For Queer Communities, Being Counted Has Downsides

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Kevin Guyan: “Next March, for the first time, Scotland’s census will ask all residents 16 and over to share information about their sexual orientation and whether they identify as trans. These new questions, whose addition follows similar developments in other parts of the United Kingdom and Malta, invite people to “come out” on their census return. Proposals to add more questions about gender, sex, and sexuality to national censuses are at various stages of discussion in countries outside of Europe, including New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and the United States.

The idea of being counted in a census feels good. Perhaps it’s my passion for data, but I feel recognized when I tick the response option “gay” in a survey that previously pretended I did not exist or was not important enough to count. If you identify with descriptors less commonly listed in drop-down boxes, seeing yourself reflected in a survey can change how you relate to wider communities that go beyond individual experiences. It therefore makes sense that many bottom-up queer rights groups and top-down government agencies frame the counting of queer communities in a positive light and position expanded data collection as a step toward greater inclusion.

There is great historical significance in increased visibility for many queer communities. But an over-focus on the benefits of being counted distracts from the potential harms for queer communities that come with participation in data collection activities….

The limits of inclusion became apparent to me as I observed the design process for Scotland’s 2022 census. While researching my book Queer Data, I sat through committee meetings at the Scottish Parliament, digested lengthy reports, submitted evidence, and participated in stakeholder engagement sessions. As many months of disagreement over how to count and who to count progressed, it grew more and more obvious that the design of a census is never exclusively about the collection of accurate data.

I grew ambivalent about what “being counted” actually meant for queer communities and concerned that the expansion of the census to include some queer people further erased those who did not match the government’s narrow understanding of gender, sex, and sexuality. Most notably, Scotland’s 2022 census does not count nonbinary people, who are required to identify their sex as either male or female. In another example, trans-exclusionary campaign groups requested that the census remove the “other” write-in box and limit response options for sexual orientation to “gay or lesbian,” “bisexual,” and “straight/heterosexual.” Reproducing the idea that sexual orientation is based on a fixed, binary notion of sex and restricting the question to just three options would effectively delete those who identify as queer, pansexual, asexual, and other sexualities from the count. Although the final version of the sexual orientation question includes an “other” write-in box for sexuality, collecting data about the lives of some queer people can push those who fall outside these expectations further into the shadows…(More)”.

Making Space for Everyone

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Amy Paige Kaminski at Issues: “The story of how NASA came to see the public as instrumental in accomplishing its mission provides insights for R&D agencies trying to create societal value, relevance, and connection….Over the decades since, NASA’s approaches to connecting with citizens have evolved with the introduction of new information and communications technologies, social change, legal developments, scientific progress, and external trends in space activities and public engagement. The result has been an increasing and increasingly accessible set of opportunities that have enabled diverse segments of society to connect more closely with NASA’s work and, in turn, boost the agency’s techno-scientific and societal value….

Another significant change in public engagement practices has been providing more people with opportunities to do space-related R&D. Through the shuttle program, the agency enabled companies, universities, high schools, and an eclectic set of participants ranging from artists to garden seed companies to develop and fly payloads. The stated purpose was to advance knowledge of the effects of the space environment—a concept that was sometimes loosely defined. 

Today NASA similarly encourages a broad set of players to use the International Space Station (ISS) for R&D. While some of the shuttle and ISS programs have charged fees to payload owners, NASA has instead offered grants, primarily to the university community, for competitively selected research projects in space science. The agency also invites various groups to propose experiments and technology development projects through government-wide programs such as the Small Business Innovative Research program, which aims to foster innovation in small businesses, as well as the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (better known by its EPSCoR acronym), which seeks to enhance research infrastructure and competitiveness at the state level….(More)”.

Amsterdam introduces mandatory register for sensors

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Sarah Wray at Cities Today: “Private companies, research institutions and government organisations in Amsterdam are now obliged to report sensors deployed in public spaces.

The information is being displayed via an online map to give residents more insight into how, where and what data is collected from sources such as cameras, air quality and traffic sensors, Wi-Fi counters and smart billboards. The map shows the type of sensor, the owner and whether personal data is processed.

