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)”.

The Data Dividend Project

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About: “The Data Dividend Project is a movement dedicated to taking back control of our personal data: our data is our property, and if we allow companies to use it, we should get paid for it. The DDP is the brainchild of former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Its primary objective is to establish and enforce data property rights under laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which went into effect on January 1, 2020.

Every day, people are generating data simply by going about the business of living in an ever connected and digital world. Unbeknownst to most people, technology companies are tracking their every move online, extracting this data, and then buying and selling it for big money. The sale and resale of consumer data is called data brokering, which is itself a $200 billion industry.

For example, technology companies can extract location data from your mobile phone and sell it to advertisers who can then turn around and post local ads to you in real time. Until recently, the data collector – in this case, the technology company – was deemed to own the data. As the owner, the technology company could sell that data and profit handsomely. Meanwhile, you generated the data but received no share of those profits. DDP plans to change that.

Until this year, you, as the American consumer, had little recourse against technology companies who were profiting off your data without your consent or knowledge. Now, under the CCPA, Californians are endowed with a collection of unalienable data rights: the right to know what information is being collected on you, the right to delete that information, and the right to opt-out from technology companies collecting your data. These rights, however, are ignored and abused by technology companies. And unfortunately, individual consumers don’t have the leverage to be able to go up against these companies. That’s where DDP comes in….(More)“

Best Practices to Cover Ad Information Used for Research, Public Health, Law Enforcement & Other Uses

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “The Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) released privacy Best Practices for its members to follow if they use data collected for Tailored Advertising or Ad Delivery and Reporting for non-marketing purposes, such as sharing with research institutions, public health agencies, or law enforcement entities.

“Ad tech companies have data that can be a powerful resource for the public good if they follow this set of best practices for consumer privacy,” said Leigh Freund, NAI President and CEO. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen the opportunity for substantial public health benefits from sharing aggregate and de-identified location data.”

The NAI Code of Conduct – the industry’s premier self-regulatory framework for privacy, transparency, and consumer choice – covers data collected and used for Tailored Advertising or Ad Delivery and Reporting. The NAI Code has long addressed certain non-marketing uses of data collected for Tailored Advertising and Ad Delivery and Reporting by prohibiting any
eligibility uses of such data, including uses for credit, insurance, healthcare, and employment decisions.

The NAI has always firmly believed that data collected for advertising purposes should not have a negative effect on consumers in their daily lives. However, over the past year, novel data uses have been introduced, especially during the recent health crisis. In the case of opted-in data such as Precise Location Information, a company may determine a user would benefit from more detailed disclosure in a just-in-time notice about non-marketing uses of the data being collected….(More)”.

Changing Citizen Behaviour: An Investigation on Nudge Approach in Developing Society

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Dimas Budi Prasetyo: “It is widely explored that problems in developing society related to think and act logically and reflectively in a social context positively correlates with the cognition skill. In most developing societies, people are busy with problems that they face daily (i.e. working overtime), limits their cognitive capacity to properly process a social stimulus, which mostly asked their thoughtful response. Thus, a better design in social stimulus to tackle problematic behaviour, such as littering, to name a few, becomes more prominent. During the last decade, nudge has been famous for its subtle approach for behaviour change – however, there is relatively little known of the method applied in the developing society. The current article reviews the nudge approach to change human behaviour from two perspectives: cognitive science and consumer psychology. The article concludes that intervention using the nudge approach could be beneficial for current problematic behaviour…(More)”.

What Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom’s early work tells us about defunding the police

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Aaron Vansintjan: “…As she concluded in her autobiographical reflections published two years before she died in 2012, “For policing, increasing the size of governmental units consistently had a negative impact on the level of output generated as well as on efficiency of service provision… smaller police departments… consistently outperformed their better trained and better financed larger neighbors.”

But why did this happen? To explain this, Ostrom showed how, in small communities with small police forces, citizens are more active in monitoring their neighborhoods. Officers in smaller police forces also have more knowledge of the local area and better connections with the community. 

She also found that larger, more centralized police forces also have a negative effect on other public services. With a larger police bureaucracy, other local frontline professionals with less funding — social workers, mental health support centers, clinics, youth support services — have less of a say in how to respond to a community’s issues  such as drug use or domestic violence. The bigger the police department, the less citizens — especially those that are already marginalized, like migrants or Black communities — have a say in how policing should be conducted.

This finding became a crucial step in Ostrom’s groundbreaking work on how communities manage their resources sustainably without outside help — through deliberation, resolving conflict and setting clear community agreements. This is what she ended up becoming famous for, and what won her the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, placing her next to some of the foremost economists in the world.

