Blockchain for the public good

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Camille Crittenden: “Over the last year, I have had the privilege to lead the California Blockchain Working Group, which delivered its report to the Legislature in early July. Established by AB 2658, the 20-member Working Group comprised experts with backgrounds in computer science, cybersecurity, information technology, law, and policy. We were charged with drafting a working definition of blockchain, providing advice to State offices and agencies considering implementation of blockchain platforms, and offering guidance to policymakers to foster an open and equitable regulatory environment for the technology in California.

What did we learn? Enough to make a few outright recommendations as well as identify areas where further research is warranted.

A few guiding principles: Refine the application of blockchain systems first on things, not people. This could mean implementations of blockchain for tracing food from farms to stores to reduce the economic and human harm of food-borne illnesses; reducing paperwork and increasing reliability of tracing vehicles and parts from manufacturing floor to consumer to future owners or dismantlers; improving workflows for digitizing, cataloging and storing the reams of documents held in the State Archives.

Similarly, blockchain solutions could be implemented for public vital records, such as birth, death and marriage certificates or real estate titles without risk of compromising private information. Greater caution should be taken in applications that affect public service delivery to populations in precarious circumstances, such as the homeless or unemployed. Overarching problems to address, especially for sensitive records, include the need for reliable, persistent digital identification and the evolving requirements for cybersecurity….

The Working Group’s final report, Blockchain in California: A Roadmap, avoids the magical thinking or technological solutionism that sometimes attends shiny new tech ideas. Blockchain won’t cure Covid-19, fix systemic racism, or reverse alarming unemployment trends. But if implemented conscientiously on a case-by-case basis, it could make a dent in improving health outcomes, increasing autonomy for property owners and consumers, and alleviating some bureaucratic practices that may be a drag on the economy. And those are contributions we can all welcome….(More)”.

Medical data has a silo problem. These models could help fix it.

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Scott Khan at the WEF: “Every day, more and more data about our health is generated. Data, which if analyzed, could hold the key to unlocking cures for rare diseases, help us manage our health risk factors and provide evidence for public policy decisions. However, due to the highly sensitive nature of health data, much is out of reach to researchers, halting discovery and innovation. The problem is amplified further in the international context when governments naturally want to protect their citizens’ privacy and therefore restrict the movement of health data across international borders. To address this challenge, governments will need to pursue a special approach to policymaking that acknowledges new technology capabilities.

Understanding data siloes

Data becomes siloed for a range of well-considered reasons ranging from restrictions on terms-of-use (e.g., commercial, non-commercial, disease-specific, etc), regulations imposed by governments (e.g., Safe Harbor, privacy, etc.), and an inability to obtain informed consent from historically marginalized populations.

Siloed data, however, also creates a range of problems for researchers looking to make that data useful to the general population. Siloes, for example, block researchers from accessing the most up-to-date information or the most diverse, comprehensive datasets. They can slow the development of new treatments and therefore, curtail key findings that can lead to much needed treatments or cures.

Even when these challenges are overcome, the incidences of data mis-use – where health data is used to explore non-health related topics or without an individual’s consent – continue to erode public trust in the same research institutions that are dependent on such data to advance medical knowledge.

Solving this problem through technology

Technology designed to better protect and decentralize data is being developed to address many of these challenges. Techniques such as homomorphic encryption (a cryptosystem that encrypts data with a public key) and differential privacy (a system leveraging information about a group without revealing details about individuals) both provide means to protect and centralize data while distributing the control of its use to the parties that steward the respective data sets.

Federated data leverages a special type of distributed database management system that can provide an alternative approach to centralizing encoded data without moving the data sets across jurisdictions or between institutions. Such an approach can help connect data sources while accounting for privacy. To further forge trust in the system, a federated model can be implemented to return encoded data to prevent unauthorized distribution of data and learnings as a result of the research activity.

To be sure, within every discussion of the analysis of aggregated data lies challenges with data fusion between data sets, between different studies, between data silos, between institutions. Despite there being several data standards that could be used, most data exist within bespoke data models built for a single purpose rather than for the facilitation of data sharing and data fusion. Furthermore, even when data has been captured into a standardized data model (e.g., the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health offers some models for standardizing sensitive health data), many data sets are still narrowly defined. They often lack any shared identifiers to combine data from different sources into a coherent aggregate data source useful for research. Within a model of data centralization, data fusion can be addressed through data curation of each data set, whereas within a federated model, data fusion is much more vexing….(More)“.

Social-Change Games Can Help Us Understand the Public Health Choices We Face

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by the Hastings Institute: “Before there was the Covid-19 pandemic, there was Pandemic. This tabletop game, in which players collaborate to fight disease outbreaks, debuted in 2007. Expansions feature weaponized pathogens, historic pandemics, zoonotic diseases, and vaccine development races. Game mechanics modelled on pandemic vectors provide multiple narratives: battle, quest, detection, discovery. There is satisfaction in playing “against” disease–and winning.

