Four Principles to Make Data Tools Work Better for Kids and Families

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by the Annie E. Casey Foundation: “Advanced data analytics are deeply embedded in the operations of public and private institutions and shape the opportunities available to youth and families. Whether these tools benefit or harm communities depends on their design, use and oversight, according to a report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Four Principles to Make Advanced Data Analytics Work for Children and Families examines the growing field of advanced data analytics and offers guidance to steer the use of big data in social programs and policy….

The Foundation report identifies four principles — complete with examples and recommendations — to help steer the growing field of data science in the right direction.

Four Principles for Data Tools

  1. Expand opportunity for children and families. Most established uses of advanced analytics in education, social services and criminal justice focus on problems facing youth and families. Promising uses of advanced analytics go beyond mitigating harm and help to identify so-called odds beaters and new opportunities for youth.
    • Example: The Children’s Data Network at the University of Southern California is helping the state’s departments of education and social services explore why some students succeed despite negative experiences and what protective factors merit more investment.
    • Recommendation: Government and its philanthropic partners need to test if novel data science applications can create new insights and when it’s best to apply them.
       
  2. Provide transparency and evidence. Advanced analytical tools must earn and maintain a social license to operate. The public has a right to know what decisions these tools are informing or automating, how they have been independently validated, and who is accountable for answering and addressing concerns about how they work.
    • Recommendations: Local and state task forces can be excellent laboratories for testing how to engage youth and communities in discussions about advanced analytics applications and the policy frameworks needed to regulate their use. In addition, public and private funders should avoid supporting private algorithms whose design and performance are shielded by trade secrecy claims. Instead, they should fund and promote efforts to develop, evaluate and adapt transparent and effective models.
       
  3. Empower communities. The field of advanced data analytics often treats children and families as clients, patients and consumers. Put to better use, these same tools can help elucidate and reform the systems acting upon children and families. For this shift to occur, institutions must focus analyses and risk assessments on structural barriers to opportunity rather than individual profiles.
    • Recommendation: In debates about the use of data science, greater investment is needed to amplify the voices of youth and their communities.
       
  4. Promote equitable outcomes. Useful advanced analytics tools should promote more equitable outcomes for historically disadvantaged groups. New investments in advanced analytics are only worthwhile if they aim to correct the well-documented bias embedded in existing models.
    • Recommendations: Advanced analytical tools should only be introduced when they reduce the opportunity deficit for disadvantaged groups — a move that will take organizing and advocacy to establish and new policy development to institutionalize. Philanthropy and government also have roles to play in helping communities test and improve tools and examples that already exist….(More)”.

E-participation: a quick overview of recent qualitative trends

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Paper by David Le Blanc: “This paper briefly takes stock of two decades of e-participation initiatives based on a limited review of the academic literature. The purpose of the paper is to complement the results of the e-government Survey 2020/ As such, the emphasis is on aspects that the e-government survey (based on analysis of e-government portals and on quantitative indicators) does not capture directly. Among those are the challenges faced by e-participation initiatives and key areas of attention for governments.

The paper maps the field of e-participation and related activities, as well as its relationships with other governance concepts. Areas of recent development in terms of e-participation applications are briefly reviewed. The paper selectively highlights conclusions from the literature on different participation tools, as well as a list of key problematic areas for policy makers. The paper concludes that while e-participation platforms using new technologies have spread rapidly in developed countries in the first decade of the 2000s and in developing countries during the last 10 years, it is not clear that their multiplication has translated into broader or deeper citizen participation. Beyond reasons related to technology access and digital skills, factors such as lack of understanding of citizens’ motivations to participate and the reluctance of public institutions to genuinely share agenda-setting and decision-making power seem to play an important role in the observed limited progress….(More)’

Tackling misinformation during crisis

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Paper by Elizabether Seger and Mark Briers: “The current COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying ‘infodemic’ clearly illustrate that access to reliable information is crucial to coordinating a timely crisis response in democratic societies. Inaccurate information and the muzzling of important information sources have degraded trust in health authorities and slowed public response to the crisis. Misinformation about ineffective cures, the origins and malicious spread of COVID-19, unverified treatment discoveries, and the efficacy of face coverings have increased the difficulty of coordinating a unified public response during the crisis. 

