Building Data Infrastructure in Development Contexts: Lessons from the Data4COVID19 Africa Challenge

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Stefaan Verhulst, Andrew Young, Andrew J. Zahuranec, Peter Martey Addo: “COVID-19 and other societal threats hamper the ability of development practitioners and stakeholders to address The COVID-19 pandemic has posed a number of unprecedented societal threats. While the effects of the crisis know no borders, the pandemic’s consequences have been felt in a particularly acute way in developing economies across the Global South. Indeed, while estimates of excess mortality show that many developing economies compare favorably to other parts of the world, the pandemic has still overburdened health systems and disrupted food supplies, increasing the risk of malnutrition. Economic estimates suggest that COVID-19 will reduce the GDP of African economies by 1.4 percent, with smaller economies facing contractions of up to 7.8 percent (Gondwe 2020).

Given that development agencies have limited resources to fight the effects of the pandemic, data can play an important role in bolstering decision-making processes. When data is available and used responsibly, it can generate important insights about what is happening, help organizations understand cause and effect, improve forecasting, and assess the impact of efforts (Verhulst et al. 2021). However, the major limiting factors are the amount of data and the expertise available in the ecosystem. These limitations are especially severe in least-developed countries, such as those in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, datadriven challenges—short-term exercises where data and expertise is brought to bear on some pressing social challenge—can be useful tools for overcoming these limiting factors by, attracting data holders and practitioners to engage in rapid action to advance development goals…(More)”

Health Data Governance Principles

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Principles prepared by Transform health: “Data-driven approaches are increasingly the norm or aspiration in the operation of health systems. The collection, processing, storage, analysis, use, sharing and disposal of health data has grown in complexity. This exponential increase in data use necessitates robust and equitable governance of health data. Countries and regions around the world are instituting health data governance policies and legislation. However, there is not yet a comprehensive, global set of principles to guide the governance of health data across public health systems and policies. The Health Data Governance Principles respond to that need.

The Principles are intended as a resource for, and have applicability to, a range of stakeholders involved in the collection and use of health data, including governments, the private sector, international organisations, civil society, among others. We encourage all stakeholders to endorse the Principles.

We want to see the Principles adopted by governments, technology companies, and other institutions responsible for collecting and managing health data…(More)”.

Dynamic capabilities of the public sector: Towards a new synthesis

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Paper by Rainer Kattel: “The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how important public sector capacities and capabilities are in terms of reacting to crises, and re-configuring existing policies and implementation practices. Prior to the pandemic, policy makers were increasingly turning their attention to challenge-driven innovation policies in order to tackle climate emergencies and other ‘wicked’ societal challenges. Such a ‘normative turn’ also assumes the existence of what can be called dynamic capabilities in the public sector. This paper offers a new synthesis of how to conceptualise dynamic capabilities in the public sector. The paper synthesises existing state capacity, public sector innovation capacity and dynamic capabilities literature. Using three brief case studies (the UK’s Government Digital Service, the city of Barcelona and Sweden’s Vinnova), the paper discusses the origins and constitutive elements (sense-making, connecting, shaping) of dynamic capabilities. The paper also discusses how dynamic capabilities could be assessed…(More)”.

The Digital, Data and Technology Playbook

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Guidance by the UK Government: “Digital, data and technology (DDaT) underpins everything we do and the government provides vital services for millions of citizens every day. The public sector is estimated to spend £46 billion on digital in 2021/22. To ensure that spend meets the needs of our users in this rapidly evolving world, we need to continually strive for excellence by thinking about our products and services in new ways.

The Digital, Data and Technology Playbook is focused on getting things right from the start. Setting projects and programmes up for success can take more time upfront but we know from past experience that this early investment can be repaid many times over by enabling us to avoid costly mistakes later on.

Changing our approach to procurement in this sector will allow us to learn from successes and failures across government and industry. In order to decide on the correct delivery model, a robust assessment needs to be done of the options available (see Delivery Model Assessment in Chapter 5).

This mixed model of delivery is key. We will use the market’s expertise and capability to supplement agile teams and our commercial processes must be designed to enable this. Following the policies and principles in this Playbook, we will work with our suppliers to take an outcome-based approach and deliver innovative solutions which are focused on the user and create the best possible value for our citizens.

The Digital, Data and Technology Playbook sets out 11 key policy reforms which will transform how we assess, procure and manage our products and services. This includes:

  • online public services such as applying for a driver’s licence
  • business systems ranging from simple database applications through to large transactional systems supporting the operation of tax collection and benefits payments.
  • back-office systems such as finance, human resources, and facilities management systems
  • infrastructure which provides all the basic tools of the modern working environment such as computers and email

We will work together across government and industry to implement and drive the consistent application of the best practice and policies set out in this Playbook and deliver transformational change….(More)”.

