media

Index: The Data Universe

Curated on August 22, 2013September 6, 2019 by admin

The Living Library Index – inspired by the Harper’s Index – provides important statistics and highlights global trends in governance innovation. This installment focuses on the data universe and was originally published in 2013.

How much data exists in the digital universe as of 2012: 2.7 zetabytes*
Increase in the quantity of Internet data from 2005 to 2012: +1,696%
Percent of the world’s data created in the last two years: 90
Number of exabytes (=1 billion gigabytes) created every day in 2012: 2.5; that number doubles every month
Percent of the digital universe in 2005 created by the U.S. and western Europe vs. emerging markets: 48 vs. 20
Percent of the digital universe in 2012 created by emerging markets: 36
Percent of the digital universe in 2020 predicted to be created by China alone: 21
How much information in the digital universe is created and consumed by consumers (video, social media, photos, etc.) in 2012: 68%
Percent of which enterprises have liability or responsibility for (copyright, privacy, compliance with regulations, etc.): 80
Amount included in the Obama Administration’s 2-12 Big Data initiative: over $200 million
Amount the Department of Defense is investing annually on Big Data projects as of 2012: over $250 million
Data created per day in 2012: 2.5 quintillion bytes
How many terabytes* of data collected by the U.S. Library of Congress as of April 2011: 235
How many terabytes of data collected by Walmart per hour as of 2012: 2,560, or 2.5 petabytes*
Projected growth in global data generated per year, as of 2011: 40%
Number of IT jobs created globally by 2015 to support big data: 4.4 million (1.9 million in the U.S.)
Potential shortage of data scientists in the U.S. alone predicted for 2018: 140,000-190,000, in addition to 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions
Time needed to sequence the complete human genome (analyzing 3 billion base pairs) in 2003: ten years
Time needed in 2013: one week
The world’s annual effective capacity to exchange information through telecommunication networks in 1986, 2007, and (predicted) 2013: 281 petabytes, 65 exabytes, 667 exabytes
Projected amount of digital information created annually that will either live in or pass through the cloud: 1/3
Increase in data collection volume year-over-year in 2012: 400%
Increase in number of individual data collectors from 2011 to 2012: nearly double (over 300 data collection parties in 2012)

*1 zetabyte = 1 billion terabytes | 1 petabyte = 1,000 terabytes | 1 terabyte = 1,000 gigabytes | 1 gigabyte = 1 billion bytes

Sources

The Logic of Connective Action- Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics

Curated on August 22, 2013December 11, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New book by W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg: “The Logic of Connective Action explains the rise of a personalized digitally networked politics in which diverse individuals address the common problems of our times such as economic fairness and climate change. Rich case studies from the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany illustrate a theoretical framework for understanding how large-scale connective action is coordinated using inclusive discourses such as “We Are the 99%” that travel easily through social media. In many of these mobilizations, communication operates as an organizational process that may replace or supplement familiar forms of collective action based on organizational resource mobilization, leadership, and collective action framing. In some cases, connective action emerges from crowds that shun leaders, as when Occupy protesters created media networks to channel resources and create loose ties among dispersed physical groups. In other cases, conventional political organizations deploy personalized communication logics to enable large-scale engagement with a variety of political causes. The Logic of Connective Action shows how power is organized in communication-based networks, and what political outcomes may result.”

From Machinery to Mobility: Government and Democracy in a Participative Age

Curated on August 15, 2013October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New book by Jeffrey Roy: “The Westminster-stylized model of Parliamentary democratic politics and public service accountability is increasingly out of step with the realities of today’s digitally and socially networked era. This book explores the reconfiguration of democratic and managerial governance within democratic societies due to the advent of technological mobility. More specifically, the traditional public sector prism of organizational and accountability – denoted as ‘machinery of government’, is increasingly strained in an era characterized by smart devices, social media, and cloud computing. This book examines the roots and implications of the tensions between machinery and mobility and the sorts of investments and initiatives that have been undertaken by governments around the world as well as their appropriateness and relative impacts. This book also examines the prospects for holistic adaptation of democratic and managerial systems going forward, identifying the most crucial directions and determinants for improving public sector performance in terms of outcomes, accountability, and agility. Accordingly, the ultimate aim of this initiative is to contribute to the formation of intellectual foundations for more systemic reforms of public sector governance in Canada and elsewhere, and to offer forward-looking trajectories for government adaptation in shifting from a traditional prism of ‘machinery’ to new organizational and institutional arrangements better suited for an era of ‘mobility’.”

Putting Citizens First

Curated on August 13, 2013October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New Book by Evert A. Lindquist, Sam Vincent and John Wanna on Engagement in Policy and Service Delivery for the 21st Century: “This book explores the ways in which governments are putting citizens first in their policy-making endeavours. Making citizens the focus of policy interventions and involving them in the delivery and design is for many governments a normative ideal; it is a worthy objective and sounds easy to achieve. But the reality is that putting citizens at the centre of policy-making is hard and confronting. Are governments really serious in their ambitions to put citizens first? Are they prepared for the challenges and demands such an approach will demand? Are they prepared to commit the time and resources to ensure genuine engagement takes place and that citizens’ interests are considered foremost? And, more importantly, are governments prepared for the trade-offs, risks and loss of control such citizen-centric approaches will inevitably involve?
The book is divided into five parts:

setting the scene: The evolving landscape for citizen engagement
drivers for change: Innovations in citizen-centric governance
case studies in land management and Indigenous empowerment
case studies in fostering community engagement and connectedness
case studies engaging with information technology and new media.”

