Stacy Wood in KULA: knowledge creation, dissemination, and preservation studies: “This paper considers the history and politics of ‘police data.’ Police data, I contend, is a category of endangered data reliant on voluntary and inconsistent reporting by law enforcement agencies; it is also inconsistently described and routinely housed in systems that were not designed with long-term strategies for data preservation, curation or management in mind. Moreover, whereas US law enforcement agencies have, for over a century, produced and published a great deal of data about crime, data about the ways in which police officers spend their time and make decisions about resources—as well as information about patterns of individual officer behavior, use of force, and in-custody deaths—is difficult to find. This presents a paradoxical situation wherein vast stores of extant data are completely inaccessible to the public. This paradoxical state is not new, but the continuation of a long history co-constituted by technologies, epistemologies
Congress passes ‘Open Government Data Act’ to make open data part of the US Code
Melisha Dsouza at Packt>: “22nd December marked a win for U.S. government in terms of efficiency, accountability, and transparency of open data. Following the Senate vote held on 19th December, Congress passed the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking (FEBP) Act (H.R. 4174, S. 2046). Title II of this package is the Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act, which requires all non-sensitive government data to be made available in open and machine-readable formats by default.
The federal government possesses a huge amount of public data which should ideally be used to improve government services and promote private sector innovation. The open data proposal will mandate that federal agencies publish their information online, using machine-readable data formats.
Here are some of the key points that the Open Government Data Act seeks to do:
- Define open data without locking in yesterday’s technology.
- Create minimal standards for making federal government data available to the public.
- Require the federal government to use open data for better decision making.
- Ensure accountability by requiring regular oversight.
- Establish and formalize Chief Data Officers (CDO) at federal agencies with data governance and implementation responsibilities.
- Agencies need to maintain and publish a comprehensive data inventory of all data assets to help open data advocates identify key government information resources and transform them from documents and siloed databases into open data
…. (More)”.
For a more extensive discussion see: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States by Alex Howard.
It’s time for a Bill of Data Rights
Article by Martin Tisne: “…The proliferation of data in recent decades has led some reformers to a rallying cry: “You own your data!” Eric Posner of the University of Chicago, Eric Weyl of Microsoft Research, and virtual-reality guru Jaron Lanier, among others, argue that data should be treated as a possession. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and head of Facebook, says so as well. Facebook now says that you “own all of the contact and information you post on Facebook” and “can control how it is shared.” The Financial Times argues that “a key part of the answer lies in giving consumers ownership of their own personal data.” In a recent speech, Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, agreed, saying, “Companies should recognize that data belongs to users.”
This essay argues that “data ownership” is a flawed, counterproductive way of thinking about data. It not only does not fix existing problems; it creates new ones. Instead, we need a framework that gives people rights to stipulate how their data is used without requiring them to take ownership of it themselves
The notion of “ownership” is appealing because it suggests giving you power and control over your data. But owning and “renting” out data is a bad analogy. Control over how particular bits of data are used is only one problem among many. The real questions are questions about how data shapes society and individuals. Rachel’s story will show us why data rights are important and how they might work to protect not just Rachel as an individual, but society as a whole.
Tomorrow never knows
To see why data ownership is a flawed concept, first think about this article you’re reading. The very act of opening it on an electronic device created data—an entry in your browser’s history, cookies the website sent to your browser, an entry in the website’s server log to record a visit from your IP address. It’s virtually impossible to do anything online—reading, shopping, or even just going somewhere with an internet-connected phone in your pocket—without leaving a “digital shadow” behind. These shadows cannot be owned—the way you own, say, a bicycle—any more than can the ephemeral patches of shade that follow you around on sunny days.
Your data on its own is not very useful to a marketer or an insurer. Analyzed in conjunction with similar data from thousands of other people, however, it feeds algorithms and
Too Many Secrets? When Should the Intelligence Community be Allowed to Keep Secrets?
