philanthropy & aid

Monithon

Curated on May 4, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

“Moni-thon” comes from “monitor” and “marathon”, and this is precisely what this platform seeks to help with: anintensive activity of observing and reporting of public policies in Italy.

What’s there to monitor? Monithon was born as an independently developed initiative to promote the citizen monitoring of development projects funded both by the Italian government and the EU through the Cohesion (aka. Regional) Policy. Projects include a wide range of interventions such as large transport, digital, research or environmental infrastructures (railroads, highways, broadband networks, waste management systems…), aids to enterprises to support innovation and competitiveness, and other funding for energy efficiency, social inclusion, education and training, occupation and workers mobility, tourism, etc.

Citizen monitoring of these projects is possible thanks to a combination of open government data and citizens’ collaboration, joined by the goal of controlling how the projects are progressing, and whether they deliver actual results.

The Italian government releases the information on all the 800k+ projects funded (worth almost 100 billion Euros), the beneficiaries of the subsidies and all the actors involved as open data, including the location and the timing of the intervention. All the data is integrated with interactive visualizations on the national portal OpenCoesione, where people can play with the data and find the most interesting projects to follow.

The Monithon initiative takes this transparency further: it asks citizens to actively engage with open government data and to produce valuable information through it.

How does it work? Monithon means active involvement of communities and a shared methodology. Citizens, journalist, experts, researchers, students – or all combined – collect information on a specific project chosen from the OpenCoesione database. Then this information can be uploaded on the Monithon platform (based on Ushahidi) by selecting the projects from a list and it can be geo-referenced and enriched with interviews, quantitative data, pictures, videos. The result is a form of civic, bottom-down, collective data storytelling. All the “wannabe monithoners” can download this simple toolkit, a 10-page document that describes the initiative and explains how to pick a project to monitor and get things started. ….

How to achieve actual impact? The Monithon platform is method and a model whereby citizen monitoring may be initiated and a tool for civic partners to press forward, to report on malpractice, but also to collaborate in making all these projects work, in accelerating their completion and understanding whether they actually respond to local demand. ….

Monithon has rapidly evolved from being an innovative new platform into a transferable civic engagement format. Since its launch in September 2013, Monithon has drawn dozens of national and local communities (some formed on purpose, other based on existing associations) and around 500 people into civic monitoring activities, mostly in Southern Italy, where cohesion funds are more concentrated. Specific activities are carried out by established citizen groups, like Libera, a national anti-Mafia association, which became Monithon partner, focusing their monitoring on the rehabilitation of Mafia-seized properties. Action Aid is now partnering with Monithon to promote citizen empowerment. Existing, local groups of activists are using the Monithon methodology to test local transportation systems that benefited from EU funding, while new groups have formed to begin monitoring social innovation and cultural heritage projects.

Now more than 50 “citizen monitoring reports”, which take the form of collective investigations on project development and results, are publicly available on the Monithon website, many of which spurred further dialogue with public administrations….(More)“

Arnold Foundation Adds Program for Data-Driven Public Policy

Curated on April 28, 2015October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Nicole Wallace at the Chronicle of Philanthropy: “The Laura and John Arnold Foundation is starting a new program to encourage government to evaluate programs rigorously and use data to design new programs. The new Evidence-Based Policy and Innovation division will be based in Washington.

“People may disagree about the optimal size of government and the amount of money dedicated to public services,” Denis Calabrese, the foundation’s president, said in a written statement. “However, nearly everyone agrees that whatever funds are spent should be directed toward programs that have a significant impact.”

The new division will have two leaders. Kathy Stack, a longtime official at the Office of Management and Budget, will serve as vice president for evidence-based innovation and focus on efforts to promote the use of data in government decision making.

Jon Baron, the founder of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, will serve as vice president for evidence-based policy, overseeing grant making to support randomized, controlled trials for social programs and the expansion of efforts that show meaningful results. The Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy will close around April 30, and its employees will join Mr. Baron at the foundation….(More)”

The extreme poverty of data

Curated on April 22, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Mo Ibrahim in the Financial Times: “As finance ministers gather this week in Washington DC they cannot but agree and commit to fighting extreme poverty. All of us must rejoice in the fact that over the past 15 years, the world has reportedly already “halved the number of poor people living on the planet”.

But none of us really knows it for sure. It could be less, it could be more. In fact, for every crucial issue related to human development, whether it is poverty, inequality, employment, environment or urbanization, there is a seminal crisis at the heart of global decision making – the crisis of poor data.