In a recent report, researchers at the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) in collaboration with The Alan Turing Institute and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) workshopped an array of hypothetical crisis scenarios to investigate social and technological factors that interfere with well-informed decision-making and timely collective action in democratic societies.

Crisis scenarios

Crisis scenarios are useful tools for appraising threats and vulnerabilities to systems of information production, dissemination, and evaluation. Factors influencing how robust a society is to such threats and vulnerabilities are not always obvious when life is relatively tranquil but are often highlighted under the stress of a crisis. 

CSER and Dstl workshop organisers, together with workshop participants (a diverse group of professionals interested in topics related to [mis/dis]information, information technology, and crisis response), co-developed and explored six hypothetical crisis scenarios and complex challenges:

  • Global health crisis
  • Character assassination
  • State fake news campaign
  • Economic collapse
  • Xenophobic ethnic cleansing
  • Epistemic babble, where the ability for the general population to tell the difference between truth and fiction (presented as truth) is lost

We analysed each scenario to identify various interest groups and actors, to pinpoint vulnerabilities in systems of information production and exchange, and to visualise how the system might be interfered with. We also considered interventions that could help bolster the society against threats to informed decision-making.

The systems map below is an example from workshop scenario 1: Global health crisis. The map shows how adversarial actors (red) and groups working to mitigate the crisis (blue) interact, impact each other’s actions, and influence the general public and other interest groups (green) such as those affected by the health crisis. 

Systems maps help visualise vulnerabilities in both red and blue actor systems, which, in turn, helps identify areas where intervention (yellow) is possible to help mitigate the crisis….(More)“

Putting Games to Work in the Battle Against COVID-19

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Sara Frueh at the National Academies: “While video games often give us a way to explore other worlds, they can also help us learn more about our own — including how to navigate a pandemic. That was the premise underlying “Jamming the Curve,” a competition that enlisted over 400 independent video game developers around the world to develop concepts for games that reflect the real-world dynamics of COVID-19.

“Games can help connect our individual actions to larger-scale impact … and help translate data into engaging stories,” said Rick Thomas, associate program officer of LabX, a program of the National Academy of Sciences that supports creative approaches to public engagement.

Working with partners IndieCade and Georgia Tech, LabX brought Jamming the Curve to life over two weeks in September.

The “game jam” generated over 50 game concepts that drop players into a wide array of roles — from a subway rider trying to minimize the spread of infection among passengers, to a grocery store cashier trying to help customers while avoiding COVID-19, to a fox ninja tasked with dispensing masks to other forest creatures.

The five winning game concepts (see below) were announced at an award ceremony in late October, where each winning team was given a $1,000 prize and the chance to compete for a $20,000 grant to develop their game further.

The power of games

“Sometimes public health concepts can be a little dry,” said Carla Alvarado, a public health expert and program officer at the National Academies who served as a judge for the competition, during the awards ceremony. “Games package that information — it’s bite-sized, it’s digestible, and it’s palatable.”

And because games engage the senses and involve movement, they help people remember what they learn, she said. “That type of learning — experiential learning — helps retain a lot of the concepts.”

The idea of doing a game jam around COVID-19 began when Janet Murray of Georgia Tech reached out to Stephanie Barish and her colleagues at IndieCade about games’ potential to help express the complicated data around the disease. “Not everybody really knows how to look at that all of that information, and games are so wonderful at reaching people in ways that people understand,” Barish said.

Rick Thomas and the LabX team heard about the idea for Jamming the Curve and saw how they could contribute. The program had experience organizing other game projects around role-playing and storytelling — along with access to a range of scientists and public health experts through the National Academies’ networks.

