Selected Readings on Digital Self-Determination for Migrants

Curated on Posted on by Uma

By Uma Kalkar, Marine Ragnet, and Stefaan Verhulst

Digital self-determination (DSD) is a multidisciplinary concept that extends self-determination to the digital sphere. Self-determination places humans (and their ability to make ‘moral’ decisions) at the center of decision-making actions. While self-determination is considered as a jus cogens rule (i.e. a global norm), the concept of digital self-determination came only to light in the early 2010s as a result of the increasing digitization of most aspects of society. 

While digitalization has opened up new opportunities for self-expression and communication for individuals across the globe, its reach and benefits have not been evenly distributed. For instance, migrants and refugees are particularly vulnerable to the deepening inequalities and power structures brought on by increased digitization, and the subsequent datafication. Further, non-traditional data, such as social media and telecom data, have brought great potential to improve our understanding of the migration experience and patterns of mobility that can provide more targeted migration policies and services yet it also has brought new concerns related to the lack of agency to determine how the data is being used and who determines the migration narrative.

These selected readings look at DSD in light of the growing ubiquity of technology applications and specifically focus on their impacts on migrants. They were produced to inform the first studio on DSD and migration co-hosted by the Big Data for Migration Alliance and the International Digital Self Determination Network. The readings are listed in alphabetical order.

These readings serve as a primer to offer base perspectives on DSD and its manifestations, as well as provide a better understanding of how migration data is managed today to advance or hinder life for those on the move. Please alert us of any other publication we should include moving forward.

Berens, Jos, Nataniel Raymond, Gideon Shimshon, Stefaan Verhulst, and Lucy Bernholz. “The Humanitarian Data Ecosystem: the Case for Collective Responsibility.” Stanford Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, 2017.

  • The authors explore the challenges to, and potential solutions for, the responsible use of digital data in the context of international humanitarian action. Data governance is related to DSD because it oversees how the information extracted from an individual—understood by DSD as an extension of oneself in the digital sphere—is handled.
  • They argue that in the digital age, the basic service provision activities of NGOs and aid organizations have become data collection processes. However, the ecosystem of actors is “uncoordinated” creating inefficiencies and vulnerabilities in the humanitarian space.
  • The paper presents a new framework for responsible data use in the humanitarian domain. The authors advocate for data users to follow three steps: 
  1. “[L]ook beyond the role they take up in the ‘data-lifecycle’ and consider previous and following steps and roles;
  2. Develop sound data responsibility strategies not only to prevent harm to their own operations but also to other organizations in the ‘data-lifecycle;’ and, 
  3. Collaborate with and learn from other organizations, both in the humanitarian field and beyond, to establish broadly supported guidelines and standards for humanitarian data use.”

Currion, Paul. “The Refugee Identity.” Caribou Digital (via Medium), March 13, 2018.

  • Developed as part of a DFID-funded initiative, this essay outlines the Data Requirements for Service Delivery within Refugee Camps project that investigated current data standards and design of refugee identity systems.
  • Currion finds that since “the digitisation of aid has already begun…aid agencies must therefore pay more attention to the way in which identity systems affect the lives and livelihoods of the forcibly displaced, both positively and negatively.” He argues that an interoperable digital identity for refugees is essential to access financial, social, and material resources while on the move but also to tap into IoT services.
  • However, many refugees are wary of digital tracking and data collection services that could further marginalize them as they search for safety. At present, there are no sector-level data standards around refugee identity data collection, combination, and centralization. How can regulators balance data protection with government and NGO requirements to serve refugees in the ways they want to uphold their DSD?
  • Currion argues that a Responsible Data approach, as opposed to a process defined by a Data Minimization principle, provides “useful guidelines” but notes that data responsibility “still needs to be translated into organizational policy, then into institutional processes, and finally into operational practice. He further adds that “the digitization of aid, if approached from a position that empowers the individual as much as the institution, offers a chance to give refugees back their voices.”

Decker, Rianne, Paul Koot, S. Ilker Birbil, Mark van Embden Andres. “Co-designing algorithms for governance: Ensuring responsible and accountable algorithmic management of refugee camp supplies” Big Data and Society, April 2022. 