Ross W. Bellaby in Polity: “In recent years, revelations regarding reports of torture by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the quiet growth of the National Security Agency’s pervasive cyber-surveillance system have brought into doubt the level of trust afforded to the intelligence community. The question of its trustworthiness requires determining how much secrecy it should enjoy and what mechanisms should be employed to detect and prevent future abuse. My argument is not a call for complete transparency, however, as secret intelligence does play an important and ethical role in society. Rather, I argue that existing systems built on
Data scores
Data-scores.org: “Data scores that combine data from a variety of both online and offline activities are becoming a way to categorize citizens, allocating services, and predicting future behavior. Yet little is still known about the implementation of data-driven systems and algorithmic processes in public services and how citizens are increasingly ‘scored’ based on the collection and combination of data.
As part of our project ‘Data Scores as Governance’ we have developed a tool to map and investigate the uses of data analytics and algorithms in public services in the UK. This tool is designed to facilitate further research and investigation into this topic and to advance public knowledge and understanding.
The tool is made up of a collection of documents from different sources that can be searched and mapped according to different categories. The database consists of more than 5300 unverified documents that have been scraped based on a number of search terms relating to data systems in government. This is an incomplete and on-going data-set. You can read more in our Methodology section….(More)”.
Advancing Sustainability Together: Launching new report on citizen-generated data and its relevance for the SDGs
Danny Lämmerhirt at Open Knowledge Foundation: “Citizen-generated data (CGD) expands what gets measured, how, and for what purpose. As the collection and engagement with CGD increases in relevance and visibility, public institutions can learn from existing initiatives about what CGD initiatives do, how they enable different forms of sense-making and how this may further progress around the Sustainable Development Goals.
Our report, as well as a guide for governments (find the layouted version here, as well as a living document here) shall help start conversations around the different approaches of doing and organising CGD. When CGD becomes good enough depends on the purpose it is used for but also how CGD is situated in relation to other data.
As our work wishes to be illustrative rather than comprehensive, we started with a list of over 230 projects that were associated with the term “citizen-generated data” on Google Search, using an approach known as “search as research” (Rogers, 2013). Outgoing from this list, we developed case studies on a range of prominent CGD examples.
The report identifies several benefits CGD can bring for implementing and monitoring the SDGs, underlining the importance for public institutions to further support these initiatives.
Figure 1: Illustration of tasks underpinning CGD initiatives and their workflows
Key findings:
- Dealing with data is usually much more than ‘just producing’ data. CGD
initiativesopen up new types of relationships between individuals, civil society and public institutions. This includes local development and educational programmes, community outreach, and collaborative strategies for monitoring, auditing, planningand decision-making. - Generating data takes many shapes, from collecting new data in the
field, to compiling, annotating, and structuring existing data to enable new ways of seeing things through data. Accessing and working with existing (government) data is often an important enabling condition for CGD initiatives to start in the first place. - CGD initiatives can help
gathering data in regions otherwise not reachable. Some CGD approaches may provide updated and detailed data at lower costs and faster than official data collections. - Beyond filling data gaps, official measurements can be expanded, complemented, or cross-verified. This includes pattern and trend identification and the creation of baseline indicators for further research. CGD can help governments detect anomalies, test the accuracy of existing monitoring processes, understand the context around phenomena, and initiate its own follow-up data collections.
- CGD can inform several actions to achieve the SDGs. Beyond education, community engagement and community-based problem solving, this includes baseline research, planning
and strategy development, allocation and coordination of public and private programs, as well as improvement to public services. - CGD must be ‘good enough’ for different (and varying) purposes. Governments already develop pragmatic ways to negotiate and assess the usefulness of data for a specific task. CGD may be particularly useful when agencies have a clear remit or responsibility to manage a problem.
- Data quality can be comparable to official data collections, provided tasks are sufficiently easy to conduct, tool quality is high enough, and sufficient training, resources and quality assurance are provided
…. (More)”.
Innovations In The Fight Against Corruption In Latin America
Blog Post by Beth Noveck: “…The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) has published an important, practical and prescriptive report with recommendations for every sector of society from government to individuals on innovative and effective approaches to combatting corruption. While focused on Latin America, the report’s proposals, especially those on the application of new technology in the fight against corruption, are relevant around the world….
