Blockchain helps refugees gain access to financial services

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “…Blockchain has also lead to huge steps forward in this sector, enabling greater transparency for consumers in the food industry. This latest innovation could also combine both worlds in using blockchain to take back control of personal data.

Gravity Earth seeks to provide equal access and opportunity to digital IDs, a growing necessity in the modern world. Digital identities allow access to key financial services, mobile communication, and other online benefits. At the moment, Gravity Earth estimates that around 1.5 billion people across the globe do not have an official proof of identity.

The Nairobi-based startup sought to change this by allowing anyone to create a secure, self-sovereign digital ID based on their personal data. The blockchain-based process can be done wherever you are and on any mobile device. Their solution allows currently disadvantaged people to store and share personal data with whoever they want. In so doing, it also allows users to build on existing traditional IDs, but does not depend on them.

The products is currently close to its first deployment at a refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya. Gravity Earth will use it to track attendance at three refugee schools. In the future, the startup is also looking to work closely with more refugee-orientated NGOs…(More)”

See also: Field Report On the Emergent Use of Distributed Ledger Technologies for Identity Management

Understanding Smart Cities: Innovation ecosystems, technological advancements, and societal challenges

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction of Special Issue of Technological Forecasting and Social Change by Francesco PaoloAppio, MarcosLima, and Sotirios Paroutis: “Smart Cities initiatives are spreading all around the globe at a phenomenal pace. Their bold ambition is to increase the competitiveness of local communities through innovation while increasing the quality of life for its citizens through better public services and a cleaner environment. Prior research has shown contrasting views and a multitude of dimensions and approaches to look at this phenomenon. In spite of the fact that this can stimulate the debate, it lacks a systematic assessment and an integrative view. The papers in the special issue on “Understanding Smart Cities: Innovation Ecosystems, Technological Advancements, and Societal Challenges” take stock of past work and provide new insights through the lenses of a hybrid framework. Moving from these premises, we offer an overview of the topic by featuring possible linkages and thematic clusters. Then, we sketch a novel research agenda for scholars, practitioners, and policy makers who wish to engage in – and build – a critical, constructive, and conducive discourse on Smart Cities….(More)”.

Congress passes ‘Open Government Data Act’ to make open data part of the US Code

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

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.

The Datafication of Employment

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Sam Adler-Bell and Michelle Miller at the Century Foundation: “We live in a surveillance society. Our every preference, inquiry, whim, desire, relationship, and fear can be seen, recorded, and monetized by thousands of prying corporate eyes. Researchers and policymakers are only just beginning to map the contours of this new economy—and reckon with its implications for equity, democracy, freedom, power, and autonomy.

For consumers, the digital age presents a devil’s bargain: in exchange for basically unfettered access to our personal data, massive corporations like Amazon, Google, and Facebook give us unprecedented connectivity, convenience, personalization, and innovation. Scholars have exposed the dangers and illusions of this bargain: the corrosion of personal liberty, the accumulation of monopoly power, the threat of digital redlining,1 predatory ad-targeting,2 and the reification of class and racial stratification.3 But less well understood is the way data—its collection, aggregation, and use—is changing the balance of power in the workplace.

This report offers some preliminary research and observations on what we call the “datafication of employment.” Our thesis is that data-mining techniques innovated in the consumer realm have moved into the workplace. Firms who’ve made a fortune selling and speculating on data acquired from consumers in the digital economy are now increasingly doing the same with data generated by workers. Not only does this corporate surveillance enable a pernicious form of rent-seeking—in which companies generate huge profits by packaging and selling worker data in marketplace hidden from workers’ eyes—but also, it opens the door to an extreme informational asymmetry in the workplace that threatens to give employers nearly total control over every aspect of employment.

The report begins with an explanation of how a regime of ubiquitous consumer surveillance came about, and how it morphed into worker surveillance and the datafication of employment. The report then offers principles for action for policymakers and advocates seeking to respond to the harmful effects of this new surveillance economy. The final sections concludes with a look forward at where the surveillance economy is going, and how researchers, labor organizers, and privacy advocates should prepare for this changing landscape….(More)”

Selling Smartness: Corporate Narratives and the Smart City as a Sociotechnical Imaginary

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jathan Sadowski and Roy Bendor in Science, Technology and Human Values: “This article argues for engaging with the smart city as a sociotechnical imaginary. By conducting a close reading of primary source material produced by the companies IBM and Cisco over a decade of work on smart urbanism, we argue that the smart city imaginary is premised in a particular narrative about urban crises and technological salvation. This narrative serves three main purposes: (1) it fits different ideas and initiatives into a coherent view of smart urbanism, (2) it sells and disseminates this version of smartness, and (3) it crowds out alternative visions and corresponding arrangements of smart urbanism.

Furthermore, we argue that IBM and Cisco construct smart urbanism as both a reactionary and visionary force, plotting a model of the near future, but one that largely reflects and reinforces existing sociopolitical systems. We conclude by suggesting that breaking IBM’s and Cisco’s discursive dominance over the smart city imaginary requires us to reimagine what smart urbanism means and create counter-narratives that open up space for alternative values, designs, and models….(More)”.

