European Parliament Think Tank: “Given the central role that online platforms (OPs) play in the digital economy, questions arise about their responsibility in relation to illegal/harmful content or products hosted in the frame of their operation. Against this background, this study reviews the main legal/regulatory challenges associated with OP operations and analyses the incentives for OPs, their users and third parties to detect and remove illegal/harmful and dangerous material, content and/or products. To create a functional classification which can be used for regulatory purposes, it discusses the notion of OPs and attempts to categorise them under multiple criteria. The study then maps and critically assesses the whole range of OP liabilities, taking hard and soft law, self-regulation and national legislation into consideration, whenever relevant. Finally, the study puts forward policy options for an efficient EU liability regime: (i) maintaining the status quo; (ii) awareness-raising and media literacy; (iii)promoting self-regulation; (iv) establishing co-regulation mechanisms and tools; (v) adoptingstatutory legislation; (vi) modifying OPs’ secondaryliability by employing two different models – (a) byclarifying the conditions for liability exemptionsprovided by the e-Commerce Directive or (b) byestablishing a harmonised regime of liability….(More)”.
Dialogues about Data: Building trust and unlocking the value of citizens’ health and care data
Nesta Report by Sinead Mac Manus and Alice Clay: “The last decade has seen exponential growth in the amount of data generated, collected and analysed to provide insights across all aspects of industry. Healthcare is no exception. We are increasingly seeing the value of using health and care data to prevent ill health, improve health outcomes for people and provide new insights into disease and treatments.
Bringing together common themes across the existing research, this report sets out two interlinked challenges to building a data-driven health and care system. This is interspersed with best practice examples of the potential of data to improve health and care, as well as cautionary tales of what can happen when this is done badly.
The first challenge we explore is how to increase citizens’ trust and transparency in data sharing. The second challenge is how to unlock the value of health and care data.
We are excited about the role for participatory futures – a set of techniques that systematically engage people to imagine and create more sustainable, inclusive futures – in helping governments and other organisations work with citizens to engage them in debate about their health and care data to build a data-driven health and care system for the benefit of all….(More)”.
Surveillance and the ‘New Normal’ of Covid-19: Public Health, Data, and Justice
Report by the Social Science Research Council: “The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically altered the way nations around the world use technology in public health. As the virus spread globally, some nations responded by closing businesses, shuttering schools, limiting gatherings, and banning travel. Many also deployed varied technological tools and systems to track virus exposure, monitor outbreaks, and aggregate hospital data.
Some regions are still grappling with crisis-level conditions, and others are struggling to navigate the complexities of vaccine rollouts. Amid the upheavals, communities are adjusting to a new normal, in which mask-wearing has become as commonplace as seatbelt use and digital temperature checks are a routine part of entering public buildings.
Even as the frenzy of emergency responses begins to subside, the emergent forms of surveillance that have accompanied this new normal persist. As a consequence, societies face new questions about how to manage the monitoring systems created in response to the virus, what processes are required in order to immunize populations, and what new norms the systems have generated. How they answer these questions will have long-term impacts on civil liberties, governance, and the role of technology in society. The systems implemented amid the public health emergency could jeopardize individual freedoms and exacerbate harms to already vulnerable groups, particularly if they are adapted to operate as permanent social management tools. At the same time, growing public awareness about the impact of public health technologies could also provide a catalyst for strengthening democratic engagement and demonstrating the urgency of improving governance systems. As the world transitions in and out of pandemic crisis modes, there is an opportunity to think broadly about strengthening public health systems, policymaking, and the underlying structure of our social compacts.
The stakes are high: an enduring lesson from history is that moments of crisis often recast the roles of governments and the rights of individuals. Moments of crisis often recast the roles of governments and the rights of individuals.In this moment of flux, the Social Science Research Council calls on policymakers, technologists, data scientists, health experts, academics, activists, and communities around the world to assess the implications of this transformation and seize opportunities for positive social change. The Council seeks to facilitate a shift from reactive modes of crisis response to more strategic forms of deliberation among varied stakeholders. As such, it has convened discussions and directed research in order to better understand the intersection of governance and technologically enabled surveillance in conditions of public health emergencies. Through these activities, the Council aims to provide analysis that can help foster societies that are more resilient, democratic, and inclusive and can, therefore, better withstand future crises.
With these goals in mind, the Council convened a cross-disciplinary, multinational group of experts in the summer of 2020 to survey the landscape of human rights and social justice with regard to technologically driven public health practices. The resulting group—the Public Health, Surveillance, and Human Rights (PHSHR) Network—raised a broad range of questions about governance, social inequalities, data protection, medical systems, and community norms: What rules should govern the sharing of personal health data? How should the efficacy of public health interventions be weighed against the emergence and expansion of new forms of surveillance? How much control should multinational corporations have in designing and implementing nations’ public health technology systems? These are among the questions that pushed members to think beyond traditional professional, geographic, and intellectual boundaries….(More)”.
