Book edited by Staci M. Zavattaro and Thomas A. Bryer: “Social media is playing a growing role within public administration, and with it, there is an increasing need to understand the connection between social media research and what actually takes place in government agencies. Most of the existing books on the topic are scholarly in nature, often leaving out the vital theory-practice connection. This book joins theory with practice within the public sector, and explains how the effectiveness of social media can be maximized. The chapters are written by leading practitioners and span topics like how to manage employee use of social media sites, how emergency managers reach the public during a crisis situation, applying public record management methods to social media efforts, how to create a social media brand, how social media can help meet government objectives such as transparency while juggling privacy laws, and much more. For each topic, a collection of practitioner insights regarding the best practices and tools they have discovered are included. Social Media for Government responds to calls within the overall public administration discipline to enhance the theory-practice connection, giving practitioners space to tell academics what is happening in the field in order to encourage further meaningful research into social media use within government….(More)
Responsible Data reflection stories
Responsible Data Forum: “Through the various Responsible Data Forum events over the past couple of years, we’ve heard many anecdotes of responsible data challenges faced by people or organizations. These include potentially harmful data management practices, situations where people have experienced gut feelings that there is potential for harm, or workarounds that people have created to avoid those situations.
But we feel that trading in these “war stories” isn’t the most useful way for us to learn from these experiences as acommunity. Instead, we have worked with our communities to build a set of Reflection Stories: a structured, well-researched knowledge base on the unforeseen challenges and (sometimes) negative consequences of usingtechnology and data for social change.
We hope that this can offer opportunities for reflection and learning, as well as helping to develop innovativestrategies for engaging with technology and data in new and responsible ways….
What we learned from the stories
New spaces, new challenges
Moving into new digital spaces is bringing new challenges, and social media is one such space where these challengesare proving very difficult to navigate. This seems to stem from a number of key points:
- organisations with low levels of technical literacy and experience in tech- or data-driven projects, deciding toengage suddenly with a certain tool or technology without realising what this entails. For some, this seems to stemfrom funders being more willing to support ‘innovative’ tech projects.
- organisations wishing to engage more with social media while not being aware of more nuanced understandingsof public/private spaces online, and how different communities engage with social media. (see story #2)
unpredictability and different levels of visibility: due to how privacy settings on Twitter are currently set, visibilityof users can be increased hugely by the actions of others – and once that happens, a user actually has very littleagency to change or reverse that. Sadly, being more visible on, for example, Twitter disproportionately affectswomen and minority groups in a negative way – so while ‘signal boosting’ to raise someone’s profile might be well-meant, the consequences are hard to predict, and almost impossible to reverse manually. (see story #4) - consent: related to the above point, “giving consent” can mean many different things when it comes to digitalspaces, especially if the person in question has little experience or understanding of using the technology inquestion (see stories #4 and #5).
Grey areas of responsible data
In almost all of the cases we looked at, very few decisions were concretely “right” or “wrong”. There are many, manygrey areas here, which need to be addressed on a case by case basis. In some cases, people involved really did thinkthrough their actions, and approached their problems thoughtfully and responsibly – but consequences they had notimagined, happened (see story #8).
Additionally, given the quickly moving nature of the space, challenges can arise that simply would not have beenpossible at the start.
….Despite the very varying settings of the stories collected, the shared mitigation strategies indicate that there areindeed a few key principles that can be kept in mind throughout the development of a new tech- or data-drivenproject.
The most stark of these – and one key aspect that is underlying many of these challenges – is a fundamental lack of technical literacy among advocacy organisations. This affects the way they interact with technical partners, the decisions they make around the project, the level to which they can have meaningful input, and more. Perhaps more crucially, it also affects the ability to know what to ask for help about – ie, to ‘know the unknowns’.
Building an organisation’s technical literacy might not mean being able to answer all technical questions in-house, but rather knowing what to ask and what to expect in an answer, from others. For advocacy organisations who don’t (yet)have this, it becomes all too easy to outsource not just the actual technical work but the contextual decisions too, which should be a collaborative process, benefiting from both sets of expertise.