Researcher Helps Create Big Data ‘Early Alarm’ for Ukraine Abuses

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Chris Carroll: From searing images of civilians targeted by shelling to detailed accounts of sick children and their families fleeing nearby fighting to seek medical care, journalists have created a kaleidoscopic view of the suffering that has engulfed Ukraine since Russia invaded—but the news media can’t be everywhere.

Social media practically can be, however, and a University of Maryland researcher is part of a U.S.-Ukrainian multi-institutional team that’s harvesting data from Twitter and analyzing it with machine-learning algorithms. The result is a real-time system that provides a running account of what people in Ukraine are facing, constructed from their own accounts.

The project, Data for Ukraine, has been running for about three weeks, and has shown itself able to surface important events a few hours ahead of Western or even Ukrainian media sources. It focuses on four areas: humanitarian needs, displaced people, civilian resistance and human rights violations. In addition to simply showing spikes of credible tweets about certain subjects the team is tracking, the system also geolocates tweets—essentially mapping where events take place.

“It’s an early alarm system for human rights abuses,” said Ernesto Calvo, professor of government and politics and director of UMD’s Inter-Disciplinary Lab for Computational Social Science. “For it to work, we need to know two basic things: what is happening or being reported, and who is reporting those things.”

Calvo and his lab focus on the second of those two requirements, and constructed a “community detection” system to identify key nodes of Twitter users from which to use data. Other team members with expertise in Ukrainian society and politics spotted him a list of about 400 verified users who actively tweet on relevant topics. Then Calvo, who honed his approach analyzing social media from political and environmental crises in Latin America, and his team expanded and deepened the collection, drawing on connections and followers of the initial list so that millions of tweets per day now feed the system.

Nearly half of the captured tweets are in Ukrainian, 30% are in English and 20% are in Russian. Knowing who to exclude—accounts started the day before the invasion, for instance, or with few long-term connections—is key, Calvo said…(More)”.

Internet poverty: The next frontier in development

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Jesús Crespo Cuaresma, Katharina Fenz, Marianne Nari Fisher, Homi Kharas: “…people today also need to access a minimum package of internet services as part of basic human needs. To expand on the traditional method of poverty measurement, researchers at World Data Lab have identified and costed a “minimum internet basket,” which combines measures of quantity, quality, and affordability based on consultations with the Alliance for Affordable Internet, Ookla, and GSMA. 

Under this expanded definition (see below image), a person is considered internet poor if s/he cannot afford a minimum quantity (1 GB) and quality (10 Mbps download speed) of internet services without spending more than 10 percent of his or her disposable income on these services. This minimum package of internet services would allow a person to fulfill basic needs, such as accessing emails, reading the news, or using government e-services. The core methodology of internet poverty was initially presented in mid-2021 and has undergone additional enhancements to identify the number of internet poor in almost all countries. 

World Data Lab’s just-launched Internet Poverty Index can now adjust the actual cost of internet services in every country to estimate what a standard mobile internet package of 1 GB at 10 MB/second would cost in that country. It then computes how many people in the country could afford such a package. If the cost of the standardized package is above 10 percent of a person’s total spending, the person is considered internet poor. This allows us to create global estimates and share the number of people living in internet poverty globally, with disaggregations available by gender. 

As with the $1.90 threshold of extreme poverty, the key value added of the approach is not the threshold itself but its consistent measurement across countries and over time. There can be a legitimate discussion about the minimum package, just as there are now suggestions that higher poverty lines be used in lower-middle-income and upper-middle-income countries. For now, however, we use the same package in all countries, which would correspond roughly to $6 per month ($0.19/day; 2011 PPP)…(More)”

Urban Creativity Now

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Playbook by Urban Change Academy: “The coronavirus pandemic has changed city life almost beyond recognition. Many people are struggling with loss, financial insecurity, and loneliness. At the same time, the crisis has made many things possible that were previously unthinkable or difficult to imagine – parks became open-air fitness studios, car parks turned into playgrounds, exhibition halls changed into hospital wards. Bicycles have been given more space on the streets in many cities, retailers and restaurateurs have become more creative and found new ways to serve their customers despite shop closures.

Many of these things have come about spontaneously, without any underlying strategies or development plans. they demonstrate a creativity we have not seen that we have not seen in cities for a long time. As the Urban Change Academy, we were wondering: what can cities learn from these projects? This playbook reflects that approach.

Urban Creativity Now is a collection of impulses, observations, and perspectives on the Covid pandemic and how it is changing our cities. In three parts, we explore the question of how cities and citizens are dealing with this crisis and what options for action arise from it…(More)”.