The Power of Virtual Communities
Report by The GovLab: “When India went into lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, restrictions on movement affected people’s access to medicine, food and other supplies that they relied upon. HIV/AIDS sufferers feared traveling to clinics and labs to pick up their medication. Needing help, many turned to HumanKind Global, a new network of thousands of volunteers who coordinate aid through a Facebook Group and WhatsApp (also owned by Facebook).
Mahita Nagaraj, 39, a self-employed digital marketing professional and single mother based in Bangalore, created the group in March 2020. In just four weeks, HumanKind Global volunteers delivered lifesaving HIV medicines to more than 170 people across India. It has since grown to more than 50,000 members. Answering more than 25,000 requests for help, these volunteers have coordinated blood donations, delivered life-saving medication and provided people stranded at home with enough food to eat.
HumanKind Global is an online group, a form of human organization that is expanding at a remarkable scale and speed. Online groups exist for many reasons. Some offer lifesaving support while others enable people—whether they life next door or across an ocean—to trade articles, jokes, photographs, insults, ideas, advice, information, and sometimes misinformation. The space in which contemporary online groups are active is at once global and local, intimate and vast. A post can reach two million people, or spark a conversation between just two. Governed by their own members and the policies of the platforms on which they are hosted, these groups have diverse rules that seek to create a space in which their members can connect supported by feelings of belonging, intimacy and trust.
Online groups like HumanKind Global can be found on many platforms. There are discussion groups on Reddit, artist colonies on LEGO Mindstorms, player groups on gaming platforms like Twitch, or parenting groups in which members go online to organize real-life meetings through MeetUp. But in this report we study Facebook Groups, specifically, as one category of online group….(More)”. (See also: https://virtual-communities.thegovlab.org/)
Copenhagen Manual
About: “The Copenhagen Manual is a helping hand for those who are in a position to further data-informed strategies for public sector development or have been given the responsibility for preparing, analysing or communicating a survey on public sector innovation.
Like other instruction manuals, the Copenhagen Manual offers examples of use, handy tips and general warnings. The manual discusses setting strategic goals, communication, reaching respondents, adapting the questionnaire and defining public sector innovation.
Internationally comparable data
The manual offers an opportunity to mirror public sector innovation capacity by way of internationally comparable data. The Copenhagen Manual, with emphasis on the ‘open’ in Copenhagen is:
- the result of an open co-creation process that welcomed the participation of all interested parties
- based on the open sharing of a multitude of experiences, good and bad
- open to interpretation, making it usable in different national contexts and open to continuous discussion of added practical experience as actors from more countries conduct surveys on public sector innovation…(More)”.
Designing Data Trusts. Why We Need to Test Consumer Data Trusts Now
Policy Brief by Aline Blankertz: “Data about individuals, about their preferences and behaviors, has become an increasingly important resource for companies, public agencies, and research institutions. Consumers carry the burden of having to decide which data about them is shared for which purpose. They want to make sure that data about them is not used to infer intimate details of their private life or to pursue other undesirable purposes. At the same time, they want to benefit from personalized products and innovation driven by the same data. The complexity of how data is collected and used overwhelms consumers, many of whom wearily accept privacy policies and lose trust that those who gain effective control over the data will use it for the consumers’ benefit.
At the same time, a few large companies accumulate and lock in vast amounts of data that enable them to use insights across markets and across consumers. In Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has given data rights to consumers to assert their interests vis-a-vis those companies, but it gives consumers neither enough information nor enough power to make themselves heard. Other organizations, especially small businesses or start-ups, do not have access to the data (unless individual consumers laboriously exercise their right to portability), which often inhibits competition and innovation. Governments across Europe would like to tackle the challenge of reconciling productive data use with privacy. In recent months, data trusts have emerged as a promising solution to enable data-sharing for the benefit of consumers.
The concept has been endorsed by a broad range of stakeholders, including privacy advocates, companies and expert commissions. In Germany, for example, the data ethics commission and the commission competition law 4.0 have recommended further exploring data trusts, and the government is incorporating the concept into its data strategy.
There is no common understanding yet what consumer data trusts are and what they do. In order for them to address the problems mentioned, it is helpful to use as a working definition: consumer data trusts are intermediaries that aggregate consumers’ interests and represent them vis-à-vis data-using organizations. Data trusts use more technical and legal expertise, as well as greater bargaining power, to negotiate with organizations on the conditions of data use to achieve better outcomes than those that individual consumers can achieve. To achieve their consumer-oriented mission, data trusts should be able to assign access rights, audit data practices, and support enforcement. They may or may not need to hold data…(More)”.
Future of Vulnerability: Humanity in the Digital Age
Report by the Australian Red Cross: “We find ourselves at the crossroads of humanity and technology. It is time to put people and society at the centre of our technological choices. To ensure that benefits are widely shared. To end the cycle of vulnerable groups benefiting least and being harmed most by new technologies.
There is an agenda for change across research, policy and practice towards responsible, inclusive and ethical uses of data and technology.