But her research on policing shouldn’t be forgotten: It shows that, when it comes to safer communities, having more funding or larger services is not important. What’s important is the connections and trust between the community and the service provider….(More)”.

The practice of democracy: A selection of civic engagement initiatives

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Study by the European Parliament Research Service: “Public powers are currently facing extraordinary challenges, from finding ways to revive economic growth without damaging the environment, to managing a global health crisis, combating inequality and securing peace. In the coming decades, public regulators, and with them academics, civil society actors and corporate powers, will confront another dilemma that is fast becoming a clear and present challenge. This is whether to protect the current structures of democratic governance,despite the widespread perception of their inefficiency,or adapt them to fast-changing scenarios (but, in doing so, take the risk of further weakening democracy).

The picture is blurred, with diverging trends. On the one hand, the classic interest-representation model is under strain. Low voter turnouts, rising populist (or anti-establishment) political movements and widespread discontent towards public institutions are stress-testing the foundations of democratic systems. Democracy, ever-louder voices argue, is a mere chimera, and citizens have little meaningful impact on the public decision-making process. Therefore, critics suggest, alternatives to the democratic model must be considered if countries are to navigate future challenges. However, the reality is more complex. Indeed, the decay of democratic values is unambiguously rejected by the birth of new grassroots movements, evidenced by record-speed civic mobilisation (especially among the young) and sustained by widespread street protest. Examined more closely, these events show that global demand for participation is alive and kicking.

The clash between these two opposing trends raises a number of questions that policy-makers and analysts must answer. First, will new, hybrid, forms of democratic participation replace classic representation systems? Second, amid transformative processes, how will power-roles be redistributed? A third set of questions looks at what is driving the transformation of democratic systems. As the venues of political discussion and interaction move from town halls and meeting rooms to online forums, it becomes critical to understand whether innovative democratic practices will be implemented almost exclusively through impersonal, ascetic, digital platforms; or, whether civic engagement will still be nurtured through in-person, local forums built to encourage debate.

This study begins by looking at the latest developments in the academic and institutional debates on democratic participation and civic engagement. Contributing to the crisis of traditional democratic models are political apathy and declining trust in political institutions, changes in methods of producing and sharing knowledge, and the pervasive nature of technology. How are public institutions reacting to these disruptive changes? The central part of this study examines a sample of initiatives trialled by public administrations (local, national and supranational) to engage citizens in policy-making. These initiatives are categorised by three criteria: first, the depth and complexity of cooperation between public structures and private actors; second, the design of procedures and structures of participation; and,third, the level of politicisation of the consultations, as well as the attractiveness of certain topics compared with others.

This analysis is intended to contribute to the on-going debate on the democratisation of the European Union (EU). The planned Conference on the Future of Europe, the recent reform of the European Citizens’ Initiative, and on-going debates on how to improve the transparency of EU decision-making are all designed to revive the civic spirit of the European public. These efforts notwithstanding, severe political, economic and societal challenges are jeopardising the very ideological foundations of the Union. The on-going coronavirus pandemic has placed the EU’s effectiveness under scrutiny once again. By appraising and applying methods tested by public sector institutions to engage citizens in policy-making, the EU could boost its chances of accomplishing its political mandate with success….(More)”

Exploring Blockchain Technology for Government Transparency

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the World Economic Forum: “The costs to society of public-sector corruption and weak accountability are staggering. In many parts of the world, public-sector corruption is the single-largest challenge, stifling social, economic and environmental development. Often, corruption centres around a lack of transparency, inadequate record-keeping and low public accountability.

Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, when applied thoughtfully to certain corruption-prone government processes, can potentially increase transparency and accountability in these systems, reducing the risk or prevalence of corrupt activity.

In partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Office of the Inspector General of Colombia (Procuraduría General de Colombia), the Forum has led a multistakeholder team to investigate, design and trial the use of blockchain technology for corruption-prone government processes, anchored in the use case of public procurement.

Using cryptography and distributed consensus mechanisms, blockchain provides the unique combination of permanent and tamper-evident record-keeping, transaction transparency and auditability, automated functions with “smart contracts”, and the reduction of centralized authority and information ownership within processes. These properties make blockchain a high potential emerging technology to address corruption. The project chose to focus on the public procurement process because it constitutes one of the largest sites of corruption globally, stands to benefit from these technology properties and plays a significant role in serving public interest…(More)”.

