Matthew S Mayernik at Big Data and Society: “The movements by national governments, funding agencies, universities, and research communities toward “open data” face many difficult challenges. In high-level visions of open data, researchers’ data and metadata practices are expected to be robust and structured. The integration of the internet into scientific institutions amplifies these expectations. When examined critically, however, the data and metadata practices of scholarly researchers often appear incomplete or deficient. The concepts of “accountability” and “transparency” provide insight in understanding these perceived gaps. Researchers’ primary accountabilities are related to meeting the expectations of research competency, not to external standards of data deposition or metadata creation. Likewise, making data open in a transparent way can involve a significant investment of time and resources with no obvious benefits. This paper uses differing notions of accountability and transparency to conceptualize “open data” as the result of ongoing achievements, not one-time acts….(More)”.
Justice in Algorithmic Robes
Editorial by Joseph Savirimuthu of a Special Issue of the International Review of Law, Computers & Technology: “The role and impact of algorithms has attracted considerable interest in the media. Its impact is already being reflected in adjustments made in a number of sectors – entertainment, travel, transport, cities and financial services. From an innovation point of view, algorithms enable new knowledge to be created and identify solutions to problems. The emergence of smart sensing technologies, 3D printing, automated systems and robotics is seamlessly being interwoven into discourses such as ‘the collaborative economy’, ‘governance by platforms’ and ‘empowerment’. Innovations such as body worn cameras, fitness trackers, 3D printing, smart meters, robotics and Big Data hold out the promise of a new algorithmic future. However, the shift in focus from natural and scarce resources towards information also makes individuals the objects and the mediated construction of access and knowledge infrastructures now provide the conditions for harnessing value from data. The increasing role of algorithms in environments mediated by technology also coincide with growing inter-disciplinary scholarship voicing concerns about the vulnerability of the values we associate with fundamental freedoms and how these are being algorithmically reconfigured or dismantled in a systematic manner. The themed issue, Justice in Algorithmic Robes, is intended to initiate a dialogue on both the challenges and opportunities as digitalization ushers in a period of transformation that has no immediate parallels in terms of scale, speed and reach. The articles provide different perspectives to the transformation taking place in the digital environment. The contributors offer an inter-disciplinary view of how the digital economy is being invigorated and evaluate the regulatory responses – in particular, how these transformations interact with law. The different spheres covered in Justice in Algorithmic Robes – the relations between the State and individuals, autonomous technology, designing human–computer interactions, infrastructures of trust, accountability in the age of Big Data, and health and wearables – not only reveal the problem of defining spheres of economic, political and social activity, but also highlight how these contexts evolve into structures for dominance, power and control. Re-imagining the role of law does not mean that technology is the problem but the central idea from the contributions is that how we critically interpret and construct Justice in Algorithmic Robes is probably the first step we must take, always mindful of the fact that law may actually reinforce power structures….(Full Issue)”.
Data and the City
Book edited by Rob Kitchin, Tracey P. Lauriault, and Gavin McArdle: “There is a long history of governments, businesses, science and citizens producing and utilizing data in order to monitor, regulate, profit from and make sense of the urban world. Recently, we have entered the age of big data, and now many aspects of everyday urban life are being captured as data and city management is mediated through data-driven technologies.
Data and the City is the first edited collection to provide an interdisciplinary analysis of how this new era of urban big data is reshaping how we come to know and govern cities, and the implications of such a transformation. This book looks at the creation of real-time cities and data-driven urbanism and considers the relationships at play. By taking a philosophical, political, practical and technical approach to urban data, the authors analyse the ways in which data is produced and framed within socio-technical systems. They then examine the constellation of existing and emerging urban data technologies. The volume concludes by considering the social and political ramifications of data-driven urbanism, questioning whom it serves and for what ends.
