Blog by Jim Nelson: “The idea is that web sites will verify you much as a bartender checks your ID before pouring a drink. The bar doesn’t store a copy of your card and the bartender doesn’t look at your name or address; only your age is pertinent to receive service. The next time you enter the bar the bartender once again asks for proof of age, which you may or may not relinquish. That’s the promise of self-sovereign identity. At the Decentralized Web Summit, questions and solutions were bounced around in the hopes of solving this fundamental problem.... (More >)
Age of the expert as policymaker is coming to an end
Wolfgang Münchau at the Financial Times: “…Where the conflation of the expert and the policymaker did real damage was not to policy but to expertdom itself. It compromised the experts’ most prized asset — their independence. When economics blogging started to become fashionable, I sat on a podium with an academic blogger who predicted that people like him would usurp the role of the economics newspaper columnist within a period of 10 years. That was a decade ago. His argument was that trained economists were just smarter. What he did not reckon with is that it is hard to... (More >)
The language we use to describe data can also help us fix its problems
Luke Stark & Anna Lauren Hoffmann at Quartz: “Data is, apparently, everything. It’s the “new oil” that fuels online business. It comes in floods or tsunamis. We access it via “streams” or “fire hoses.” We scrape it, mine it, bank it, and clean it. (Or, if you prefer your buzzphrases with a dash of ageism and implicit misogyny, big data is like “teenage sex,” while working with it is “the sexiest job” of the century.) These data metaphors can seem like empty cliches, but at their core they’re efforts to come to grips with the continuing onslaught of connected... (More >)
Public Entrepreneurship: How to train 21st century leaders
Beth Noveck at apolitical: “So how do we develop these better ways of working in government? How do we create a more effective public service? Governments, universities and philanthropies are beginning to invest in training those inside and outside of government in new kinds of public entrepreneurial skills. They are also innovating in how they teach. Canada has created a new Digital Academy to teach digital literacy to all 250,000 public servants. Among other approaches, they have created a 15 minute podcast series called bus rides to enable public servants to learn on their commute. The better programs, like... (More >)
The Education Data Collaborative: A new kind of partnership.
About: “Whether we work within schools or as part of the broader ecosystem of parent-teacher associations, and philanthropic, nonprofit, and volunteer organizations, we need data to guide decisions about investing our time and resources. This data is typically expensive to gather, often unvalidated (e.g. self-reported), and commonly available only to those who collect or report it. It can even be hard to ask for data when it’s not clear what’s available. At the same time, information – in the form of discrete research, report-card style PDFs, or static websites – is everywhere. The result is that many already resource-thin... (More >)
The war to free science
Brian Resnick and Julia Belluz at Vox: “The 27,500 scientists who work for the University of California generate 10 percent of all the academic research papers published in the United States. Their university recently put them in a strange position: Sometime this year, these scientists will not be able to directly access much of the world’s published research they’re not involved in. That’s because in February, the UC system — one of the country’s largest academic institutions, encompassing Berkeley, Los Angeles, Davis, and several other campuses — dropped its nearly $11 million annual subscription to Elsevier, the world’s largest... (More >)
Data & Policy: A new venue to study and explore policy–data interaction
Opening editorial by Stefaan G. Verhulst, Zeynep Engin and Jon Crowcroft: “…Policy–data interactions or governance initiatives that use data have been the exception rather than the norm, isolated prototypes and trials rather than an indication of real, systemic change. There are various reasons for the generally slow uptake of data in policymaking, and several factors will have to change if the situation is to improve. …. Despite the number of successful prototypes and small-scale initiatives, policy makers’ understanding of data’s potential and its value proposition generally remains limited (Lutes, 2015). There is also limited appreciation of the advances data... (More >)
Introducing ‘AI Commons’: A framework for collaboration to achieve global impact
Press Release: “Last week’s 3rd annual AI for Good Global Summit once again showcased the growing number of Artificial Intelligence (AI) projects with promise to advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Now, using the Summit’s momentum, AI innovators and humanitarian leaders are prepared to take the ‘AI for Good’ movement to the next level. They are working together to launch an ‘AI Commons’ that aims to scale AI for Good projects and maximize their impact across the world. The AI Commons will enable AI adopters to connect with AI specialists and data owners to align incentives for... (More >)
How not to conduct a consultation – and why asking the public is not always such a great idea
Agnes Batory & Sara Svensson at Policy and Politics: “Involving people in policy-making is generally a good thing. Policy-makers themselves often pay at least lip-service to the importance of giving citizens a say. In the academic literature, participatory governance has been, with some exaggeration, almost universally hailed as a panacea to all ills in Western democracies. In particular, it is advocated as a way to remedy the alienation of voters from politicians who seem to be oblivious to the concerns of the common man and woman, with an ensuing decline in public trust in government. Representation by political parties... (More >)
Number of fact-checking outlets surges to 188 in more than 60 countries
Mark Stencel at Poynter: “The number of fact-checking outlets around the world has grown to 188 in more than 60 countries amid global concerns about the spread of misinformation, according to the latest tally by the Duke Reporters’ Lab. Since the last annual fact-checking census in February 2018, we’ve added 39 more outlets that actively assess claims from politicians and social media, a 26% increase. The new total is also more than four times the 44 fact-checkers we counted when we launched our global database and map in 2014. Globally, the largest growth came in Asia, which went from... (More >)