  • While recent literature has looked at the negative impacts of big data and algorithms in public governance, claiming they may reinforce existing biases and defy scrutiny by public officials, this paper argues that designing algorithms with relevant government and society stakeholders might be a way to make them more accountable and transparent. 
  • It presents a case study of the development of an algorithmic tool to estimate the populations of refugee camps to manage the delivery of emergency supplies. The algorithms included in this tool were co-designed with relevant stakeholders. 
  • This may provide a way to uphold DSD by  contributing to the “accountability of the algorithm by making the estimations transparent and explicable to its users.”
  • The authors found that the co-design process enabled better accuracy and responsibility and fostered collaboration between partners, creating a suitable purpose for the tool and making the algorithm understandable to its users. This enabled algorithmic accountability. 
  • The authors note, however, that the beneficiaries of the tools were not included in the design process, limiting the legitimacy of the initiative. 

European Migration Network. “The Use of Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence in Migration Management.” EMN-OECD Inform Series, February 2022.

  • This paper explores the role of new digital technologies in the management of migration and asylum, focusing specifically on where digital technologies, such as online portals, blockchain, and AI-powered speech and facial recognition systems are being used across Europe to navigate the processes of obtaining visas, claiming asylum, gaining citizenship,  and deploying border control management. 
  • Further, it points to friction between GDPR and new technologies like blockchain—which by decision does not allow for the right to be forgotten—and potential workarounds, such as two-step pseudonymisation.
  • As well, it highlights steps taken to oversee and open up data protection processes for immigration. Austria, Belgium, and France have begun to conduct Data Protection Impact Assessments; France has a portal that allows one to request the right to be forgotten; Ireland informs online service users on how data can be shared or used with third-party agencies; and Spain outlines which personal data are used in immigration as per the Registry Public Treatment Activities.
  • Lastly, the paper points out next steps for policy development that upholds DSD, including universal access and digital literacy, trust in digital systems, willingness for government digital transformations, and bias and risk reduction.

Martin, Aaron, Gargi Sharma, Siddharth Peter de Souza, Linnet Taylor, Boudewijn van Eerd, Sean Martin McDonald, Massimo Marelli, Margie Cheesman, Stephan Scheel, and Huub Dijstelbloem. “Digitisation and Sovereignty in Humanitarian Space: Technologies, Territories and Tensions.” Geopolitics (2022): 1-36.

  • This paper explores how digitisation and datafication are reshaping sovereign authority, power, and control in humanitarian spaces.
  • Building on the notion that technology is political, Martin et al. discuss three cases where digital tools powered by partnerships between international organizations and NGOs and private firms such as Palantir and Facebook have raised concerns for data to be “repurposed” to undermine national sovereignty and distort humanitarian aims with for-profit motivations.
  • The authors draw attention to how cyber dependencies threaten international humanitarian organizations’ purported digital sovereignty. They touch on the tensions between national and digital sovereignty and self-governance.
  • The paper further argues that the rise of digital technologies in the governance of international mobility and migration policies “has all kinds of humanitarian and security consequences,” including (but not limited to) surveillance, privacy infringement, profiling, selection, inclusion/exclusion, and access barriers. Specifically, Scheel introduces the notion of function creep—the use of digital data beyond initially defined purposes—and emphasizes its common use in the context of migration as part “of the modus operandi of sovereign power.”

McAuliffe, Marie, Jenna Blower, and Ana Beduschi. “Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence in Migration and Mobility: Transnational Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Societies 11, no. 135 (2021): 1-13.

  • This paper critically examines the implications of intensifying digitalization and AI for migration and mobility systems in a post- COVID transnational context. 
  • The authors first situate digitalization and AI in migration by analyzing its uptake throughout the Migration Cycle, i.e. to verify identities and visas, “enable “smart” border processing,” and understand travelers’ adherence to legal frameworks. It then evaluates the current challenges and opportunities to migrants and migration systems brought about by deepening digitalization due to COVID-19. For example, contact tracing, infection screening, and quarantining procedures generate increased data about an individual and are meant, by design, to track and trace people, which raises concerns about migrants’ safety, privacy, and autonomy.
  • This essay argues that recent changes show the need for further computational advances that incorporate human rights throughout the design and development stages, “to mitigate potential risks to migrants’ human rights.” AI is severely flawed when it comes to decision-making around minority groups because of biased training data and could further marginalize vulnerable populations and intrusive data collection for public health could erode the power of one’s universal right to privacy. Leaving migrants at the mercy of black-box AI systems fails to uphold their right to DSD because it forces them to relinquish their agency and power to an opaque system.