Because the challenges are huge and the resources scarce, on these issues more maybe than anywhere else, we need data, to monitor the results and adapt the strategies whenever needed. Bad data feed bad management, weak accountability, loss of resources and, of course, corruption.

It is rather bewildering that while we live in this technology-driven age, the development communities and many of our African governments are relying too much on guesswork. Our friends in the development sector and our African leaders would not dream of driving their cars or flying without instruments. But somehow they pretend they can manage and develop countries without reliable data.

The development community must admit it has a big problem. The sector is relying on dodgy data sets. Take the data on extreme poverty. The data we have are mainly extrapolations of estimates from years back – even up to a decade or more ago. For 38 out of 54 African countries, data on poverty and inequality are either out-dated or non-existent. How can we measure progress with such a shaky baseline? To make things worse we also don’t know how much countries spend on fighting poverty. Only 3 per cent of African citizens live in countries where governmental budgets and expenditures are made open, according to the Open Budget Index. We will never end extreme poverty if we don’t know who or where the poor are, or how much is being spent to help them.

Our African countries have all fought and won their political independence. They should now consider the battle for economic sovereignty, which begins with the ownership of sound and robust national data: how many citizens, living where, and how, to begin with.

There are three levels of intervention required.

First, a significant increase in resources for credible, independent, national statistical institutions. Establishing a statistical office is less eye-catching than building a hospital or school but data driven policy will ensure that more hospital and schools are delivered more effectively and efficiently. We urgently need these boring statistical offices. In 2013, out of a total aid budget of $134.8bn, a mere $280m went in support of statistics. Governments must also increase the resources they put into data.

Second, innovative means of collecting data. Mobile phones, geocoding, satellites and the civic engagement of young tech-savvy citizens to collect data can all secure rapid improvements in baseline data if harnessed.

Third, everyone must take on this challenge of the global public good dimension of high quality open data. Public registers of the ownership of companies, global standards on publishing payments and contracts in the extractives sector and a global charter for open data standards will help media and citizens to track corruption and expose mismanagement. Proposals for a new world statistics body – “Worldstat” – should be developed and implemented….(More)”

The End of Asymmetric Information

Curated on April 14, 2015November 20, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen: Might the age of asymmetric information – for better or worse – be over? Market institutions are rapidly evolving to a situation where very often the buyer and the seller have roughly equal knowledge. Technological developments are giving everyone who wants it access to the very best information when it comes to product quality, worker performance, matches to friends and partners, and the nature of financial transactions, among many other areas.

These developments will have implications for how markets work, how much consumers benefit, and also economic policy and the law. As we will see, there may be some problematic sides to these new arrangements, specifically when it comes to privacy. Still, a large amount of economic regulation seems directed at a set of problems which, in large part, no longer exist…

Many “public choice” problems are really problems of asymmetric information. In William Niskanen’s (1974) model of bureaucracy, government workers usually benefit from larger bureaus, and they are able to expand their bureaus to inefficient size because they are the primary providers of information to politicians. Some bureaus, such as the NSA and the CIA, may still be able to use secrecy to benefit from information asymmetry. For instance they can claim to politicians that they need more resources to deter or prevent threats, and it is hard for the politicians to have well-informed responses on the other side of the argument. Timely, rich information about most other bureaucracies, however, is easily available to politicians and increasingly to the public as well. As information becomes more symmetric, Niskanen’s (1974) model becomes less applicable, and this may help check the growth of unneeded bureaucracy.

Cheap sensors are greatly extending how much information can be economically gathered and analyzed. It’s not uncommon for office workers to have every key stroke logged. When calling customer service, who has not been told “this call may be monitored for quality control purposes?” Service-call workers have their location tracked through cell phones. Even information that once was thought to be purely subjective can now be collected and analyzed, often with the aid of smart software or artificial intelligence. One firm, for example, uses badges equipped with microphones, accelerometers, and location sensors to measure tone of voice, posture, and body language, as well as who spoke to whom and for how long (Lohr 2014). The purpose is not only to monitor workers but to deduce when, where and why workers are the most productive. We are again seeing trade-offs which bring greater productivity, and limit asymmetric information, albeit at the expense of some privacy.

