Data Sharing Between Public and Private Sectors: When Local Governments Seek Information from the Sharing Economy.

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by the Centre for Information Policy Leadership: “…addresses the growing trend of localities requesting (and sometimes mandating) that data collected by the private sector be shared with the localities themselves. Such requests are generally not in the context of law enforcement or national security matters, but rather are part of an effort to further the public interest or promote a public good.

To the extent such requests are overly broad or not specifically tailored to the stated public interest, CIPL believes that the public sector’s adoption of accountability measures—which CIPL has repeatedly promoted for the private sector—can advance responsible data sharing practices between the two sectors. It can also strengthen the public’s confidence in data-driven initiatives that seek to improve their communities…(More)”.

From Fragmentation to Coordination: The Case for an Institutional Mechanism for Cross-Border Data Flows

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the World Economic Forum: “Digital transformation of the global economy is bringing markets and people closer. Few conveniences of modern life – from international travel to online shopping to cross-border payments – would exist without the free flow of data.

Yet, impediments to free-flowing data are growing. The “Data Free Flow with Trust (DFFT)” concept is based on the idea that responsible data concerns, such as privacy and security, can be addressed without obstructing international data transfers. Policy-makers, trade negotiators and regulators are actively working on this, and while important progress has been made, an effective and trusted international cooperation mechanism would amplify their progress.

This white paper makes the case for establishing such a mechanism with a permanent secretariat, starting with the Group of Seven (G7) member-countries, and ensuring participation of high-level representatives of multiple stakeholder groups, including the private sector, academia and civil society.

This new institution would go beyond short-term fixes and catalyse long-term thinking to operationalize DFFT…(More)”.

Chandler Good Government Index

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Chandler Institute of Governance (CIG): “…a polycrisis shines an intense spotlight on a government, and asks many difficult questions of it: How can a government cope with relentless change and uncertainty? How do they learn to maintain stability while adapting effectively? How can they distinguish what are the most important capabilities required, and then assess for themselves their own government’s strengths and weaknesses? The CGGI was built to help answer questions precisely like these.
Why Capabilities Matter for Managing a Polycrisis: This edition of the CGGI annual report offers a special
focus on how the pillars of good government stand together in the face of a polycrisis. Drawing on the 35 capabilities and outcomes indicators of the CGGI we examine in particular depth:
– How Public Institutions Are Better Responding to Crises. We explore how a government’s leaders, civil service and institutions come together to prepare and respond.
– Building Shared Prosperity. How are governments confronting inflation and the costof-living crisis while still creating opportunities for more efficient marketplaces that support trade and sustain good jobs? We dive into a few ways.
– Strong Nations Are Healthy and Inclusive. We spotlight how governments are building more
inclusive communities and resilient health systems…(More)”.

The Global Coalition for SDG Syntheses

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About: “The SDG Synthesis Coalition is an initiative spearheaded by UNDP and UNICEF bringing together 39 United Nations entities, bilateral and multilateral organizations, global evaluation networks, evidence synthesis collaborations, CSOs and the private sector to generate syntheses organized around the five Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) pillars (people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership), to identify lessons for accelerating the achievement of development results based on global evaluative evidence…(More)”.

Gaming Public Opinion

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Albert Zhang , Tilla Hoja & Jasmine Latimore: “The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) embrace of large-scale online influence operations and spreading of disinformation on Western social-media platforms has escalated since the first major attribution from Silicon Valley companies in 2019. While Chinese public diplomacy may have shifted to a softer tone in 2023 after many years of wolf-warrior online rhetoric, the Chinese Government continues to conduct global covert cyber-enabled influence operations. Those operations are now more frequent, increasingly sophisticated and increasingly effective in supporting the CCP’s strategic goals. They focus on disrupting the domestic, foreign, security and defence policies of foreign countries, and most of all they target democracies.

Currently—in targeted democracies—most political leaders, policymakers, businesses, civil society groups and publics have little understanding of how the CCP currently engages in clandestine activities online in their countries, even though this activity is escalating and evolving quickly. The stakes are high for democracies, given the indispensability of the internet and their reliance on open online spaces, free from interference. Despite years of monitoring covert CCP cyber-enabled influence operations by social-media platforms, governments, and research institutes such as ASPI, definitive public attribution of the actors driving these activities is rare. Covert online operations, by design, are difficult to detect and attribute to state actors. 

Social-media platforms and governments struggle to devote adequate resources to identifying, preventing and deterring increasing levels of malicious activity, and sometimes they don’t want to name and shame the Chinese Government for political, economic and/or commercial reasons…(More)”.

Data Rivers: Carving Out the Public Domain in the Age of Generative AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sylvie Delacroix: “What if the data ecosystems that made the advent of generative AI possible are being undermined by those very tools? For tools such as GPT4 (it is but one example of a tool made possible by scraping data from the internet), the erection of IP ‘fences’ is an existential threat. European and British regulators are alert to it: so-called ‘text and data mining’ exceptions are at the heart of intense debates. In the US, these debates are taking place in court hearings structured around ‘fair use’. While the concerns of the corporations developing these tools are being heard, there is currently no reliable mechanism for members of the public to exert influence on the (re)-balancing of the rights and responsibilities that shape our ‘data rivers’. Yet the existential threat that stems from restricted public access to such tools is arguably greater.