Ponzanesi, Sandra. “Migration and Mobility in a Digital Age: (Re)Mapping Connectivity and Belonging.” Television & New Media 20, no. 6 (2019): 547-557.

  • This article explores the role of new media technologies in rethinking the dynamics of migration and globalization by focusing on the role of migrant users as “connected” and active participants, as well as “screened” and subject to biometric datafication, visualization, and surveillance.
  • Elaborating on concepts such as “migration” and “mobility,” the article analyzes the paradoxes of intermittent connectivity and troubled belonging, which are seen as relational definitions that are always fluid, negotiable, and porous.
  • It states that a city’s digital infrastructures are “complex sociotechnical systems” that have a functional side related to access and connectivity and a performative side where people engage with technology. Digital access and action represent areas of individual and collective manifestations of DSD. For migrants, gaining digital access and skills and “enacting citizenship” are important for resettlement. Ponzanesi advocates for further research conducted both from the bottom-up that leans on migrant experiences with technology to resettle and remain in contact with their homeland and a top-down approach that looks at datafication, surveillance, digital/e-governance as a part of the larger technology application ecosystem to understand contemporary processes and problems of migration.

Remolina, Nydia, and Mark James Findlay. “The Paths to Digital Self-Determination — A Foundational Theoretical Framework.” SMU Centre for AI & Data Governance Research Paper No. 03 (2021): 1-34.

  • Remolina and Findlay stress that self-determination is the vehicle by which people “decide their own destiny in the international order.” Decision-making ability powers humans to be in control of their own lives and excited to pursue a set of actions. Collective action, or the ability to make decisions as a part of a group—be it based on ethnicity, nationality, shared viewpoints, etc.—further motivates oneself.
  • The authors discuss how the European Union and European Court of Human Rights’ “principle of subsidiarity” aligns with self-determination because it advocates for power to be placed at the lowest level possible to preserve bottom-up agency with a “reasonable level of efficiency.” In practice, the results of subsidiarity have been disappointing.
  • The paper provides examples of indigenous populations’ fight for self-determination, offline and online. Here, digital self-determination refers to the challenges indigenous peoples face in accessing growing government uses of technology for unlocking innovative solutions because of a lack of physical infrastructure due to structural and social inequities between settler and indigenous communities.
  • Understanding self-determination—and by extension, digital self-determination as a human right, the report investigates how autonomy, sovereignty, the legal definition of a ‘right,’ inclusion, agency, data governance, data ownership, data control, and data quality.
  • Lastly, the paper presents a foundational theoretical framework that goes beyond just protecting personal data and privacy. Understanding that DSD “cannot be detached from duties for responsible data use,” the authors present a collective and individual dimension to DSD. They extend the individual dimension of DSD to include both my data and data about me that can be used to influence a person’s actions through micro-targeting and nudge techniques. They update the collective dimension of DSD to include the views and influences of organizations, businesses, and communities online and call for a better way of visualizing the ‘social self’ and its control over data.

Ziebart, Astrid, and Jessica Bither. “AI, Digital Identities, Biometrics, Blockchain: A Primer on the Use of Technology in Migration Management.” Migration Strategy Group on International Cooperation and Development, June 2020.

  • Ziebart and Bither note the implications of increasingly sophisticated use of technology and data collection by governments with respect to their citizens. They note that migrants and refugees “often are exposed to particular vulnerabilities” during these processes and underscore the need to bring migrants into data gathering and use policy conversations.  
  • The authors discuss the promise of technology—i.e., to predict migration through AI-powered analyses, employ technologies to reduce friction in the asylum-seeking processes, and the power of digital identities for those on the move. However, they stress the need to combine these tools with informational self-determination that allows migrants to own and control what data they share and how and where the data are used.
  • The migration and refugee policy space faces issues of “tech evangelism,” where technologies are being employed just because they exist, rather than because they serve an actual policy need or provide an answer to a particular policy question. This supply-driven policy implementation signals the need for more migrant voices to inform policymakers on what tools are actually useful for the migratory experience. In order to advance the digital agency of migrants, the paper offers recommendations for some of the ethical challenges these technologies might pose and ultimately advocates for greater participation of migrants and refugees in devising technology-driven policy instruments for migration issues.

