Mapping Civic Measurement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars: “…a comprehensive civic measurement landscape review and a first-of-its-kind framework for mapping civic readiness and opportunities.  

The report features a collection of measurement tools, rubrics, and more than 200 resources in use by practitioners across education, business, philanthropy, community institutions, media, government, and civil society. You’ll come away from the report with new ways to think about measuring civic learning impact, new research to inform your work, and new opportunities to connect with other practitioners. 

Now is the time to come together to cultivate people as informed, engaged, and hopeful citizens. Creating a common knowledge base and practices to measure civic readiness and opportunities will enable us to chart the course to a healthy and robust democracy that works for all…(More)”

Effects of digitalization on the human centricity of social security administration and services

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

ILO Working paper 87: “Human-centered social security administrations keep the human dimension in control of decision-making. This is made possible through the insight to be gained from digital data-driven innovation in policy and governance and managerial reforms. Moreover, there are risks associated with collecting and analysing people’s digital data analysed and using it to further automate business processes. Human centricity is examined in this paper, through a human + machine approach, starting with social policy through to service delivery. Machines using AI and related technologies are designed to aug¬ment rather than replace human decision-making capability. This augmentation approach is essential in matters where discretion, compassion, reasoning, judgement, and empathy are essential for equity, fair¬ness, and fiscal responsibility within social security administration. This working paper presents a series of vignette style case studies (13) as examples of digitisation and/or digitalisation in the context of human centricity in social security administration…(More)”.

ESG data governance: A growing imperative for banks

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article and Report by Daniel Heller, Andreas Reiter, Sebastian Schöbl, and Henning Soller: “The banking industry is facing mounting pressure to meet fast-changing demands in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. New and evolving regulations call for greater transparency and disclosure of ESG-related data (see sidebar, “ESG regulatory and disclosure requirements”). Stakeholders and investors are increasing their scrutiny of the effects investment decisions have on the climate and society. Consumers are holding banks to higher ESG standards as well—in 2019, about 14 percent of total client-driven revenues were controlled by consumers whose banking preferences were influenced by concern about purpose and sustainability.

To meet these expectations, banks must adapt their IT systems to systematically collect, aggregate, and report on a broad range of ESG data. However, many financial institutions still do not have a comprehensive approach to integrating ESG data into their existing risk reporting.

Moving toward this goal will require significant changes to the IT infrastructure, from applications to data integration, architecture, and governance. New applications include not only the management and capture of ESG data but also financed emissions models, climate risk models, ESG scorecards, climate stress tests, and climate-adjusted ratings. ESG data must be woven into existing processes, such as credit approvals and decision making. And banks will need to adjust their data architecture, define a data collection strategy, and reorganize their data governance model to successfully manage and report ESG data.

Investing in the right priorities from the beginning will enable banking IT leaders to quickly build these new capabilities and solutions without accumulating technical debt…(More)”

Data and the Digital Self

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the ACS: “A series of essays by some of the leading minds on data sharing and privacy in Australia, this book takes a look at some of the critical data-related issues facing Australia today and tomorrow. It looks at digital identity and privacy in the 21st century; at privacy laws and what they need to look like to be effective in the era of big data; at how businesses and governments can work better to build trust in this new era; and at how we need to look beyond just privacy and personal information as we develop solutions over the coming decades…(More)”.

“How Dare They Peep into My Private Life”

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Human Rights Watch on “Children’s Rights Violations by Governments that Endorsed Online Learning During the Covid-19 Pandemic”: “The coronavirus pandemic upended the lives and learning of children around the world. Most countries pivoted to some form of online learning, replacing physical classrooms with EdTech websites and apps; this helped fill urgent gaps in delivering some form of education to many children.

But in their rush to connect children to virtual classrooms, few governments checked whether the EdTech they were rapidly endorsing or procuring for schools were safe for children. As a result, children whose families were able to afford access to the internet and connected devices, or who made hard sacrifices in order to do so, were exposed to the privacy practices of the EdTech products they were told or required to use during Covid-19 school closures.

Human Rights Watch conducted its technical analysis of the products between March and August 2021, and subsequently verified its findings as detailed in the methodology section. Each analysis essentially took a snapshot of the prevalence and frequency of tracking technologies embedded in each product on a given date in that window. That prevalence and frequency may fluctuate over time based on multiple factors, meaning that an analysis conducted on later dates might observe variations in the behavior of the products…(More)”

Farmer-Centric Data Governance: Towards A New Paradigm

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report, six Deep Dives, and nine Case Studies by The Development Gateway: “..provide user-centric approaches to data governance that places farmers and their communities at the center of data gathering initiatives and aims to reduce the negative effects of centralized power. The findings are based on literature, interviews, and workshops, to gather the experiences of change-makers and aims to:
• Raise awareness around the current political economy of agricultural data and its implications;
• Identify user-centric data governance models and mechanisms, particularly in LMICs;
• Demonstrate the purpose, value, benefits, and challenges of these models for all stakeholders; and
• Identify appropriate and relevant actionable principles, recommendations, and considerations related to user-centric data governance in the agriculture sector for the donor community…(More)”

Embracing Innovation in Government: Global trends 2023

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the OECD: “Governments worldwide have faced unprecedented challenges in the last few years, and the global mood remains far from optimistic. The world had little time to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic before the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation dealt the global economy a series of shocks. The culminative effect of these catastrophes has been the destruction of lives and livelihoods, and growing humanitarian, economic and governance crises. Millions of people have been displaced, energy and food markets have been severely disrupted, inflation continues to surge, and many countries are on the brink of recession. Governments must cope with and respond to these emerging threats while already grappling with issues such as climate change, digital disruption and low levels of trust. The challenges they face in ensuring positive outcomes for their people seem to be increasing dramatically.

