Kamil Gregor at OpeningParliament.org: “The process of shaping the law often resembles an Indiana Jones maze. Bills and amendments run through an elaborate system of committees, sessions and hearings filled with booby traps before finally reaching the golden idol of a final approval.
Parliamentary monitoring organizations and researchers are often interested in how various pieces of legislation survive in this environment and what are the strategies to either kill or aid them. This specifically means answering two questions: What is the probability of a bill being approved and what factors determine this probability?
The legislative process is usually hierarchical: Successful completion of a step in the process is conditioned by completion of all previous steps. Therefore, we may also want to know the probabilities of completion in each consecutive step and their determinants.
A simple way how to give a satisfying answer to these questions without wandering into the land of nonlinear logistic regressions is the Sankey diagram. It is a famous flow chart in which a process is visualized using arrows. Relative quantities of outcomes in the process are represented by arrows’ widths.
A famous example is a Sankey diagram of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. We can clearly see how the Grand Army was gradually shrinking as French soldiers were dying or defecting. Another well-known example is the Google Analytics flow chart. It shows how many visitors enter a webpage and then either leave or continue to a different page on the same website. As the number of consecutive steps increases, the number of visitors remaining on the website decreases.
The legislative process can be visualized in the same way. Progress of bills is represented by a stream between various steps in the process and width of the stream corresponds to quantities of bills. A bill can either complete all the steps of the process, or it can “drop out” of it at some point if it gets rejected.
Let’s take a look…”
Money and trust among strangers
New paper by Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari and Maria Bigoni in PNAS:”What makes money essential for the functioning of modern society? Through an experiment, we present evidence for the existence of a relevant behavioral dimension in addition to the standard theoretical arguments. Subjects faced repeated opportunities to help an anonymous counterpart who changed over time. Cooperation required trusting that help given to a stranger today would be returned by a stranger in the future. Cooperation levels declined when going from small to large groups of strangers, even if monitoring and payoffs from cooperation were invariant to group size. We then introduced intrinsically worthless tokens. Tokens endogenously became money: subjects took to reward help with a token and to demand a token in exchange for help. Subjects trusted that strangers would return help for a token. Cooperation levels remained stable as the groups grew larger. In all conditions, full cooperation was possible through a social norm of decentralized enforcement, without using tokens. This turned out to be especially demanding in large groups. Lack of trust among strangers thus made money behaviorally essential. To explain these results, we developed an evolutionary model. When behavior in society is heterogeneous, cooperation collapses without tokens. In contrast, the use of tokens makes cooperation evolutionarily stable.”
Smartphones As Weather Surveillance Systems
Tom Simonite in MIT Technology Review: “You probably never think about the temperature of your smartphone’s battery, but it turns out to provide an interesting method for tracking outdoor air temperature. It’s a discovery that adds to other evidence that mobile apps could provide a new way to measure what’s happening in the atmosphere and improve weather forecasting.
Startup OpenSignal, whose app crowdsources data on cellphone reception, first noticed in 2012 that changes in battery temperature correlated with those outdoors. On Tuesday, they published a scientific paper on that technique in a geophysics journal and announced that the technique will be used to interpret data from a weather crowdsourcing app. OpenSignal originally started collecting data on battery temperatures to try and understand the connections between signal strength and how quickly a device chews through its battery.
OpenSignal’s crowdsourced weather-tracking effort joins another accidentally enabled by smartphones. A project called PressureNET that collects air pressure data by taking advantage of the fact many Android phones have a barometer inside to aid their GPS function (see “App Feeds Scientists Atmospheric Data From Thousands of Smartphones”). Cliff Mass, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, is working to incorporate PressureNET data into weather models that usually rely on data from weather stations. He believes that smartphones could provide valuable data from places where there are no weather stations, if enough people start sharing data using apps like PressureNET.
Other research suggests that logging changes in cell network signal strength perceived by smartphones could provide yet more weather data. In February researchers in the Netherlands produced detailed maps of rainfall compiled by monitoring fluctuations in the signal strength measured by cellular network masts, caused by water droplets in the atmosphere.”
Searching Big Data for ‘Digital Smoke Signals’
Steve Lohr in the New York Times: “It is the base camp of the United Nations Global Pulse team — a tiny unit inside an institution known for its sprawling bureaucracy, not its entrepreneurial hustle. Still, the focus is on harnessing technology in new ways — using data from social networks, blogs, cellphones and online commerce to transform economic development and humanitarian aid in poorer nations….