People and civil society must be at the centre of this work, involved in generating insights and developing prototypes, in evidence-based decision-making about impacts, and as part of new ‘business as usual’.
The Future of Vulnerability report invites a conversation around the complex questions that all of us collectively need to ask about the vulnerabilities frontier technologies can introduce or heighten. It also highlights opportunities for collaborative exploration to develop and promote ‘humanity first’ approaches to data and technology….(More)”.
Centre for Applied Data Ethics Strategy – Enabling ethically appropriate research and statistics for the public good
Foreword by Professor Sir Ian Diamond: “I am delighted to introduce the UK Statistics Authority’s new Centre for Applied Data Ethics which we committed to establishing in the UK Statistics Authority’s five-year strategy published last year. Being able to show that researchers, statisticians and analysts have not only considered how they can use data but also how they should use data from an ethical perspective is vital to ensuring public acceptability around the use of data for research and statistical purposes. For this reason, I believe that it is important that as the UK’s national statistical institute, we play a lead role in providing statisticians, researchers and analysts with applied sources of advice, guidance and other tools to help them ensure they use data in ethically appropriate ways. I have therefore established the UK Statistics Authority’s Centre for Applied Data Ethics with the aim of being recognised as world-leaders in the practical application of data ethics for statistics and research.
The new Centre will build on the excellent work of the National Statistician’s Data Ethics Advisory Committee that will continue to provide me with valuable independent data ethics advice and assurance about the collection and use of data for research and statistics.
The significant role the analytical community across Government and beyond has played in informing the response to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic highlights the importance of using data in new ways to produce timely statistics, research and analysis to inform the important policy questions of the day. Demonstrating how we apply the principles of good data ethics is an important part of this and is a key enabler, and safeguard, to unlock the power of data for better research and statistics for the public good. By focussing our efforts on providing practical data ethics support and guidance to researchers collecting and using data, the Centre for Applied Data Ethics will help the UK Statistics Authority to meet its strategic objectives of producing statistics for the public good to inform the UK, improve lives and build for the future….(More)”.
Collective bargaining on digital platforms and data stewardship
Paper by Astha Kapoor: “… there is a need to think of exploitation on platforms not only through the lens of labour rights but also that of data rights. In the current context, it is impossible to imagine well-being without more agency on the way data are collected, stored and used. It is imperative to envision structures through which worker communities and representatives can be more involved in determining their own data lives on platforms. There is a need to organize and mobilize workers on data rights.
One of the ways in which this can be done is through a mechanism of community data stewards who represent the needs and interests of workers to their platforms, thus negotiating and navigating the data-based decisions. This paper examines the need for data rights as a critical requirement for worker well-being in the platform economy and the ways in which it can be actualized. It argues, given that workers on platforms produce data through collective labour on and off the platform, that worker data are a community resource and should be governed by representatives of workers who can negotiate with platforms on the use of that data for workers and for the public interest. The paper analyses the opportunity for a community data steward mechanism that represents workers’ interests and intermediates on data issues, such as transparency and accountability, with offline support systems. And is also a voice to online action to address some of the injustices of the data economy. Thus, a data steward is a tool through which workers better control their data—consent, privacy and rights—better and organize online. Essentially, it is a way forward for workers to mobilize collective bargaining on data rights.
The paper covers the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on workers’ rights and well-being. It explores the idea of community data rights on the platform economy and why collective bargaining on data is imperative for any kind of meaningful negotiation with technology companies. The role of a community data steward in reclaiming workers’ power in the platform economy is explained, concluding with policy recommendations for a community data steward structure in the Indian context….(More)”.
Introducing Fast Government, an exploration of innovation and talent in public service
Fast Company: “Before he cofounded ride-sharing company Lyft, CEO Logan Green learned the intricacies of public transportation as a director on the Santa Barbara Metropolitan Transit District board. Venture capitalist Bradley Tusk worked as a communications director for Sen. Chuck Schumer and served as deputy governor of Illinois. Aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe says her six years working at NASA were “instrumental” to founding STEMBoard, a tech company that serves government and private-sector clients.
For these business leaders, “government service” isn’t a pejorative. Their work in the public sector helped shape their entrepreneurial journeys. And many executives from Silicon Valley to Wall Street have served at the highest levels in government, including Mike Bloomberg (a three-term mayor of New York), Megan Smith (former Google executive who served as Chief Technology Officer of the United States), and Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, a former venture investor nominated to be U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
Today Fast Company is launching an initiative called Fast Government that aims to examine the cross-pollination of talent and innovative ideas between the public and private sectors. It is a home for stories about leaders who are bringing entrepreneurial zeal to state, federal, and local agencies and offices. This section will also explore the ways government service helped shape the careers of business leaders at some of the world’s most innovative companies.
As Sean McManus and Brett Dobbs explain in this accompanying piece, the talent pipeline in government needs refreshing. A third of federal civilian employees are slated to retire in the next five years, and fewer than 6% are under the age of 30. Young leaders, especially purpose-driven individuals looking to make a difference, might perhaps want to consider a stint in fast government….(More)”.