The recommendations about the use of new technologies, including big data, blockchain and collective intelligence, are drawn from an effort undertaken last year by the Governance Lab at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering to crowdsource such solutions and advice on how to implement them from a hundred global experts. (See the Smarter Crowdsourcing against Corruption report here.)…
Big data, when published as open data, namely in a form that can be re-used without legal or technical restriction and in a machine-readable format that computers can analyze, is another tool in the fight against corruption. With machine readable, big and open data, those outside of government can pinpoint and measure irregularities in government contracting, as Instituto Observ is doing in Brazil.
Opening up judicial data, such as information about case processing times, judges’ and prosecutors’ salaries, information about selection processes, such as CV’s, professional and academic backgrounds, and written and oral exam scores provides activists and reformers with the tools to fight judicial corruption. The Civil Association for Equality and Justice (ACIJ) (a non-profit advocacy group) in Argentina uses such open justice data in its Concursos Transparentes (Transparent Contests) to fight judicial corruption. Jusbrasil is a private open justice company also using open data to reform the courts in Brazil….(More)”
Making NHS data work for everyone
Reform: This report looks at the access and use of NHS data by private sector companies for research or product and service development purposes….
The private sector is an important partner to the NHS and plays a crucial role in the development of healthcare technologies that use data collected by hospitals or GP practices. It provides the skills and know-how to develop data-driven tools which can be used to improve patient care. However, this is not a one-sided exchange as the NHS makes the data available to build these tools and offers medical expertise to make sense of the data. This is known as the “value exchange”. Our research uncovered that there is a lack of clarity over what a fair value exchange looks like. This lack of clarity in conjunction with the lack of national guidance on the types of partnerships that could be developed has led to a patchwork on the ground….
Knowing what the “value exchange” is between patients, the NHS and industry allows for a more informed conversation about what constitutes a fair partnership when there is access to data to create a product or service
WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE?
- Engage with the public
- A national strategy
- Access to good quality data
- Commercial and legal skills…(More)
G20/OECD Compendium of good practices on the use of open data for Anti-corruption
OECD: “This compendium of good practices was prepared by the OECD at the request of the G20 Anti-corruption Working Group (ACWG), to raise awareness of the benefits of open data policies and initiatives in:
- fighting corruption,
- increasing public sector transparency and integrity,
- fostering economic development and social innovation.
This compendium provides an overview of initiatives for the publication and re-use of open data to fight corruption across OECD and G20 countries and underscores the impact that a digital transformation of the public sector can deliver in terms of better governance across policy areas. The practices illustrate the use of open data as a way of fighting corruption and show how open data principles can be translated into concrete initiatives.
The publication is divided into three sections:
Section 1 discusses the benefits of open data for greater public sector transparency and performance, national competitiveness and social engagement, and how these initiatives contribute to greater public trust in government.
Section 2 highlights the preconditions necessary across different policy areas related to anti-corruption (e.g. open government, public procurement) to sustain the implementation of an “Open by default” approach that could help government move from a perspective that focuses on increasing access to public sector information to one that enhances the publication of open government data for re-use and value co-creation.
Section 3 presents the results of the OECD survey administered across OECD and G20 countries, good practices on the publishing and reusing of open data for anti-corruption in G20 countries, and lessons learned from the definition and implementation of these initiatives. This chapter also discusses the implications for broader national matters such as freedom of press, and the involvement of key actors of the open data ecosystem (e.g. journalists and civil society organisations) as key partners in open data re-use for anti-corruption…(More)”.
Data Flow in the Smart City: Open Data Versus the Commons
Chapter by Richard Beckwith, John Sherry and David Prendergast in The Hackable City: “Much of the recent excitement around data, especially ‘Big Data,’ focuses on the potential commercial or economic value of data. How that data will affect people isn’t much discussed. People know that smart cities will deploy Internet-based monitoring and that flows of the collected data promise to produce new values. Less considered is that smart cities will be sites of new forms of citizen action—enabled by an ‘economy’ of data that will lead to new methods of collectivization, accountability, and control which, themselves, can provide both positive and negative values to the citizenry. Therefore, smart city design needs to consider not just measurement and publication of data but also the implications of city-wide deployment, data openness, and the possibility of unintended consequences if data leave the city….(More)”.