analyze the long-term success of a welfare project, NPR correspondent Shankar Vedantam said, “it really makes no sense that marketers selling toys have better data on what works and what doesn’t than policy makers who are spending billions and billions of dollars.”…(More)

Innovate or Stagnate

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum at Project Syndicate: “Companies, like people, grow old. They start life small and eager to survive, fueled by youthful energy and fresh ideas. They compete, expand, mature, and eventually, with few exceptions, fade into obscurity. The same is true of governments: they, too, can lose the hunger and ambition of youth and allow themselves to become complacent….

The key to corporations’ rejuvenation, civilizations’ evolution, and human development in general is simple: innovation. I am always amazed when governments think they are an exception to this rule. Innovation in government is not an intellectual luxury, a topic confined to seminars and panel discussions, or a matter only of administrative reforms. It is the recipe for human survival and development, the fuel for constant progress, and the blueprint for a country’s rise.

The first key to business-like innovation in government is a focus on skills. Top-tier companies continuously invest in their employees to provide them with the right skills for the marketplace. Governments must do the same, by constantly upgrading skills and nurturing innovation – among their own employees, across key sectors of the economy, and at the foundations of the education system. Governments that fail to equip new generations with the skills needed to become leaders for their time are condemning them to be led by other, more innovative societies….

The second key to transforming governments into engines of innovation is to shift the balance of investment toward intangibles, as in the private sector. Whereas more than 80% of the value of the Standard & Poor’s 500 consisted of tangible assets 40 years ago, today that ratio is reversed: more than 80% of the largest companies’ value is intangible – the knowledge and skills of their employees and the intellectual property embedded in their products.

Governments, too, should think strategically about shifting their spending away from tangible infrastructure like roads and buildings, and toward intangibles like education and research and development…. (More)”.

Training the next generation of public leaders

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Thanks to the generous support of the Knight Foundation, this term the Governance Lab Academy – a training program designed to promote civic engagement and innovation – is launching a series of online coaching programs.
Geared to the teams and individuals inside and outside of government planning to undertake a new project or trying to figure out how to make an existing project even more effective and scalable, these programs are designed to help participants working in civic engagement and innovation develop effective projects from idea to implementation.
Convened by leading experts in their fields, coaching programs meet exclusively online once a week for four weeks or every other week for eight weeks. They include frequent and constructive feedback, customized and original learning materials, peer-to-peer support, mentoring by topic experts and individualized coaching from those with policy, technology, and domain expertise.
There is no charge to participants but each program is limited to 8-10 project teams or individuals.
You can see the current roster of programs below and check out the website for more information (including FAQs), to sign up and to suggest a new program.

Faculty includes: 

  • Brian Behlendorf, Managing Director at Mithril Capital Management and Co-Founder Apache
  • Alexandra Clare, Founder of Iraq Re:Coded
  • Brian Forde, Senior Former Advisor to the U.S. CTO, White House Office of Science Technology and Policy
  • Francois Grey,  Coordinator of the Citizen Cyberscience Centre, Geneva
  • Gavin Hayman, Executive Director of the Open Contracting Partnership
  • Clay Johnson, CEO of The Department for Better Technology and Former Presidential Innovation Fellow
  • Benjamin Kallos, New York City Council Member and Chair of the Committee on Governmental Operations of the New York City Council
  • Karim Lakhani, Lumry Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School
  • Amen Ra Mashariki, Chief Analytics Officer of New York City
  • Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive of NESTA
  • Miriam Nisbet,  Former Director of the Office of Government Information Services
  • Beth Noveck, Founder and CEO of The GovLab
  • Tiago Peixoto, Open Government Specialist at The World Bank
  • Arnaud Sahuguet, Chief Technology Officer of The GovLab
  • Joeri van den Steenhoven, Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Officer of MaRS Solutions Lab
  • Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Officer of The GovLab

Ebola: Call for more sharing of scientific data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Helen Briggs at the BBC: “The devastation left by the Ebola virus in west Africa raises many questions for science, policy and international development. One issue that has yet to receive widespread media attention is the handling of genetic data on the virus. By studying its code, scientists can trace how Ebola leapt across borders, and how, like all viruses, it is constantly evolving and changing.

Yet, researchers have been privately complaining for months about the scarcity of genetic information about the virus that is entering the public domain….

