Access to Public Information, Open Data, and Personal Data Protection: How do they dialogue with each other?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Open Data Charter and Civic Compass: “In this study, we aim to examine data protection policies in the European Union and Latin America juxtaposed with initiatives concerning open government data and access to public information. We analyse the regulatory landscape, international rankings, and commitments about each right in four countries from each region to achieve this. Additionally, we explore how these institutions interact with one another, considering their respective stances while delving into existing tensions and exploring possibilities for achieving a balanced approach…(More)”.

AI-enabled Peacekeeping Tech for the Digital Age

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “There are countless organisations and government agencies working to resolve conflicts around the globe, but they often lack the tools to know if they are making the right decisions. Project Didi is developing those technological tools – helping peacemakers plan appropriately and understand the impact of their actions in real time.

Project Didi Co-founder and CCO Gabe Freund explained to Springwise that the project uses machine learning, big data, and AI to analyse conflicts and “establish a new standard for best practice when it comes to decision-making in the world of peacebuilding.”

In essence, the company is attempting to analyse the many factors that are involved in conflict in order to identify a ‘ripe moment’ when both parties will be willing to negotiate for peace. The tools can track the impact and effect of all actors across a conflict. This allows them to identify and create connections between organisations and people who are doing similar work, amplifying their effects…(More)” See also: Project Didi (Kluz Prize)

Defining AI incidents and related terms

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “As AI use grows, so do its benefits and risks. These risks can lead to actual harms (“AI incidents”) or potential dangers (“AI hazards”). Clear definitions are essential for managing and preventing these risks. This report proposes definitions for AI incidents and related terms. These definitions aim to foster international interoperability while providing flexibility for jurisdictions to determine the scope of AI incidents and hazards they wish to address…(More)”.

On the Meaning of Community Consent in a Biorepository Context

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Astha Kapoor, Samuel Moore, and Megan Doerr: “Biorepositories, vital for medical research, collect and store human biological samples and associated data for future use. However, our reliance solely on the individual consent of data contributors for biorepository data governance is becoming inadequate. Big data analysis focuses on large-scale behaviors and patterns, shifting focus from singular data points to identifying data “journeys” relevant to a collective. The individual becomes a small part of the analysis, with the harms and benefits emanating from the data occurring at an aggregated level.

Community refers to a particular qualitative aspect of a group of people that is not well captured by quantitative measures in biorepositories. This is not an excuse to dodge the question of how to account for communities in a biorepository context; rather, it shows that a framework is needed for defining different types of community that may be approached from a biorepository perspective. 

Engaging with communities in biorepository governance presents several challenges. Moving away from a purely individualized understanding of governance towards a more collectivizing approach necessitates an appreciation of the messiness of group identity, its ephemerality, and the conflicts entailed therein. So while community implies a certain degree of homogeneity (i.e., that all members of a community share something in common), it is important to understand that people can simultaneously consider themselves a member of a community while disagreeing with many of its members, the values the community holds, or the positions for which it advocates. The complex nature of community participation therefore requires proper treatment for it to be useful in a biorepository governance context…(More)”.

Building a trauma-informed algorithmic assessment toolkit

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Suvradip Maitra, Lyndal Sleep, Suzanna Fay, Paul Henman: “Artificial intelligence (AI) and automated processes provide considerable promise to enhance human wellbeing by fully automating or co-producing services with human service providers. Concurrently, if not well considered, automation also provides ways in which to generate harms at scale and speed. To address this challenge, much discussion to date has focused on principles of ethical AI and accountable algorithms with a groundswell of early work seeking to translate these into practical frameworks and processes to ensure such principles are enacted. AI risk assessment frameworks to detect and evaluate possible harms is one dominant approach, as are a growing body of AI audit frameworks, with concomitant emerging governmental and organisational regulatory settings, and associate professionals.

The research outlined in this report took a different approach. Building on work in social services on trauma-informed practice, researchers identified key principles and a practical framework that framed AI design, development and deployment as a reflective, constructive exercise that resulting in algorithmic supported services to be cognisant and inclusive of the diversity of human experience, and particularly those who have experienced trauma. This study resulted in a practical, co-designed, piloted Trauma Informed Algorithmic Assessment Toolkit.

This Toolkit has been designed to assist organisations in their use of automation in service delivery at any stage of their automation journey: ideation; design; development; piloting; deployment or evaluation. While of particular use for social service organisations working with people who may have experienced past trauma, the tool will be beneficial for any organisation wanting to ensure safe, responsible and ethical use of automation and AI…(More)”.

Predicting hotspots of unsheltered homelessness using geospatial administrative data and volunteered geographic information

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jessie Chien, Benjamin F. Henwood, Patricia St. Clair, Stephanie Kwack, and Randall Kuhn: “Unsheltered homelessness is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon in major cities that is associated with adverse health and mortality outcomes. This creates a need for spatial estimates of population denominators for resource allocation and epidemiological studies. Gaps in the timeliness, coverage, and spatial specificity of official Point-in-Time Counts of unsheltered homelessness suggest a role for geospatial data from alternative sources to provide interim, neighborhood-level estimates of counts and trends. We use citizen-generated data from homeless-related 311 requests, provider-based administrative data from homeless street outreach cases, and expert reports of unsheltered count to predict count and emerging hotspots of unsheltered homelessness in census tracts across the City of Los Angeles for 2019 and 2020. Our study shows that alternative data sources can contribute timely insights into the state of unsheltered homelessness throughout the year and inform the delivery of interventions to this vulnerable population…(More)”.

