Developing new models for social transformation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Sarah Pearson: We live in unprecedented times. A period where globalisation has supported relative peace and growing prosperity. Where technological innovation has transformed social connectivity, democratised access to information and power, and driven new industry and jobs. The current pandemic, geopolitical power struggles, and a widening disparity in the distribution of the benefits of technology, however, threatens this progression. Many people have been, and many more are being left behind, with the recent COVID-19 pandemic seriously affecting progress in areas such as gender equality. Innovation, from an operational, business model, technological and societal perspective, is poised and ripe to help. This research focused on how this innovation could be applied to philanthropies seeking to address social change, overcome disadvantage, and build Equality of Opportunity.

Opportunities abound: starting with how we lead and govern in Foundations so that we unleash creativity and opportunity, throughout the organisation and externally; how we become more open and access new impactful ideas we would not have dreamt of without looking more widely; how we fund differently in order to make the most of our corpus, apply a gender lens, provide more than financial resources,
and support long term impact through new funding models; how we manage programs with sufficient flexibility to allow for unforeseen impact and experimentation by those we support; with whom and how we partner to deliver greater systemic change, and how to engage in an inclusive ecosystem of impact; how we leverage data to understand the issues, provide an asset for innovation, and measure our impact; and crucially how we set up for a diverse, experimental, learning culture. And in all of this, how we connect to and empower those with lived expertise to build economic self-determination, and combine with other expertise to grow inclusive problem-solving communities…(More)”.

Going Digital to Advance Data Governance for Growth and Well-being

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “Data are generated wherever digital technologies are deployed namely, in almost every part of modern life. Using these data can empower individuals, drive innovation, enable new digital products and improve policy making and public service delivery. But as data become more widely used across sectors and applications, the potential for misuse and harm also grows. To advance data governance for growth and well-being, this report advocates a holistic and coherent approach to data governance, domestically and across borders. It examines how data have emerged as a strategic asset, with the ability to transform lives and confer economic advantage. It explains how the unique characteristics of data can pose complex trade-offs and challenge policies that pre-date the data-driven era. This report provides new insights, evidence and analysis and outlines considerations for better data governance policies in the digital age…(More)”.

Data Solidarity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

White Paper by Barbara Prainsack et al: “…The concept of solidarity, applied to data governance, offers an approach to address the issues raised above. Solidarity-based data governance (in short: data solidarity) seeks to increase collective control, oversight and ownership over digital data and resources. In today’s societies, digital technologies and practices are entrenched in every domain of practice. Even people who are not heavy users of digital technologies contribute to the benefits that emerge from digital data and practice. They do so when data about their bodies and behaviours are captured by public institutions and companies, and as members of societies that make available the technical, social and knowledge infrastructures necessary for the generation and analysis of digital data. In short, in digital societies, all people contribute to the benefits resulting from digital data and practice. Similarly, everyone bears risks – not only that their privacy will be infringed, but also that they or other people will be discriminated against, profiled, or otherwise harmed as a result of data analytics and other data practices in fields as diverse as policing, administration and insurance. Against this backdrop, approaches that seek to increase the control of individuals over the use of their data remain important, but they are not sufficient to address the issues emerging from political and economic constellations.

Data solidarity’s core premise is that the benefits and the risks of digital practices need to be borne by societies collectively. The structure of this White Paper is as follows: After sketching our understanding of data solidarity and what a governance framework based on it should entail (Section 2), we discuss how data solidarity is different from related concepts (Section 3). We then give an overview of manifestations of data solidarity in existing legal frameworks (Section 4). Following this, we elaborate on policy instruments that can realise the proposed solidarity-based data governance framework (Section 5). We then discuss other ways to enable and improve data solidarity (Section 6). We end by providing specific recommendations to policymakers and other actors (Section 7) and presenting a brief research agenda for the immediate and near future (Section 8)…(More)“.

Social Media Seen as Mostly Good for Democracy Across Many Nations, But U.S. is a Major Outlier

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Pew Research: “As people across the globe have increasingly turned to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other platforms to get their news and express their opinions, the sphere of social media has become a new public space for discussing – and often arguing bitterly – about political and social issues. And in the mind of many analysts, social media is one of the major reasons for the declining health of democracy in nations around the world.

Bar chart showing most say that social media has been good for democracy but has had important negative and positive effects on politics and society

However, as a new Pew Research Center survey of 19 advanced economies shows, ordinary citizens see social media as both a constructive and destructive component of political life, and overall most believe it has actually had a positive impact on democracy. Across the countries polled, a median of 57% say social media has been more of a good thing for their democracy, with 35% saying it is has been a bad thing.

There are substantial cross-national differences on this question, however, and the United States is a clear outlier: Just 34% of U.S. adults think social media has been good for democracy, while 64% say it has had a bad impact. In fact, the U.S. is an outlier on a number of measures, with larger shares of Americans seeing social media as divisive…(More)”.

Navigating the Crisis: How Governments Used Intelligence for Decision Making During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Geoff Mulgan, Oliver Marsh, and Anina Henggeler: “…examines how governments — and the societies around them — mobilised intelligence to handle the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects. It also makes recommendations as to how they could improve their ability to organise intelligence for future challenges of all kinds, from pandemics to climate change.

The study draws on dozens of interviews with senior officials and others in many countries including Estonia, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Finland, USA, Chile, Canada, Portugal, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Bangladesh, UAE, South Korea and the UK, as well as the European Commission and UN agencies — along with roundtables and literature analysis.

The pandemic was an unprecedented event in its global impacts and in the scale of government responses. It required a myriad of policy decisions: about testing, lockdowns, masks, school closures, visiting rules at care homes and vaccinations.