This book, the companion volume to 2016’s Code and the City, offers the first critical reflection on the relationship between data, data practices and the city, and how we come to know and understand cities through data. It will be crucial reading for those who wish to understand and conceptualize urban big data, data-driven urbanism and the development of smart cities….(More)”
The Prospects & Limits of Deliberative Democracy
Introduction by James S. Fishkin and Jane Mansbridge of Special Issue of Daedalus: “Democracy is under siege. Approval ratings for democratic institutions in most countries around the world are at near-record lows. The number of recognized democratic countries in the world is no longer expanding after the so-called Third Wave of democratic transitions. Indeed, there is something of a “democratic recession.” Further, some apparently democratic countries with competitive elections are undermining elements of liberal democracy: the rights and liberties that ensure freedom of thought and expression, protection of the rule of law, and all the protections for the substructure of civil society that may be as important for making democracy work as the electoral process itself. The model of party competition-based democracy – the principal model of democracy in the modern era – seems under threat.
That model also has competition. What might be called “meritocratic authoritarianism,” a model in which regimes with flawed democratic processes nevertheless provide good governance, is attracting attention and some support. Singapore is the only successful extant example, although some suggest China as another nation moving in this direction. Singapore is not a Western-style party- and competition-based democracy, but it is well-known for its competent civil servants schooled in making decisions on a cost-benefit basis to solve public problems, with the goals set by elite consultation with input from elections rather than by party competition.
Public discontent makes further difficulties for the competitive model. Democracies around the world struggle with the apparent gulf between political elites who are widely distrusted and mobilized citizens who fuel populism with the energy of angry voices. Disillusioned citizens turning against elites have produced unexpected election results, including the Brexit decision and the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The competitive elections and referenda of most current democracies depend on mobilizing millions of voters within a context of advertising, social media, and efforts to manipulate as well as inform public opinion. Competing teams want to win and, in most cases, are interested in informing voters only when it is to their advantage. The rationale for competitive democracy, most influentially developed by the late economist Joseph Schumpeter, held that the same techniques of advertising used in the commercial sphere to get people to buy products can be expected in the political sphere. On this view, we should not expect a “genuine” public will, but rather “a manufactured will” that is just a by-product of political competition.
Yet the ideal of democracy as the rule of “the people” is deeply undermined when the will of the people is in large part manufactured. The legitimacy of democracy depends on some real link between the public will and the public policies and office-holders who are selected. Although some have criticized this “folk theory of democracy” as empirically naive, its very status as a folk theory reflects how widespread this normative expectation is.5 To the extent that leaders manufacture the public will, the normative causal arrow goes in the wrong direction. If current democracies cannot produce meaningful processes of public will formation, the legitimacy claims of meritocratic autocracies or even more fully autocratic systems become comparatively stronger.
Over the last two decades, another approach to democracy has become increasingly prominent. Based on greater deliberation among the public and its representatives, deliberative democracy has the potential, at least in theory, to respond to today’s current challenges. If the many versions of a more deliberative democracy live up to their aspirations, they could help revive democratic legitimacy, provide for more authentic public will formation, provide a middle ground between widely mistrusted elites and the angry voices of populism, and help fulfill some of our common normative expectations about democracy.
Can this potential be realized? In what ways and to what extent? Deliberative democracy has created a rich literature in both theory and practice. This issue of Dædalus assesses both its prospects and limits. We include advocates as well as critics. As deliberative democrats, our aim is to stimulate public deliberation about deliberative democracy, weighing arguments for and against its application in different contexts and for different purposes.
How can deliberative democracy, if it were to work as envisaged by its supporters, respond to the challenges just sketched? First, if the more-deliberative institutions that many advocate can be applied to real decisions in actual ongoing democracies, arguably they could have a positive effect on legitimacy and lead to better governance. They could make a better connection between the public’s real concerns and how they are governed. Second, these institutions could help fill the gap between distrusted elites and angry populists. Elites are distrusted in part because they seem and often are unresponsive to the public’s concerns, hopes, and values. Perhaps, the suspicion arises, the elites are really out for themselves. On the other hand, populism stirs up angry, mostly nondeliberative voices that can be mobilized in plebescitary campaigns, whether for Brexit or for elected office. In their contributions to this issue, both Claus Offe and Hélène Landemore explore the crisis of legitimacy in representative government, including the clash between status quo – oriented elites and populism. Deliberative democratic methods open up the prospect of prescriptions that are both representative of the entire population and based on sober, evidence-based analysis of the merits of competing arguments. Popular deliberative institutions are grounded in the public’s values and concerns, so the voice they magnify is not the voice of the elites. But that voice is usually also, after deliberation, more evidence-based and reflective of the merits of the major policy arguments. Hence these institutions fill an important gap.