There seems to be a lot of scope to expand this set of stories both in terms of collecting more from other advocacy organisations, and into other sectors, too. Ultimately, we hope that sharing our collective intelligence around lessonslearned from responsible data challenges faced in projects, will contribute to a greater understanding for all of us….Read all the stories here
Capitalizing on Creativity at Work: Fostering the Implementation of Creative Ideas in Organizations
Book by Miha Škerlavaj et al: “How does one implement highly creative ideas in the workplace? Though creativity fuels modern businesses and organizations, capitalizing on creativity is still a relatively unchartered territory. The crux of this issue is explored as contributors present and analyze remedies for capitalizing on highly creative ideas.
Editors Miha Škerlavaj, Matej ?erne, Anders Dysvik and Arne Carlsen have gathered a large network of contributors across four continents to craft this relevant, evidence-based and holistic text. Multiple levels, methods, approaches and perspectives are all considered while focusing on a single research question. Chapters feature a combination of research-based materials, stories and short cases to show what can be done to implement highly creative ideas in the workplace.
This extremely relevant subject will be of interest to a large number of organizations worldwide that are looking to tap into the potential of highly creative and possibly useful ideas to build their competitive advantage. Specifically, management consultants in Human Resource Management, innovation, creativity, coaching, and/or leadership will find this book useful. It can also be used in Innovation Management MSc and MBA courses, executive education courses, as well as for PhD researchers and innovation management scholars…. Contents: …
E. As Innovation Policy Makers
21. Adjusting National Innovation Policies to Support Open and Networked Innovation Systems
22. Governmental Ideation Systems
23. Creation of a Social Media Social Venture…(More)”
The Opportunity Project: Utilizing Open Data to Build Stronger Ladders of Opportunity for All
White House Factsheet: “In the lead up to the President’s historic visit to SxSW, today the Administration is announcing the launch of “The Opportunity Project,” a new open data effort to improve economic mobility for all Americans. As the President said in his State of the Union address, we must harness 21st century technology and innovation to expand access to opportunity and tackle our greatest challenges.
The Opportunity Project will put data and tools in the hands of civic leaders, community organizations, and families to help them navigate information about critical resources such as access to jobs, housing, transportation, schools, and other neighborhood amenities. This project is about unleashing the power of data to help our children and our children’s children access the resources they need to thrive. Today, the Administration is releasing a unique package of Federal and local datasets in an easy-to-use format and accelerating a new way for the federal government to collaborate with local leaders, technologists, and community members to use data and technology to tackle inequities and strengthen their communities.
Key components of this announcement include:
· The launch of “The Opportunity Project” and Opportunity.Census.gov to provide easy access to the new package of Opportunity Project data, a combination of Federal and local data, on key assets that determine access to opportunity at the neighborhood level. This data can now be used by technologists, community groups, and local governments in order to help families find affordable housing, help businesses identify services they need, and help policymakers see inequities in their communities and make investments to expand fair housing and increase economic mobility.
· The release of a dozen new private sector and non-profit digital tools that were built in collaboration with eight cities and using the Opportunity Project data to help families, local leaders, advocates, and the media navigate information about access to jobs, housing, transportation, schools, neighborhood amenities, and other critical resources. Participating cities include Baltimore, Detroit, Kansas City, MO, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., as well as organizations and companies such as Redfin, Zillow, GreatSchools, PolicyLink andStreetwyze.
· More than thirty additional non-profits, community organizations, coding boot camps, academic institutions, and local governments have already committed to use the Opportunity Project data to build stronger ladders of opportunity in communities across the country.
· The Administration is issuing a Call to Action to the public to develop new tools, offer additional sources of data, deepen community engagement through the use of the data, and other actions. We want to hear about what new steps you are taking or programs you are implementing to address these topics.
