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
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.
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.
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
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
“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)”
Index: Prizes and Challenges
The Living Library Index – inspired by the Harper’s Index – provides important statistics and highlights global trends in governance innovation. This installment focuses on prizes and challenges and was originally published in 2015.
This index highlights recent findings about two key techniques in shifting innovation from institutions to the general public:
- Prize-Induced Contests – using monetary rewards to incentivize individuals and other entities to develop solutions to public problems; and
- Grand Challenges – posing large, audacious goals to the public to spur collaborative, non-governmental efforts to solve them.
You can read more about Governing through Prizes and Challenges here. You can also watch Alph Bingham, co-founder of Innocentive, answer the GovLab’s questions about challenge authoring and defining the problem here.
Previous installments of the Index include Measuring Impact with Evidence, The Data Universe, Participation and Civic Engagement and Trust in Institutions. Please share any additional statistics and research findings on the intersection of technology in governance with us by emailing shruti at thegovlab.org.
Prize-Induced Contests
- Year the British Government introduced the Longitude Prize, one of the first instances of prizes by government to spur innovation: 1714
- President Obama calls on “all agencies to increase their use of prizes to address some of our Nation’s most pressing challenges” in his Strategy for American Innovation: September 2009
- The US Office of Management and Budget issues “a policy framework to guide agencies in using prizes to mobilize American ingenuity and advance their respective core missions”: March 2010
- Launch of Challenge.gov, “a one-stop shop where entrepreneurs and citizen solvers can find public-sector prize competitions”: September 2010
- Number of competitions currently live on Challenge.gov in February 2015: 22 of 399 total
- How many competitions on Challenge.gov are for $1 million or above: 23
- The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act is introduced, which grants “all Federal agencies authority to conduct prize competitions to spur innovation, solve tough problems, and advance their core missions”: 2010
- Value of prizes authorized by COMPETES: prizes up to $50 million
- Fact Sheet and Frequently Asked Questions memorandum issued by the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget to aid agencies to take advantage of authorities in COMPETES: August 2011
- Number of prize competitions run by the Federal government from 2010 to April 2012: 150
- How many Federal agencies have run prize competitions by 2012: 40
- Prior to 1991, the percentage of prize money that recognized prior achievements according to an analysis by McKinsey and Company: 97%
- Since 1991, percentage of new prize money that “has been dedicated to inducement-style prizes that focus on achieving a specific, future goal”: 78%
- Value of the prize sector as estimated by McKinsey in 2009: $1-2 billion
- Growth rate of the total value of new prizes: 18% annually
- Growth rate in charitable giving in the US: 2.5% annually
-
Value of the first Horizon Prize awarded in 2014 by the European Commission to German biopharmaceutical company CureVac GmbH “for progress towards a novel technology to bring life-saving vaccines to people across the planet in safe and affordable ways”: €2 million
- Number of solvers registered on InnoCentive, a crowdsourcing company: 355,000+ from nearly 200 countries
-
- Total Challenges Posted: 2,000+ External Challenges
- Total Solution Submissions: 40,000+
- Value of the awards: $5,000 to $1+ million
- Success Rate for premium challenges: 85%
Grand Challenges
- Value of the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, sponsored in part by DOE to develop production-capable super fuel-efficient vehicles: $10 million
- Number of teams around the world who took part in the challenge “to develop a new generation of technologies” for production-capable super fuel-efficient vehicles: 111 teams
- Time it took for the Air Force Research Laboratory to receive a workable solution on “a problem that had vexed military security forces and civilian police for years” by opening the challenge to the world: 60 days
- Value of the HHS Investing in Innovation initiative to spur innovation in Health IT, launched under the new COMPETES act: $5 million program
- Number of responses received by NASA for its Asteroid Grand Challenge RFI which seeks to identify and address all asteroid threats to the human population: over 400
- The decreased cost of sequencing a single human genome as a result of the Human Genome Project Grand Challenge: $7000 from $100 million
- Amount the Human Genome Project Grand Challenge has contributed to the US economy for every $1 invested by the US federal government: $141 for every $1 invested
- The amount of funding for research available for the “Brain Initiative,” a collaboration between the National Institute of Health, DARPA and the National Science Foundation, which seeks to uncover new prevention and treatment methods for brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, autism and schizophrenia: $100 million
- Total amount offered in cash awards by the Department of Energy’s “SunShot Grand Challenge,” which seeks to eliminate the cost disparity between solar energy and coal by the end of the decade: $10 million
Sources
- ‘And the winner is…’ Capturing the promise of philanthropic prizes. McKinsey & Company. July 2009.
- Collins, Francis and Prabhakar, Arati. BRAIN Initiative Challenges Researchers to Unlock Mysteries of Human Mind. The White House. April 02, 2013.