“Given the high stakes of the topic around COVID-19 and the amount of misinformation around the pandemic, we really needed to make sure that we were doing this right when it came to creating these games,” said Thomas. LabX helped to recruit public health professionals involved in the COVID-19 response, as well as experts in science communication and risk perception, to serve as mentors to the game developers.

Play the Winning Games!

Trailers and some playable prototypes for the five winning game concepts can be found online:

  • Everyday Hero, in which players work to stop the spread of COVID-19 through measures such as social distancing and mask use
  • PandeManager, which gives players the job of a town’s mayor who must slow the spread of disease among citizens
  • Lab Hero, in which users play a first responder who is working hard to find a vaccine while following proper health protocols
  • Cat Colony Crisis, in which a ship of space-faring cats must deal with a mysterious disease outbreak
  • Outbreak in Space, which challenges players to save friends and family from a spreading epidemic in an alien world

All of the games submitted to Jamming the Curve can be found at itch.io.

The games needed to be fun as well as scientifically accurate — and so IndieCade, Georgia Tech, and Seattle Indies recruited gaming experts who could advise participants on how to make their creations engaging and easy to understand….(More)“.

COVID-19 Data and Data Sharing Agreements: The Potential of Sunset Clauses and Sunset Provisions

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A report by SDSN TReNDS and DataReady Limited on behalf of Contracts4DataCollaboration: “Building upon issues discussed in the C4DC report, “Laying the Foundation for Effective Partnerships: An Examination of Data Sharing Agreements,” this brief examines the potential of sunset clauses or sunset provisions to be a legally binding, enforceable, and accountable way of ensuring COVID-19 related data sharing agreements are wound down responsibly at the end of the pandemic. The brief is divided into four substantive parts: Part I introduces sunset clauses as legislative tools, highlighting a number of examples of how they have been used in both COVID-19 related and other contexts; Part II discusses sunset provisions in the context of data sharing agreements and attempts to explain the complex interrelationship between data ownership, intellectual property, and sunset provisions; Part III identifies some key issues policymakers should consider when assessing the utility and viability of sunset provisions within their data sharing agreements and arrangements; and Part IV highlights the value of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) as a viable vehicle for sunset provisions in contexts where data sharing agreements are either non-existent or not regularly used….(More)“.(Contracts 4 Data Collaboration Framework).

Tracking COVID-19: U.S. Public Health Surveillance and Data

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CRS Report: “Public health surveillance, or ongoing data collection, is an essential part of public health practice. Particularly during a pandemic, timely data are important to understanding the epidemiology of a disease in order to craft policy and guide response decision making. Many aspects of public health surveillance—such as which data are collected and how—are often governed by law and policy at the state and sub federal level, though informed by programs and expertise at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has exposed limitations and challenges with U.S. public health surveillance, including those related to the timeliness, completeness, and accuracy of data.

This report provides an overview of U.S. public health surveillance, current COVID-19 surveillance and data collection, and selected policy issues that have been highlighted by the pandemic.Appendix B includes a compilation of selected COVID-19 data resources….(More)”.

Trace Labs

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Trace Labs is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to accelerate
the family reunification of missing persons while training members in
the trade craft of open source intelligence (OSINT)….We crowdsource open source intelligence through both the Trace Labs OSINT Search Party CTFs and Ongoing Operations with our global community. Our highly skilled intelligence analysts then triage the data collected to produce actionable intelligence reports on each missing persons subject. These intelligence reports allow the law enforcement agencies that we work with the ability to quickly see any new details required to reopen a cold case and/or take immediate action on a missing subject.(More)”

Challenging the Use of Algorithm-driven Decision-making in Benefits Determinations Affecting People with Disabilities

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Paper by Lydia X. Z. Brown, Michelle Richardson, Ridhi Shetty, and Andrew Crawford: “Governments are increasingly turning to algorithms to determine whether and to what extent people should receive crucial benefits for programs like Medicaid, Medicare, unemployment, and Social Security Disability. Billed as a way to increase efficiency and root out fraud, these algorithm-driven decision-making tools are often implemented without much public debate and are incredibly difficult to understand once underway. Reports from people on the ground confirm that the tools are frequently reducing and denying benefits, often with unfair and inhumane results.

