Sector: future of work

Chicago police see less violent crime after using predictive code

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jon Fingas at Engadget: “Law enforcement has been trying predictive policing software for a while now, but how well does it work when it’s put to a tough test? Potentially very well, according to Chicago police. The city’s 7th District police reportthat their use of predictive algorithms helped reduce the number of shootings 39 percent year-over-year in the first 7 months of 2017, with murders dropping by 33 percent. Three other districts didn’t witness as dramatic a change, but they still saw 15 to 29 percent reductions in shootings and a corresponding 9 to 18 percent drop in murders.

It mainly comes down to knowing where and when to deploy officers. One of the tools used in the 7th District, HunchLab, blends crime statistics with socioeconomic data, weather info and business locations to determine where crimes are likely to happen. Other tools (such as the Strategic Subject’s List and ShotSpotter) look at gang affiliation, drug arrest history and gunfire detection sensors.

If the performance holds, It’ll suggest that predictive policing can save lives when crime rates are particularly high, as they have been on Chicago’s South Side. However, both the Chicago Police Department and academics are quick to stress that algorithms are just one part of a larger solution. Officers still have be present, and this doesn’t tackle the underlying issues that cause crime, such as limited access to education and a lack of economic opportunity. Still, any successful reduction in violence is bound to be appreciated….(More)”.

Digital Decisions Tool

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT): “Two years ago, CDT embarked on a project to explore what we call “digital decisions” – the use of algorithms, machine learning, big data, and automation to make decisions that impact individuals and shape society. Industry and government are applying algorithms and automation to problems big and small, from reminding us to leave for the airport to determining eligibility for social services and even detecting deadly diseases. This new era of digital decision-making has created a new challenge: ensuring that decisions made by computers reflect values like equality, democracy, and justice. We want to ensure that big data and automation are used in ways that create better outcomes for everyone, and not in ways that disadvantage minority groups.

The engineers and product managers who design these systems are the first line of defense against unfair, discriminatory, and harmful outcomes. To help mitigate harm at the design level, we have launched the first public version of our digital decisions tool. We created the tool to help developers understand and mitigate unintended bias and ethical pitfalls as they design automated decision-making systems.

About the digital decisions tool

This interactive tool translates principles for fair and ethical automated decision-making into a series of questions that can be addressed during the process of designing and deploying an algorithm. The questions address developers’ choices, such as what data to use to train an algorithm, what factors or features in the data to consider, and how to test the algorithm. They also ask about the systems and checks in place to assess risk and ensure fairness. These questions should provoke thoughtful consideration of the subjective choices that go into building an automated decision-making system and how those choices could result in disparate outcomes and unintended harms.

The tool is informed by extensive research by CDT and others about how algorithms and machine learning work, how they’re used, the potential risks of using them to make important decisions, and the principles that civil society has developed to ensure that digital decisions are fair, ethical, and respect civil rights. Some of this research is summarized on CDT’s Digital Decisions webpage….(More)”.

Building Digital Government Strategies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Rodrigo Sandoval-Almazan et al: “This book provides key strategic principles and best practices to guide the design and implementation of digital government strategies. It provides a series of recommendations and findings to think about IT applications in government as a platform for information, services and collaboration, and strategies to avoid identified pitfalls. Digital government research suggests that information technologies have the potential to generate immense public value and transform the relationships between governments, citizens, businesses and other stakeholders. However, developing innovative and high impact solutions for citizens hinges on the development of strategic institutional, organizational and technical capabilities.

Thus far,  particular characteristics and problems of the public sector organization promote the development of poorly integrated and difficult to maintain applications. For example, governments maintain separate applications for open data, transparency, and public services, leading to duplication of efforts and a waste of resources. The costs associated with maintaining such sets of poorly integrated systems may limit the use of resources to future projects and innovation.

This book provides best practices and recommendations based on extensive research in both Mexico and the United States on how governments can develop a digital government strategy for creating public value, how to finance digital innovation in the public sector, how to building successful collaboration networks and foster citizen engagement, and how to correctly implement open government projects and open data. It will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, students, and public sector IT professionals that work in the design and implementation of technology-based projects and programs….(More)”.