A statement from the city said: “Amsterdam believes that residents have the right to know where and when data is collected. The sensor register and the reporting obligation help to create awareness. It is one of the 18 actions from the Amsterdam Data Strategy.”

The requirement applies to new sensors and those that are already installed in the city, including mobile sensors.

So far, only sensors from the City of Amsterdam have been included in the register. Other owners are now urged to report their sensors and have until 1 June 2022 before enforcement action will be taken.

If there is no response even after warnings, the municipality can remove the sensor at the owner’s expense, the city said.

The obligation to report sensors  is part of a regulation update recently passed by the City Council…(More)”.

Are Your Data Visualizations Racist?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

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)”.

How Smart Tech Is Transforming Nonprofits

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Allison Fine and Beth Kanter: “Covid-19 created cascades of shortages, disruptions, and problems that rolled downhill and landed in the most vulnerable neighborhoods. In these neighborhoods, it’s often nonprofit organizations that provide services to members of the community. While the pandemic accelerated the need for digital transformation throughout the economy, the nonprofit sector was not immune to the need for nearly overnight innovation. As experts on the use of technology for social good, we’ve observed the many ways that nonprofits have been adopting “smart tech” to further social change in the wake of the pandemic, which we chronicle in our upcoming book, The Smart Nonprofit.

We use “smart tech” as an umbrella term for advanced digital technologies that make decisions for people. It includes artificial intelligence (AI) and its subsets and cousins, such as machine learning, natural language processing, smart forms, chatbots, robots, and more.

The use of smart tech by social service agencies and other nonprofits exploded during the pandemic. For example, food banks deployed robots to pack meals; homeless services agencies used chatbots to give legal and mental health advice; and fundraising departments turned to AI-powered software to identify potential donors.Insight Center CollectionTaking on Digital TransformationMoving your company forward in the wake of the pandemic.

When the pandemic began and schools switched to remote learning, many students who relied on school lunches were not able to receive them. Here’s where nonprofits stepped in to use smart technologies for social good. For example, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University used machine learning to flip the system on its head; instead of using buses to deliver children to schools, new bus routes were created to bring meals to children in the Pittsburgh area in the most efficient way.

The use of chatbots to provide support and deliver services to vulnerable populations increased tremendously during the pandemic. For instance, the Rentervention chatbot was developed by the legal aid nonprofits in Illinois to help tenants navigate eviction and other housing issues they were experiencing due to Covid-19. It also directs renters to pro bono legal advice….(More)”.

Senators unveil bipartisan bill requiring social media giants to open data to researchers

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Rebecca Klar: “Meta and other social media companies would be required to share their data with outside researchers under a new bill announced by a bipartisan group of senators on Thursday. 

Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) underscored the need for their bill based on information leaked about Meta’s platforms in the so-called Facebook Papers, though the proposal would also apply to other social media companies.

The bill, the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act, would allow independent researchers to submit proposals to the National Science Foundation. If the requests are approved, social media companies would be required to provide the necessary data subject to certain privacy protections. 

“It’s increasingly clear that more transparency is needed so that the billions of people who use Facebook, Twitter, and similar platforms can fully understand the impact of those tradeoffs. This bipartisan proposal is an important step that will bring much needed information about the impact of social media companies to light and ought to be a crucial part of any comprehensive strategy that Congress can take to regulate major social media companies,” Coons said in a statement. 

If companies failed to comply with the requirement under the bill, they would be subject to enforcement from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and face losing immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 is a controversial provision that provides immunity for internet companies based on content posted by third parties, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have proposed measures to weaken its reach….(More)”.

What Biden’s Democracy Summit Is Missing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Hélène Landemore: “U.S. President Joe Biden is set to host a virtual summit this week for leaders from government, civil society, and the private sector to discuss the renewal of democracy. We can expect to see plenty of worthy yet predictable issues discussed: the threat of foreign agents interfering in elections, online disinformation, political polarization, and the temptation of populist and authoritarian alternatives. For the United States specifically, the role of money in politics, partisan gerrymandering, endless gridlock in Congress, and the recent voter suppression efforts targeting Black communities in the South should certainly be on the agenda.

All are important and relevant topics. Something more fundamental, however, is needed.