- Facts and Stats. InnoCentive. Last accessed March 2015.
- Horizon Prizes. European Commission. Last accessed March 2015.
- Implementation of Federal Prize Authority: Fiscal Year 2013 Progress Report. White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. May, 2014.
- Implementation of Federal Prize Authority: Progress Report. White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. March, 2012.
- Kalil, Tom and Dorgelo, Cristin. Identifying Steps Forward in Use of Prizes to Spur Innovation. White House Blog: Office of Science and Technology Policy. April 10, 2012.
- SunShot Prize: Race to 7-Day Solar. Energy.gov. Last accessed March 2015.
- The History. Longitude Prize. Last accessed March 2015.
Civic Media Project
Site and Book edited by Eric Gordon and Paul Mihailidis: “Civic life is comprised of the attention and actions an individual devotes to a common good. Participating in a human rights rally, creating and sharing a video online about unfair labor practices, connecting with neighbors after a natural disaster: these are all civic actions wherein the actor seeks to benefit a perceived common good. But where and how civic life takes place, is an open question. The lines between the private and the public, the self-interested and the civic are blurring as digital cultures transform means and patterns of communication around the world.
As the definition of civic life is in flux, there is urgency in defining and questioning the mediated practices that compose it. Civic media are the mediated practices of designing, building, implementing or using digital tools to intervene in or participate in civic life. The Civic Media Project (CMP) is a collection of short case studies from scholars and practitioners from all over the world that range from the descriptive to the analytical, from the single tool to the national program, from the enthusiastic to the critical. What binds them together is not a particular technology or domain (i.e. government or social movements), but rather the intentionality of achieving a common good. Each of the case studies collected in this project reflects the practices associated with the intentional effort of one or many individuals to benefit or disrupt a community or institution outside of one’s intimate and professional spheres.
As the examples of civic media continue to grow every day, the Civic Media Project is intended as a living resource. New cases will be added on a regular basis after they have gone through an editorial process. Most importantly, the CMP is meant to be a place for conversation and debate about what counts as civic, what makes a citizen, what practices are novel, and what are the political, social and cultural implications of the integration of technology into civic lives.
How to Use the Site
Case studies are divided into four sections: Play + Creativity, Systems + Design, Learning + Engagement, and Community + Action. Each section contains about 25 case studies that address the themes of the section. But there is considerable crossover and thematic overlap between sections as well. For those adventurous readers, the Tag Cloud provides a more granular entry point to the material and a more diverse set of connections.
We have also developed a curriculum that provides some suggestions for educators interested in using the Civic Media Project and other resources to explore the conceptual and practical implications of civic media examples.
One of the most valuable elements of this project is the dialogue about the case studies. We have asked all of the project’s contributors to write in-depth reviews of others’ contributions, and we also invite all readers to comment on cases and reviews. Do not be intimidated by the long “featured comments” in the Disqus section—these formal reviews should be understood as part of the critical commentary that makes each of these cases come alive through discussion and debate.
The Book
Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice is forthcoming from MIT Press and will serve as the print book companion to the Civic Media Project. The book identifies the emerging field of Civic Media by brining together leading scholars and practitioners from a diversity of disciplines to shape theory, identify problems and articulate opportunities. The book includes 19 chapters (and 25 case studies) from fields as diverse as philosophy, communications, education, sociology, media studies, art, policy and philanthropy, and attempts to find common language and common purpose through the investigation of civic media….(More)”
How Open Is University Data?
Daniel Castro at GovTech: “Many states now support open data, or data that’s made freely available without restriction in a nonproprietary, machine-readable format, to increase government transparency, improve public accountability and participation, and unlock opportunities for civic innovation. To date, 10 states have adopted open data policies, via executive order or legislation, and 24 states have built open data portals. But while many agencies have joined the open data movement, state colleges and universities have largely ignored this opportunity. To remedy this, policymakers should consider how to extend open data policies to state colleges and universities.
There are many potential benefits of open data for higher education. First, it can help prospective students and their parents better understand the value of different degree programs. One way to control rising higher ed costs is to create more informed consumers. The feds are already pushing for such changes. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan called for schools to make more information publicly available about the costs of obtaining a college degree, and the White House launched the College Scorecard, an online tool to compare data about the average tuition cost, size of loan payments and loan default rate for different schools.
But students deserve more detailed information. Prospective students should be able to decide where to attend and what to study based on historical data like program costs, percentage of students completing the program and how long they take to do so, and what kind of earning power they have after graduating.
Second, open data can aid better fiscal oversight and accountability of university operations. In 2014, states provided about $76 billion in support for higher ed, yet few colleges and universities have adopted open data policies to increase the transparency of their budgets. Contrast this with California cities like Oakland, Palo Alto and Los Angeles, which created online tools to let others explore and visualize their budgets. Additional oversight, including from the public, could help reduce fraud, waste and abuse in higher education, save taxpayers money and create more opportunities for public participation in state budgeting.
