Gender Gaps in Urban Mobility

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Brief of the Data 2X Big Data and Gender Brief Series by The GovLab, UNICEF, Universidad Del Desarrollo, Telefónica R&D Center, ISI Foundation, and DigitalGlobe: “Mobility is gendered. For example, the household division of labor in many societies leads women and girls to take more multi-purpose, multi-stop trips than men. Women-headed households also tend to work more in the informal sector, with limited access to transportation subsidies, and use of public transit is further reduced by the risk of violence in public spaces.

This brief summarizes a recent analysis of gendered urban mobility in 51 (out of 52) neighborhoods of Santiago, Chile, relying on the call detail records (CDRs) of a large sample of mobile phone users over a period of three months. We found that: 1) women move less overall than men; 2) have a smaller radius of movement; and 3) tend to concentrate their time in a smaller set of locations. These mobility gaps are linked to lower average incomes and fewer public and private transportation options. These insights, taken from large volumes of passively generated, inexpensive data streaming in realtime, can help policymakers design more gender inclusive urban transit systems….(More)”.

Next100

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

PressRelease: “Next100, a new “startup” think tank built for and by the next generation of policy leaders, officially launched today with the announcement of its inaugural class of eight “Policy Entrepreneurs,” selected from a highly competitive pool of more than 740 applicants. These eight rising leaders will spend the next two years researching and developing policy solutions to the issues that matter most to the next generation, focusing in particular on: education, immigration, criminal justice, climate change, economic opportunity, and the intersections between such issues.

Next100 was announced as an independent think tank earlier this year by The Century Foundation (TCF), in celebration of TCF’s 100th anniversary. It is built as a different type of “think and do” tank — both in terms of the people, perspectives, and policy areas represented, as well as its approach to advancing policy change. The organization’s mission is to change the face and future of progressive policy, through making the policymaking space more inclusive of diverse, next generation voices, and by helping emerging leaders translate their creative policy ideas into tangible policy change.

“The next generation is too often and too easily excluded from the policymaking table, despite having the most at stake in the decisions made at that table,” said Emma Vadehra, executive director of Next100. “As a result, we end up with the same people, with the same ideas, trying to solve the same problems, in the same ways. Next100 is trying to change that, and reimagine what a think tank can and should be. We’re giving diverse leaders of the next generation a chance to cut through the inertia and bring their unmatched creativity, knowledge, skills, and experiences to bear on the policymaking process. Policy by those with the most at stake, for those with the most at stake.”…(More)”.

How Tulsa is Preserving Privacy and Sharing Data for Social Good

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Data across Sectors for Health: “Data sharing between organizations addressing social risk factors has the potential to amplify impact by increasing direct service capacity and efficiency. Unfortunately, the risks of and restrictions on sharing personal data often limit this potential, and adherence to regulations such as HIPAA and FERPA can make data sharing a significant challenge.

DASH CIC-START awardee Restore Hope Ministries worked with Asemio to utilize technology that allows for the analysis of personally identifiable information while preserving clients’ privacy. The collaboration shared their findings in a new white paper that describes the process of using multi-party computation technology to answer questions that can aid service providers in exploring the barriers that underserved populations may be facing. The first question they asked: what is the overlap of populations served by two distinct organizations? The results of the overlap analysis confirmed that a significant opportunity exists to increase access to services for a subset of individuals through better outreach…(More)”

Today’s Problems, Yesterday’s Toolkit

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Beth Noveck and Rod Glover: “Governments of all political stripes are being buffeted by technological and societal change. There is a pervasive sense globally that governments are not doing as well as they ought to solve our biggest policy problems. Pressure has intensified to provide better services and experiences, and deliver measurable results that improve people’s lives. The failure to meet our most pressing challenges help to explain why in Australia, trust in government is at an all-time low. New technologies, however, bring with them the opportunity to rethink how the public sector in Australia might solve public problems by building a workforce with diverse and innovative skills, especially how to use data and actively reach out beyond the public sector itself.

Commissioned by the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG), this report builds on a pioneering survey of almost 400 public servants in Australia and New Zealand, dozens of interviews with senior practitioners, and original research into how governments around the world are training public officials in innovative practices.