When it comes to re-balancing the data ecosystems that made generative AI possible, much can be learned from age-old river management practices, with one important proviso: data not only carries traces of our past. It is also a powerful tool to envisage different futures. If data-powered technologies such as GPT4 are to live up to their potential, we would do well to invest in bottom-up empowerment infrastructure. Such infrastructure could not only facilitate the valorisation of and participation in the public domain. It could also help steer the (re)-development of ‘copyright as privilege’ in a way that is better able to address the varied circumstances of today’s original content creators…(More)”

LGBTQ+ data availability

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Beyond Deng and Tara Watson: “LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning) identification has doubled over the past decade, yet data on the overall LGBTQ+ population remains limited in large, nationally representative surveys such as the American Community Survey. These surveys are consistently used to understand the economic wellbeing of individuals, but they fail to fully capture information related to one’s sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI).[1]

Asking incomplete SOGI questions leaves a gap in research that, if left unaddressed, will continue to grow in importance with the increase of the LGBTQ+ population, particularly among younger cohorts. In this report, we provide an overview of four large, nationally representative, and publicly accessible datasets that include information relevant for economic analysis. These include the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the American Community Survey (ACS), and the Census Household Pulse Survey. Each survey varies by sample size, sample unit, periodicity, geography, and the SOGI information they collect.[2]

The difference in how these datasets collect SOGI information impacts the estimates of LGBTQ+ prevalence. While we find considerable difference in measured LGBT prevalence across datasets, each survey documents a substantial increase in non-straight identity over time. Figure 1 shows that this is largely driven by young adults, who are increasingly likely to identify as LGBT over almost the past ten years. Using data from NHIS, around 4% of 18–24-year-olds in 2013 identified as LGB, which increased to 9.5% in 2021. Because of the short time horizon in these surveys, it is unclear how the current young adult cohort will identify as they age. Despite this, an important takeaway is that younger age groups clearly represent a substantial portion of the LGB community and are important to incorporate in economic analyses…(More)”.

AI in Hiring and Evaluating Workers: What Americans Think

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Pew Research Center survey: “… finds crosscurrents in the public’s opinions as they look at the possible uses of AI in workplaces. Americans are wary and sometimes worried. For instance, they oppose AI use in making final hiring decisions by a 71%-7% margin, and a majority also opposes AI analysis being used in making firing decisions. Pluralities oppose AI use in reviewing job applications and in determining whether a worker should be promoted. Beyond that, majorities do not support the idea of AI systems being used to track workers’ movements while they are at work or keeping track of when office workers are at their desks.

Yet there are instances where people think AI in workplaces would do better than humans. For example, 47% think AI would do better than humans at evaluating all job applicants in the same way, while a much smaller share – 15% – believe AI would be worse than humans in doing that. And among those who believe that bias along racial and ethnic lines is a problem in performance evaluations generally, more believe that greater use of AI by employers would make things better rather than worse in the hiring and worker-evaluation process. 

Overall, larger shares of Americans than not believe AI use in workplaces will significantly affect workers in general, but far fewer believe the use of AI in those places will have a major impact on them personally. Some 62% think the use of AI in the workplace will have a major impact on workers generally over the next 20 years. On the other hand, just 28% believe the use of AI will have a major impact on them personally, while roughly half believe there will be no impact on them or that the impact will be minor…(More)”.

Accept All: Unacceptable? 

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Demos and Schillings: “…sought to investigate how our data footprints are being created and exploited online. It involved an exploratory investigation into how data sharing and data regulation practices are impacting citizens: looking into how individuals’ data footprints are created, what people experience when they want to exercise their data rights, and how they feel about how their data is being used. This was a novel approach, using live case studies as they embarked on a data odyssey in order to understand, in real time, the data challenge people face.

We then held a series of stakeholder roundtables with academics, lawyers, technologists, people working in industry and civil society, which focused on diagnosing the problems and what potential solutions already look like, or could look like in the future, across multiple stakeholder groups….(More)” See also: documentary produced by the project partners, law firm Schillings and the independent consumer data action service Rightly, and TVN, alongside this report, here.

Behavioral Economics: Policy Impact and Future Directions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: “Behavioral economics – a field based in collaborations among economists and psychologists – focuses on integrating a nuanced understanding of behavior into models of decision-making. Since the mid-20th century, this growing field has produced research in numerous domains and has influenced policymaking, research, and marketing. However, little has been done to assess these contributions and review evidence of their use in the policy arena.

Behavioral Economics: Policy Impact and Future Directions examines the evidence for behavioral economics and its application in six public policy domains: health, retirement benefits, climate change, social safety net benefits, climate change, education, and criminal justice. The report concludes that the principles of behavioral economics are indispensable for the design of policy and recommends integrating behavioral specialists into policy development within government units. In addition, the report calls for strengthening research methodology and identifies research priorities for building on the accomplishments of the field to date…(More)”.