Saying yes to State Longitudinal Data Systems: building and maintaining cross agency relationships

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the National Skills Coalition: “In order to provide actionable information to stakeholders, state longitudinal data systems use administrative data that state agencies collect through administering programs. Thus, state longitudinal data systems must maintain strong working relationships with the state agencies collecting necessary administrative data. These state agencies can include K-12 and higher education agencies, workforce agencies, and those administering social service programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

When state longitudinal data systems have strong relationships with agencies, agencies willingly and promptly share their data with the system, engage with data governance when needed, approve research requests in a timely manner, and continue to cooperate with the system over the long term. If state agencies do not participate with their state’s longitudinal data system, the work of the system is put into jeopardy. States may find that research and performance reporting can be stalled or stopped outright.

Kentucky and Virginia have been able to build and maintain support for their systems among state agencies. Their example demonstrates how states can effectively utilize their state longitudinal data systems….(More)”.

Mapping the challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence for the conduct of diplomacy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

DiploFoundation: “This report provides an overview of the evolution of diplomacy in the context of artificial intelligence (AI). AI has emerged as a very hot topic on the international agenda impacting numerous aspects of our political, social, and economic lives. It is clear that AI will remain a permanent feature of international debates and will continue to shape societies and international relations.

It is impossible to ignore the challenges – and opportunities – AI is bringing to the diplomatic realm. Its relevance as a topic for diplomats and others working in international relations will only increase….(More)”.

The Internet of Humans (IoH): Human Rights and Co-Governance to Achieve Tech Justice in the City

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Christian Iaione, Elena de Nictolis and Anna Berti Suman: “Internet of Things, Internet of Everything and Internet of People are concepts suggesting that objects, devices and people will be increasingly interconnected through digital infrastructure that will generate a growing gathering of data. Parallel to this is the celebration of the smart city and sharing city as urban policy visions that by relying heavily on new technologies bear the promise of a efficient and thriving cities. Law and policy scholarship has either focused on questions related to privacy, discrimination, security or issues related to the production and use of big data, digital public services. Little or no attention in the literature has been paid to the disruptive impact of technological development on urban governance and city inhabitants’ rights of equal access, participation, management and even ownership, in order to understand whether and how technology can also enhance the protection of human rights and social justice in the city.

This article advances the proposal of complementing the technological and digital infrastructure with a legal and institutional infrastructure, the Internet of Humans, by construing and injecting in the legal and policy framework of the city the principle of Tech Justice. Building on the literature review on and from the analysis of selected case studies this article stresses the dichotomy existing between the market-based and the society-based applications of technology, the first likely to increase the digital divide and the challenges to human rights in the city, the latter bearing the promise to promote equal access to technology in the city. The main argument advanced by this paper is indeed that Tech Justice is an empirical dimension that can steer the developments of smart city and sharing city policies toward a more just and democratic city….(More)”.

Google’s Sidewalk Labs Plans to Package and Sell Location Data on Millions of Cellphones

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Ava Kofman at the Intercept: “Most of the data collected by urban planners is messy, complex, and difficult to represent. It looks nothing like the smooth graphs and clean charts of city life in urban simulator games like “SimCity.” A new initiative from Sidewalk Labs, the city-building subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has set out to change that.

The program, known as Replica, offers planning agencies the ability to model an entire city’s patterns of movement. Like “SimCity,” Replica’s “user-friendly” tool deploys statistical simulations to give a comprehensive view of how, when, and where people travel in urban areas. It’s an appealing prospect for planners making critical decisions about transportation and land use. In recent months, transportation authorities in Kansas City, Portland, and the Chicago area have signed up to glean its insights. The only catch: They’re not completely sure where the data is coming from.

Typical urban planners rely on processes like surveys and trip counters that are often time-consuming, labor-intensive, and outdated. Replica, instead, uses real-time mobile location data. As Nick Bowden of Sidewalk Labs has explained, “Replica provides a full set of baseline travel measures that are very difficult to gather and maintain today, including the total number of people on a highway or local street network, what mode they’re using (car, transit, bike, or foot), and their trip purpose (commuting to work, going shopping, heading to school).”

To make these measurements, the program gathers and de-identifies the location of cellphone users, which it obtains from unspecified third-party vendors. It then models this anonymized data in simulations — creating a synthetic population that faithfully replicates a city’s real-world patterns but that “obscures the real-world travel habits of individual people,” as Bowden told The Intercept.

The program comes at a time of growing unease with how tech companies use and share our personal data — and raises new questions about Google’s encroachment on the physical world….(More)”.