Modeling the Human Trajectory

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

David Roodman at Open Philanthropy: “… How much should we care about people who will live far in the future? Or about chickens today? What events could extinguish civilization? Could artificial intelligence (AI) surpass human intelligence?

One strand of analysis that has caught our attention is about the pattern of growth of human society over many millennia, as measured by number of people or value of economic production. Perhaps the mathematical shape of the past tells us about the shape of the future. I dug into that subject. A draft of my technical paper is here. (Comments welcome.) In this post, I’ll explain in less technical language what I learned.

It’s extraordinary that the larger the human economy has become—the more people and the more goods and services they produce—the faster it has grown on average. Now, especially if you’re reading quickly, you might think you know what I mean. And you might be wrong, because I’m not referring to exponential growth. That happens when, for example, the number of people carrying a virus doubles every week. Then the growth rate (100% increase per week) holds fixed. The human economy has grown super-exponentially. The bigger it has gotten, the faster it has doubled, on average. The global economy churned out $74 trillion in goods and services in 2019, twice as much as in 2000.1 Such a quick doubling was unthinkable in the Middle Ages and ancient times. Perhaps our earliest doublings took millennia.

If global economic growth keeps accelerating, the future will differ from the present to a mind-boggling degree. The question is whether there might be some plausibility in such a prospect. That is what motivated my exploration of the mathematical patterns in the human past and how they could carry forward. Having now labored long on the task, I doubt I’ve gained much perspicacity. I did come to appreciate that any system whose rate of growth rises with its size is inherently unstable. The human future might be one of explosion, perhaps an economic upwelling that eclipses the industrial revolution as thoroughly as it eclipsed the agricultural revolution. Or the future could be one of implosion, in which environmental thresholds are crossed or the creative process that drives growth runs amok, as in an AI dystopia. More likely, these impulses will mix.

I now understand more fully a view that shapes the work of Open Philanthropy. The range of possible futures is wide. So it is our task as citizens and funders, at this moment of potential leverage, to lower the odds of bad paths and raise the odds of good ones….(More)”.

Laying the Foundation for Effective Partnerships: An Examination of Data Sharing Agreements

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Hayden Dahmm: “In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, data has never been more salient. COVID has generated new data demands and increased cross-sector data collaboration. Yet, these data collaborations require careful planning and evaluation of risks and opportunities, especially when sharing sensitive data. Data sharing agreements (DSAs) are written agreements that establish the terms for how data are shared between parties and are important for establishing accountability and trust.

However, negotiating DSAs is often time consuming, and collaborators lacking legal or financial capacity are disadvantaged. Contracts for Data Collaboration (C4DC) is a joint initiative between SDSN TReNDS, NYU’s GovLab, the World Economic Forum, and the University of Washington, working to strengthen trust and transparency of data collaboratives. The partners have created an online library of DSAs which represents a selection of data applications and contexts.

This report introduces C4DC and its DSA library. We demonstrate how the library can support the data community to strengthen future data collaborations by showcasing various DSA applications and key considerations. First, we explain our method of analyzing the agreements and consider how six major issues are addressed by different agreements in the library. Key issues discussed include data use, access, breaches, proprietary issues, publicization of the analysis, and deletion of data upon termination of the agreement. For each of these issues, we describe approaches illustrated with examples from the library. While our analysis suggests some pertinent issues are regularly not addressed in DSAs, we have identified common areas of practice that may be helpful for entities negotiating partnership agreements to consider in the future….(More)”.

A Practical Guide for Establishing an Evidence Centre

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Alliance for Useful Evidence: “Since 2013, Nesta and the Alliance for Useful Evidence have supported the development of more than eight evidence centres. This report draws on insight from our own experience, published material and interviews with senior leaders from a range of evidence intermediaries.

The report identifies five common ingredients that contribute to successful evidence centres:

  1. Clear objectives: Good knowledge of the centre’s intended user group(s), clear outcomes to work towards and an evidence-informed theory of change.
  2. Robust organisational development: Commitment to create an independent and sustainable organisation with effective governance and the right mix of skills and experience, over a timescale that will be sufficient to make a difference.
  3. Engaged users: Understanding users’ evidence needs and working collaboratively with them to increase their capability, motivation and opportunity to use evidence in their decision-making.
  4. Rigorous curation and creation of evidence: A robust and transparent approach to selecting and generating high-quality evidence for the centre’s users.
  5. A focus on impact: Commitment to learn from the centre’s activities, including successes and failures, so that you can increase your effectiveness in achieving your objectives…(More)”.