How might popular deliberative democracy, if it were to work as envisaged by its supporters, fulfill normative expectations of democracy, thought to be unrealistic by critics of the “folk theory”? The issue turns on the empirical possibility that the public can actually deliberate. Can the people weigh the trade-offs? Can they assess competing arguments? Can they connect their deliberations with their voting preferences or other expressions of preference about what should be done? Is the problem that the people are not competent, or that they are not in the right institutional context to be effectively motivated to participate? These are empirical questions, and the controversies about them are part of our dialogue.
This issue includes varying definitions, approaches, and contexts. The root notion is that deliberation requires “weighing” competing arguments for policies or candidates in a context of mutually civil and diverse discussion in which people can decide on the merits of arguments with good information. Is such a thing possible in an era of fake news, social media, and public discussions largely among the like-minded? These are some of the challenges facing those who might try to make deliberative democracy practical….(More)”
Local Government in China Trials Blockchain for Public Services
Wolfie Zhao at Coin Desk: “A city district in southern China is using blockchain to streamline government services for its one million residents.
Chan Cheng District, within Foshan City in Canton province, announced during an event on 23rd June the launch of a platform called Intelligent Multifunctional Identity (IMI) that lets registered local residents avoid filling repetitive personal information for different public services, presumably providing a more simple and secured process.
The newly revealed system is seen as an upgrade, incorporated to the current all-in-one workflow in the local administration.
Since 2014, the Chan Cheng District government has operated a central hub inside the city that serves as a physical portal for residents who need tax, pension, healthcare or utility services, among others. Despite offering a single source at which residents can access these services, repetitive work is needed for multiple processes.
According to the district’s announcement, residents who are able to register on and verified by the IMI platform will have the control of their personal information and can grant access to a government service they need. Using paired public and private keys, the system is also said to be able to verify users’ identity automatically without requiring them to be physically present at a service center….(More)”.
Children and the Data Cycle: Rights And Ethics in a Big Data World
Gabrielle Berman andKerry Albright at UNICEF: “In an era of increasing dependence on data science and big data, the voices of one set of major stakeholders – the world’s children and those who advocate on their behalf – have been largely absent. A recent paper estimates one in three global internet users is a child, yet there has been little rigorous debate or understanding of how to adapt traditional, offline ethical standards for research involving data collection from children, to a big data, online environment (Livingstone et al., 2015). This paper argues that due to the potential for severe, long-lasting and differential impacts on children, child rights need to be firmly integrated onto the agendas of global debates about ethics and data science. The authors outline their rationale for a greater focus on child rights and ethics in data science and suggest steps to move forward, focusing on the various actors within the data chain including data generators, collectors, analysts and end-users. It concludes by calling for a much stronger appreciation of the links between child rights, ethics and data science disciplines and for enhanced discourse between stakeholders in the data chain, and those responsible for upholding the rights of children, globally….(More)”.
The Problem With Participatory Democracy Is the Participants
Eitan D. Hersh in the New York Times: “…For years, political scientists have studied how people vote, petition, donate, protest, align with parties and take in the news, and have asked what motivates these actions. The typical answers are civic duty and self-interest.
But civic duty and self-interest do not capture the ways that middle- and upper-class Americans are engaging in politics. Now it is the Facebooker who argues with friends of friends he does not know; the news consumer who spends hours watching cable; the repeat online petitioner who demands actions like impeaching the president; the news sharer willing to spread misinformation and rumor because it feels good; the data junkie who frantically toggles between horse races in suburban Georgia and horse races in Britain and France and horse races in sports (even literal horse races).
What is really motivating this behavior is hobbyism — the regular use of free time to engage in politics as a leisure activity. Political hobbyism is everywhere.
