Actualizing Digital Self Determination: From Theory to Practice

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Stefaan G. Verhulst: “The world is undergoing a rapid process of datafication, providing immense potential for addressing various challenges in society and the environment through responsible data reuse. However, datafication also results in imbalances, asymmetries, and silos that hinder the full realization of this potential and pose significant public policy challenges. In a recent paper, I suggest a key way to address these asymmetries–through a process of operationalizing digital self-determination. The paper, published open access in the journal Data and Policy (Cambridge University Press), is built around four key themes:…

Operationalizing DSD requires translating theoretical concepts into practical implementation. The paper proposes a four-pronged framework that covers processes, people and organizations, policies, products and technologies:

  • Processes include citizen engagement programs, public deliberations, and participatory impact assessments, can inform responsible data use.
  • People and organizations, including data stewards and intermediaries, play a vital role in fostering a culture of data agency and responsible data reuse.
  • Effective governance and policies, such as charters, social licenses, and codes of conduct, are key for implementing DSD.
  • Finally, technological tools and products need to focus on trusted data spaces, data portability, privacy-enhancing technologies, transparency, consent management, algorithmic accountability, and ethical AI….(More)” See also: International Network on Digital Self Determination.
Four ways to actualize digital self determination, Stefaan G. Verhulst

Crime, inequality and public health: a survey of emerging trends in urban data science

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Paper by Massimiliano Luca, Gian Maria Campedelli, Simone Centellegher, Michele Tizzoni, and Bruno Lepri: “Urban agglomerations are constantly and rapidly evolving ecosystems, with globalization and increasing urbanization posing new challenges in sustainable urban development well summarized in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The advent of the digital age generated by modern alternative data sources provides new tools to tackle these challenges with spatio-temporal scales that were previously unavailable with census statistics. In this review, we present how new digital data sources are employed to provide data-driven insights to study and track (i) urban crime and public safety; (ii) socioeconomic inequalities and segregation; and (iii) public health, with a particular focus on the city scale…(More)”.

A Hiring Law Blazes a Path for A.I. Regulation

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Article by Steve Lohr: “European lawmakers are finishing work on an A.I. act. The Biden administration and leaders in Congress have their plans for reining in artificial intelligence. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, maker of the A.I. sensation ChatGPT, recommended the creation of a federal agency with oversight and licensing authority in Senate testimony last week. And the topic came up at the Group of 7 summit in Japan.

Amid the sweeping plans and pledges, New York City has emerged as a modest pioneer in A.I. regulation.

The city government passed a law in 2021 and adopted specific rules last month for one high-stakes application of the technology: hiring and promotion decisions. Enforcement begins in July.

The city’s law requires companies using A.I. software in hiring to notify candidates that an automated system is being used. It also requires companies to have independent auditors check the technology annually for bias. Candidates can request and be told what data is being collected and analyzed. Companies will be fined for violations.

New York City’s focused approach represents an important front in A.I. regulation. At some point, the broad-stroke principles developed by governments and international organizations, experts say, must be translated into details and definitions. Who is being affected by the technology? What are the benefits and harms? Who can intervene, and how?

“Without a concrete use case, you are not in a position to answer those questions,” said Julia Stoyanovich, an associate professor at New York University and director of its Center for Responsible A.I.

But even before it takes effect, the New York City law has been a magnet for criticism. Public interest advocates say it doesn’t go far enough, while business groups say it is impractical.

The complaints from both camps point to the challenge of regulating A.I., which is advancing at a torrid pace with unknown consequences, stirring enthusiasm and anxiety.

Uneasy compromises are inevitable.

Ms. Stoyanovich is concerned that the city law has loopholes that may weaken it. “But it’s much better than not having a law,” she said. “And until you try to regulate, you won’t learn how.”…(More)” – See also AI Localism: Governing AI at the Local Level

Boston Isn’t Afraid of Generative AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Beth Simone Noveck: “After ChatGPT burst on the scene last November, some government officials raced to prohibit its use. Italy banned the chatbot. New York City, Los Angeles Unified, Seattle, and Baltimore School Districts either banned or blocked access to generative AI tools, fearing that ChatGPT, Bard, and other content generation sites could tempt students to cheat on assignments, induce rampant plagiarism, and impede critical thinking. This week, US Congress heard testimony from Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and AI researcher Gary Marcus as it weighed whether and how to regulate the technology.