The survey findings show that public servants are eager to embrace skills for innovation but receive inadequate training in them….(More)”

Politics, Bureaucracy and Successful Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Inaugural lecture by K.J. Meier: “One of the major questions, perhaps the major question, in the field of public administration is how to reconcile the need for bureaucracy with the democratic process. Bureaucracies after all are not seen as democratic institutions and operate based on hierarchy and expertise rather than popular will (see Mosher 1968). I take a distinctly minority view in the field, seeing bureaucracy not so much as a threat to democracy in existing mature democracies but as a necessary precondition for the existence of democracy in modern society (Meier 1997).

Democracy is a system of governance with high transactions costs that seeks democratic ideals of representation, equity, and fairness with only modest, if any, concern for efficiency. Effective bureaucracies are the institutions that produce the outcomes that build public support for democracy and in a sense generate the surplus that allows democratic processes to survive and flourish. Although bureaucracies may have none of the trappings of democracy internally, their role in contributing to democratic governance means that they should also be considered democratic institutions. Scholars, politicians, and citizens need to be concerned about preserving and protecting bureaucracy just as they seek to preserve and protect our official institutions of democracy.

Within the general theme of bureaucracy and democracy, this lecture will address two major concerns – (1) the failure of politics which severs the crucial link between voters and elected officials and poses major challenges to bureaucrats seeking to administer effective programs, and (2) the subsequent need for bureaucracy to also become an institution that represents the public. Within this concern about bureaucratic representation, the lecture will address how bureaucracies can assess the needs of citizens, and more narrowly how representative bureaucracy can be and is instrumental to the bureaucracy, and finally the limits of symbolic representation within bureaucracies….(More)”.

Government wants access to personal data while it pushes privacy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Sara Fischer and Scott Rosenberg at Axios: “Over the past two years, the U.S. government has tried to rein in how major tech companies use the personal data they’ve gathered on their customers. At the same time, government agencies are themselves seeking to harness those troves of data.

Why it matters: Tech platforms use personal information to target ads, whereas the government can use it to prevent and solve crimes, deliver benefits to citizens — or (illegally) target political dissent.

Driving the news: A new report from the Wall Street Journal details the ways in which family DNA testing sites like FamilyTreeDNA are pressured by the FBI to hand over customer data to help solve criminal cases using DNA.

  • The trend has privacy experts worried about the potential implications of the government having access to large pools of genetic data, even though many people whose data is included never agreed to its use for that purpose.

The FBI has particular interest in data from genetic and social media sites, because it could help solve crimes and protect the public.

  • For example, the FBI is “soliciting proposals from outside vendors for a contract to pull vast quantities of public data” from Facebook, Twitter Inc. and other social media companies,“ the Wall Street Journal reports.
  • The request is meant to help the agency surveil social behavior to “mitigate multifaceted threats, while ensuring all privacy and civil liberties compliance requirements are met.”
  • Meanwhile, the Trump administration has also urged social media platforms to cooperate with the governmentin efforts to flag individual users as potential mass shooters.

Other agencies have their eyes on big data troves as well.

  • Earlier this year, settlement talks between Facebook and the Department of Housing and Urban Development broke down over an advertising discrimination lawsuit when, according to a Facebook spokesperson, HUD “insisted on access to sensitive information — like user data — without adequate safeguards.”
  • HUD presumably wanted access to the data to ensure advertising discrimination wasn’t occurring on the platform, but it’s unclear whether the agency needed user data to be able to support that investigation….(More)”.

Fostering an Enabling Policy and Regulatory Environment in APEC for Data-Utilizing Businesses

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

APEC: “The objectives of this study is to better understand: 1) how firms from different sectors use data in their business models; and considering the significant increase in data-related policies and regulations enacted by governments across the world, 2) how such policies and regulations are affecting their use of data and hence business models. The study also tries: 3) to identify some of the middle-ground approaches that would enable governments to achieve public policy objectives, such as data security and privacy, and at the same time, also promote the growth of data-utilizing businesses. 39 firms from 12 economies have participated in this project and they come from a diverse group of industries, including aviation, logistics, shipping, payment services, encryption services, and manufacturing. The synthesis report can be found in Chapter 1 while the case study chapters can be found in Chapter 2 to 10….(More)”.