As information becomes more prevalent and symmetric, earlier solutions to asymmetric problems will become less necessary. When employers do not easily observe workers, for example, employers may pay workers unusually high wages, generating a rent. Workers will then work at high levels despite infrequent employer observation, to maintain their future rents (Shapiro and Stiglitz 1984). But those higher wages involved a cost, namely that fewer workers were hired, and the hires that were made often were directed to people who were already known to the firm. Better monitoring of workers will mean that employers will hire more people and furthermore they may be more willing to take chances on risky outsiders, rather than those applicants who come with impeccable pedigree. If the outsider does not work out and produce at an acceptable level, it is easy enough to figure this out and fire them later on….(More)”

Bloomberg Philanthropies Launches $100 Million Data for Health Program in Developing Countries

Curated on April 13, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “Bloomberg Philanthropies, in partnership with the Australian government, is launching Data for Health, a $100 million initiative that will enable 20 low- and middle-income countries to vastly improve public health data collection. Each year the World Health Organization estimates that 65% of all deaths worldwide – 35 million each year – go unrecorded. Millions more deaths lack a documented cause. This gap in data creates major obstacles for understanding and addressing public health problems. The Data for Health initiative seeks to provide governments, aid organizations, and public health leaders with tools and systems to better collect data – and use it to prioritize health challenges, develop policies, deploy resources, and measure success. Over the next four years, Data for Health aims to help 1.2 billion people in 20 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America live healthier, longer lives….

“Australia’s partnership on Data for Health coincides with the launch of innovationXchange, a new initiative to embrace exploration, experimentation, and risk through a focus on innovation,” said the Hon Julie Bishop MP, Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs. “Greater innovation in development assistance will allow us to do a better job of tackling the world’s most daunting problems, such as a lack of credible health data.”

In addition to improving the recording of births and deaths, Data for Health will support new mechanisms for conducting public health surveys. These surveys will monitor major risk factors for early death, including non-communicable diseases (chronic diseases that are not transmitted from person to person such as cancer and diabetes). With information from these surveys, illness caused by day-to-day behaviors such as tobacco use and poor nutrition habits can be targeted, addressed and prevented. Data for Health will take advantage of the wide-spread use of mobile phone devices in developing countries to enhance the efficiency of traditional household surveys, which are typically time-consuming and expensive…(More)”

Innovation spaces: transforming humanitarian practice in the United Nations

Curated on April 1, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Louise Bloom and Romy Faulkner at the Oxford Refugee Studies Centre: “Since 2009 there has been a growing interest in defining and operationalising innovation for use in the humanitarian context. The increase in scale of new crises, the urbanisation of many displaced populations, and stretched financing for humanitarian assistance are forcing international aid agencies to think and act in new ways. Along with other international humanitarian actors, several United Nations (UN) bodies are engaging with new tools and practices to bring innovation to the forefront of their work. Within these agencies, there has been a growing movement to establish ‘innovation spaces’ or ‘innovation labs’. These labs take different forms – some virtual, others physical – and each is created with its own motivations unique to the context in which it operates. Despite the variation, there is a growing trend in the UN system, and more broadly in the international humanitarian community, to create labs as a way to engage in and facilitate innovation practice. This research seeks to understand the way in which innovation labs across several UN agencies are being used to foster new ways of operating within the UN’s bureaucratic structures. We ask four key questions: What form do innovation labs in UN agencies take? What motivated their initiation? What are their aims and objectives? What impact have they had and how is the impact being measured? As innovation practice gains momentum, we reflect on the future of innovation spaces as a way to foster innovation within the UN system. We conclude with six key recommendations….(More)”

Mobile Spans Language Gap to Aid Human Trafficking Victims

Curated on March 25, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Aida Akl at VOATechTonics: “A mobile solution from the Mekong Club, a non-profit group dedicated to fighting slavery, helps identify potential trafficking victims among populations where the person’s country of origin and language is unknown, and lets law enforcement agencies communicate with them.

The Android app was the product of collaboration between the Mekong Club, the United Nations Action for Cooperation Against Trafficking in Persons, and MotherApp, a private company that developed the app for free.

To communicate with potential victims, users press an icon which brings up a sample of flags on the phone’s screen, said Mathew Friedman, CEO of the Mekong Club, in an email interview.

A screenshot from the human trafficking mobile app shows potential human trafficking victims the flags of several countries. Once users choose thee one that corresponds to them, a video in their language comes on and asks them questions about whether they are being exploited and need help.

Users then tap the flags that correspond to their countries of origin. “Once this has been done,” Friedman added, “a video in the language of the country comes up informing the respondent of his/her rights, assuring them of confidentiality, and explaining that the officials playing the video to them are there to help should they require assistance.”

The videos pose a number of questions for users to respond to by pressing either a green button for an affirmative answer or a red button for a negative response.