Data governance for the ecological transition: An infrastructure perspective

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Charlotte Ducuing: “This article uses infrastructure studies to provide a critical analysis of the European Union’s (EU) ambition to regulate data for the ecological transition. The EU’s regulatory project implicitly qualifies data as an infrastructure for a better economy and society. However, current EU law does not draw all the logical consequences derived from this qualification of data as infrastructure, which is one main reason why EU data legislation for the ecological transition may not deliver on its high political expectations. The ecological transition does not play a significant normative role in EU data legislation and is largely overlooked in the data governance literature. By drawing inferences from the qualification of data as an infrastructure more consistently, the article opens avenues for data governance that centre the ecological transition as a normative goal…(More)”.

AI for social good: Improving lives and protecting the planet

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

McKinsey Report: “…Challenges in scaling AI for social-good initiatives are persistent and tough. Seventy-two percent of the respondents to our expert survey observed that most efforts to deploy AI for social good to date have focused on research and innovation rather than adoption and scaling. Fifty-five percent of grants for AI research and deployment across the SDGs are $250,000 or smaller, which is consistent with a focus on targeted research or smaller-scale deployment, rather than large-scale expansion. Aside from funding, the biggest barriers to scaling AI continue to be data availability, accessibility, and quality; AI talent availability and accessibility; organizational receptiveness; and change management. More on these topics can be found in the full report.

While overcoming these challenges, organizations should also be aware of strategies to address the range of risks, including inaccurate outputs, biases embedded in the underlying training data, the potential for large-scale misinformation, and malicious influence on politics and personal well-being. As we have noted in multiple recent articles, AI tools and techniques can be misused, even if the tools were originally designed for social good. Experts identified the top risks as impaired fairness, malicious use, and privacy and security concerns, followed by explainability (Exhibit 2). Respondents from not-for-profits expressed relatively more concern about misinformation, talent issues such as job displacement, and effects of AI on economic stability compared with their counterparts at for-profits, who were more often concerned with IP infringement…(More)”

Data Stewardship: The Way Forward in the New Digital Data Landscape

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Courtney Cameron: “…It is absolutely critical that Statistics Canada, as a national statistical office (NSO) and public service organization, along with other government agencies and services, adapt to the new data ecosystem and digital landscape. Canada is falling behind in adjusting to rapid digitalization, exploding data volumes, the ever-increasing digital market monopolization by private companies, foreign data harvesting, and in managing the risks associated with data sharing or reuse. If Statistics Canada and the federal public service are to keep up with private companies or foreign powers in this digital data context, and to continue to provide useful insights and services for Canadians, concerns of data digitalization, data interoperability and data security must be addressed through effective data stewardship.

However, it is not sufficient to have data stewards responsible for data: as data governance expert David Plotkin argues in Data Stewardship: An Actionable Guide to Effective Data Management and Data Governance, government departments must also consult these stewards on decisions about the data that they steward, if they are to ensure that decisions are made in the best interests of those who get value from the information. Frameworks, policies and procedures are needed to ensure this, as is having a steward involved in the processes as they occur. Plotkin also writes that data stewardship involvement needs to be integrated into enterprise processes, such as in project management and systems development methodologies. Data stewardship and data governance principles must be accepted as a part of the corporate culture, and stewardship leaders need to advise, drive and support this shift.

Finally, stewardship goes beyond sound data management and standards: it is important to be mindful of the role of an NSO. Public acceptability and trust are of vital importance. Social licence, or acceptability, and public engagement are necessary for NSOs to be able to perform their duties. These are achieved through practising data stewardship and adhering to the principles of open data, as well as by ensuring transparent processes, confidentiality and security, and by communicating the value of citizens’ sharing their data…With the rapidly accelerating proliferation of data and the increasing demand for, and potential of, data sharing and collaboration, NSOs and public governance organizations alike need to reimagine data stewardship as a function and role encompassing a wider range of purposes and responsibilities…(More)”. See also: Data Stewards — Drafting the Job Specs for A Re-imagined Data Stewardship Role

Groups want N.Y. to disaggregate data of Middle Eastern, North African individuals

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Luke Parsnow: “A group of organizations are pushing for New York lawmakers to pass a bill that would disaggregate data of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) individuals, according to a letter sent Monday.

The bill (S6584-B/A6219-A) would direct every state agency, board, department and commission that collects demographic data to use separate categories to collect data for the “White” and “Middle Eastern or North African” groups.

“Our organizations have seen firsthand the impact of the systemic exclusion of Middle Eastern and North African communities from data collection,” the letter reads. “Our communities do not perceive themselves to be white and are not perceived to be white. We also experience various disparities compared to non-Hispanic whites that go unseen because of the lack of data.”

The group says those communities categorized as “White” hinders those communities in education, employment, housing, health care and political representation.

“Miscategorizing a New Yorker’s race is not only offensive, but has real-world impacts on services and resources my particular communities receive,” Senate Deputy Leader Michael Gianaris said in a statement. “It should be obvious that people from the Middle East or North Africa are not white, yet that is how our laws define them.”

Gianaris said the legislation would give many New Yorkers better representation and a more powerful voice.

“The lack of a MENA category has hindered our understanding of the needs of MENA communities and our ability to consider those needs in decision-making and resource allocation,” according to the letter…(More)”.