Rise of the Government Chatbot

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Zack Quaintance at Government Technology: “A robot uprising has begun, except instead of overthrowing mankind so as to usher in a bleak yet efficient age of cold judgment and colder steel, this uprising is one of friendly robots (so far).

Which is all an alarming way to say that many state, county and municipal governments across the country have begun to deploy relatively simple chatbots, aimed at helping users get more out of online public services such as a city’s website, pothole reporting and open data. These chatbots have been installed in recent months in a diverse range of places including Kansas City, Mo.; North Charleston, S.C.; and Los Angeles — and by many indications, there is an accompanying wave of civic tech companies that are offering this tech to the public sector.

They range from simple to complex in scope, and most of the jurisdictions currently using them say they are doing so on somewhat of a trial or experimental basis. That’s certainly the case in Kansas City, where the city now has a Facebook chatbot to help users get more out of its open data portal.

“The idea was never to create a final chatbot that was super intelligent and amazing,” said Eric Roche, Kansas City’s chief data officer. “The idea was let’s put together a good effort, and put it out there and see if people find it interesting. If they use it, get some lessons learned and then figure out — either in our city, or with developers, or with people like me in other cities, other chief data officers and such — and talk about the future of this platform.”

Roche developed Kansas City’s chatbot earlier this year by working after hours with Code for Kansas City, the local Code for America brigade — and he did so because since in the four-plus years the city’s open data program has been active, there have been regular concerns that the info available through it was hard to navigate, search and use for average citizens who aren’t data scientists and don’t work for the city (a common issue currently being addressed by many jurisdictions). The idea behind the Facebook chatbot is that Roche can program it with a host of answers to the most prevalent questions, enabling it to both help interested users and save him time for other work….

In North Charleston, S.C., the city has adopted a text-based chatbot, which goes above common 311-style interfaces by allowing users to report potholes or any other lapses in city services they may notice. It also allows them to ask questions, which it subsequently answers by crawling city websites and replying with relevant links, said Ryan Johnson, the city’s public relations coordinator.

North Charleston has done this by partnering with a local tech startup that has deep roots in the area’s local government. The company is called Citibot …

With Citibot, residents can report a pothole at 2 a.m., or they can get info about street signs or trash pickup sent right to their phones.

There are also more complex chatbot technologies taking hold at both the civic and state levels, in Los Angeles and Mississippi, to be exact.

Mississippi’s chatbot is called Missi, and its capabilities are vast and nuanced. Residents can even use it for help submitting online payments. It’s accessible by clicking a small chat icon on the side of the website.

Back in May, Los Angeles rolled out Chip, or City Hall Internet Personality, on the Los Angeles Business Assistance Virtual Network. The chatbot aims to assist visitors by operating as a 24/7 digital assistant for visitors to the site, helping them navigate it and better understand its services by answering their inquiries. It is capable of presenting info from anywhere on the site, and it can even go so far as helping users fill out forms or set up email alerts….(More)”

Algorithmic Transparency for the Smart City

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Robert Brauneis and Ellen P. Goodman: “Emerging across many disciplines are questions about algorithmic ethics – about the values embedded in artificial intelligence and big data analytics that increasingly replace human decisionmaking. Many are concerned that an algorithmic society is too opaque to be accountable for its behavior. An individual can be denied parole or denied credit, fired or not hired for reasons she will never know and cannot be articulated. In the public sector, the opacity of algorithmic decisionmaking is particularly problematic both because governmental decisions may be especially weighty, and because democratically-elected governments bear special duties of accountability. Investigative journalists have recently exposed the dangerous impenetrability of algorithmic processes used in the criminal justice field – dangerous because the predictions they make can be both erroneous and unfair, with none the wiser.

We set out to test the limits of transparency around governmental deployment of big data analytics, focusing our investigation on local and state government use of predictive algorithms. It is here, in local government, that algorithmically-determined decisions can be most directly impactful. And it is here that stretched agencies are most likely to hand over the analytics to private vendors, which may make design and policy choices out of the sight of the client agencies, the public, or both. To see just how impenetrable the resulting “black box” algorithms are, we filed 42 open records requests in 23 states seeking essential information about six predictive algorithm programs. We selected the most widely-used and well-reviewed programs, including those developed by for-profit companies, nonprofits, and academic/private sector partnerships. The goal was to see if, using the open records process, we could discover what policy judgments these algorithms embody, and could evaluate their utility and fairness.

