Report by the World Economic Forum: “Over the past few decades, the digital world has been a breeding ground for bad actors, data breaches, and dark patterns of data collection and use. Shifting individuals’ perceptions away from skepticism to a position of trust is no easy task with no easy answers. This report provides a pragmatic approach to strengthen the engagement of individuals and positively affect the experiences of those who contribute data for the common good…(More)”.
Eight ways to institutionalise deliberative democracy
OECD Report: “This guide for public officials and policy makers outlines eight models for institutionalising representative public deliberation to improve collective decision making and strengthen democracy.
Increasingly, public authorities are reinforcing democracy by making use of deliberative processes in a structural way, beyond one-off initiatives that are often dependent on political will. The guide provides examples of how to create structures that allow representative public deliberation to become an integral part of how certain types of public decisions are taken.
Eight models to consider for implementation:
1. Combining a permanent citizens’ assembly with one-off citizens’ panels
2. Connecting representative public deliberation to parliamentary committees
3. Combining deliberative and direct democracy
4. Standing citizens’ advisory panels
5. Sequenced representative deliberative processes throughout the policy cycle
6. Giving people the right to demand a representative deliberative process
7. Requiring representative public deliberation before certain types of public decisions
8. Embedding representative deliberative processes in local strategic planning…(More)”.
Putting the Public First: Improving Customer Experience and Service Delivery for the American People
Executive Order (US): “… directs Federal agencies to put people at the center of everything the Government does. Specifically, the Executive Order includes 36 customer experience (CX) improvement commitments across 17 Federal agencies, all of which aim to improve people’s lives and the delivery of Government services. The Executive Order also creates a sustained, cross-government service delivery process that aligns to the moments that matter most in people’s lives – like turning 65, having a child, or applying for a small business loan. As part of this framework, the Administration will work to identify and define critical services that meet customers’ needs and expectations, assess performance delivery and report it publicly, incorporate customer feedback during each interaction, and ultimately ensure services deliver a better experience to the public. Every interaction between the Government and the public, whether it involves filing taxes or renewing a passport, is an opportunity to deliver the value, service, and efficiency that the public expects and deserves.
The Government has designated 35 High-Impact Service Providers in Federal agencies as key service providers due to the volume and types of benefits, services, and programs they deliver to the public. As part of this Executive Order, agencies commit to putting their customers at the center of everything they do. These actions include modernizing programs, reducing administrative burdens, and piloting new online tools and technologies that can provide a simple, seamless, and secure customer experience….(More)”.
Using social media data to ‘nowcast’ migration around the globe
Report by RAND: “In recent years, unprecedented waves of refugees, economic migrants and people displaced by a variety of factors have made migration a high-priority policy issue around the world. Despite this, official migration statistics often come with a time lag and can fail to correctly capture the full extent of migration, leaving decision makers without timely and robust data to make informed policy decisions.
In a RAND-initiated, self-funded research study, we developed a methodological tool to compute near real-time migration estimates for European Union member states and the United States. The tool, underpinned by a Bayesian model, is capable of providing ‘nowcasts’ of migrant stocks by combining real-time data from the Facebook Marketing Application Programming Interface and data from official migration sources, such as Eurostat and the US Census Bureau.
These nowcasts can serve as an early-warning system to anticipate ‘shock events’ and rapid migration trends that would otherwise be captured too late or not at all by official migration data sources. The tool could therefore enable decision makers to make informed, evidence-based policy decisions in the rapidly changing social policy sphere of international migration.
The study also provides a useful example of how to combine ‘big data’ with traditional data to improve measurement and estimation which can be applied to other social and demographic phenomena…(More)”.
The state of AI in 2021
McKinsey Global Survey on AI: “..indicate that AI adoption continues to grow and that the benefits remain significant— though in the COVID-19 pandemic’s first year, they were felt more strongly on the cost-savings front than the top line. As AI’s use in business becomes more common, the tools and best practices to make the most out of AI have also become more sophisticated. We looked at the practices of the companies seeing the biggest earnings boost from AI and found that they are not only following more of both the core and advanced practices, including machine-learning operations (MLOps), that underpin success but also spending more efficiently on AI and taking more advantage of cloud technologies. Additionally, they are more likely than other organizations to engage in a range of activities to mitigate their AI-related risks—an area that continues to be a shortcoming for many companies’ AI efforts…(More)”.
Arts Data in the Public Sector: Strategies for local arts agencies
Report by Bloomberg Associates: “Cities are increasingly using data to help shape policy and identify service gaps, but data about arts and culture is often met with skepticism. Local arts agencies, the city and county entities at the forefront of understanding and serving their local creative communities, often face difficulties in identifying meaningful metrics that capture quality as well as quantity in this unique field. With the Covid-19 pandemic and intensifying demand for equity, the desire for reliable, longitudinal information will only increase in the coming years as municipalities with severely limited resources face critical decisions in their effort toward recovery.