Yet, despite compounding challenges, governments have been able to adapt and innovate to transform their societies and economies, and more specifically to the focus of this work, to transform themselves and how they design policies, deliver services and manage the business of government. If anything, recent and ongoing crises have catalysed public sector innovation and reinstated the critical role of the state. While the overall tone may be pessimistic, public sector innovation has provided bright spots and room for hope.

The search for these bright spots and entry points for change is the driving force behind this report, and the research that underpins it. As part of the MENA-OECD Governance Programme, the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Mohammed Bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation (MBRCGI) have collaborated since 2016 to explore how governments are working to understand, test and embed new ways of doing things. These efforts have culminated in 12 reports on Global Trends in government innovation, including this one, as well as a deep-dive effort on achieving Cross-Border Government Innovation to tackle global challenges.

To take the pulse of public sector innovation this year, OPSI and the MBRCGI have identified and analysed 1 084 innovative initiatives from 94 countries around the world (download CSV)…(More)”

Managing Intellectual Property Rights in Citizen Science: A Guide for Researchers and Citizen Scientists

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Teresa Scassa & Haewon Chung: “IP issues arise in citizen science in a variety of different ways. Indeed, the more broadly the concept of citizen science is cast, the more diverse the potential IP interests. Some community-based projects, for example, may well involve the sharing of traditional knowledge, whereas open innovation projects are ones that are most likely to raise patent issues and to do so in a context where commercialization is a project goal. Trademark issues may also arise, particularly where a project gains a certain degree of renown. In this study we touch on issues of patenting and commercialization; however, we also recognize that most citizen science projects do not have commercialization as an objective, and have IP issues that flow predominantly from copyright law. This guide navigates these issues topically and points the reader towards further research and law in this area should they wish to gain an even more comprehensive understanding of the nuances. It accompanies a prior study conducted by the same authors that created a Typology of Citizen Science Projects from an Intellecutal Property Perspective…(More)”.

Data Brokers and the Sale of Americans’ Mental Health Data

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Report by Joanne Kim: “This report includes findings from a two-month-long study of data brokers and data on U.S. individuals’ mental health conditions. The report aims to make more transparent the data broker industry and its processes for selling and exchanging mental health data about depressed and anxious individuals. The research is critical as more depressed and anxious individuals utilize personal devices and software-based health-tracking applications (many of which are not protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), often unknowingly putting their sensitive mental health data at risk. This report finds that the industry appears to lack a set of best practices for handling individuals’ mental health data, particularly in the areas of privacy and buyer vetting. It finds that there are data brokers which advertise and are willing and able to sell data concerning Americans’ highly sensitive mental health information. It concludes by arguing that the largely unregulated and black-box nature of the data broker industry, its buying and selling of sensitive mental health data, and the lack of clear consumer privacy protections in the U.S. necessitate a comprehensive federal privacy law or, at the very least, an expansion of HIPAA’s privacy protections alongside bans on the sale of mental health data on the open market…(More)”.

Data for emergencies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Royal Society: “As evidenced throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists and decision-makers benefit from rapid access to high quality data in a fast-changing, emergency environment. Enabling this for future pandemics, and other events which threaten serious damage to human welfare or the environment, will require a robust data infrastructure and a continuous process of public engagement.

Creating resilient and trusted data systems (PDF) sets out five high level recommendations for the UK Government to achieve this. This project, chaired by Professor Chris Dye FRS FMedSci, builds on a public dialogue commissioned by the Royal Society and a workshop held in October 2022, the recommendations call for action on public engagement; data protection; stress testing; standardisation; and trusted research environments.

The Royal Society commissioned the public facilitation agency Hopkins Van Mil to deliver a public dialogue to explore the public’s views on data systems during emergencies and non-emergencies. The dialogue format was chosen to facilitate an immersive and informed discussion, where a full range of viewpoints could be shared, exploring nuanced views, trade-offs and ‘least-regret’ options. The public dialogue addressed the following questions:

a) Do the current systems in place support a trusted and effective response to emergencies?

b) Have the systems been established in ways that enable them to be used in a trusted way outside of emergencies?

c) Are we any better placed to put in place a data-led response to other emergencies?

There are seven key findings from the dialogue, covering the complexity of emotions, confidence in data protection enforcement, and expectations for emergency preparedness…(More)”.