To do this work, we identified what meaningful “algorithmic transparency” entails. We found that in almost every case, it wasn’t provided. Over-broad assertions of trade secrecy were a problem. But contrary to conventional wisdom, they were not the biggest obstacle. It will not usually be necessary to release the code used to execute predictive models in order to dramatically increase transparency. We conclude that publicly-deployed algorithms will be sufficiently transparent only if (1) governments generate appropriate records about their objectives for algorithmic processes and subsequent implementation and validation; (2) government contractors reveal to the public agency sufficient information about how they developed the algorithm; and (3) public agencies and courts treat trade secrecy claims as the limited exception to public disclosure that the law requires. Although it would require a multi-stakeholder process to develop best practices for record generation and disclosure, we present what we believe are eight principal types of information that such records should ideally contain….(More)”.

Getting on the map: How to fix the problem with addresses

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Joshua Howgego at New Scientist: “Kwandengezi is a beguiling neighbourhood on the outskirts of Durban. Its ramshackle dwellings are spread over rolling green hills, with dirt roads winding in between. Nothing much to put it on the map. Until last year, that is, when weird signs started sprouting, nailed to doors, stapled to fences or staked in front of houses. Each consisted of three seemingly random words. Cutaway.jazz.wording said one; tokens.painted.enacted read another.

In a neighbourhood where houses have no numbers and the dirt roads no names, these signs are the fastest way for ambulances to locate women going into labour and who need ferrying to the nearest hospital. The hope is that signs like this will save lives and be adopted elsewhere. For the residents of KwaNdengezi in South Africa aren’t alone – recent estimates suggest that only 80 or so countries worldwide have an up-to-date addressing system. And even where one exists, it isn’t always working as well as it could.

Poor addresses aren’t simply confusing: they frustrate businesses and can shave millions of dollars off economic output. That’s why there’s a growing feeling that we need to reinvent the address – and those makeshift three-word signs are just the beginning.

“Poor addresses frustrate businesses and can shave millions of dollars off economic output”

In itself, an address is a simple thing: its purpose is to unambiguously identify a point on Earth’s surface. But, it also forms a crucial part of the way societies are managed. Governments use lists of addresses to work out how many people they need to serve; without an address by your name, you can’t apply for a passport…(More)”.

Opportunities and risks in emerging technologies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

White Paper Series at the WebFoundation: “To achieve our vision of digital equality, we need to understand how new technologies are shaping society; where they present opportunities to make people’s lives better, and indeed where they threaten to create harm. To this end, we have commissioned a series of white papers examining three key digital trends: artificial intelligence, algorithms and control of personal data. The papers focus on low and middle-income countries, which are all too often overlooked in debates around the impacts of emerging technologies.

The series addresses each of these three digital issues, looking at how they are impacting people’s lives and identifying steps that governments, companies and civil society organisations can take to limit the harms, and maximise benefits, for citizens.

Download the white papers

We will use these white papers to refine our thinking and set our work agenda on digital equality in the years ahead. We are sharing them openly with the hope they benefit others working towards our goals and to amplify the limited research currently available on digital issues in low and middle-income countries. We intend the papers to foster discussion about the steps we can take together to ensure emerging digital technologies are used in ways that benefit people’s lives, whether they are in Los Angeles or Lagos….(More)”.

The hidden costs of open data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Sara Friedman at GCN: “As more local governments open their data for public use, the emphasis is often on “free” — using open source tools to freely share already-created government datasets, often with pro bono help from outside groups. But according to a new report, there are unforeseen costs when it comes pushing government datasets out of public-facing platforms — especially when geospatial data is involved.

The research, led by University of Waterloo professor Peter A. Johnson and McGill University professor Renee Sieber, was based on work as part of Geothink.ca partnership research grant and exploration of the direct and indirect costs of open data.