So how can arts-minded cities leverage data to better serve grantees, promote equity in service delivery, and demonstrate the impact of arts and culture across a range of significant policy priorities, among other ambitions?
Produced by our Cultural Assets Management team, Arts Data in the Public Sector highlights the data practices of fifteen local arts agencies across the U.S. to capture a meaningful cross-section of constituencies, resources, and strategies. Through best practices and case studies, the Guide offers useful insights and practical resources that can assist and inspire local government arts funders and advocates as they work to establish more equitable and inclusive practices and to affirm the importance of arts and culture as a public service well into the future…(More)”.
Are Your Data Visualizations Racist?
Article by Alice Feng & Jonathan Schwabish: “Through rigorous, data-based analysis, researchers and analysts can add to our understanding of societal shortcomings and point toward evidence-based solutions. But carelessly collecting and communicating data can lead to analyses and visualizations that have an outsized capacity to mislead, misrepresent, and harm communities already experiencing inequity and discrimination.
To unlock the full potential of data, researchers and analysts must consider and apply equity at every step of the research process. Ensuring responsible data collection, representing the communities surveyed accurately, and incorporating community input whenever possible will lead to more equitable data analyses and visualizations. Although there is no one-size-fits-all approach to working with data, for researchers to truly do no harm, they must build their work on a foundation of empathy.
In our recent report, Do No Harm Guide: Applying Equity Awareness in Data Visualization, we focus on how data practitioners can approach their work through a lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion. To create this report, we conducted more than a dozen interviews with nearly 20 people who work with data to hear how they approach inclusivity. In those interviews, we heard time and time again that demonstrating empathy for the people and communities you are focusing on and communicating with should be the guiding light for those working with data. Journalist Kim Bui succinctly captured how researchers and analysts can apply empathy, saying: “If I were one of the data points on this visualization, would I feel offended?”…(More)”.
Leveraging Location and Mobility Data: Perils & Practices
Paper by Suha Mohamed: “…Mobility data refers to information (often passively captured) that provides insights into the location and movement of a population – often through their interactions with digital mobility devices (like our smartphones) or transport services. Sources of mobility data, while diverse, include call detail records from telecom companies, GPS details from phones or vehicles, geotagged social media data or first or third-party software data.
Geolocation, a subset of mobility data, may be useful in shaping responsive courses of action as it can be leveraged in granular form to understand hyperlocal realities or, when aggregated, regional, national or international patterns. However, privacy concerns arise from the sensitive or personal data that may be inferred from these records and the often opaque conditions around its usage. The ongoing deployment of contact tracing applications, which largely depend on individual-level location data, have demonstrated extensive potential for misuse and surveillance….
Despite the surveillance and privacy concerns around the use of contact tracing apps and mobility data, it is undeniable that this data has immense public value and has helped officials understand the development of the COVID-19 virus and map its variants and waves. It has also been used to track: areas of mobility that contribute towards increased transmission of the virus, adherence to social distancing norms and the effectiveness of measures like lockdowns or restrictions….(More)”.
Improving Consumer Welfare with Data Portability
Report by Daniel Castro: “Data protection laws and regulations can contain restrictive provisions, which limit data sharing and use, as well as permissive provisions, which increase it. Data portability is an example of a permissive provision that allows consumers to obtain a digital copy of their personal information from an online service and provide this information to other services. By carefully crafting data portability provisions, policymakers can enable consumers to obtain more value from their data, create new opportunities for businesses to innovate with data, and foster competition….(More)”.
Sharing Student Data Across Public Sectors: Importance of Community Engagement to Support Responsible and Equitable Use
Report by CDT: “Data and technology play a critical role in today’s education institutions, with 85 percent of K-12 teachers anticipating that online learning and use of education technology at their school will play a larger role in the future than it did before the pandemic. The growth in data-driven decision-making has helped fuel the increasing prevalence of data sharing practices between K-12 education agencies and adjacent public sectors like social services. Yet the sharing of personal data can pose risks as well as benefits, and many communities have historically experienced harm as a result of irresponsible data sharing practices. For example, if the underlying data itself is biased, sharing that information exacerbates those inequities and increases the likelihood that potential harms fall disproportionately on certain communities. As a result, it is critical that agencies participating in data sharing initiatives take steps to ensure the benefits are available to all and no groups of students experience disproportionate harm.
A core component of sharing data responsibly is proactive, robust community engagement with the group of people whose data is being shared, as well as their surrounding community. This population has the greatest stake in the success or failure of a given data sharing initiative; as such, public agencies have a practical incentive, and a moral obligation, to engage them regarding decisions being made about their data…
This paper presents guidance on how practitioners can conduct effective community engagement around the sharing of student data between K-12 education agencies and adjacent public sectors. We explore the importance of community engagement around data sharing initiatives, and highlight four dimensions of effective community engagement:
- Plan: Establish Goals, Processes, and Roles
- Enable: Build Collective Capacity
- Resource: Dedicate Appropriate People, Time, and Money
- Implement: Carry Out Vision Effectively and Monitor Implementation…(More)”.