Benefits recipients are challenging these tools in court, arguing that flaws in the programs’ design or execution violate their due process rights, among other claims. These cases are some of the few active courtroom challenges to algorithm-driven decision-making, producing important precedent about people’s right to notice, explanation, and other procedural due process safeguards when algorithm-driven decisions are made about them. As the legal and policy world continues to recognize the outsized impact of algorithm-driven decision-making in various aspects of our lives, public benefits cases provide important insights into how such tools can operate; the risks of errors in design and execution; and the devastating human toll when tools are adopted without effective notice, input, oversight, and accountability. 

This report analyzes lawsuits that have been filed within the past 10 years arising from the use of algorithm-driven systems to assess people’s eligibility for, or the distribution of, public benefits. It identifies key insights from the various cases into what went wrong and analyzes the legal arguments that plaintiffs have used to challenge those systems in court. It draws on direct interviews with attorneys who have litigated these cases and plaintiffs who sought to vindicate their rights in court – in some instances suing not only for themselves, but on behalf of similarly situated people. The attorneys work in legal aid offices, civil rights litigation shops, law school clinics, and disability protection and advocacy offices. The cases cover a range of benefits issues and have netted mixed results.

People with disabilities experience disproportionate and particular harm because of unjust algorithm-driven decision-making, and we have attempted to center disabled people’s stories and cases in this paper. As disabled people fight for rights inside and outside the courtroom on a wide range of issues, we focus on litigation and highlight the major legal theories for challenging improper algorithm-driven benefit denials in the U.S. 

The good news is that in some cases, plaintiffs are successfully challenging improper adverse benefits decisions with Constitutional, statutory, and administrative claims. But like other forms of civil rights and impact litigation, the bad news is that relief can be temporary and is almost always delayed. Litigation must therefore work in tandem with the development of new processes driven by people who require access to public assistance and whose needs are centered in these processes. We hope this contribution informs not only the development of effective litigation, but a broader public conversation about the thoughtful design, use, and oversight of algorithm-driven decision-making systems….(More)”.

Third Wave of Open Data

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Paper (and site) by Stefaan G. Verhulst, Andrew Young, Andrew J. Zahuranec, Susan Ariel Aaronson, Ania Calderon, and Matt Gee on “How To Accelerate the Re-Use of Data for Public Interest Purposes While Ensuring Data Rights and Community Flourishing”: “The paper begins with a description of earlier waves of open data. Emerging from freedom of information laws adopted over the last half century, the First Wave of Open Data brought about newfound transparency, albeit one only available on request to an audience largely composed of journalists, lawyers, and activists. 

The Second Wave of Open Data, seeking to go beyond access to public records and inspired by the open source movement, called upon national governments to make their data open by default. Yet, this approach too had its limitations, leaving many data silos at the subnational level and in the private sector untouched..

The Third Wave of Open Data seeks to build on earlier successes and take into account lessons learned to help open data realize its transformative potential. Incorporating insights from various data experts, the paper describes the emergence of a Third Wave driven by the following goals:

  1. Publishing with Purpose by matching the supply of data with the demand for it, providing assets that match public interests;
  2. Fostering Partnerships and Data Collaboration by forging relationships with  community-based organizations, NGOs, small businesses, local governments, and others who understand how data can be translated into meaningful real-world action;
  3. Advancing Open Data at the Subnational Level by providing resources to cities, municipalities, states, and provinces to address the lack of subnational information in many regions.
  4. Prioritizing Data Responsibility and Data Rights by understanding the risks of using (and not using) data to promote and preserve the public’s general welfare.

Riding the Wave

Achieving these goals will not be an easy task and will require investments and interventions across the data ecosystem. The paper highlights eight actions that decision and policy makers can take to foster more equitable, impactful benefits… (More) (PDF) “