The efforts by Global Pulse and a growing collection of scientists at universities, companies and nonprofit groups have been given the label “Big Data for development.” It is a field of great opportunity and challenge. The goal, the scientists involved agree, is to bring real-time monitoring and prediction to development and aid programs. Projects and policies, they say, can move faster, adapt to changing circumstances and be more effective, helping to lift more communities out of poverty and even save lives.
Research by Global Pulse and other groups, for example, has found that analyzing Twitter messages can give an early warning of a spike in unemployment, price rises and disease. Such “digital smoke signals of distress,” Mr. Kirkpatrick said, usually come months before official statistics — and in many developing countries today, there are no reliable statistics.
Finding the signals requires data, though, and much of the most valuable data is held by private companies, especially mobile phone operators, whose networks carry text messages, digital-cash transactions and location data. So persuading telecommunications operators, and the governments that regulate and sometimes own them, to release some of the data is a top task for the group. To analyze the data, the groups apply tools now most widely used for pinpointing customers with online advertising.”
Can We Build A Kickstarter For Cancer?
Paul Howard in Forbes: “tarting you own band, writing your first novel, or re-publishing your favorite ‘80s tabletop RPG are all cool goals. You can do them all on Kickstarter. What would be cooler?
How about funding a virtual biotech company with one goal: Saving or extending the life of a cancer patient who doesn’t respond to “standard of care” treatments….
The Cancer Commons approach – a distributed framework for empowering patients and learning from every patient/treatment combination – breaks down traditional distinctions between clinical trials and patient treatment in the “real world.” Instead of developing treatments in a lab and then testing them on randomized patients in clinical trials (designed to benefit future patients), researchers would apply the latest scientific knowledge and tools to help each patient achieve the best possible outcome today based on what we know – or think we can predict – about a molecular subtype of cancer….
We’ll need more than money to power a Kickstarter-for-cancer movement. We’ll need to encourage companies – from Big Pharma to “small” biotechs – to participate in distributed, Bayesian trials where new biomarkers or combinations of biomarkers are tested in patients with particular molecular profiles. And the FDA is going to have to be convinced that the system is going to generate high quality data that benefits patients, not sell them snake-oil cures.
In return for companies making their compound libraries and experimental drugs available for the “virtual biotechs” launched by cancer patients and their families, there should be a regulatory path established to take the most promising drugs and drug combinations to market.”
The Charitable-Industrial Complex
Peter Buffett in the New York Times: “It’s time for a new operating system. Not a 2.0 or a 3.0, but something built from the ground up. New code.
What we have is a crisis of imagination. Albert Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem with the same mind-set that created it. Foundation dollars should be the best “risk capital” out there.
There are people working hard at showing examples of other ways to live in a functioning society that truly creates greater prosperity for all (and I don’t mean more people getting to have more stuff).
Money should be spent trying out concepts that shatter current structures and systems that have turned much of the world into one vast market. Is progress really Wi-Fi on every street corner? No. It’s when no 13-year-old girl on the planet gets sold for sex. But as long as most folks are patting themselves on the back for charitable acts, we’ve got a perpetual poverty machine.
It’s an old story; we really need a new one.”
Why Contests Improve Philantropy
New Report from the Knight Foundation: “Since 2007, Knight Foundation has run or funded nearly a dozen open contests, many over multiple years, choosing some 400 winners from almost 25,000 entries, and granting more than $75 million to individuals, businesses, schools and nonprofits. The winners believe, as we do, that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. The contests reflect the full diversity of our program areas: journalism and media innovation, engaging communities and fostering the arts. Over the past seven years, we have learned a lot about how good contests work, what they can do, and what the challenges are. Though contests represent less than 20 percent of our grant-making, they have improved our traditional programs in myriad ways.
A 2009 McKinsey & Company Report, “And the winner is…, ” put it this way: “Every leading philanthropist should consider the opportunity to use prizes to help achieve their mission, and to accept the challenge of fully exploiting this powerful tool. ” But of America ‘s more than 76,000 grant-making foundations, only a handful, maybe 100 at most, have embraced the use of contests. That means 99.9 percent do not.