New Urban Centres Database sets new standards for information on cities at global scale

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

EU Science Hub: “Data analysis highlights very diverse development patterns and inequalities across cities and world regions.

Building on the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL), the new database provides more detailed information on the cities’ location and size as well as characteristics such as greenness, night time light emission, population size, the built-up areas exposed to natural hazards, and travel time to the capital city.

For several of these attributes, the database contains information recorded over time, dating as far back as 1975. 

Responding to a lack of consistent data, or data only limited to large cities, the Urban Centre Database now makes it possible to map, classify and count all human settlements in the world in a standardised way.

An analysis of the data reveals very different development patterns in the different parts of the world.

“The data shows that in the low-income countries, high population growth has resulted only into moderate increases in the built-up areas, while in the high-income countries, moderate population growth has resulted into very big increases in the built-up areas. In practice, cities have grown more in size in richer countries, with respect to poorer countries where the populations are growing faster”, said JRC researcher Thomas Kemper.

According to JRC scientists, around 75% of the global population now live in cities, towns or suburbs….

The City Centres Database provides new open data supporting the monitoring of UN Sustainable Development Goals, the UN’s New Urban Agenda and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.

The main findings based on the Urban Centre Database are summarised in a new edition of the Atlas of the Human Planet, published together with the database….(More)”.

Knowledge and Politics in Setting and Measuring SDGs

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Special Issue of Global Policy: “The papers in this special issue investigate the politics that shaped the SDGs, the setting of the goals, the selection of the measurement methods. The SDGs ushered in a new era of ‘governance by indicators’ in global development. Goal setting and the use of numeric performance indicators have now become the method for negotiating a consensus vision of development and priority objectives.  The choice of indicators is seemingly a technical issue, but measurement methods interprets and reinterprets norms, carry value judgements, theoretical assumptions, and implicit political agendas.  As social scientists have long pointed out, reliance on indicators can distort social norms, frame hegemonic discourses, and reinforce power hierarchies. 

The case studies in this collection show the open multi-stakeholder negotiations helped craft more transformative and ambitious goals.  But across many goals, there was slippage in ambition when targets and indicators were selected.  The papers also highlight how the increasing role of big data and other non-traditional sources of data is altering data production, dissemination and use, and fundamentally altering the epistemology of information and knowledge.  This raises questions about ‘data for whom and for what’ – fundamental issues concerning the power of data to shape knowledge, the democratic governance of SDG indicators and of knowledge for development overall.

Introduction

Knowledge and Politics in Setting and Measuring the SDGs – Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and Desmond McNeill 

Case Studies

The Contested Discourse of Sustainable Agriculture – Desmond McNeill 

Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: Feminist Mobilization for the SDGs – Gita Sen

The Many Meanings of Quality Education: Politics of Targets and Indicators in SDG4 – Elaine Unterhalter 

Power, Politics and Knowledge Claims: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in the SDG Era – Alicia Ely Yamin 

Keeping Out Extreme Inequality from The SDG Agenda – The Politics of Indicators – Sakiko Fukuda-Parr 

The Design of Environmental Priorities in the SDGs – Mark Elder and Simon Høiberg Olsen 

The Framing of Sustainable Consumption and Production in SDG 12  – Des Gasper, Amod Shah and Sunil Tankha 

Measuring Access to Justice: Transformation and Technicality in SDG 16.3. – Margaret L. Satterthwaite and Sukti Dhital 

Data Governance

The IHME in the Shifting Landscape of Global Health Metrics – Manjari Mahajan

The Big (data) Bang: Opportunities and Challenges for Compiling SDG Indicators – Steve MacFeely …(More)”

Survey: Majority of Americans Willing to Share Their Most Sensitive Personal Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Center for Data Innovation: “Most Americans (58 percent) are willing to allow third parties to collect at least some sensitive personal data, according to a new survey from the Center for Data Innovation.

While many surveys measure public opinions on privacy, few ask consumers about their willingness to make tradeoffs, such as sharing certain personal information in exchange for services or benefits they want. In this survey, the Center asked respondents whether they would allow a mobile app to collect their biometrics or location data for purposes such as making it easier to sign into an account or getting free navigational help, and it asked whether they would allow medical researchers to collect sensitive data about their health if it would lead to medical cures for their families or others. Only one-third of respondents (33 percent) were unwilling to let mobile apps collect either their biometrics or location data under any of the described scenarios. And overall, nearly 6 in 10 respondents (58 percent) were willing to let a third party collect at least one piece of sensitive personal data, such as biometric, location, or medical data, in exchange for a service or benefit….(More)”.

