Unlocking Responsible Access to Data to Increase Equity and Economic Mobility

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Markle Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF): “Economic mobility remains elusive for far too many Americans and has been declining for several decades. A person born in 1980 is 50% less likely to earn more than their parents than a person born in 1950 is. While all children who grow up in low-opportunity neighborhoods face mobility challenges, racial, ethnic, and gender disparities add even more complexity. In 99% of neighborhoods in America, Black boys earn less, and are more likely to fall into poverty, than white boys, even when they grow up on the same block, attend the same schools, and have the same family income. In 2016, a Pew Research study found that the median wealth of white households was ten times the median wealth of Black households and eight times that of Hispanic households. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated existing disparities, as communities of color suffer higher exposure and death rates, along with greater job loss and increased food and housing insecurity.

Reversing this overall decline to address the persistent racial, ethnic, and gender gaps in economic mobility is one of the great challenges of our time. Some progress has been made in identifying the causes and potential solutions to declining mobility, yet policymakers, researchers, and the public still lack access to critical data necessary to understand which policies, programs, interventions, and investments are most effective at creating opportunity for students and workers, particularly those struggling with intergenerational poverty. Data collected across all levels of governments, nonprofit organizations, and private sector companies can help answer foundational policy and research questions on what drives economic mobility. There are promising efforts underway to improve government data infrastructure and processes at both the federal and state levels, but critical data often remains siloed, and legitimate concerns about privacy and civil liberties can make data difficult to share. Often, data on vulnerable populations most in need of services is of poor quality or is not collected at all.

To tackle this challenge, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the Markle Foundation (Markle) spent much of 2020 working with a diverse range of experts to identify strategic opportunities to accelerate progress towards unlocking data to improve policymaking, answer foundational research questions, and ensure that individuals can easily and responsibly access the information they need to make informed decisions in a rapidly changing environment….(More)”.

Using FOIA logs to develop news stories

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Yilun Cheng at MuckRock: “In the fiscal year 2020, federal agencies received a total of 790,772 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. There are also tens of thousands of state and local agencies taking in and processing public record requests on a daily basis. Since most agencies keep a log of requests received, FOIA-minded reporters can find interesting story ideas by asking for and digging through the history of what other people are looking to obtain.

Some FOIA logs are posted on the websites of agencies that proactively release these records. Those that are not can be obtained through a FOIA request. There are a number of online resources that collect and store these documents, including MuckRock, the Black Vault, Government Attic and FOIA Land.

Sorting through a FOIA log can be challenging since format differs from agency to agency. A more well-maintained log might include comprehensive information on the names of the requesters, the records being asked for, the dates of the requests’ receipt and the agency’s responses, as shown, for example, in a log released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency.https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20508483/annotations/2024702

But other departments –– the Cook County Department of Public Health, for instance –– might only send over a three-column spreadsheet with no descriptions of the nature of the requests.https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20491259/annotations/2024703

As a result, learning how to negotiate with agencies and interpreting the content in their FOIA logs are crucial for journalists trying to understand the public record landscape. While some reporters only use FOIA logs to keep tabs on their competitors’ reporting interests, the potential of these documents goes far beyond this. Below are some tips for getting story inspiration from FOIA logs….(More)”.

Freedom of Information Act—How Open is Public Access to Government Data?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

US Government Accountability Office: “The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) establishes a legal right for individuals and organizations to request access to government information. In FY 2019, federal agencies reported that they processed nearly 878,000 FOIA requests for government information, an increase of 32% since FY 2012.  

In honor of Sunshine Week—an annual observation that promotes open government—today’s WatchBlog post looks at our recent reports on agencies’ implementation of laws that seek to improve the public’s access to government information.

What does the government disclose as part of open government laws?

FOIA requires agencies to publicly post certain information without waiting for specific requests and report on these disclosures annually. These proactive disclosures include final opinions, administrative staff manuals, and records that have been requested 3 or more times.

In our March report, we assessed agency policies related to these disclosures. Among other things, we found that the Department of Housing and Urban Development did not report proactively disclosing any records from FY 2017 through 2019. Similarly, we found that the Veterans Health Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration did not report the number of records disclosed for all required categories in FY 2019.

We made 8 recommendations to help improve compliance with these requirements.

What might the government not disclose under FOIA?

FOIA requires agencies to provide the relevant records in response to a request unless an exemption applies to limit the disclosure of that information, such as withholding classified national defense or foreign policy information. The graphic below provides more detail on FOIA’s 9 exemptions.

Pie Chart showing federal exemptions to FOIA by category

In FY 2019, agencies denied approximately 34,000 requests based on exemptions. More than half of these requests were related to law enforcement and investigations….(More)”.