This project represents an important continuation of how the Federal government is working with communities and technologists to enhance the power of open data by making it more accessible to a wide variety of users across the country, and by facilitating collaborations between software developers and community members to build digital tools that make it easier for communities and families to solve their greatest challenges….(More)”
Ebola: A Big Data Disaster
Study by Sean Martin McDonald: “…undertaken with support from the Open Society Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Media Democracy Fund, explores the use of Big Data in the form of Call Detail Record (CDR) data in humanitarian crisis.
It discusses the challenges of digital humanitarian coordination in health emergencies like the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and the marked tension in the debate around experimentation with humanitarian technologies and the impact on privacy. McDonald’s research focuses on the two primary legal and human rights frameworks, privacy and property, to question the impact of unregulated use of CDR’s on human rights. It also highlights how the diffusion of data science to the realm of international development constitutes a genuine opportunity to bring powerful new tools to fight crisis and emergencies.
Analysing the risks of using CDRs to perform migration analysis and contact tracing without user consent, as well as the application of big data to disease surveillance is an important entry point into the debate around use of Big Data for development and humanitarian aid. The paper also raises crucial questions of legal significance about the access to information, the limitation of data sharing, and the concept of proportionality in privacy invasion in the public good. These issues hold great relevance in today’s time where big data and its emerging role for development, involving its actual and potential uses as well as harms is under consideration across the world.
The paper highlights the absence of a dialogue around the significant legal risks posed by the collection, use, and international transfer of personally identifiable data and humanitarian information, and the grey areas around assumptions of public good. The paper calls for a critical discussion around the experimental nature of data modelling in emergency response due to mismanagement of information has been largely emphasized to protect the contours of human rights….
See Sean Martin McDonald – “Ebola: A Big Data Disaster” (PDF).
Data Collaboratives: Matching Demand with Supply of (Corporate) Data to solve Public Problems
Blog by Stefaan G. Verhulst, IrynaSusha and Alexander Kostura: “Data Collaboratives refer to a new form of collaboration, beyond the public-private partnership model, in which participants from different sectors (private companies, research institutions, and government agencies) share data to help solve public problems. Several of society’s greatest challenges — from climate change to poverty — require greater access to big (but not always open) data sets, more cross-sector collaboration, and increased capacity for data analysis. Participants at the workshop and breakout session explored the various ways in which data collaborative can help meet these needs.
Matching supply and demand of data emerged as one of the most important and overarching issues facing the big and open data communities. Participants agreed that more experimentation is needed so that new, innovative and more successful models of data sharing can be identified.
How to discover and enable such models? When asked how the international community might foster greater experimentation, participants indicated the need to develop the following:
· A responsible data framework that serves to build trust in sharing data would be based upon existing frameworks but also accommodates emerging technologies and practices. It would also need to be sensitive to public opinion and perception.
· Increased insight into different business models that may facilitate the sharing of data. As experimentation continues, the data community should map emerging practices and models of sharing so that successful cases can be replicated.
· Capacity to tap into the potential value of data. On the demand side,capacity refers to the ability to pose good questions, understand current data limitations, and seek new data sets responsibly. On the supply side, this means seeking shared value in collaboration, thinking creatively about public use of private data, and establishing norms of responsibility around security, privacy, and anonymity.
· Transparent stock of available data supply, including an inventory of what corporate data exist that can match multiple demands and that is shared through established networks and new collaborative institutional structures.
· Mapping emerging practices and models of sharing. Corporate data offers value not only for humanitarian action (which was a particular focus at the conference) but also for a variety of other domains, including science,agriculture, health care, urban development, environment, media and arts,and others. Gaining insight in the practices that emerge across sectors could broaden the spectrum of what is feasible and how.
In general, it was felt that understanding the business models underlying data collaboratives is of utmost importance in order to achieve win-win outcomes for both private and public sector players. Moreover, issues of public perception and trust were raised as important concerns of government organizations participating in data collaboratives….(More)”
Public-Private Partnerships for Statistics: Lessons Learned, Future Steps
Report by Nicholas Robin, Thilo Klein and Johannes Jütting for Paris 21: “Non-offcial sources of data, big data in particular, are currently attracting enormous interest in the world of official statistics. An impressive body of work focuses on how different types of big data (telecom data, social media, sensors, etc.) can be used to fll specifc data gaps, especially with regard to the post-2015 agenda and the associated technology challenges. The focus of this paper is on a different aspect, but one that is of crucial importance: what are the perspectives of the commercial operations and national statistical offces which respectively produce and might use this data and which incentives, business models and protocols are needed in order to leverage non-offcial data sources within the offcial statistics community?