Societies globally are responding to Covid-19 under differing political and economic conditions. In the United States, these conditions include mass unemployment and entrenched social inequalities that drive health disparities by race, class, and neighborhood. Real pandemic is not as tidy as a game. But can games, and the immense appetite for them, support understanding about the societal challenges we now face? Yes.

A well-designed game is structured as a flow chart or a decision tree. Games simulate challenges, require choices, and allow players to see the consequences of their decisions. Visual and narrative elements enhance these vicarious experiences. Game narratives can engage human capacities such as empathy, helping us to imagine the perspectives of people unlike ourselves. In The Waiting Game (2018), an award-winning digital single-player game designed by news outlets ProPublica and WNYC and game design firm Playmatics, the player starts by choosing one of five characters representing asylum seekers. The player is immersed in a day-by-day depiction of their character’s journey and experiences. Each “day,” the player must make a choice: give up or keep going?

Games can also engage the moral imagination by prompting players to reflect on competing values and implicit biases. In the single-player game Parable of the Polygons (2014), a player moves emoji-like symbols into groups. This quick game visualizes how decisions aimed at making members of a community happier can undermine a shared commitment to diversity when happiness relies on living near people “like me.” It is free-to-play on the website of Games for Change (G4C), a nonprofit organization that promotes the development and use of games to imagine and respond to real-world problems.

Also in the G4C arcade is Cards Against Calamity (2018), which focuses on local governance in a coastal town. This game, developed by 1st Playable Productions and the Environmental Law Institute, aims to help local policymakers foresee community planning challenges in balancing environmental protections and economic interests. Plague Inc. (2012) flips the Pandemic script by having players assume the pathogen role, winning by spreading. This game has been used as a teaching tool and has surged in popularity during disease outbreak: in January 2020, its designers issued a statement reminding players that Plague Inc. should not be used for pandemic modeling….(More)”.

What’s next for nudging and choice architecture?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Richard Thaler at a Special Edition of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes: “I have long considered all my co-editors of this special issue to be good friends. That is, until they asked me to write an editorial on the topic of “what is next?” When a bunch of experts in judgment and decision-making ask you to do something they know to be impossible, you should be suspicious, right? Do they think I don’t know that predicting the future of science is impossible?

They slyly assigned Katy Milkman the job of luring me into agreeing. The first request came via email with what had to be a deliberately impenetrable subject heading: “Ask for OBHDP Special Issue You’re Co-Editing: 1–3 Paragraphs on the Future of Nudge.” The other three co-editors were copied, the message was long and complicated, and, to top it off, the first word of the subject was “Ask.” Katy surely knew there was no chance I would read that email, which of course was part of her cunning strategy. She figured that when she sent the inevitable follow-up email I would feel guilty about not responding to the first one. Guilt is a powerful nudge.

The expected second email came three days later, this time with a catchier one-word subject line: “Noodge.” (Have I mentioned that these emails arrived in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown?) This new email began by acknowledging that the first one had been too long and poorly timed, lulling me into a false sense of security that I was being excused and off the hook. But then, Katy launched the heavy artillery. She framed her request in a way that made my acceptance the default option: “Hope you’re up for writing 1–3 paragraphs, but let me know if not and we’ll manage. :)” We all know that defaults are powerful, but did she really think this was going to work on me? Although I was mildly miffed at the brazen noodging, I find it hard to say “no” to Katy, so I stuck to my usual strategy of lying low and ignored this email as well, foolishly hoping she would give up.

That hope was dashed a week later when the third email arrived with the subject line: “pretty please with sugar on top. :)” Plus, she pulled out another trick she had up her sleeve: a deadline! “The introduction is due in just a few days!” She was telling me that this assignment, which I had never agreed to do, was almost overdue. Of course, she also knew I was trapped in my home with very few excuses. Seeing no plausible escape route at this point, I capitulated and agreed to her request.

Conclusion: nudging works! Even on me.

Recall her request was that I write one to three paragraphs. This is already the sixth paragraph so by all rights I should already be done. Certainly, I will not be lured into making any forecasts. Phil Tetlock is her colleague! But since the word processor is already open, I will instead offer a few thoughts about my hopes and dreams for this enterprise.

My first hope is that the range of “nudges” expands. We know a lot about the effect of the kinds of strategies Katy used in her emails to me such as defaults, reminders, deadlines, guilt, salience, and norms. Come to think of it, I am surprised Katy didn’t try “90 percent of all recipients of my emails agree to do what I ask.” While I concede that these ploys often (though not always) work, it can’t be that they span the entire behavioral science repertoire. So I am hoping to see studies using a different set of behavioral insights. I am sure there are good ones out there….(More)”.