Sharing these lessons here is an invitation to others to consider how contests, when appropriate, might widen their networks, deepen the work they already do, and broaden their definition of philanthropic giving.
Before you launch and manage your own contests, you might want to consider the six major lessons we ‘ve learned about how contests improved our philanthropy.
1. They bring in new blood and new ideas.
2. They create value beyond the winners.
3. They help organizations spot emerging trends.
4. They challenge routines and entrenched foundation behaviors.
5. They complement existing philanthropy strategies.
6. They create new ways to engage communities.
…Depending upon the competition, the odds of winning one of Knight’s contests are, at their lowest, one in six, and at their highest, more than one in 100. But if you think of your contest only as a funnel spitting out a handful of winning ideas, you overlook what’s really happening. A good contest is more a megaphone for a cause.”
Feedback Labs
Feedback Labs: “
If you find yourself asking the following three questions, then you have come to the right place:
- “What do citizens want?”
- “Are they getting it?”
- “If not, how will things change?”
Much excellent work has been done over recent years to answer the first and second questions. Our goal is to catalyze that work and make it matter by focusing on the third question – “How will things change?”
Aid, philanthropy, and government programs are often designed, implemented and evaluated by experts. We think that citizens should increasingly be in the driver’s seat. Experts are still important, but in many cases their role needs to shift from being a decision-maker to being people who enrich and inform conversations among citizens.
What will Feedback Labs do?
Based on what we have heard so far, we think we can add value in three ways:
- Frame the issues – for example, what exactly do we mean by feedback loops? What works and what doesn’t? What is the evidence for impact?
- Help close the feedback loop – uncover approaches that are succeeding at finding out what people want and whether they are getting it, and then helping to close the loop by understanding (and in some cases funding) what it takes to translate citizen voice into real changes in programs.
- Facilitate mainstreaming – i.e., assist aid, philanthropy and government organizations adopt feedback loops in their normal course of operation. We want to make feedback loops the norm rather than the exception.
Historically we have often assumed that the flow of knowledge is from the richer countries to the poorer. But learning goes both ways, and in the case of feedback loops, some of the most innovative approaches are being pioneered in developing countries. So we plan to support work both internationally and domestically.”
Accountability.Org: Online Disclosure by Nonprofits
Paper by Joannie Tremblay-Boire and Aseem Prakash: “Why do some nonprofits signal their accountability via unilateral website disclosures? We develop an Accountability Index to examine the websites of 200 U.S. nonprofits ranked by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. We expect nonprofits’ incentives for website disclosures will be shaped by their organizational and sectoral characteristics. Our analysis suggests that nonprofits appearing frequently in the media disclose more accountability information while nonprofits larger in size disclose less. Religion-related nonprofits tend to disclose less information, suggesting that religious bonding enhances trust and reduce incentives for self-disclosure. Health nonprofits disclose less information, arguably because government-mandated disclosures reduce marginal benefits from voluntary disclosures. Education nonprofits, on the other hand, tend to disclose more accountability information perhaps because they supply credence goods. This research contributes to the emerging literature on websites as accountability mechanisms by developing a new index for scholars to use and proposing new hypotheses based on the corporate social responsibility literature.”
Why the Share Economy is Important for Disaster Response and Resilience
Patrick Meier at iRevolution: “A unique and detailed survey funded by the Rockefeller Foundation confirms the important role that social and community bonds play vis-à-vis disaster resilience. The new study, which focuses on resilience and social capital in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, reveals how disaster-affected communities self-organized, “with reports of many people sharing access to power, food and water, and providing shelter.” This mutual aid was primarily coordinated face-to-face. This may not always be possible, however. So the “Share Economy” can also play an important role in coordinating self-help during disasters….
In a share economy, “asset owners use digital clearinghouses to capitalize the unused capacity of things they already have, and consumers rent from their peers rather than rent or buy from a company”. During disasters, these asset owners can use the same digital clearinghouses to offer what they have at no cost. For example, over 1,400 kindhearted New Yorkers offered free housing to people heavily affected by the hurricane. They did this using AirBnB, as shown in the short video above. Meanwhile, on the West Coast, the City of San Francisco has just lunched a partnership with BayShare, a sharing economy advocacy group in the Bay Area. The partnership’s goal is to “harness the power of sharing to ensure the best response to future disasters in San Francisco”