Mapping the Demand Side of Computational Social Science for Policy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Alonso Raposo, M., et al: “This report aims at collecting novel and pressing policy issues that can be addressed by Computational Social Science (CSS), an emerging discipline that is rooted in the increasing availability of digital trace data and computational resources and seeks to apply data science methods to social sciences. The questions were sourced from researchers at the European Commission who work at the interface between science and policy and who are well positioned to formulate research questions that are likely to anticipate future policy needs.

The attempt is to identify possible directions for Computational Social Science starting from the demand side, making it an effort to consider not only how science can ultimately provide policy support — “Science for Policy – but also how policymakers can be involved in the process of defining and co-creating the CSS4P agenda from the outset — ‘Policy for Science’. The report is expected to raise awareness on the latest scientific advances in Computational Social Science and on its potential for policy, integrating the knowledge of policymakers and stimulating further questions in the context of future developments of this initiative…(More)”.

Democracy Report 2022: Autocratization Changing Nature?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem): “This Democracy Report documents several signs that autocratization is changing nature. With five military coups and one self-coup, 2021 featured an increase in coups unprecedented over the past two decades. These coups contributed to driving the uptick in the number of closed autocracies. They also seem to signal a shift toward emboldened actors, given the previous decline in coups during the 21st century.
Polarization and government misinformation are also increasing. These trends are interconnected. Polarized publics are more likely to demonize political opponents and distrust information from diverse sources, and mobilization shifts as a result. The increase in misinformation and polarization further signals what may prove to be a changing nature of autocratization in the world today. We discuss this shift in detail in the third part of the report: “Autocratization Changing Nature?”.
Another sign of emboldened political leaders is the increasing number of countries where critical, formal aspects of democracy are eroding. The autonomy of institutions such as Election Management Bodies (EMBs) are now attacked and undermined in many autocratzing countries alongside the judiciary and the legislature. This year’s Democracy Report documents such changes.
The Democracy Report 2022 is published along with version 12 of the V-Dem dataset. The dataset is produced by the worldwide V-Dem collaboration and is based on assessments by over 3,700 experts from more than 180 countries, resulting in over 30 million data points. The Democracy Report 2022 is authored by a team at the V-Dem Institute, and we alone are accountable for its contents.
The Democracy Report 2022 analyzes the evidence from three perspectives. The first part examines the state of the world in 2021 based on the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI) and the Regimes of the World (RoW) Index. The second part of the report focuses on countries that are in a process of changing. The third part presents data on coups, polarization, and disinformation, all of which signal that the fundamental dynamics of the current wave of autocratization may be changing.
In summary: The worldwide wave of autocratization is deepening, engulfing more countries, and seems to be changing nature…(More)”.

Technology rules? The advent of new technologies in the justice system

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by The Justice and Home Affairs Committee (House of Lords): “In recent years, and without many of us realising it, Artificial Intelligence has begun to permeate every aspect of our personal and professional lives. We live in a world of big data; more and more decisions in society are being taken by machines using algorithms built from that data, be it in healthcare, education, business, or consumerism. Our Committee has limited its investigation to only one area–how these advanced technologies are used in our justice system. Algorithms are being used to improve crime detection, aid the security categorisation of prisoners, streamline entry clearance processes at our borders and generate new insights that feed into the entire criminal justice pipeline.

We began our work on the understanding that Artificial Intelligence (AI), used correctly, has the potential to improve people’s lives through greater efficiency, improved productivity. and in finding solutions to often complex problems. But while acknowledging the many benefits, we were taken aback by the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence tools potentially being used without proper oversight, particularly by police forces across the country. Facial recognition may be the best known of these new technologies but in reality there are many more already in use, with more being developed all the time.

When deployed within the justice system, AI technologies have serious implications for a person’s human rights and civil liberties. At what point could someone be imprisoned on the basis of technology that cannot be explained? Informed scrutiny is therefore essential to ensure that any new tools deployed in this sphere are safe, necessary, proportionate, and effective. This scrutiny is not happening. Instead, we uncovered a landscape, a new Wild West, in which new technologies are developing at a pace that public awareness, government and legislation have not kept up with.
Public bodies and all 43 police forces are free to individually commission whatever tools they like or buy them from companies eager to get in on the burgeoning AI market. And the market itself is worryingly opaque. We were told that public bodies often do not know much about the systems they are buying and will be implementing, due to the seller’s insistence on commercial confidentiality–despite the fact that many of these systems will be harvesting, and relying on, data from the general public.
This is particularly concerning in light of evidence we heard of dubious selling practices and claims made by vendors as to their products’ effectiveness which are often untested and unproven…(More)”.