How Data Sharing Can Improve Frontline Worker Development

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Digital Promise: “Frontline workers, or the workers who interact directly with customers and provide services in industries like retail, healthcare, food service, and hospitality, help make up the backbone of today’s workforce.

However, frontline workforce talent development presents numerous challenges. Frontline workers may not be receiving the education and training they need to advance in their careers and sustain gainful employment. They also likely do not have access to data regarding their own skills and learning, and do not know what skills employers seek in quality workers.

Today, Digital Promise, a nonprofit authorized by Congress to support comprehensive research and development of programs to advance innovation in education, launched “Tapping Data for Frontline Talent Development,” a new, interactive report that shares how the seamless and secure sharing of data is key to creating more effective learning and career pathways for frontline service workers.

The research revealed that the current learning ecosystem that serves frontline workers—which includes stakeholders like education and training providers, funders, and employers—is complex, siloed, and removes agency from the worker.

Although many data types are collected, in today’s system much of the data is duplicative and rarely used to inform impact and long-term outcomes. The processes and systems in the ecosystem do not support the flow of data between stakeholders or frontline workers.

And yet, data sharing systems and collaborations are beginning to emerge as providers, funders, and employers recognize the power in data-driven decision-making and the benefits to data sharing. Not only can data sharing help to improve programs and services, it can create more personalized interventions for education providers supporting frontline workers, and it can also improve talent pipelines for employers.

In addition to providing three case studies with valuable examples of employers, a community, and a state focused on driving change based on data, this new report identifies key recommendations that have the potential to move the current system toward a more data-driven, collaborative, worker-centered learning ecosystem, including:

  1. Creating awareness and demand among stakeholders
  2. Ensuring equity and inclusion for workers/learners through access and awareness
  3. Creating data sharing resources
  4. Advocating for data standards
  5. Advocating for policies and incentives
  6. Spurring the creation of technology systems that enable data sharing/interoperability

We invite you to read our new report today for more information, and sign up for updates on this important work….(More)”

Research Handbook on Human Rights and Digital Technology

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Ben Wagner, Matthias C. Kettemann and Kilian Vieth: “In a digitally connected world, the question of how to respect, protect and implement human rights has become unavoidable. This contemporary Research Handbook offers new insights into well-established debates by framing them in terms of human rights. It examines the issues posed by the management of key Internet resources, the governance of its architecture, the role of different stakeholders, the legitimacy of rule making and rule-enforcement, and the exercise of international public authority over users. Highly interdisciplinary, its contributions draw on law, political science, international relations and even computer science and science and technology studies…(More)”.

Contracts for Data Collaboration

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The GovLab: “The road to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals is complex and challenging. Policymakers around the world need both new solutions and new ways to become more innovative. This includes evidence-based policy and program design, as well as improved monitoring of progress made.

Unlocking privately processed data through data collaboratives — a new form of public-private partnership in which private industry, government and civil society work together to release previously siloed data — has become essential to address the challenges of our era.

Yet while research has proven its promise and value, several barriers to scaling data collaboration exist.

Ensuring trust and shared responsibility in how the data will be handled and used proves particularly challenging, because of the high transaction costs involved in drafting contracts and agreements of sharing.

Ensuring Trust in Data Collaboration

The goal of the Contracts for Data Collaboration (C4DC) initiative is to address the inefficiencies of developing contractual agreements for public-private data collaboration.

The intent is to inform and guide those seeking to establish a data collaborative by developing and making available a shared repository of contractual clauses (taken from existing data sharing agreements) that covers a host of issues, including (non –exclusive):

  • The provenance, quality and purpose of data;
  • Security and privacy concerns;
  • Roles and responsibilities of participants;
  • Access provisions; and use limitations;
  • Governance mechanisms;
  • Other contextual mechanisms

In addition to the searchable library of contractual clauses, the repository will house use cases, guides and other information that analyse common patterns, language and best practices.

Help Us Scale Data Collaboration

Contracts for Data Collaboration builds on efforts from member organizations that have experience in developing and managing data collaboratives; and have documented the legal challenges and opportunities of data collaboration.

The initiative is an open collaborative with charter members from the GovLab at NYU, UN SDSN Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS), University of Washington and the World Economic Forum.

Organizations interested in joining the initiative should contact the individuals noted below; or share any agreements they have used for data sharing activities (without any sensitive or identifiable information): Stefaan Verhulst, GovLab ([email protected]) …(More)