A screenshot from the Mekong Club's mobile app shows some of the questions users are asked to determine if they are victims of human trafficking. (The Mekong Club)

The questions help law enforcement officials determine if the respondent is a victim of human trafficking.

“If all of the users’ answers are in the affirmative, then that would indicate a potential problem,” said Friedman.

Organizations that tested the app found it useful in bridging the translation gap. Friedman said the easy-to-use app offers an option for responders to triage potential victims in locations where translation is absent and allows the user to take notes and record audio/visual information….

Once developed, Friedman said the app will be cost-effective because “putting it on responder phones doesn’t cost anything.” But he lamented that it was only able to help “about 48,000″ trafficking victims last year — “well below one percent,” he said….(More)”

Big Data for Social Good

Curated on March 22, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction to a Special Issue of the Journal “Big Data” by Catlett Charlie and Ghani Rayid: “…organizations focused on social good are realizing the potential as well but face several challenges as they seek to become more data-driven. The biggest challenge they face is a paucity of examples and case studies on how data can be used for social good. This special issue of Big Data is targeted at tackling that challenge and focuses on highlighting some exciting and impactful examples of work that uses data for social good. The special issue is just one example of the recent surge in such efforts by the data science community. …

This special issue solicited case studies and problem statements that would either highlight (1) the use of data to solve a social problem or (2) social challenges that need data-driven solutions. From roughly 20 submissions, we selected 5 articles that exemplify this type of work. These cover five broad application areas: international development, healthcare, democracy and government, human rights, and crime prevention.

“Understanding Democracy and Development Traps Using a Data-Driven Approach” (Ranganathan et al.) details a data-driven model between democracy, cultural values, and socioeconomic indicators to identify a model of two types of “traps” that hinder the development of democracy. They use historical data to detect causal factors and make predictions about the time expected for a given country to overcome these traps.

“Targeting Villages for Rural Development Using Satellite Image Analysis” (Varshney et al.) discusses two case studies that use data and machine learning techniques for international economic development—solar-powered microgrids in rural India and targeting financial aid to villages in sub-Saharan Africa. In the process, the authors stress the importance of understanding the characteristics and provenance of the data and the criticality of incorporating local “on the ground” expertise.

In “Human Rights Event Detection from Heterogeneous Social Media Graphs,” Chen and Neil describe efficient and scalable techniques to use social media in order to detect emerging patterns in human rights events. They test their approach on recent events in Mexico and show that they can accurately detect relevant human rights–related tweets prior to international news sources, and in some cases, prior to local news reports, which could potentially lead to more timely, targeted, and effective advocacy by relevant human rights groups.

“Finding Patterns with a Rotten Core: Data Mining for Crime Series with Core Sets” (Wang et al.) describes a case study with the Cambridge Police Department, using a subspace clustering method to analyze the department’s full housebreak database, which contains detailed information from thousands of crimes from over a decade. They find that the method allows human crime analysts to handle vast amounts of data and provides new insights into true patterns of crime committed in Cambridge…..(More)

UNESCO demonstrates global impact through new transparency portal

Curated on March 18, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

“Opendata.UNESCO.org is intended to present comprehensive, quality and timely information about UNESCO’s projects, enabling users to find information by country/region, funding source, and sector and providing comprehensive project data, including budget, expenditure, completion status, implementing organization, project documents, and more. It publishes program and financial information that are in line with UN system-experience of the IATI (International Aid Transparency Initiative) standards and other relevant transparency initiatives. UNESCO is now part of more than 230 organizations that have published to the IATI Registry, which brings together donor and developing countries, civil society organizations and other experts in aid information who are committed to working together to increase the transparency of aid.

Since its creation 70 years ago, UNESCO has tirelessly championed the causes of education, culture, natural sciences, social and human sciences, communication and information, globally. For instance – started in March 2010, the program for the Enhancement of Literacy in Afghanistan (ELA) benefited from a $19.5 million contribution by Japan. It aimed to improve the level of literacy, numeracy and vocational skills of the adult population in 70 districts of 15 provinces of Afghanistan. Over the next three years, until April 2013, the ELA programme helped some 360,000 adult learners in General Literacy compotency. An interactive map allows for an easy identification of UNESCO’s high-impact programs, and up-to-date information of current and future aid allocations within and across countries.

Public participation and interactivity are key to the success of any open data project. http://Opendata.UNESCO.org will evolve as Member States and partners will get involved, by displaying data on their own websites and sharing data among different networks, building and sharing applications, providing feedback, comments, and recommendations. …(More)”