Open data in action: initiatives during the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by OECD and The GovLab: “The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the demand for access to timely, relevant, and quality data. This demand has been driven by several needs: taking informed policy actions quickly, improving communication on the current state of play, carrying out scientific analysis of a dynamic threat, understanding its social and economic impact, and enabling civil society oversight and reporting.


This report…assesses how open government data (OGD) was used to react and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic during initial stage of the crisis (March-July 2020) based on initiatives collected through an open call for evidence. It also seeks to transform lessons learned into considerations for policy makers on how to improve OGD policies to better prepare for future shocks…(More)”.

Hospitals Hide Pricing Data From Search Results

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Tom McGinty, Anna Wilde Mathews and Melanie Evans at the Wall Street Journal: “Hospitals that have published their previously confidential prices to comply with a new federal rule have also blocked that information from web searches with special coding embedded on their websites, according to a Wall Street Journal examination.

The information must be disclosed under a federal rule aimed at making the $1 trillion sector more consumer friendly. But hundreds of hospitals embedded code in their websites that prevented Alphabet Inc.’s Google and other search engines from displaying pages with the price lists, according to the Journal examination of more than 3,100 sites.

The code keeps pages from appearing in searches, such as those related to a hospital’s name and prices, computer-science experts said. The prices are often accessible other ways, such as through links that can require clicking through multiple layers of pages.

“It’s technically there, but good luck finding it,” said Chirag Shah, an associate professor at the University of Washington who studies human interactions with computers. “It’s one thing not to optimize your site for searchability, it’s another thing to tag it so it can’t be searched. It’s a clear indication of intentionality.”…(More)”.

What the drive for open science data can learn from the evolving history of open government data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Stefaan Verhulst, Andrew Young, and Andrew Zahuranec at The Conversation: “Nineteen years ago, a group of international researchers met in Budapest to discuss a persistent problem. While experts published an enormous amount of scientific and scholarly material, few of these works were accessible. New research remained locked behind paywalls run by academic journals. The result was researchers struggled to learn from one another. They could not build on one another’s findings to achieve new insights. In response to these problems, the group developed the Budapest Open Access Initiative, a declaration calling for free and unrestricted access to scholarly journal literature in all academic fields.

In the years since, open access has become a priority for a growing number of universities, governments, and journals. But while access to scientific literature has increased, access to the scientific data underlying this research remains extremely limited. Researchers can increasingly see what their colleagues are doing but, in an era defined by the replication crisis, they cannot access the data to reproduce the findings or analyze it to produce new findings. In some cases there are good reasons to keep access to the data limited – such as confidentiality or sensitivity concerns – yet in many other cases data hoarding still reigns.

To make scientific research data open to citizens and scientists alike, open science data advocates can learn from open data efforts in other domains. By looking at the evolving history of the open government data movement, scientists can see both limitations to current approaches and identify ways to move forward from them….(More) (French version)”.

The Third Wave of Open Data Toolkit

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The GovLab: “Today, as part of Open Data Week 2021, the Open Data Policy Lab is launching  The Third Wave of Open Data Toolkit, which provides organizations with specific operational guidance on how to foster responsible, effective, and purpose-driven re-use. The toolkit—authored by Andrew Young, Andrew J. Zahuranec, Stefaan G. Verhulst, and Kateryna Gazaryan—supports the work of data stewards, responsible data leaders at public, private, and civil society organizations empowered to seek new ways to create public value through cross-sector data collaboration. The toolkit provides this support a few different ways. 

First, it offers a framework to make sense of the present and future open data ecosystem. Acknowledging that data re-use is the result of many stages, the toolkit separates each stage, identifying the ways the data lifecycle plays into data collaboration, the way data collaboration plays into the production of insights, the way insights play into conditions that enable further collaboration, and so on. By understanding the processes that data is created and used, data stewards can promote better and more impactful data management. 

Third Wave Framework

Second, the toolkit offers eight primers showing how data stewards can operationalize the actions previously identified as being part of the third wave. Each primer includes a brief explanation of what each action entails, offers some specific ways data stewards can implement these actions, and lists some supplementary pieces that might be useful in this work. The primers, which are available as part of the toolkit and as standalone two-pagers, are…(More)”.

Open Data Day 2021: How to unlock its potential moving forward?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Stefaan Verhulst, Andrew Young, and Andrew Zahuranec at Data and Policy: “For over a decade, data advocates have reserved one day out of the year to celebrate open data. Open Data Day 2021 comes at a time of unprecedented upheaval. As the world remains in the grip of COVID-19, open data researchers and practitioners must confront the challenge of how to use open data to address the types of complex, emergent challenges that are likely to define the rest of this century (and beyond). Amid threats like the ongoing pandemic, climate change, and systemic poverty, there is renewed pressure to find ways that open data can solve complex social, cultural, economic and political problems.