There are several reasons. For one, technology allows those interested in politics to gain specialized knowledge and engage in pleasing activities, like reinforcing their views with like-minded friends on Facebook. For another, our era of relative security (nearly a half-century without a conscripted military) has diminished the solemnity that accompanied politics in the past. Even in the serious moments since the 2016 election, political engagement for many people is characterized by forwarding the latest clip that embarrasses the other side, like videos of John McCain asking incomprehensible questions or Elizabeth Warren “destroying” Betsy DeVos.
Then there are the well-intentioned policy innovations over the years that were meant to make politics more open but in doing so exposed politics to hobbyists: participatory primaries, ballot initiatives, open-data policies, even campaign contribution limits. The contribution rules that are now in place favor the independent vanity projects of wealthy egomaniacs instead of allowing parties to raise money and build durable local support.
The result of this is political engagement that takes the form of partisan fandom, the seeking of cheap thrills, and amateurs trying their hand at a game — the billionaire funding “super PACs” all the way down to the everyday armchair quarterback who professes that the path to political victory is through ideological purity. (In the face of a diverse and moderate country, the demand for ideological purity itself can be a symptom of hobbyism: If politics is a sport and the stakes are no higher, why not demand ideological purity if it feels good?)….
What, exactly, is wrong with political hobbyism? We live in a democracy, after all. Aren’t we supposed to participate? Political hobbyism might not be so bad if it complemented mundane but important forms of participation. The problem is that hobbyism is replacing other forms of participation, like local organizing, supporting party organizations, neighbor-to-neighbor persuasion, even voting in midterm elections — the 2014 midterms had the lowest level of voter participation in over 70 years.
The Democratic Party, the party that embraces “engagement,” is in atrophy in state legislatures across the country. Perhaps this is because state-level political participation needs to be motivated by civic duty; it is not entertaining enough to pique the interest of hobbyists. The party of Hollywood celebrities also struggles to energize its supporters to vote. Maybe it is because when politics is something one does for fun rather than out of a profound moral obligation, the citizen who does not find it fun has no reason to engage. The important parts of politics for the average citizen simply may not be enjoyable….
An unqualified embrace of engagement, without leaders channeling activists toward clear goals, yields the spinning of wheels of hobbyism.
Democrats should know that an unending string of activities intended for instant gratification does not amount to much in political power. What they should ask is whether their emotions and energy are contributing to a behind-the-scenes effort to build local support across the country or whether they are merely a hollow, self-gratifying manifestation of the new political hobbyism….(More)”
The solution to US politics’ Facebook problem is Facebook
Parag Khanna in Quartz: “In just one short decade, Facebook has evolved from a fast-growing platform for sharing classmates’ memories and pet photos to being blamed for Donald Trump’s election victory, promoting hate speech, and accelerating ISIS recruitment. Clearly, Facebook has outgrown its original mission.
It should come as no surprise then that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has in the past few months issued a long manifesto explaining the company’s broader aim to foster global connectivity, given a commencement speech at Harvard focused on the need for people to feel a meaningful “sense of purpose,” as well as more recently changed the company’s mission to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”
In truth, Facebook has been doing this all along. In just a three year period between 2011-2014, the average number of international “friends” Facebook members have (whether from rich or poor countries) doubled and in many cases tripled. There is no denying that without Facebook, people would have much less exposure to people they would never meet, and therefore opportunities to gain wider perspectives (irrespective of whether they confirm or contradict one’s own). Then there are charities and NGOs from UNICEF to Human Rights Watch that raise millions of dollars on Facebook and other online platforms such as Avaaz and Change.org.
Facebook has just crossed two billion monthly users, meaning more people express their views on it each month than will vote in all elections in the world this year. That makes Facebook the largest player in wide array of social media tools that are the epicenter–and the lightening rod–for our conversation about technology and politics. Ironically, though, while so many of these innovations come out of the US, the American approach to using digital technology for better governance is at best pathetic…. Sloppy analysis, a cynical Kommentariat and an un-innovative government have led America down the path of ignoring most of the positive ways digital governance can unfold. Fortunately, there are plenty of lessons from around the world for those who care to look and learn.