Responsible innovation requires new workways, and courage

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Jon Simonsson, Chair of the Committee for Technological Innovation and Ethics (Komet) in Sweden: “People have said that in the present – the fourth industrial revolution – everything is possible. The ingredients are there – 5G, IoT, AI, drones and self-driving vehicles – as well as advanced knowledge about diagnosis and medication – and they are all rapidly evolving. Only the innovator sets the limitations for how to mix and bake with Technologies.

And right now, when the threat of the corona virus has almost shock-digitized both business and the public sector, the interest in new technology solutions has skyrocketed. Working remotely, moving things without human presence, or – most important – virus vaccines and medical treatment methods, have all become self-evident areas for intensified research and experimentation. But the laws and regulations surrounding these areas were often created for a completely different setting.

Rules are good. And there are usually very good reasons why an area is regulated. Some rules are intended to safeguard democratic rights or individual rights to privacy, others to control developments in a certain direction. The rules are required. Especially at the present when not only development of technology but also the technology uptake in society is accelerating. It takes time to develop laws and regulations, and the process of doing so is not in pace with the rapid development of technology. This creates risks in society. For example, risks related to the individual’s right to privacy, the economy or the environment. At the same time, gaps in regulation may be revealed, gaps that could lead to introduction of new and perhaps not desired solutions.

Would it be possible to find a middle ground and a more future oriented way to work with regulation? With rules that are clear, future-proof and developed with legally safe methods, but encourages and facilitates ethical and sustainable innovation?

Responsible development and use of new technology

The Government wants Sweden to be a leader in the responsible development and use of new technologies. The Swedish Committee for Technological Innovation and Ethics (Komet) works with policy development to create good conditions for innovation and competitiveness, while ensuring that development and dissemination of new technology is safe and secure. The Committee helps the Swedish government to proactively address improvements technology could create for citizens, business and society, but also to highlight the conflicting goals that may arise.

This includes raising ethical issues related to the rapid technological development. When almost everything is possible, we need to place particularly high demands on the compass, how we responsibly navigate the technology landscape. Not least during the corona pandemic, when we have seen how ethical boundaries have been moved for the use of surveillance technology.

An important objective of the Komet work is to instil courage in the public sector. Although innovators are often private, at the end of the day, it is the public sector that must enable, be willing to and dare to meet the demands of both business and society. It is the public sector’s role to ensure that the proper regulations are on the table. A balanced and future-oriented regulation which will be required for rapidly creating a sustainable world….(More)”.

Good Bureaucracy: Max Weber on the 100th anniversary of his death

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Wolfgang Drechsler: “Max Weber passed away a century ago today at the early age of 56, a late victim of the last pandemic — the Spanish Flu.

During the last 100 years, Weber’s position as one of the world’s great economists, sociologists, social science theorists, and public administration scholars has been secure, if with ups and downs.

One can think with or against Weber in the areas he covered, but by and large, not really without him. Weber is often associated with Weberian bureaucracy, i.e. hierarchical, career-organized, competence-based, rules- and files-based public administration of the now traditional type (when he conceived of it, this was public sector innovation).

However, Weber was a Weberian only to the extent that Luther was a Lutheran or Marx was a Marxist: somewhat, but certainly not totally so. In fact, Weber did not particularly like what we understand today as Weberian public administration, often used interchangeably with the term “bureaucracy.” He just thought it was the optimal administrative form, in the sense of rationalization, for the time and society he was analyzing (Germany at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century — both for the public and for the private sector, incidentally).

Nobody would have been more surprised than him that his framework is still the most used — and best — 100 years later. Indeed, it is often applied to systems for which it was never intended.

In fact, Weberian public administration in the wider sense has been, and is, much maligned; bureaucracy is an easy target, and whining about it is a steady feature of complex human societies which always need and automatically generate it. And Weberian public administration has its systemic faults — slowness, process-orientation, a slippery slope to authoritarian, mindless hierarchization and shirking. However, this bureaucracy is in its optimal form ethics-based, high-capacity, and motivation-driven. It is meant to be both responsible — to a state that is above and beyond particular interests — as well as responsive — to groups and citizens, but not at the cost of the commonweal.

However we decide to manage the transition to a CO2-neutral world — via Green Growth or Post-Growth — that process will have to be implemented by competent, motivated, and yes, Weberian civil servants.

But neoliberal ideology never believed that this kind of civil service was real, or pretended not to. So Weberian public administration became the bête noire of the New Public Management (NPM)….(More)”.

COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by François Bonnici: “…Social innovators and social entrepreneurs have been working to solve market failures and demonstrate more sustainable models to build inclusive economies for years. The Schwab Foundation 2020 Impact Report “Two Decades of Impact” demonstrated how the network of 400 leading social innovators and entrepreneurs it supports have improved the lives of more than 622 million people, protecting livelihoods, driving movements for social inclusion and environmental sustainability, and providing improved access to health, sanitation, education and energy.