On-the-go interesting resources 

  • Empowering Digital Self-Determination, mediaX at Stanford University: This short video presents definitions of DSD, and digital personhood, identity, and privacy and an overview of their applications across ethics, law, and the private sector.
  • Digital Self-Determination — A Living Syllabus: This syllabus and assorted materials have been created and curated from the 2021 Research Sprint run by the Digital Asia Hub and Berkman Klein Center for Internet Society at Harvard University. It introduces learners to the fundamentals of DSD across a variety of industries to enrich understanding of its existing and potential applications.
  • Digital Self-Determination Wikipedia Page: This Wikipedia page was developed by the students who took part in the Berkman Klein Center research sprint on digital self-determination. It provides a comprehensive overview of DSD definitions and its key elements, which include human-centered design, robust privacy mandates and data governance, and control over data use to give data subjects the ability to choose how algorithms manipulate their data for autonomous decision-making.
  • Roger Dubach on Digital Self-Determination: This short video presents DSD in the public sector and the dangers of creating a ‘data-protected’ world, but rather on understanding how governments can efficiently use data and protect privacy. Note: this video is part of the Living Syllabus course materials (Digital Self-Determination/Module 1: Beginning Inquiries).

Responsiveness of open innovation to COVID-19 pandemic: The case of data for good

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Francesco Scotti, Francesco Pierri, Giovanni Bonaccorsi, and Andrea Flori: “Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries around the world are facing one of the most severe health and economic crises of recent history and human society is called to figure out effective responses. However, as current measures have not produced valuable solutions, a multidisciplinary and open approach, enabling collaborations across private and public organizations, is crucial to unleash successful contributions against the disease. Indeed, the COVID-19 represents a Grand Challenge to which joint forces and extension of disciplinary boundaries have been recognized as main imperatives. As a consequence, Open Innovation represents a promising solution to provide a fast recovery. In this paper we present a practical application of this approach, showing how knowledge sharing constitutes one of the main drivers to tackle pressing social needs. To demonstrate this, we propose a case study regarding a data sharing initiative promoted by Facebook, the Data For Good program. We leverage a large-scale dataset provided by Facebook to the research community to offer a representation of the evolution of the Italian mobility during the lockdown. We show that this repository allows to capture different patterns of movements on the territory with increasing levels of detail. We integrate this information with Open Data provided by the Lombardy region to illustrate how data sharing can also provide insights for private businesses and local authorities. Finally, we show how to interpret Data For Good initiatives in light of the Open Innovation Framework and discuss the barriers to adoption faced by public administrations regarding these practices…(More)”.

The ethical imperative to identify and address data and intelligence asymmetries

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Stefaan Verhulst in AI & Society: “The insight that knowledge, resulting from having access to (privileged) information or data, is power is more relevant today than ever before. The data age has redefined the very notion of knowledge and information (as well as power), leading to a greater reliance on dispersed and decentralized datasets as well as to new forms of innovation and learning, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). As Thomas Piketty (among others) has shown, we live in an increasingly stratified world, and our society’s socio-economic asymmetries are often grafted onto data and information asymmetries. As we have documented elsewhere, data access is fundamentally linked to economic opportunity, improved governance, better science and citizen empowerment. The need to address data and information asymmetries—and their resulting inequalities of political and economic power—is therefore emerging as among the most urgent ethical challenges of our era, yet often not recognized as such.

Even as awareness grows of this imperative, society and policymakers lag in their understanding of the underlying issue. Just what are data asymmetries? How do they emerge, and what form do they take? And how do data asymmetries accelerate information and other asymmetries? What forces and power structures perpetuate or deepen these asymmetries, and vice versa? I argue that it is a mistake to treat this problem as homogenous. In what follows, I suggest the beginning of a taxonomy of asymmetries. Although closely related, each one emerges from a different set of contingencies, and each is likely to require different policy remedies. The focus of this short essay is to start outlining these different types of asymmetries. Further research could deepen and expand the proposed taxonomy as well help define solutions that are contextually appropriate and fit for purpose….(More)”.