Third, open data can be a valuable resource for producing innovations that make universities a better place to work and study. Large campuses are basically small cities, and many cities have found open data useful for improving public safety and optimizing transportation services. Universities hold much untapped data: course catalogs, syllabi, bus schedules, campus menus, campus directories, faculty evaluations, etc. Creating portals to release these data sets and building application programming interfaces to access this information would give developers direct access to data that students, faculty, alumni and other stakeholders could use to build apps and services to improve the college experience….(More)”
Amid Open Data Push, Agencies Feel Urge for Analytics
at NextGov: “Federal agencies, thanks to their unique missions, have long been collectors of valuable, vital and, no doubt, arcane data. Under a nearly two-year-old executive order from President Barack Obama, agencies are releasing more of this data in machine-readable formats to the public and entrepreneurs than ever before.
But agencies still need a little help parsing through this data for their own purposes. They are turning to industry, academia and outside researchers for cutting-edge analytics tools to parse through their data to derive insights and to use those insights to drive decision-making.
Take the U.S. Agency for International Development, for example. The agency administers U.S. foreign aid programs aimed at ending extreme poverty and helping support democratic societies around the globe.
Under the agency’s own recent open data policy, it’s started collecting reams of data from its overseas missions. Starting Oct. 1, organizations doing development work on the ground – including through grants and contracts – have been directed to also collect data generated by their work and submit it to back to agency headquarters. Teams go through the data, scrub it to remove sensitive material and then publish it.
The data spans the gamut from information on land ownership in South Sudan to livestock demographics in Senegal and HIV prevention activities in Zambia….The agency took the first step in solving that problem with a Jan. 20 request for information from outside groups for cutting-edge data analytics tools.
“Operating units within USAID are sometimes constrained by existing capacity to transform data into insights that could inform development programming,” the RFI stated.
The RFI queries industry on their capabilities in data mining and social media analytics and forecasting and systems modeling.
USAID is far from alone in its quest for data-driven decision-making.
A Jan. 26 RFI from the Transportation Department’s Federal Highway Administration also seeks innovative ideas from industry for “advanced analytical capabilities.”…(More)”
Citizen Science: Catch, Click and Submit Contest
Wilson Commons Lab: “The inaugural Catch, Click and Submit Contest begins on Feb 21st in honor of the National Invasive Species Awareness Week running Feb 22nd through the 28th. The contest, which calls on anglers to photograph and report non-native fish species caught during the derby, will award prizes to various categories such as “Most Unusual Catch” and “Most Species”. Submissions from the contest will aid researchers in developing a better understanding of the distribution of fish species throughout Florida waterways.
By engaging the existing angler community, the contest hopes to increase public awareness of the potential impacts that arise from non-native fish species. “The Catch, Click and Submit Contest offers anglers the opportunity to assist natural resource managers in finding nonnative species by doing what they enjoy – fishing!” said biologist Kelly Gestring. “The early detection of a new, nonnative species could provide a better opportunity to control or even eradicate a population.” The hope is that participants will choose to target non-native fish for consumption in the future, helping to control invasive populations…(More).”
Helping the Poor in Education: The Power of a Simple Nudge
The New York Times: “There are enormous inequalities in education in the United States. A child born into a poor family has only a 9 percent chance of getting a college degree, but the odds are 54 percent for a child in a high-income family. These gaps open early, with poor children less prepared than their kindergarten classmates.
How can we close these gaps?….
Yet as these debates rage, researchers have been quietly finding small, effective ways to improve education. They have identified behavioral “nudges” that prod students and their families to take small steps that can make big differences in learning. These measures are cheap, so schools or nonprofits could use them immediately.
Let’s start with college. At every step of the way, low-income students are more likely to stumble on the path to higher education. Even the summer after high school is a perilous time, with 20 percent of those who plan to attend college not actually enrolling — a phenomenon known as “summer melt.” Bureaucratic barriers, like the labyrinthine process of applying for financial aid, explain some of the drop-off.
While they were graduate students at Harvard, two young professors designed and tested a program to help students stick to their college plans. Benjamin L. Castleman, now at the University of Virginia, and Lindsay C. Page, at the University of Pittsburgh, set up a system of automatic, personalized text messages that reminded high school students about their college deadlines. The texts included links to required forms and live counselors.
The result? Students who received the texts were more likely to enroll in college: 70 percent, compared with 63 percent of those who did not get them. Seven percentage points is a big increase in this field, similar to the gains produced by scholarships that cost thousands of dollars. Yet this program cost only $7 per student.
The same researchers also tested a texting program to keep students from dropping out of college….(More)”