At the heart of the issue is the scientific process. The main way scientists are rewarded for their work is through the quality and number of research papers they publish.
Data is only revealed for scrutiny by the wider scientific community when the research is published, which can be a lengthy process….
Dr Emma Thomson of the MRC-University of Glasgow centre for virus research says all journals publishing papers on Ebola must insist all data is released, as a collaborative approach could save lives.
“At the time of publication is really important – these days most people do it but not always and journals often insist (but not always),” she told me.
“A lot of Ebola sequencing has happened but the data hasn’t always been uploaded.
“It’s an international emergency so people need to get the data out there to allow it to be analysed in different ways by different labs.”
In the old days of the public private race to decode the first human genome, the mood was one of making data accessible to all for the good of science and society.
Genetic science and public attitudes have moved on, but in the case of Ebola, some are saying it may be time for a re think.
As Prof Paul Hunter, Professor of health protection at the University of East Anglia, put it: “It would be tragic if, during a crisis like this, data was not being adequately shared with the public health community.
“The rapid sharing of data could help enable more rapid control of the outbreak.”…(More)”

Innovation Labs: Leveraging Openness for Radical Innovation?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Gryszkiewicz, Lidia and Lykourentzou, Ioanna and Toivonen, Tuukka: “A growing range of public, private and civic organisations, from Unicef through Nesta to Tesco, now run units known as ‘innovation labs’. The hopeful assumption they share is that labs, by building on openness among other features, can generate promising solutions to grand challenges of the future. Despite their seeming proliferation and popularisation, the underlying innovation paradigm embodied by labs has so far received scant academic attention. This is a missed opportunity, because innovation labs are potentially fruitful vehicles for leveraging openness for radical innovation. Indeed, they not only strive to span organisational, sectoral and geographical boundaries by bringing a variety of uncommon actors together to embrace radical ideas and out-of-the box thinking, but they also aim to apply the concept of openness throughout the innovation process, including the experimentation and development phases. While the phenomenon of labs clearly forms part of a broader trend towards openness, it seems to transcend traditional conceptualisations of open innovation (Chesbrough, 2006), open strategy (Whittington et al., 2011), open science (David, 1998) or open government (Janssen et al., 2012). What are innovation labs about, how do they differ from other innovation efforts and how do they embrace openness to create breakthrough innovations? This short exploratory paper is an introduction to a larger empirical study aiming to answer these questions….(More).”

U.S. Public Participation Playbook

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
“The U.S. Public Participation Playbook is a resource for government managers to effectively evaluate and build better services through public participation using best practices and performance metrics.
Public participation—where citizens help shape and implement government programs—is a foundation of open, transparent, and engaging government services. From emergency management, town hall discussions and regulatory development to science and education, better engagement with those who use public services can measurably improve those services for everyone.
Developing a U.S. Public Participation Playbook is an open government priority included in both the first and second U.S. Open Government National Action Plans as part of the United States effort to increase public integrity in government programs. This resource reflects the commitment of the government and civic partners to measurably improve participation programs, and is designed using the same inclusive principles that it champions.
How is the playbook structured?

We needed to create a resource that combines best practices and suggested performance metrics for public servants to use to evaluate and build better services — to meet this need, based on discussions with federal managers and stakeholders, we identified five main categories that should be addressed in all programs, whether digital or offline. Within each category we identified 12 unifying plays to start with, each including a checklist to consider, resources and training. We then provide suggested performance metrics for each main category.
This is only the beginning, however, and we hope the plays will quickly expand and enrich. The U.S. Public Participation Playbook was not just designed for a more open government — it was designed collaboratively through a more open government…(More)”

Cultures of Code

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Brian Hayes in the American Scientist: “Kim studies parallel algorithms, designed for computers with thousands of processors. Chris builds computer simulations of fluids in motion, such as ocean currents. Dana creates software for visualizing geographic data. These three people have much in common. Computing is an essential part of their professional lives; they all spend time writing, testing, and debugging computer programs. They probably rely on many of the same tools, such as software for editing program text. If you were to look over their shoulders as they worked on their code, you might not be able to tell who was who.
Despite the similarities, however, Kim, Chris, and Dana were trained in different disciplines, and they belong to  different intellectual traditions and communities. Kim, the parallel algorithms specialist, is a professor in a university department of computer science. Chris, the fluids modeler, also lives in the academic world, but she is a physicist by training; sometimes she describes herself as a computational scientist (which is not the same thing as a computer scientist). Dana has been programming since junior high school but didn’t study computing in college; at the startup company where he works, his title is software developer.
These factional divisions run deeper than mere specializations. Kim, Chris, and Dana belong to different professional societies, go to different conferences, read different publications; their paths seldom cross. They represent different cultures. The resulting Balkanization of computing seems unwise and unhealthy, a recipe for reinventing wheels and making the same mistake three times over. Calls for unification go back at least 45 years, but the estrangement continues. As a student and admirer of all three fields, I find the standoff deeply frustrating.
Certain areas of computation are going through a period of extraordinary vigor and innovation. Machine learning, data analysis, and programming for the web have all made huge strides. Problems that stumped earlier generations, such as image recognition, finally seem to be yielding to new efforts. The successes have drawn more young people into the field; suddenly, everyone is “learning to code.” I am cheered by (and I cheer for) all these events, but I also want to whisper a question: Will the wave of excitement ever reach other corners of the computing universe?…
What’s the difference between computer science, computational science, and software development?…(More)”

