Mary K. Pratt at Computerworld: “Hundreds of thousands of refugees streamed into Europe in 2015 from Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. Some estimates put the number at nearly a million. The sheer volume of people overwhelmed European officials, who not only had to handle the volatile politics stemming from the crisis, but also had to find food, shelter and other necessities for the migrants. Sweden, like many of its European Union counterparts, was taking in refugees. The Swedish Migration Board, which usually sees 2,500 asylum seekers in an average month, was accepting 10,000 per week. “As you can... (More >)
How Big Data is Helping to Tackle Climate Change
Bernard Marr at DataInformed: “Climate scientists have been gathering a great deal of data for a long time, but analytics technology’s catching up is comparatively recent. Now that cloud, distributed storage, and massive amounts of processing power are affordable for almost everyone, those data sets are being put to use. On top of that, the growing number of Internet of Things devices we are carrying around are adding to the amount of data we are collecting. And the rise of social media means more and more people are reporting environmental data and uploading photos and videos of their environment,... (More >)
Data-Driven Innovation: Big Data for Growth and Well-Being
“A new OECD report on data-driven innovation finds that countries could be getting much more out of data analytics in terms of economic and social gains if governments did more to encourage investment in “Big Data” and promote data sharing and reuse. The migration of economic and social activities to the Internet and the advent of The Internet of Things – along with dramatically lower costs of data collection, storage and processing and rising computing power – means that data-analytics is increasingly driving innovation and is potentially an important new source of growth. The report suggest countries act to... (More >)
Revolution Delayed: The Impact of Open Data on the Fight against Corruption
Report by RiSSC – Research Centre on Security and Crime (Italy): “In the recent years, the demand for Open Data picked up stream among stakeholders to increasing transparency and accountability of the Public Sector. Governments are supporting Open Data supply, to achieve social and economic benefits, return on investments, and political consensus. While it is self-evident that Open Data contributes to greater transparency – as it makes data more available and easy to use by the public and governments, its impact on fighting corruption largely depends on the ability to analyse it and develop initiatives that trigger both social... (More >)
Open governance systems: Doing more with more
Paper by Jeremy Millard in Government Information Quarterly: “This paper tackles many of the important issues and discussions taking place in Europe and globally about the future of the public sector and how it can use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to respond innovatively and effectively to some of the acute societal challenges arising from the financial crisis as well as other deeper rooted global problems. These include inequality, poverty, corruption and migration, as well as climate change, loss of habitat and the ageing society. A conceptual framework for open governance systems enabled by ICT is proposed, drawing on... (More >)
5 tech trends that will transform governments
Zac Bookman at the World Economic Forum: “…The public sector today looks a bit like the consumer industry of 1995 and the enterprise space in 2005: it is at the beginning of a large-scale digital metamorphosis. The net result will be years of saved time, better decisions and stronger communities. Here are five trends that will define this transformation in the coming decade: Real-time operations Many industries in the global economy already operate in real time. …. Governments are different. They often access accurate data only on a monthly or quarterly basis, even though they make critical decisions every... (More >)
‘Airbnb for refugees’ group overwhelmed by offers of help
Jessica Elgot at The Guardian: “A German group which matchmakes citizens willing to share their homes with refugees said it had been overwhelmed by offers of support, with plans in the works for similar schemes in other European countries. The Berlin-based Refugees Welcome, which has been described as an “Airbnb for refugees”, has helped people fleeing from Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria. More than 780 Germans have signed up to the Refugees Welcome website and 26 people have been placed in private homes so far. Two of the site’s founders, Jonas Kakoschke, 31, and Mareike... (More >)
Citizen Urban Science
New report by Anthony Townsend and Alissa Chisholm at the Cities of Data Project: “Over the coming decades, the world will continue to urbanize rapidly amidst an historic migration of computing power off the desktop, unleashing new opportunities for data collection that reveal how cities function. In a recent report, Making Sense of the Science of Cities (bit.ly/sciencecities) we described an emerging global research movement that seeks establish a new urban science built atop this new infrastructure of instruments. But will this new intellectual venture be an inclusive endeavor? What role is 1 there for the growing ranks of... (More >)
Algorithmic Citizenship
Citizen-Ex: “Algorithmic Citizenship is a new form of citizenship, one where your citizenship, and therefore both your allegiances and your rights, are constantly being questioned, calculated, and rewritten. Most people are assigned a citizenship at birth, in one of two ways. You may receive your citizenship from the place you’re born, which is called jus soli, or the right of soil. If you’re born in a place, that’s where you’re a citizen of. This is true in a lot of North and South America, for example – but not much of the rest of the world. You may get... (More >)
Colombia’s Data-Driven Fight Against Crime
Tina Rosenberg in the New York Times: “One Monday in 1988, El Mundo newspaper of Medellín, Colombia, reported, as it did every Monday, on the violent deaths in the city of two million people over the weekend. An article giving an hour-by-hour description of the deaths from Saturday night to Sunday night was remarkable for, among other things, the journalist’s skill in finding different ways to report a murder. “Someone took the life of Luís Alberto López at knife point … Luís Alberto Patiño ceased to exist with a bullet in his head … Mario Restrepo turned up dead... (More >)