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) offer signifcant opportunities such as cost effectiveness, timeliness, granularity, new indicators, but also present a range of challenges that need to be surmounted. These comprise technical diffculties, risks related to data confdentiality as well as a lack of incentives. Nevertheless, a number of collaborative projects have already emerged and can be
Nevertheless, a number of collaborative projects have already emerged and can be classified into four ideal types: namely the in-house production of statistics by the data provider, the transfer of private data sets to the end user, the transfer of private data sets to a trusted third party for processing and/or analysis, and the outsourcing of national statistical office functions (the only model which is not centred around a data-sharing dimension). In developing countries, a severe lack of resources and particular statistical needs (to adopt a system-wide approach within national statistical systems and fill statistical gaps which are relevant to national development plans) highlight the importance of harnessing the private sector’s resources and point to the most holistic models (in-house and third party) in which the private sector contributes to the processing and analysis of data. The following key lessons are drawn from four case studies….(More)”
The Geography of Cultural Ties and Human Mobility: Big Data in Urban Contexts
Wenjie Wu Jianghao Wang & Tianshi Dai in Annals of the American Association of Geographers: “A largely unexplored big data application in urban contexts is how cultural ties affect human mobility patterns. This article explores China’s intercity human mobility patterns from social media data to contribute to our understanding of this question. Exposure to human mobility patterns is measured by big data computational strategy for identifying hundreds of millions of individuals’ space–time footprint trajectories. Linguistic data are coded as a proxy for cultural ties from a unique geographically coded atlas of dialect distributions. We find that cultural ties are associated with human mobility flows between city pairs, contingent on commuting costs and geographical distances. Such effects are not distributed evenly over time and space, however. These findings present useful insights in support of the cultural mechanism that can account for the rise, decline, and dynamics of human mobility between regions….(More)”
Civic hacking as data activism and advocacy: A history from publicity to open government data
Andrew R Schrock in New Media and Society: “The civic hacker tends to be described as anachronistic, an ineffective “white hat” compared to more overtly activist cousins. By contrast, I argue that civic hackers’ politics emerged from a distinct historical milieu and include potentially powerful modes of political participation. The progressive roots of civic data hacking can be found in early 20th-century notions of “publicity” and the right to information movement. Successive waves of activists saw the Internet as a tool for transparency. The framing of openness shifted in meaning from information to data, weakening of mechanisms for accountability even as it opened up new forms of political participation. Drawing on a year of interviews and participant observation, I suggest civic data hacking can be framed as a form of data activism and advocacy: requesting, digesting, contributing to, modeling, and contesting data. I conclude civic hackers are utopian realists involved in the crafting of algorithmic power and discussing ethics of technology design. They may be misunderstood because open data remediates previous forms of openness. In the process, civic hackers transgress established boundaries of political participation….(More)”
Hoaxmap: Debunking false rumours about refugee ‘crimes’
“The stories seemed to be [orchestrated] by far-right parties and organisations and I wanted to try to find some way to help organise this – maybe find patterns and give people a tool to look up these stories [when] they were being confronted with new ones.”
And so she did.
Along with 35-year-old developer Lutz Helm, Schwarz launched last week Hoaxmap, an online platform that allows people to separate fact from fiction by debunking false rumours about supposed crimes committed by refugees.
Using an interactive system of popping dots, the map documents and categorises where those “crimes” allegedly took place. It then counters that false information with official statements from the police and local authorities, as well as news reports in which the allegations have been disproved. The debunked cases marked on the map range from thefts and assaults to manslaughter – but one of the most common topics is rape, Schwarz said….(More)”