The Precision Medicine Initiative: Data-Driven Treatments as Unique as Your Own Body

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

White House Press Release: “…the Precision Medicine Initiative will pioneer a new model of patient-powered research that promises to accelerate biomedical discoveries and provide clinicians with new tools, knowledge, and therapies to select which treatments will work best for which patients.

Most medical treatments have been designed for the “average patient.” As a result of this “one-size-fits-all-approach,” treatments can be very successful for some patients but not for others.  This is changing with the emergence of precision medicine, an innovative approach to disease prevention and treatment that takes into account individual differences in people’s genes, environments, and lifestyles.  Precision medicine gives clinicians tools to better understand the complex mechanisms underlying a patient’s health, disease, or condition, and to better predict which treatments will be most effective….

Objectives of the Precision Medicine Initiative:

  • More and better treatments for cancer: NCI will accelerate the design and testing of effective, tailored treatments for cancer by expanding genetically based clinical cancer trials, exploring fundamental aspects of cancer biology, and establishing a national “cancer knowledge network” that will generate and share new knowledge to fuel scientific discovery and guide treatment decisions.
  • Creation of a voluntary national research cohort: NIH, in collaboration with other agencies and stakeholders, will launch a national, patient-powered research cohort of one million or more Americans who volunteer to participate in research.  Participants will be involved in the design of the Initiative and will have the opportunity to contribute diverse sources of data—including medical records; profiles of the patient’s genes, metabolites (chemical makeup), and microorganisms in and on the body; environmental and lifestyle data; patient-generated information; and personal device and sensor data.  Privacy will be rigorously protected.  This ambitious project will leverage existing research and clinical networks and build on innovative research models that enable patients to be active participants and partners.  The cohort will be broadly accessible to qualified researchers and will have the potential to inspire scientists from multiple disciplines to join the effort and apply their creative thinking to generate new insights. The ONC will develop interoperability standards and requirements to ensure secure data exchange with patients’ consent, to empower patients and clinicians and advance individual, community, and population health.
  • Commitment to protecting privacy: To ensure from the start that this Initiative adheres to rigorous privacy protections, the White House will launch a multi-stakeholder process with HHS and other Federal agencies to solicit input from patient groups, bioethicists, privacy, and civil liberties advocates, technologists, and other experts in order to identify and address any legal and technical issues related to the privacy and security of data in the context of precision medicine.
  • Regulatory modernization: The Initiative will include reviewing the current regulatory landscape to determine whether changes are needed to support the development of this new research and care model, including its critical privacy and participant protection framework.  As part of this effort, the FDA will develop a new approach for evaluating Next Generation Sequencing technologies — tests that rapidly sequence large segments of a person’s DNA, or even their entire genome. The new approach will facilitate the generation of knowledge about which genetic changes are important to patient care and foster innovation in genetic sequencing technology, while ensuring that the tests are accurate and reliable.
  • Public-private partnerships: The Obama Administration will forge strong partnerships with existing research cohorts, patient groups, and the private sector to develop the infrastructure that will be needed to expand cancer genomics, and to launch a voluntary million-person cohort.  The Administration will call on academic medical centers, researchers, foundations, privacy experts, medical ethicists, and medical product innovators to lay the foundation for this effort, including developing new approaches to patient participation and empowerment.  The Administration will carefully consider and develop an approach to precision medicine, including appropriate regulatory frameworks, that ensures consumers have access to their own health data – and to the applications and services that can safely and accurately analyze it – so that in addition to treating disease, we can empower individuals and families to invest in and manage their health.”

(More).

Access to Scientific Data in the 21st Century: Rationale and Illustrative Usage Rights Review

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by James Campbell  in Data Science Journal: “Making scientific data openly accessible and available for re-use is desirable to encourage validation of research results and/or economic development. Understanding what users may, or may not, do with data in online data repositories is key to maximizing the benefits of scientific data re-use. Many online repositories that allow access to scientific data indicate that data is “open,” yet specific usage conditions reviewed on 40 “open” sites suggest that there is no agreed upon understanding of what “open” means with respect to data. This inconsistency can be an impediment to data re-use by researchers and the public. (More)”