Citizen engagement is an obvious start. But this should be more than just live-streamed town halls and Q&As in the run-up to elections. European governments such as the UK use Facebook pages to continuously gather policy proposals on public spending priorities. In Estonia, electronic voting is the norm. In the world’s oldest direct democracy, Switzerland, citizen petitions and initiatives are being digitized for even more transparent and inclusive deliberation. In Australia, the Flux movement is allowing all citizens to cast digital ballots on specific policy issues and submit them straight to parliament. Meanwhile, America has the Koch Brothers and the NRA…..
Even governments that are less respected in the West because their regimes do not resemble our own do a better job of harnessing social media. Sheikh Mohammed, ruler of Dubai, uses Facebook to crowdsource suggestions for infrastructure projects and other ideas from a population that is a whopping 90 percent foreign.
Singapore may be the most sophisticated government in this domain. Though the incumbent People’s Action Party (PAP) wins every parliamentary election hands-down, more important is the fact that surveys the public ad nauseam on issues of savings and healthcare, transit routes, immigration policy and just about everything else. Singapore is not Switzerland, but it might be the world’s most responsive government.
This is how governments that appear illegitimate according to a narrow reading of Western political theory boast far higher public satisfaction than most all Western governments today. If you don’t understand this, you probably spend too much time in a filter bubble….
The US should aspire to be a place where democracy and data reinforce rather than contradict each other….(More)
Four lessons NHS Trusts can learn from the Royal Free case
Blog by Elizabeth Denham, Information Commissioner in the UK: “Today my office has announced that the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust did not comply with the Data Protection Act when it turned over the sensitive medical data of around 1.6 million patients to Google DeepMind, a private sector firm, as part of a clinical safety initiative. As a result of our investigation, the Trust has been asked to sign an undertaking committing it to changes to ensure it is acting in accordance with the law, and we’ll be working with them to make sure that happens.
But what about the rest of the sector? As organisations increasingly look to unlock the huge potential that creative uses of data can have for patient care, what are the lessons to be learned from this case?
It’s not a choice between privacy or innovation
It’s welcome that the trial looks to have been positive. The Trust has reported successful outcomes. Some may reflect that data protection rights are a small price to pay for this.
But what stood out to me on looking through the results of the investigation is that the shortcomings we found were avoidable. The price of innovation didn’t need to be the erosion of legally ensured fundamental privacy rights….
Don’t dive in too quickly
Privacy impact assessments are a key data protection tool of our era, as evolving law and best practice around the world demonstrate. Privacy impact assessments play an increasingly prominent role in data protection, and they’re a crucial part of digital innovation. ….
New cloud processing technologies mean you can, not that you always should
Changes in technology mean that vast data sets can be made more readily available and can be processed faster and using greater data processing technologies. That’s a positive thing, but just because evolving technologies can allow you to do more doesn’t mean these tools should always be fully utilised, particularly during a trial initiative….
Know the law, and follow it
No-one suggests that red tape should get in the way of progress. But when you’re setting out to test the clinical safety of a new service, remember that the rules are there for a reason….(More)”
The role of Open Data in driving sustainable mobility in nine smart cities
Paper by Piyush Yadav et al: “In today’s era of globalization, sustainable mobility is considered as a key factor in the economic growth of any country. With the emergence of open data initiatives, there is tremendous potential to improve mobility. This paper presents findings of a detailed analysis of mobility open data initiatives in nine smart cities – Amsterdam, Barcelona, Chicago, Dublin, Helsinki, London, Manchester, New York and San Francisco. The paper discusses the study of various sustainable indicators in the mobility domain and its convergence with present open datasets. Specifically, it throws light on open data ecosystems in terms of their production and consumption. It gives a comprehensive view of the nature of mobility open data with respect to their formats, interactivity, and availability. The paper details the open datasets in terms of their alignment with different mobility indicators, publishing platforms, applications and API’s available. The paper discusses how these open datasets have shown signs of fostering organic innovation and sustainable growth in smart cities with impact on mobility trends. The results of the work can be used to inform the design of data driven sustainable mobility in smart cities to maximize the utilization of available open data resources….(More)”.