Blockchain and the General Data Protection Regulation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the European Directorate-General for Parliamentary Research Services (EPRS): “Blockchain is a much-discussed instrument that, according to some, promises to inaugurate a new era of data storage and code-execution, which could, in turn, stimulate new business models and markets. The precise impact of the technology is, of course, hard to anticipate with certainty, in particular as many remain sceptical of blockchain’s potential impact. In recent times, there has been much discussion in policy circles, academia and the private sector regarding the tension between blockchain and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Indeed, many of the points of tension between blockchain and the GDPR are due to two overarching factors.

First, the GDPR is based on an underlying assumption that in relation to each personal data point there is at least one natural or legal person – the data controller – whom data subjects can address to enforce their rights under EU data protection law. These data controllers must comply with the GDPR’s obligations. Blockchains, however, are distributed databases that often seek to achieve decentralisation by replacing a unitary actor with many different players. The lack of consensus as to how (joint-)controllership ought to be defined hampers the allocation of responsibility and accountability.

Second, the GDPR is based on the assumption that data can be modified or erased where necessary to comply with legal requirements, such as Articles 16 and 17 GDPR. Blockchains, however, render the unilateral modification of data purposefully onerous in order to ensure data integrity and to increase trust in the network. Furthermore, blockchains underline the challenges of adhering to the requirements of data minimisation and purpose limitation in the current form of the data economy.

This study examines the European data protection framework and applies it to blockchain technologies so as to document these tensions. It also highlights the fact that blockchain may help further some of the GDPR’s objectives. Concrete policy options are developed on the basis of this analysis….(More)”

Guidance Note: Statistical Disclosure Control

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Centre for Humanitarian Data: “Survey and needs assessment data, or what is known as ‘microdata’, is essential for providing adequate response to crisis-affected people. However, collecting this information does present risks. Even as great effort is taken to remove unique identifiers such as names and phone numbers from microdata so no individual persons or communities are exposed, combining key variables such as location or ethnicity can still allow for re-identification of individual respondents. Statistical Disclosure Control (SDC) is one method for reducing this risk. 

The Centre has developed a Guidance Note on Statistical Disclosure Control that outlines the steps involved in the SDC process, potential applications for its use, case studies and key actions for humanitarian data practitioners to take when managing sensitive microdata. Along with an overview of what SDC is and what tools are available, the Guidance Note outlines how the Centre is using this process to mitigate risk for datasets shared on HDX. …(More)”.

De-risking custom technology projects

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Robin Carnahan, Randy Hart, and Waldo Jaquith: “Only 13% of large government software projects are successful. State IT projects, in particular, are often challenged because states lack basic knowledge about modern software development, relying on outdated procurement processes.

State governments are increasingly reliant on modern software and hardware to deliver essential services to the public, and the success of any major policy initiative depends on the success of the underlying software infrastructure. Government agencies all confront similar challenges, facing budget and staffing constraints while struggling to modernize legacy technology systems that are out-of-date, inflexible, expensive, and ineffective. Government officials and agencies often rely on the same legacy processes that led to problems in the first place.

The public deserves a government that provides the same world-class technology they get from the commercial marketplace. Trust in government depends on it.

This handbook is designed for executives, budget specialists, legislators, and other “non-technical” decision-makers who fund or oversee state government technology projects. It can help you set these projects up for success by asking the right questions, identifying the right outcomes, and equally important, empowering you with a basic knowledge of the fundamental principles of modern software design.

This handbook also gives you the tools you need to start tackling related problems like:

  • The need to use, maintain, and modernize legacy systems simultaneously
  • Lock-in from legacy commercial arrangements
  • Siloed organizations and risk-averse cultures
  • Long budget cycles that don’t always match modern software design practices
  • Security threats
  • Hiring, staffing, and other resource constraints

This is written specifically for procurement of custom software, but it’s important to recognize that commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) is often custom and Software as a Service (SaaS) often requires custom code. Once any customization is made, the bulk of this advice in this handbook applies to these commercial offerings. (See “Beware the customized commercial software trap” for details.)

As government leaders, we must be good stewards of public money by demanding easy-to-use, cost-effective, sustainable digital tools for use by the public and civil servants. This handbook will help you do just that….(More)”