Our interest is in what contributed to those decisions, and we define intelligence broadly to include data, evidence, models, tacit knowledge, foresight and creativity and innovation — all the means that can help governments make better decisions, particularly under conditions of stress and uncertainty.

Each type of intelligence played an important role. Governments needed health as well as non-health data to help understand how the virus was spreading in real time and its impacts. They needed models — for example, to judge if their hospitals were at risk of being overrun. They needed evidence — for example on whether enforcing mask-wearing would be effective. And they needed to tap into the knowledge of citizens and frontline staff quickly to spot potential problems and frictions.

Most governments had to improvise new methods of organising that intelligence, particularly as they grappled not just with the immediate health challenges, but also with the knock-on challenges to economies, communities, mental health, school systems and sectors such as hospitality.

As we show there was extraordinary innovation globally around the gathering of data, from mass serological testing to analysis of sewage, from mobilising mobile phone data to citizen generated data on symptoms. There was an equally impressive explosion of research and evidence; and innovative approaches to problem solving and creativity, from vaccine development to Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

However, we also point to problems:

  • Imbalances in terms of what was attended to — with physical health given much more attention than mental health or educational impacts in models and data, which was understandable in the early phases of the crisis but more problematic later on as trade-offs had to be managed
  • Imbalances in different kinds of expertise in scientific advice and influence, for instance in who got to sit on and be heard in expert advisory committees
  • Very varied ability of countries to share information and data between tiers of government
  • Very varied ability to mobilise key sources, such as commercial data, and varied use of intelligence from outside sources, such as from other countries or from civic groups,
  • Even when there were strong sources of advice and evidence, weak capacities to synthesise multiple kinds of intelligence at the core of governments…(More)”.

Using private sector geospatial data to inform policy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “Over the last decade, a large variety of geospatial data sources, such as GPS trajectories, geotagged photos, and social media have become available for research and statistical applications. These new data sources are often generated, voluntarily or non-voluntarily, by private sector organisations and can provide highly granular and timely information to policymakers. Drawing on experiences of several OECD countries, this paper highlights the potential of combining traditional and unconventional data from both public and private sources, and makes the case for facilitating co-operation between data providers and organisations responsible for public policy. In addition, the paper provides a series of best practices on leveraging private data for the public good and identifies opportunities, challenges, and ways forward for public and private sector partnerships on data sharing….(More)”.

Digital Sovereignty: From Narrative To Policy?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by EU Cyber Direct: “The debate in Europe about digital sovereignty, technological sovereignty, data sovereignty and strategic autonomy has been building over recent years at both the EU level and the level of individual Member States. The different concepts – and their diverse interpretations – cover the sovereignty concerns of citizens, states and the EU itself, and range from the protection of fundamental rights to addressing geo-economic strengths and vulnerabilities and European military concerns. The language of digital sovereignty and strategic autonomy has become integrated into the policy statements and documents of the European Union, even if definitions of the terminology remain scarce. While there has been much analysis of these new narratives of digital sovereignty and strategic autonomy, less attention has been paid to the alignment – or misalignment – between these narratives and the EU policies that would translate the concepts into everyday life.

This lacuna was the point of departure for the EU Cyber Direct Research Seminar co-organised with The Hague Program on International Cyber Security on 18 March 2022 under the title Digital Sovereignty: From Narrative to Policy?, the results of which are published in this publication…(More)”.

Smart city planning must work for both private business and public citizens

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Neil Britto; Suparno Banerjee and Constanza Movsichoff: “The challenges associated with the design, development and maintenance of digital urban infrastructure are substantial and have to balance the needs and incentives of both public and private stakeholders. While proofs of concepts and test-beds have been tried and are often successful, scaling these to city scale has been challenging for a number of reasons:

  • Scope. There is too often a focus on solutions that address narrow aspects of the city’s needs.
  • Capital requirements. Many cities do not have adequate capital for deploying solutions at scale and might struggle to attract investment from the private sector.
  • Procurement. Procurement models favor vendor-buyer relationships as opposed to multi-year, multi-enterprise, complex partnerships.
  • Time scales. Some of the most pressing challenges that cities face will need multiple years to address. These complex journeys need partnerships that can withstand the pressures of time, budgets and expectations.
  • Data. A nuanced understanding of public concern over data sourcing and use can be critical for a successful public-private collaboration. These dynamics contribute to the unique challenges and opportunities for smart city public-private collaborations that range from intelligent street lighting to broadband access.

In recognition of these challenges, the World Economic Forum’s G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance assembled a taskforce to look for best practices and model policies in the area of public-private collaborations in 2021. That taskforce, comprised of experts and officers from cities, companies and institutions deeply involved in smart city projects, compiled case studies, insights and feedback from across the sector. As members of that taskforce, we are happy to provide a distillation of these resources in the form of our new Primer for Smart City Public Private Collaborations…(More)”.

Leveraging Data to Improve Racial Equity in Fair Housing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Temilola Afolabi: “Residential segregation is related to inequalities in education, job opportunities, political power, access to credit, access to health care, and more. Steering, redlining, mortgage lending discrimination, and other historic policies have all played a role in creating this state of affairs.

Over time, federal efforts including the Fair Housing Act and Home Mortgage Disclosure Act have been designed to improve housing equity in the United States. While these laws have not been entirely effective, they have made new kinds of data available—data that can shed light on some of the historic drivers of housing inequity and help inform tailored solutions to their ongoing impact.

This report explores a number of current opportunities to strengthen longstanding data-driven tools to address housing equity. The report also shows how the effects of mortgage lending discrimination and other historic practices are still being felt today. At the same time, it outlines opportunities to apply data to increase equity in many areas related to the homeownership gap, including negative impacts on health and well-being, socioeconomic disparities, and housing insecurity….(More)”.