I Flirt and Tweet. Follow Me at #Socialbot.

Curated on August 11, 2013December 6, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Ian Urbina in The New York Times: “FROM the earliest days of the Internet, robotic programs, or bots, have been trying to pass themselves off as human. Chatbots greet users when they enter an online chat room, for example, or kick them out when they get obnoxious….

Now come socialbots. These automated charlatans are programmed to tweet and retweet. They have quirks, life histories and the gift of gab. Many of them have built-in databases of current events, so they can piece together phrases that seem relevant to their target audience. They have sleep-wake cycles so their fakery is more convincing, making them less prone to repetitive patterns that flag them as mere programs. Some have even been souped up by so-called persona management software, which makes them seem more real by adding matching Facebook, Reddit or Foursquare accounts, giving them an online footprint over time as they amass friends and like-minded followers.

Researchers say this new breed of bots is being designed not just with greater sophistication but also with grander goals: to sway elections, to influence the stock market, to attack governments, even to flirt with people and one another.

…Socialbots are tapping into an ever-expanding universe of social media. Last year, the number of Twitter accounts topped 500 million. Some researchers estimate that only 35 percent of the average Twitter user’s followers are real people. In fact, more than half of Internet traffic already comes from nonhuman sources like bots or other types of algorithms. Within two years, about 10 percent of the activity occurring on social online networks will be masquerading bots, according to technology researchers….

Much of the social media remains unregulated by campaign finance and transparency laws. So far, the Federal Election Commission has been reluctant to venture into this realm.

But the bots are likely to venture into ours, said Tim Hwang, chief scientist at the Pacific Social Architecting Corporation, which creates bots and technologies that can shape social behavior. “Our vision is that in the near future automatons will eventually be able to rally crowds, open up bank accounts, write letters,” he said, “all through human surrogates.”

Citizen-Centered Governance: The Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics and the Evolution of CRM in Boston

Curated on August 9, 2013December 6, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New Paper by Susan P. Crawford and Dana Walters (Berkman Center Research Publication No. 17): “Over the last three years, the Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, the innovative, collaborative ethos within City Hall fostered by Mayor Menino and his current chief of staff, Mitchell Weiss, and Boston’s launch of a CRM system and its associated Citizens Connect smartphone app have all attracted substantial media attention. In particular, the City of Boston’s strategy to put citizen engagement and participation at the center of its efforts, implemented by Chris Osgood and Nigel Jacob as co-chairs of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, has drawn attention to the potential power of collaboration and technology to transform citizens’ connections to their government and to each other. Several global developments have combined to make Boston’s collaborative efforts interesting: First, city managers around the world confront shrinking budgets and diminishing trust in the role of government; second, civic entrepreneurs and technology innovators are pressuring local governments to adopt new forms of engagement with citizens; and third, new digital tools are emerging that can help make city services both more visible and more effective. Boston’s experience in pursuing partnerships that facilitate opportunities for engaging citizens may provide scalable (and disruptive) lessons for other cities.

During the summer of 2013, in anticipation of Mayor Menino’s retirement in January 2014, Prof. Susan Crawford and Project Assistant Dana Walters carried out a case study examining the ongoing evolution of the Boston Mayor’s Hotline into a platform for civic engagement. We chose this CRM focus because the initial development of the system provides a concrete example of how leaders in government can connect to local partners and citizens. In the course of this research, we interviewed 21 city employees and several of their partners outside government, and gathered data about the use of the system.

We found a traditional technology story—selection and integration of CRM software, initial performance management using that software, development of ancillary channels of communication, initial patterns of adoption and use—that reflects the commitment of Mayor Menino to personalized constituent service. We also found that that commitment, his long tenure, and the particular personalities of the people on the New Urban Mechanics team make this both a cultural story as well as a technology story. Here are the highlights…”

Innovation Network' Connects Leaders Across Latin America to Share Ideas

Curated on August 8, 2013August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

National Democratic Institute: “Throughout Latin America, political and civic leaders are under increasing pressure to solve pervasive problems such as poverty, insecurity, corruption and lack of government transparency. Some of that pressure is generated by social media and other new communications tools available to constituents. But new technology is also aiding the response.
Revolutionary developments such as georeferencing and low-cost video conferencing have spawned new ways for political and civic leaders to address some of these problems. Georeferencing, for example, helps combat corruption by making it possible to track the location of individuals, such as government employees, at a given time to ensure they are performing work when and where they say they are.
Leaders are using new technology to push for campaign finance transparency in Colombia, and to improve how political parties in Argentina and Uruguay prepare their members to tackle public policy challenges by using web-based tools for virtual trainings. In Honduras, where it is common for corrupt teachers to claim pay for work in multiple districts, the government is using georeferencing to ensure that these teachers aren’t paid for work they didn’t do.
But despite the innovations, there is little communication among countries in the region, so new methods developed in one country are often unknown in another. To overcome that gap, NDI has supported the creation of Red Innovación (RI), or “Innovation Network,” a virtual online Spanish-language forum where social and political innovators from throughout the region can highlight initiatives, solicit feedback and harvest new ideas to help governments become more responsive, transparent and effective.
Red Innovación uses platforms such as Google Hangout videoconferences to help put political parties and civil society organizations in touch with experts on such topics as how to communicate more effectively, how cyberactivism works and how to use technology to promote transparency.”