In a rapid about-face, however, a few governments are now embracing a less fearful and more hands-on approach to AI. New York City Schools chancellor David Banks announced yesterday that NYC is reversing its ban because “the knee jerk fear and risk overlooked the potential of generative AI to support students and teachers, as well as the reality that our students are participating in and will work in a world where understanding generative AI is crucial.” And yesterday, City of Boston chief information officer Santiago Garces sent guidelines to every city official encouraging them to start using generative AI “to understand their potential.” The city also turned on use of Google Bard as part of the City of Boston’s enterprise-wide use of Google Workspace so that all public servants have access.

The “responsible experimentation approach” adopted in Boston—the first policy of its kind in the US—could, if used as a blueprint, revolutionize the public sector’s use of AI across the country and cause a sea change in how governments at every level approach AI. By promoting greater exploration of how AI can be used to improve government effectiveness and efficiency, and by focusing on how to use AI for governance instead of only how to govern AI, the Boston approach might help to reduce alarmism and focus attention on how to use AI for social good…(More)”.

Evidence-Based Policymaking: A Path to Data Culture

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Article by Sajana Maharjan Amatya and Pranaya Sthapit: “…The first requirement of evidence-based planning is access to a supply of timely and reliable data. In Nepal, local governments produce lots of data, but it is too often locked away in multiple information systems operated by each municipal department. Gaining access to the data in these systems can be difficult because different departments often use different, proprietary formats. These information siloes block a 360 degree view of the available data—to say nothing of issues like redundancy, duplication, and inefficiency—and they frustrate public participation in an age when citizens expect streamlined digital access.

As a first step towards solving this artificial problem of data supply, D4D helps local governments gather their data onto one unified platform to release its full potential. We think of this as creating a “data lake” in each municipality for decentralized, democratic access. Freeing access to this already-existing evidence can open the door to fundamental changes in government procedures and the development and implementation of local policies, plans, and strategies.

Among the most telling shortcomings of Nepal’s legacy data policies has been the way that political interests have held sway in the local planning process, as exemplified by the political decision to distribute equal funds to all wards regardless of their unequal needs. In a more rational system, information about population size and other socioeconomic data about relative need would be a much more important factor in the allocation of funds. The National Planning Commission, a federal agency, has even distributed guidelines to Nepal’s local governments indicating that budgets should not simply be equal from ward to ward. But in practice, municipalities tend to allocate the same budget to each of their wards because elected leaders fear they will lose votes if they don’t get an equal share. Inevitably, ignoring evidence of relative need leads to the ad hoc allocation of funds to small, fragmented initiatives that mainly focus on infrastructure while overlooking other issues.

The application of available data to the planning cycle is what evidence-based planning is all about. The key is to codify the use of data throughout the planning process. So, D4D developed a framework and guidelines for evidence-based budgeting and planning for elected officials, committee members, and concerned citizens…(More)”.

Can Mobility of Care Be Identified From Transit Fare Card Data? A Case Study In Washington D.C.

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Paper by Daniela Shuman, et al: “Studies in the literature have found significant differences in travel behavior by gender on public transit that are largely attributable to household and care responsibilities falling disproportionately on women. While the majority of studies have relied on survey and qualitative data to assess “mobility of care”, we propose a novel data-driven workflow utilizing transit fare card transactions, name-based gender inference, and geospatial analysis to identify mobility of care trip making. We find that the share of women travelers trip-chaining in the direct vicinity of mobility of care places of interest is 10% – 15% higher than men….(More)”.

