The power of piggybacking

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Zografia Bika: “An unexpected hit of the first Covid lockdown was Cooking with Nonna, in which people from all over the world were taught how to cook traditional Italian dishes from a grandmother’s house in Palombara Sabina on the outskirts of Rome. The project not only provided unexpected economic success to the legion of grandmothers who were then recruited to the project but valuable jobs for those producing and promoting the videos.

It’s an example of what Oxford University’s Paulo Savaget calls piggybacking, when attempts to improve a region build upon what is already there. For those in the aid community this isn’t new. Indeed the positive deviance approach devised by Jerry and Monique Sternin popularised the notion of building on things that are already working locally rather than trying to impose solutions from afar.

In a time when most projects backed by the two tranches of the UK Government’s levelling up fund have been assessed and approved centrally not locally, it surely bears repeating. It’s an approach that was clear in our own research into how residents of deprived communities can be helped back into employment or entrepreneurship.

At the heart of our research, and at the hearts of local communities, were housing associations that were providing not only the housing needs of those communities, but also a range of additional services that were invaluable to residents. In the process, they were enriching the economies of those communities…(More)”.

Whose data commons? Whose city?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Gijs van Maanen and Anna Artyushina: “In 2020, the notion of data commons became a staple of the new European Data Governance Strategy, which envisions data cooperatives as key players of the European Union’s (EU) emerging digital market. In this new legal landscape, public institutions, businesses, and citizens are expected to share their data with the licensed data-governance entities that will oversee its responsible reuse. In 2022, the Open Future Foundation released several white papers where the NGO (non-govovernmental organisation) detailed a vision for the publicly governed and funded EU level data commons. Some academic researchers see data commons as a way to break the data silos maintained and exploited by Big Tech and, potentially, dismantle surveillance capitalism.

In this blog post, we discuss data commons as a concept and practice. Our argument here is that, for data commons to become a (partial) solution to the issues caused by data monopolies, they need to be politicised. As smart city scholar Shannon Mattern pointedly argues, the city is not a computer. This means that digitization and datafication of our cities involves making choices about what is worth digitising and whose interests are prioritised. These choices and their implications must be foregrounded when we discuss data commons or any emerging forms of data governance. It is important to ask whose data is made common and, subsequently, whose city we will end up living in. ..(More)”

Soft power, hard choices: Science diplomacy and the race for solutions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Stephan Kuster and Marga Gual Soler: “…Global challenges demand that we build consensus for action. But reaching agreement on how – and even if – science and technology should be applied, for the aggregate benefit of all, is complex, and increasingly so.

Science and technology are tightly intertwined with fast-changing economic, geopolitical, and ideological agendas. That pace of change complicates, and sometimes deviates, the discussions and decisions that could unlock the positive global impact of scientific advances.

Therefore, anticipation is key. Understanding the societal, economic, and geopolitical consequences of emerging and possible new technologies before they are deployed is critical. Just recently, for example, artificial intelligence (AI) labs have been urged by a large number of researchers and leading industry figures to pause the training of powerful AI systems, given the inherent risks to society and humanity’s existence.

Indeed, the rapid pace of scientific development calls for more effective global governance when it comes to emerging technology. That in turn requires better anticipatory tools and new mechanisms to embed the science community as key stakeholder and influencer in this work.

The Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) was created with those goals in mind. GESDA identifies the most significant science breakthroughs in the next five, 10, and 25 years. It assesses those advances with the potential to most profoundly to impact people, society, and the planet. It then brings together scientific and policy leaders from around the world to devise the diplomatic envelopes and approaches needed to embrace these advances, while minimizing downsides risks of unintended consequences…(More)”.