From providing reliable information, services and care for the most vulnerable, to developing community tracing initiatives or mental health support through mobile phones, the work of social entrepreneurs is even more critical during the COVID-19 pandemic, as they reach those who the market and governments are unable to account for.

But right now, these front-line organizations face severe constraints or even bankruptcy. Decades of work in the impact sector are at stake.

Over the past four decades, a sophisticated impact ecosystem has emerged to support the work of social innovators and impact enterprises. This includes funding provided by capital sources ranging from philanthropy and impact investing, intermediaries providing certification and standards, peer networks of learning and policy and regulation of this new “social economy” seeking to embed inclusive and sustainable organizational approaches imbued with principles of equality, justice and respect for our planet.

From this ecosystem, 40 leading global organizations collectively supporting more than 15,000 social entrepreneurs have united to launch the COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs. The aim is to share knowledge, experience and resources to coordinate and amplify social entrepreneurs’ response to COVID-19….(More)”.

Secondhand Smoke, Moral Sanctions, and How We Should Respond to COVID-19

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Barry Schwartz: “How did we get from that day to this one, with widespread smoking bans in public places? The answer, I believe, was the discovery of the effects of secondhand smoke. When I smoked, it harmed innocent bystanders. It harmed children, including my own. The research on secondhand smoke began in the 1960s, showing negative effects on lab animals. As the work continued, it left no doubt that secondhand smoke contributes to asthma, cardiovascular disease, many types of cancer, stroke, cognitive impairment, and countless other maladies. These sorts of findings empowered people to demand, not request, that others put out their cigarettes. The secondhand smoke research led eventually to all the regulation that we now take for granted.

Why did this research change public attitudes and change them so fast—in a single generation? The answer, I think, is that research on secondhand smoke took an individual (perhaps foolish) choice and moralized it, by emphasizing its effects on others. It was no longer simply dumb to smoke; it was immoral. And that changed everything.

Psychologist Paul Rozin has studied the process of moralization. When activities get moralized, they move from being matters of individual discretion to being matters of obligation. Smoking went from being an individual consumer decision to being a transgression. And the process of moralization can go in the other direction, as we have seen, for most people, in the case of sexuality. In recent years, homosexuality has been “demoralized,” and moral sanctions against it have slowly been melting away….(More)”.

The Bigot in the Machine: Bias in Algorithmic Systems

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Article by Barbara Fister: “We are living in an “age of algorithms.” Vast quantities of information are collected, sorted, shared, combined, and acted on by proprietary black boxes. These systems use machine learning to build models and make predictions from data sets that may be out of date, incomplete, and biased. We will explore the ways bias creeps into information systems, take a look at how “big data,” artificial intelligence and machine learning often amplify bias unwittingly, and consider how these systems can be deliberately exploited by actors for whom bias is a feature, not a bug. Finally, we’ll discuss ways we can work with our communities to create a more fair and just information environment….(More)”.

Why local data is the key to successful place making

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Blog by Sally Kerr: “The COVID emergency has brought many challenges that were unimaginable a few months ago. The first priorities were safety and health, but when lockdown started one of the early issues was accessing and sharing local data to help everyone deal with and live through the emergency. Communities grappled with the scarcity of local data, finding it difficult to source for some services, food deliveries and goods. This was not a new issue, but the pandemic brought it into sharp relief.

Local data use covers a broad spectrum. People moving to a new area want information about the environment — schools, amenities, transport, crime rates and local health. For residents, continuing knowledge of business opening hours, events, local issues, council plans and roadworks remains important, not only for everyday living but to help understand issues and future plans that will change their environment. Really local data (hyperlocal data) is either fragmented or unavailable, making it difficult for local people to stay informed, whilst larger data sets about an area (e.g. population, school performance) are not always easy to understand or use. They sit in silos owned by different sectors, on disparate websites, usually collated for professional or research use.

Third sector organisations in a community will gather data relevant to their work such as contacts and event numbers but may not source wider data sets about the area, such as demographics, to improve their work. Using this data could strengthen future grant applications by validating their work. For Government or Health bodies carrying out place making community projects, there is a reliance on their own or national data sources supplemented with qualitative data snapshots. Their dependence on tried and tested sources is due to time and resource pressures but means there is no time to gather that rich seam of local data that profiles individual needs.

Imagine a future community where local data is collected and managed together for both official organisations and the community itself. Where there are shared aims and varied use. Current and relevant data would be accessible and easy to understand, provided in formats that suit the user — from data scientist to school child. A curated data hub would help citizens learn data skills and carry out collaborative projects on anything from air quality to local biodiversity, managing the data and offering increased insight and useful validation for wider decision making. Costs would be reduced with duplication and effort reduced….(More)”.