How to design an AI ethics board

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Paper by Jonas Schuett, Anka Reuel, Alexis Carlier: “Organizations that develop and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) systems need to take measures to reduce the associated risks. In this paper, we examine how AI companies could design an AI ethics board in a way that reduces risks from AI. We identify five high-level design choices: (1) What responsibilities should the board have? (2) What should its legal structure be? (3) Who should sit on the board? (4) How should it make decisions and should its decisions be binding? (5) What resources does it need? We break down each of these questions into more specific sub-questions, list options, and discuss how different design choices affect the board’s ability to reduce risks from AI. Several failures have shown that designing an AI ethics board can be challenging. This paper provides a toolbox that can help AI companies to overcome these challenges…(More)”.

City data ecosystems between theory and practice: A qualitative exploratory study in seven European cities

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Paper by Giovanni Liva, Marina Micheli, Sven Schade, Alexander Kotsev, Matteo Gori and Cristiano Codagnone: “The exponential growth of data collection opens possibilities for analyzing data to address political and societal challenges. Still, European cities are not utilizing the potential of data generated by its citizens, industries, academia, and public authorities for their public service mission. The reasons are complex and relate to an intertwined set of organizational, technological, and legal barriers, although good practices exist that could be scaled, sustained, and further developed. The article contributes to research on data-driven innovation in the public sector comparing high-level expectations on data ecosystems with actual practices of data sharing and innovation at the local and regional level. Our approach consists in triangulating the analysis of in-depth interviews with representatives of the local administrations with documents obtained from the cities. The interviews investigated the experiences and perspectives of local administrations regarding establishing a local or regional data ecosystem. The article examines experiences and obstacles to data sharing within seven administrations investigating what currently prevents the establishment of data ecosystems. The findings are summarized along three main lines. First, the limited involvement of private sector organizations as actors in local data ecosystems through emerging forms of data sharing. Second, the concern over technological aspects and the lack of attention on social or organizational issues. Third, a conceptual decision to apply a centralized and not a federated digital infrastructure…(More)”.

How a small news site built an innovative data project to visualise the impact of climate change on Uruguay’s capital

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Interview by Marina Adami: “La ciudad sumergida (The submerged city), an investigation produced by Uruguayan science and technology news site Amenaza Roboto, is one of the winners of this year’s Sigma Awards for data journalism. The project uses maps of the country’s capital, Montevideo, to create impressive visualisations of the impact sea level rises are predicted to have on the city and its infrastructure. The project is a first of its kind for Uruguay, a small South American country in which data journalism is still a novelty. It is also a good example of a way news outlets can investigate and communicate the disastrous effects of climate change in local communities. 

I spoke to Miguel Dobrich, a journalist, educator and digital entrepreneur who worked on the project together with colleagues Gabriel Farías, Natalie Aubet and Nahuel Lamas, to find out what lessons other outlets can take from this project and from Amenaza Roboto’s experiments with analysing public data, collaborating with scientists, and keeping the focus on their communities….(More)”

Towards High-Value Datasets determination for data-driven development: a systematic literature review

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Anastasija Nikiforova, Nina Rizun, Magdalena Ciesielska, Charalampos Alexopoulos, and Andrea Miletič: “The OGD is seen as a political and socio-economic phenomenon that promises to promote civic engagement and stimulate public sector innovations in various areas of public life. To bring the expected benefits, data must be reused and transformed into value-added products or services. This, in turn, sets another precondition for data that are expected to not only be available and comply with open data principles, but also be of value, i.e., of interest for reuse by the end-user. This refers to the notion of ‘high-value dataset’ (HVD), recognized by the European Data Portal as a key trend in the OGD area in 2022. While there is a progress in this direction, e.g., the Open Data Directive, incl. identifying 6 key categories, a list of HVDs and arrangements for their publication and re-use, they can be seen as ‘core’ / ‘base’ datasets aimed at increasing interoperability of public sector data with a high priority, contributing to the development of a more mature OGD initiative. Depending on the specifics of a region and country – geographical location, social, environmental, economic issues, cultural characteristics, (under)developed sectors and market specificities, more datasets can be recognized as of high value for a particular country. However, there is no standardized approach to assist chief data officers in this. In this paper, we present a systematic review of existing literature on the HVD determination, which is expected to form an initial knowledge base for this process, incl. used approaches and indicators to determine them, data, stakeholders…(More)”.