The Technology/Jobs Puzzle: A European Perspective

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Pierre-Alexandre Balland, Lucía Bosoer and Andrea Renda as part of the work of the Markle Technology Policy and Research Consortium: “In recent years, the creation of “good jobs” – defined as occupations that provide a middle-class living standard, adequate benefits, sufficient economic security, personal autonomy, and career prospects (Rodrik and Sabel 2019; Rodrik and Stantcheva 2021) – has become imperative for many governments. At the same time, developments in industrial value chains and in digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) create important challenges for the creation of good jobs. On the one hand, future good jobs may not be found only in manufacturing, ad this requires that industrial policy increasingly looks at services. On the other hand, AI has shown the potential to automate both routine and also non-routine tasks (TTC 2022), and this poses new, important questions on what role humans will play in the industrial value chains of the future. In the report drafted for the Markle Technology Policy and Research Consortium on The Technology/Jobs Puzzle: A European Perspective, we analyze Europe’s approach to the creation of “good jobs”. By mapping Europe’s technological specialization, we estimate in which sectors good jobs are most likely to emerge, and assess the main opportunities and challenges Europe faces on the road to a resilient, sustainable and competitive future economy.The report features an important reflection on how to define job quality and, relatedly “good jobs”. From the perspective of the European Union, job quality can be defined along two distinct dimensions. First, while the internationally agreed definition is rather static (e.g. related to the current conditions of the worker), the emerging interpretation at the EU level incorporates the extent to which a given job leads to nurturing human capital, and thereby empowering workers with more skills and well-being over time. Second, job quality can be seen from a “micro” perspective, which only accounts for the condition of the individual worker; or from a more “macro” perspective, which considers whether the sector in which the job emerges is compatible with the EU’s agenda, and in particular with the twin (green and digital) transition. As a result, we argue that ideally, Europe should avoid creating “good” jobs in “bad” sectors, as well as “bad” jobs in “good” sectors. The ultimate goal is to create “good” jobs in “good” sectors….(More)”

Why Data for and about Children Needs Attention at the World Data Forum: The Vital Role of Partnerships

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Stefaan Verhulst, Eugenia Olliaro, Danzhen You, Estrella Lajom, and Daniel Shephard: “Issues surrounding children and data are rarely given the thoughtful and dedicated attention they deserve. An increasingly large amount of data is being collected about children, often without a framework to determine whether those data are used responsibly. At the same time, even as the volume of data increases, there remain substantial areas of missing data when it comes to children. This is especially true for children on the move and those who have been marginalized by conflict, displacement, or environmental disasters. There is also a risk that patterns of data collection mirror existing forms of exclusion, thereby perpetuating inequalities that exist along, for example, dimensions of indigeneity and gender.

This year’s World Data Forum, to be held in Hangzhou, China, offers an opportunity to unpack these challenges and consider solutions, such as through new forms of partnerships. The Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) initiative offers one important model for such a partnership. Formed between The GovLab and UNICEF, the initiative seeks to produce guidance, tools, and leadership to support the responsible handling of data for and about children across the globe. It addresses the unique vulnerabilities that face children, identifying shortcomings in the existing data ecology and pointing toward some possible solutions…(More)”.

How Design is Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Amber Case: “At a fundamental level, all design is governance. We encounter inconveniences like this coffee shop every day, both offline and in the apps we use. But it’s not enough to say it’s the result of bad design. It’s also a result of governance decisions made on behalf of the customers during the design process.

Michel Foucault talked about governance as structuring the field of action for others. Governance is the processes, systems, and principles through which a group, organization, or society is managed and controlled.

Design not only shapes how a product or service will be used, but also restricts or frustrates people’s existing or emergent choices, even when they’re not a user themselves. My neighbor at the cafe, who now has a Mac power cord snaked under her feet, can attest to that.

In a coffee shop, we’re lucky that we can move chairs around or talk with other customers. But when it comes to apps, most people cannot move buttons on interfaces. We’re stuck.

When we create designs, we’re basically defining what is possible or at least highly encouraged within the context of our products. We’re also defining what is discouraged.

To illustrate, let’s revisit this same cafe from a governance perspective…(More)”.

An agenda for advancing trusted data collaboration in cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Hannah Chafetz, Sampriti Saxena, Adrienne Schmoeker, Stefaan G. Verhulst, & Andrew J. Zahuranec: “… Joined by experts across several domains including smart cities, the law, and data ecosystem, this effort was focused on developing solutions that could improve the design of Data Sharing Agreements…we assessed what is needed to implement each aspect of our Contractual Wheel of Data Collaboration–a tool developed as a part of the Contracts for Data Collaborations initiative that seeks to capture the elements involved in data collaborations and Data Sharing Agreements.

In what follows, we provide key suggestions from this Action Lab…

  1. The Elements of Principled Negotiations: Those seeking to develop a Data Sharing Agreement often struggle to work with collaborators or agree to common ends. There is a need for a common resource that Data Stewards can use to initiate a principled negotiation process. To address this need, we would identify the principles to inform negotiations and the elements that could help achieve those principles. For example, participants voiced a need for fairness, transparency, and reciprocity principles. These principles could be supported by having a shared language or outlining the minimum legal documents required for each party. The final product would be a checklist or visualization of principles and their associated elements.
  2. Data Responsibility Principles by Design: …
  3. Readiness Matrix: …
  4. A Decision Provenance Approach for Data Collaboration: ..
  5. The Contractual Wheel of Data Collaboration 2.0…
  6. A Repository of Legal Drafting Technologies:…(More)”.