Costs related to data collection, publishing, data sharing, maintenance and updates are increasingly driving governments to third-party providers to help with hosting, standardization and analytical tools for data inspection, the researchers found. GIS implementation also has associated costs to train staff, develop standards, create valuations for geospatial data, connect data to various user communities and get feedback on challenges.

Due to these direct costs, some governments are more likely to avoid opening datasets that need complex assessment or anonymization techniques for GIS concerns. Johnson and Sieber identified four areas where the benefits of open geospatial data can generate unexpected costs.

First, open data can create “smoke and mirrors” situation where insufficient resources are put toward deploying open data for government use. Users then experience “transaction costs” when it comes to working in specialist data formats that need additional skills, training and software to use.

Second, the level of investment and quality of open data can lead to “material benefits and social privilege” for communities that devote resources to providing more comprehensive platforms.

While there are some open source data platforms, the majority of solutions are proprietary and charged on a pro-rata basis, which can present a challenge for cities with larger, poor populations compared to smaller, wealthier cities. Issues also arise when governments try to combine their data sets, leading to increased costs to reconcile problems.

The third problem revolves around the private sector pushing for the release of data sets that can benefit their business objectives. Companies could push for the release high-value sets, such as a real-time transit data, to help with their product development goals. This can divert attention from low-value sets, such as those detailing municipal services or installations, that could have a bigger impact on residents “from a civil society perspective.”

If communities decide to release the low-value sets first, Johnson and Sieber think the focus can then be shifted to high-value sets that can help recoup the costs of developing the platforms.

Lastly, the report finds inadvertent consequences could result from tying open data resources to private-sector companies. Public-private open data partnerships could lead to infrastructure problems that prevent data from being widely shared, and help private companies in developing their bids for public services….

Johnson and Sieber encourage communities to ask the following questions before investing in open data:

  1. Who are the intended constituents for this open data?
  2. What is the purpose behind the structure for providing this data set?
  3. Does this data enable the intended users to meet their goals?
  4. How are privacy concerns addressed?
  5. Who sets the priorities for release and updates?…(More)”

Read the full report here.

Nudges in a post-truth world

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Neil Levy at the Journal of Medical Ethics: “Nudges—policy proposals informed by work in behavioural economics and psychology that are designed to lead to better decision-making or better behaviour—are controversial. Critics allege that they bypass our deliberative capacities, thereby undermining autonomy and responsible agency. In this paper, I identify a kind of nudge I call a nudge to reason, which make us more responsive to genuine evidence. I argue that at least some nudges to reason do not bypass our deliberative capacities. Instead, use of these nudges should be seen as appeals to mechanisms partially constitutive of these capacities, and therefore as benign (so far as autonomy and responsible agency are concerned). I sketch some concrete proposals for nudges to reason which are especially important given the apparent widespread resistance to evidence seen in recent political events….(More)”.

Citizen sensing, air pollution and fracking: From ‘caring about your air’ to speculative practices of evidencing harm

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jennifer Gabrys at the Sociological Review: “Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is an emerging and growing industry that is having considerable effects on environments and health. Yet fracking often lacks environmental regulations that might be understood as governmental forms of care. In some locations in the US, citizens have taken up environmental monitoring as a way to address this perceived absence of care, and to evidence harm in order to argue for new infrastructures of care. This article documents the practices of residents engaged in monitoring air pollution near fracking sites in the US, as well as the participatory and practice-based research undertaken by the Citizen Sense research project to develop monitoring kits for residents to use and test over a period of seven months. Citizen sensing practices for monitoring air pollution can constitute ways of expressing care about environments, communities and individual and public health. Yet practices for documenting and evidencing harm through the ongoing collection of air pollution data are also speculative attempts to make relevant these unrecognised and overlooked considerations of the need for care. Working with the concept of speculation, this article advances alternative notions of evidence, care and policy that attend to citizens’ experiences of living in the gas fields. How do citizen sensing practices work towards alternative ways of evidencing harm? In what ways does monitoring with environmental sensors facilitate this process? And what new speculative practices emerge to challenge the uses of environmental sensors, as well as to expand the types of data gathered, along with their political impact?…(More)”.

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