When Launching a Collaboration, Keep It Agile

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by the Stakeholder Alignment Collaborative: “Conventional wisdom holds that large-scale societal challenges require large-scale responses. By contrast, we argue that progress on major societal challenges can and often should begin with small, agile initiatives—minimum viable consortia (MVC)—that learn and adapt as they build the scaffolding for large-scale change. MVCs can address societal challenges by overcoming institutional inertia, opposition, capability gaps, and other barriers because they require less energy for activation, reveal dead ends early on, and can more easily adjust and adapt over time.

Large-scale societal challenges abound, and organizations and institutions are increasingly looking for ways to deal with them. For example, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has identified 14 Grand Societal Challenges for “sustaining civilization’s continuing advancement while still improving the quality of life” in the 21st century. They include making solar energy economical, developing carbon sequestration methods, advancing health informatics, and securing cyberspace. The United Nations has set 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to achieve by 2030 for a better future for humanity. They include everything from eliminating hunger to reducing inequality.

Tackling such universal goals requires large-scale cooperation, because existing organizations and institutions simply do not have the ability to resolve these challenges independently. Further note that the NAE’s announcement of the challenges stated that “governmental and institutional, political and economic, and personal and social barriers will repeatedly arise to impede the pursuit of solutions to problems.” The United Nations included two enabling SDGs: “peace, justice, and strong institutions” and “partnership for the goals.” The question is how to bring such large-scale partnerships and institutional change into existence.

We are members of the Stakeholder Alignment Collaborative, a research consortium of scholars at different career stages, spanning multiple fields and disciplines. We study collaboration collaboratively and maintain a very flat structure. We have published on multistakeholder consortia associated with science1 and provided leadership and facilitation for the launch and sustainment of many of these consortia. Based on our research into the problem of developing large-scale, multistakeholder partnerships, we believe that MVCs provide an answer.

MVCs are less vulnerable to the many barriers to large-scale solutions, better able to forge partnerships and a more agile framework for making needed adjustments. To demonstrate these points, we focus on examples of MVCs in the domain of scientific research data and computing infrastructure. Research data are essential for virtually all societal challenges, and an upsurge of multistakeholder consortia has occurred in this domain. But the MVC concept is not limited to these challenges, nor to digitally oriented settings. We have chosen this sphere because it offers a diversity of MVC examples for illustration….(More)”. (See also “The Potential and Practice of Data Collaboratives for Migration“).

Mapping of exposed water tanks and swimming pools based on aerial images can help control dengue

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo: “Brazilian researchers have developed a computer program that locates swimming pools and rooftop water tanks in aerial photographs with the aid of artificial intelligence to help identify areas vulnerable to infestation by Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that transmits dengue, zika, chikungunya and yellow fever. 

The innovation, which can also be used as a public policy tool for dynamic socio-economic mapping of urban areas, resulted from research and development work by professionals at the University of São Paulo (USP), the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and the São Paulo State Department of Health’s Endemic Control Superintendence (SUCEN), as part of a project supported by FAPESP. An article about it is published in the journal PLOS ONE. 

“Our work initially consisted of creating a model based on aerial images and computer science to detect water tanks and pools, and to use them as a socio-economic indicator,” said Francisco Chiaravalloti Neto, last author of the article. He is a professor in the Epidemiology Department at USP’s School of Public Health (FSP), with a first degree in engineering. 

As the article notes, previous research had already shown that dengue tends to be most prevalent in deprived urban areas, so that prevention of dengue, zika and other diseases transmitted by the mosquito can be made considerably more effective by use of a relatively dynamic socio-economic mapping model, especially given the long interval between population censuses in Brazil (ten years or more). 

“This is one of the first steps in a broader project,” Chiaravalloti Neto said. Among other aims, he and his team plan to detect other elements of the images and quantify real infestation rates in specific areas so as to be able to refine and validate the model. 

“We want to create a flow chart that can be used in different cities to pinpoint at-risk areas without the need for inspectors to call on houses, buildings and other breeding sites, as this is time-consuming and a waste of the taxpayer’s money,” he added…(More)”.

The Use of Artificial Intelligence as a Strategy to Analyse Urban Informality

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Agustina Iñiguez: “Within the Latin American and Caribbean region, it has been recorded that at least 25% of the population lives in informal settlements. Given that their expansion is one of the major problems afflicting these cities, a project is presented, supported by the IDB, which proposes how new technologies are capable of contributing to the identification and detection of these areas in order to intervene in them and help reduce urban informality.