Leveraging alternative data to provide loans to the unbanked

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Keely Khoury: “Financial inclusion is integral to the achievement of seven of the 17 global SDGs, and the World Bank says in its 2021 report that between 2011 and 2021, “Great strides have been made toward financial inclusion.” However, despite a significant increase in the number of people accessing bank accounts, around 24 per cent of the global population remain unbanked.  

Particularly for minority groups such as immigrants, the ability to access formal financial services is made exponentially more difficult by their lack of permanent address, loss of employment, and gaps in tax records. For small business owners – many of whom provide an essential community service – a lack of formal accounting records, along with any previous time spent unbanked as individuals, contributes to a dearth of information traditionally used to evaluate risk for loans.  

To tackle this issue, US startup Uplinq provides lenders with a ‘credit-assessment-as-a-service’ solution that takes into account the entire business ecosystem, and therefore billions of data points that would not traditionally be examined by underwriters considering a traditional loan application. From supplier references and store traffic to community involvement and property improvements, Uplinq provides a holistic and accurate assessment of the “opportunities, challenges, and interests of each prospect” within “known confidence ranges.” By working with independently audited and fully regulatory-compliant data sets, Uplinq’s services are available worldwide.  

Other innovations that Springwise has spotted that are helping unbanked communities include a Spanish language-first bank, and a free digital learning platform to help underserved communities understand how to better manage their finances…(More)”.

To harness telecom data for good, there are six challenges to overcome

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Anat Lewin and Sveta Milusheva: “The global use of mobile phones generates a vast amount of data. What good can be done with these data? During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw that aggregated data from mobile phones can tell us where groups of humans are going, how many of them are there, and how they are behaving as a cluster. When used effectively and responsibly, mobile phone data can be immensely helpful for development work and emergency response — particularly in resource-constrained countries.  For example, an African country that had, in recent years, experienced a cholera outbreak was ahead of the game. Since the legal and practical agreements were already in place to safely share aggregated mobile data, accessing newer information to support epidemiological modeling for COVID-19 was a straightforward exercise. The resulting datasets were used to produce insightful analyses that could better inform health, lockdown, and preventive policy measures in the country.

To better understand such challenges and opportunities, we led an effort to access and use anonymized, aggregated mobile phone data across 41 countries. During this process, we identified several recurring roadblocks and replicable successes, which we summarized in a paper along with our lessons learned. …(More)”.

Lisbon’s Citizens’ Council: Embedding Deliberation into Local Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Mauricio Mejia: “Lisbon is joining cities like Paris, Bogota, and Milan in establishing new democratic institutions by convening Portugal’s first permanent Citizen Council. In April 2023, a new group of randomly selected citizens will deliberate on how to create a 15-minute city — one where citizens can easily access essential services such as education, health, commerce, culture, or green and leisure spaces.

Lisbon has taken the objective of reinforcing democracy seriously. Citizen participation is the first pillar of its Municipal Plan, intending to build “alternative mechanisms for democratic participation, capable of mobilising people’s knowledge.” To translate this into action, the City established its first Citizens’ Council, a decision-making body that is “representative of Lisbon’s population, while being impartial and independent from political parties.”

Lisbon’s Citizens’ Council is a microcosm of the city’s population

Anyone over 16 years of age who lives, studies, or works in Lisbon is eligible to become a member of the Citizens’ Council. For the first edition, the recruitment process consisted of two stages:

1. Voluntary enrolment to participate in the lottery. This process could be done online or at an in-person kiosk (Lojas Lisboa).

2. Random selection and stratification, using the following criteria: gender, age, academic qualifications, profession, area of residence, work or study, and level of political engagement.

Among the 2351 citizens enrolled, 50 citizens were randomly selected to form a microcosm of Lisbon’s population[i]:

Visual representation of the Council’s members by the gender, age and activity status criteria

Members were accompanied by an ecosystem of public servants, civil society stakeholders, academics, scientists, and experts to ensure deliberation was informed, facilitated, and objective. Participation in the Citizens’ Council was not remunerated, nor involved any financial incentives. However, members could request support to cover meals and transportation. The OECD suggests in its good practice principles for deliberative processes that participation should be encouraged through remuneration, coverage of expenses, and provision of childcare and eldercare…(More)”.