It’s time for a Bill of Data Rights

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

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 bucketizes you (e.g., “heavy smoker with a drink habit” or “healthy runner, always on time”). If an algorithm is unfair—if, for example, it wrongly classifies you as a health risk because it was trained on a skewed data set or simply because you’re an outlier—then letting you “own” your data won’t make it fair. The only way to avoid being affected by the algorithm would be to never, ever give anyone access to your data. But even if you tried to hoard data that pertains to you, corporations and governments with access to large amounts of data about other people could use that data to make inferences about you. Data is not a neutral impression of reality. The creation and consumption of data reflects how power is distributed in society. …(More)”.

Seven design principles for using blockchain for social impact

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Stefaan Verhulst at Apolitical: “2018 will probably be remembered as the bust of the blockchain hype. Yet even as crypto currencies continue to sink in value and popular interest, the potential of using blockchain technologies to achieve social ends remains important to consider but poorly understood.

In 2019, business will continue to explore blockchain for sectors as disparate as finance, agriculture, logistics and healthcare. Policymakers and social innovators should also leverage 2019 to become more sophisticated about blockchain’s real promise, limitations  and current practice.

In a recent report I prepared with Andrew Young, with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, we looked at the potential risks and challenges of using blockchain for social change — or “Blockchan.ge.” A number of implementations and platforms are already demonstrating potential social impact.

The technology is now being used to address issues as varied as homelessness in New York City, the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar and government corruption around the world.

In an illustration of the breadth of current experimentation, Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation recently analysed and mapped nearly 200 organisations and projects trying to create positive social change using blockchain. Likewise, the GovLab is developing a mapping of blockchange implementations across regions and topic areas; it currently contains 60 entries.

All these examples provide impressive — and hopeful — proof of concept. Yet despite the very clear potential of blockchain, there has been little systematic analysis. For what types of social impact is it best suited? Under what conditions is it most likely to lead to real social change? What challenges does blockchain face, what risks does it pose and how should these be confronted and mitigated?

These are just some of the questions our report, which builds its analysis on 10 case studies assembled through original research, seeks to address.

While the report is focused on identity management, it contains a number of lessons and insights that are applicable more generally to the subject of blockchange.

In particular, it contains seven design principles that can guide individuals or organisations considering the use of blockchain for social impact. We call these the Genesis principles, and they are outlined at the end of this article…(More)”.

Too Many Secrets? When Should the Intelligence Community be Allowed to Keep Secrets?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

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 a prioritization of democratic assumptions are fundamentally ill-equipped for dealing with the particular challenge of intelligence secrecy. As the necessary circle of secrecy is extended, political actors are insulated from the very public gaze that ensures they are working in line with the political community’s best interests. Therefore, a new framework needs to be developed, one that this article argues should be based on the just war tradition, where the principles of just cause, legitimate authority, last resort, proportionality, and discrimination are able to balance the secrecy that the intelligence community needs in order to detect and prevent threats with the harm that too much or incorrect secrecy can cause to people….(More)”.

Data scores

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

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)”.

A Grand Challenges-Based Research Agenda for Scholarly Communication and Information Science

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Micah Altman and Chris Bourg: “…The overarching question these problems pose is how to create a global scholarly knowledge ecosystem that supports participation, ensures agency, equitable access, trustworthiness, integrity, and is legally, economically, institutionally, technically, and socially sustainable. The aim of the Grand Challenges Summit and this report is to identify broad research areas and questions to be explored in order to provide an evidence base from which to answer specific aspects of that broad question.

Reaching this future state requires exploring a set of interrelated anthropological, behavioral, computational, economic, legal, policy, organizational, sociological, and technological areas. The extent of these areas of research is illustrated by the following exemplars:

What is necessary to develop coherent, comprehensive, and empirically testable theories of the value of scholarly knowledge to society? What is the best current evidence of this value, and what does it elide? How should the measures of use and utility of scholarly outputs be adapted for different communities of use, disciplines, theories, and cultures? What methods will improve our predictions of the future value of collections of information, or enable the selection and construction of collections that will be likely to be of value in the future?…

What parts of the scholarly knowledge ecosystem promote the values of transparency, individual agency, participation, accountability, and fairness? How can these values be reflected in the algorithms, information architecture, and technological systems supporting the scholarly knowledge ecosystem? What principles of design and governance would be effective for embedding these values?…

The list above provides a partial outline of research areas that will need to be addressed in order to overcome the major barriers to a better future for scholarly communication and information science. As the field progresses in exploring these areas, and attempting to address the barriers is discussed, new areas are likely to be identified. Even within this initial list of research areas, there are many pressing questions ripe for exploration….

Research on open scholarship solutions is needed to assess the scale and breadth of access,[68] the costs to actors and stakeholders at all levels, and the effects of openness on perceptions of trust and confidence in research and research organizations. Research is also needed in the intersection between open scholarship and participation, new forms of scholarship, information integrity, information durability, and information agency (see section 3.1.). This will require an assessment of the costs and returns of open scholarship at a systemic level, rather than at the level of individual institutions or actors. We also need to assess whether and under what conditions interventions directed at removing reputation and institutional barriers to collaboration promote open scholarship. Research is likewise required to document the conditions under which open scholarship reduces duplication and inefficiency, and promotes equity in the creation and use of knowledge. In addition, research should address the permeability of open scholarship systems to researchers across multiple scientific fields, and whether—and under what conditions—open scholarship enhances interdisciplinary collaboration….(More)”.