Informal settlements, also known as slums, shantytowns, camps or favelas, depending on the country in question, are uncontrolled settlements on land where, in many cases, the conditions for a dignified life are not in place. Through self-built dwellings, these sites are generally the result of the continuous growth of the housing deficit.

For decades, the possibility of collecting information about the Earth’s surface through satellite imagery has been contributing to the analysis and production of increasingly accurate and useful maps for urban planning. In this way, not only the growth of cities can be seen, but also the speed at which they are growing and the characteristics of their buildings.

Advances in artificial intelligence facilitate the processing of a large amount of information. When a satellite or aerial image is taken of a neighbourhood where a municipal team has previously demarcated informal areas, the image is processed by an algorithm that will identify the characteristic visual patterns of the area observed from space. The algorithm will then identify other areas with similar characteristics in other images, automatically recognising the districts where informality predominates. It is worth noting that while satellites are able to report both where and how informal settlements are growing, specialised equipment and processing infrastructure are also required…(More)”

Eight reasons responsible data for and about children matters

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Stefaan Verhulst and Andrew Young: “…The relationship between the datafication of everyday life and child welfare has generally been under-explored, both by researchers in data ethics and those who work to advance the rights of children. This neglect is a lost opportunity, and also poses a risk to children, who are in many ways at the forefront of the steady incursions of data into our lives. In what follows, over a series of two articles, we outline eight reasons why child welfare advocates should pay more attention to data, and why we need a framework for responsible data collection and use for children….(Part 1) and (Part2). (See also Responsible Data for Children).

A new data deal: the case of Barcelona

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Fernando Monge, Sarah Barns, Rainer Kattel and Francesca Bria: “Cities today are key sites for the operation of global digital marketplaces. It is at the curbsides and the intersections of cities where global digital platforms gain access to valuable urban data to be used in the delivery of data-driven urban services. Signalling an emerging role for city governments in contributing to regulatory responses to global digital platforms, a number of cities have in recent years tested their capacity to reclaim the urban data that is ‘harvested’ and monetised by digital platforms for improved local governance and participation. Focusing on the City of Barcelona, this paper investigates the conditions that enabled Barcelona to pivot from its strong focus on attracting commercial platforms under the rubric of smart city programs, to becoming one of the leading advocates of a citizen-first data rights and data sovereignty agenda. Through a series of interviews with key participants involved in the design and implementation of Barcelona’s data sovereignty program under Mayor Ada Colau, the paper examines the policy and governance instruments deployed by the city to regain access and control over data and discusses the challenges and tensions it faced during the implementation phases of the program. Finally, the paper presents the main lessons of the Barcelona experience for other cities, including a reflection on the role that cities can play in shaping a global agenda around improved data governance….(More)”.

Advancing Digital Agency: The Power of Data Intermediaries

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

World Economic Forum Report: “With the integration of screenless technology into everyday life, the data ecosystem is growing increasingly complicated. New ambient data collection methods bring many benefits, but they also have the potential to amplify mistrust between people and technology.

In this Insight Report, the World Economic Forum’s Taskforce on Data Intermediaries explores the potential to outsource human decision points to an agent acting on an individual’s behalf, in the form of a data intermediary.

The opportunities and risks of such a new approach are explored, representing one of many new policy anchors through and around which individuals may navigate new data ecosystem models. Levers of action for both the public and private sectors are suggested to ensure a future-proof digital policy environment that allows for the seamless and trusted movement of data between people and the technology that serves them…(More)”.

Shared Measures: Collective Performance Data Use in Collaborations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Alexander Kroll: “Traditionally, performance metrics and data have been used to hold organizations accountable. But public service provision is not merely hierarchical anymore. Increasingly, we see partnerships among government agencies, private or nonprofit organizations, and civil society groups. Such collaborations may also use goals, measures, and data to manage group efforts, however, the application of performance practices here will likely follow a different logic. This Element introduces the concepts of “shared measures” and “collective data use” to add collaborative, relational elements to existing performance management theory. It draws on a case study of collaboratives in North Carolina that were established to develop community responses to the opioid epidemic. To explain the use of shared performance measures and data within these collaboratives, this Element studies the role of factors such as group composition, participatory structures, social relationships, distributed leadership, group culture, and value congruence…(More)”.