Over the past year, the Open Data Policy Lab, an initiative of The GovLab at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, held several sessions with leaders of open data from around the world. Over the course of these sessions, which we called the Summer of Open Data, we studied various strategies and trends, and identified future pathways for open data leaders to pursue. The results of this research suggest an emergent Third Wave of Open Data— one that offers a clear pathway for stakeholders of all types to achieve Open Data Day’s goal of “showing the benefits of open data and encouraging the adoption of open data policies in government, business, and civil society.”

The Third Wave of Open Data is central to how data is being collected, stored, shared, used, and reused around the world. In what follows, we explain this notion further, and argue that it offers a useful rubric through which to take stock of where we are — and to consider future goals — as we mark this latest iteration of Open Data Day.

The Past and Present of Open Data

The history of open data can be divided into several waves, each reflecting the priorities and values of the era in which they emerged….(More)”.

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The Three Waves of Open Data

Covid-19 Data Cards: Building a Data Taxonomy for Pandemic Preparedness

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Data Charter: “…We want to initiate the repair of the public’s trust through the building of a Pandemic Data Taxonomy with you — a network of data users and practitioners.

Building on feedback we got from our call to identify high value Open COVID-19 Data, we have structured a set of data cards, including key data types related to health issues, legal and socioeconomic impacts and fiscal transparency, within which are well-defined data models and dictionaries. Our target audience for this data taxonomy are governments. We are hoping this framework is a starting point towards building greater consistency around pandemic data release, and flag areas for better cooperation and standardisation within and between our governments and communities around the world.

We hope that together, with the input and feedback from a diverse group of data users and practitioners, we can have at the end of this public consultation and open-call, a document by a global collective, one that we can present to governments and public servants for their buy-in to reform our data infrastructures to be better prepared for future outbreaks.

In order to analyze the variables necessary to manage and investigate the different aspects of a pandemic, as exemplified by COVID-19, and based on a review of the type of data being released by 25 countries — we categorised the data in 4 major categories:

  • General — Contains the general concepts that all the files have in common and are defined, such as the METADATA, global sections of RISKS and their MITIGATION and the general STANDARDS required for the use, management and publication of the data. Then, a link to a spreadsheet, where more details of the precision, update frequency, publication methods and specific standards of each data set are defined.
  • Health Data — Describes how to manage and potentially publish the follow-up information on COVID-19 cases, considering data with temporal, geographical and demographic distribution along with the details for the study of the evolution of the disease.
  • Legal and Socioeconomic Impact Data — Contains the regulations, actions, measures, restrictions, protocols, documents and all the information regarding quarantine and the socio-economic impact as well as medical, labor or economic regulations for each data publisher.
  • Fiscal Data — Contains all budget allocations in accordance with the overall approved Pandemic budget, as well as the implemented adjustments. It also identifies specific allocations for facing prevention, detection, control, treatment and containment of the virus, as well as possible budget reallocations from other sectors or items derived from the actions mentioned above or by the derived economic constraints. It’s based on the recommendations made by GIFT and Open Contracting….(More)”

Inside the ‘Wikipedia of Maps,’ Tensions Grow Over Corporate Influence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Corey Dickinson at Bloomberg: “What do Lyft, Facebook, the International Red Cross, the U.N., the government of Nepal and Pokémon Go have in common? They all use the same source of geospatial data: OpenStreetMap, a free, open-source online mapping service akin to Google Maps or Apple Maps. But unlike those corporate-owned mapping platforms, OSM is built on a network of mostly volunteer contributors. Researchers have described it as the “Wikipedia for maps.”

Since it launched in 2004, OpenStreetMap has become an essential part of the world’s technology infrastructure. Hundreds of millions of monthly users interact with services derived from its data, from ridehailing apps, to social media geotagging on Snapchat and Instagram, to humanitarian relief operations in the wake of natural disasters. 

But recently the map has been changing, due the growing impact of private sector companies that rely on it. In a 2019 paper published in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, a cross-institutional team of researchers traced how Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and other companies have gained prominence as editors of the map. Their priorities, the researchers say, are driving significant change to what is being mapped compared to the past. 

“OpenStreetMap’s data is crowdsourced, which has always made spectators to the project a bit wary about the quality of the data,” says Dipto Sarkar, a professor of geoscience at Carleton University in Ottawa, and one of the paper’s co-authors. “As the data becomes more valuable and is used for an ever-increasing list of projects, the integrity of the information has to be almost perfect. These companies need to make sure there’s a good map of the places they want to expand in, and nobody else is offering that, so they’ve decided to fill it in themselves.”…(More)”.