The clear erosion of our political institutions is just the latest evidence, if any more was needed, that it’s past time to discuss what democracy actually means—and why we should care about it. We have to question, moreover, whether the political systems we have are even worth restoring or if we should more substantively alter them, including through profound constitutional reforms.

Such a discussion has never been more vital. The systems in place today once represented a clear improvement on prior regimes—monarchies, theocracies, and other tyrannies—but it may be a mistake to call them adherents of democracy at all. The word roughly translates from its original Greek as “people’s power.” But the people writ large don’t hold power in these systems. Elites do. Consider that in the United States, according to a 2014 study by the political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, only the richest 10 percent of the population seems to have any causal effect on public policy. The other 90 percent, they argue, is left with “democracy by coincidence”—getting what they want only when they happen to want the same thing as the people calling the shots.

This discrepancy between reality—democracy by coincidence—and the ideal of people’s power is baked in as a result of fundamental design flaws dating back to the 18th century. The only way to rectify those mistakes is to rework the design—to fully reimagine what it means to be democratic. Tinkering at the edges won’t do….(More)”

The Promise of Community-Driven Science

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Louise Lief: “Powered by thousands of early-career scientists and students, a global movement to transform scientific practice has emerged in recent years. The objective is to “expand the boundaries of what we consider science,” says Rajul Pandya, senior director of Thriving Earth Exchange at the American Geophysical Union (AGU), “to fundamentally transform science and the way we use it.”

These scientists have joined forces with community leaders and members of the public to establish new protocols and methods for doing community-driven science in an effort to make civic science even more inclusive and accessible to the public. Community science is an outgrowth of two earlier movements that emerged in response to the democratizing forces of the internet: open science, the push to make scientific research accessible and to encourage sharing and collaboration throughout the research cycle; and open data, the support for data that anyone can freely use, reuse, and share.

For open-science advocates, a reset of scientific practice is long overdue. For decades, the field has been dominated by what some experts call the “science-push” model, a top-down approach in which scientists decide which investigations to pursue, what questions to ask, how to do the science, and which results are significant. If members of the public are involved at all, they serve as research subjects or passive consumers of knowledge curated and presented to them by scientists.

The traditional approach to science has resulted in the public’s increasing distrust of scientists—their motives, values, and business interests. Science is a process that explores the world through observation and experiment, looking for evidence that may reveal larger patterns, often producing new discoveries. However, science itself does not decide the effects or outcomes of these results. The devastating opioid epidemic—in which manufacturers have aggressively promoted the highly addictive drugs, downplaying risks and misinforming doctors—has shown that the values and motives of those who practice science make all the difference.

Instead, open-science advocates believe science should be a joint enterprise between scientists and the public to demonstrate the value of science in people’s lives. Such collaboration will change the way scientists, communities, regulatory agencies, policy makers, academia, and funders work individually and collectively. Each player will be able to integrate science more easily into civic decision-making and target problems more efficiently and at lower costs. This collaborative work will create new opportunities for civic action and give the public a greater sense of ownership—making it their science….(More)”.

Data Science and Official Statistics: Toward a New Data Culture

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Stefan Schweinfest and Ronald Jansen: “In the digital age, data are generated continuously by many different devices and are being used by many different actors. National statistical offices (NSOs) should benefit from these opportunities to improve data for decision-making. What could be the expanding role for official statistics in this context and how does this relate to emerging disciplines like data science? This article explores some new ideas. In the avalanche of new data, society may need a data steward, and the NSO could take on that role, while paying close attention to the protection of privacy. Data science will become increasingly important for extracting meaningful information from large amounts of data. NSOs will need to hire data scientists and data engineers and will need to train their staff in these fast-developing fields. NSOs will also need to clearly communicate new and experimental data and foster a good understanding of statistics. Collaboration of official statistics with the private sector, academia, and civil society will be the new way of working and the fundamental principles of official statistics may have to apply to all those actors. This article envisions that we are gradually working toward such a new data culture…(More)”.

A Fix-It Job for Government Tech

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Shira Ovide at the New York Times: “U.S. government technology has a mostly deserved reputation for being expensive and awful.

Computer systems sometimes operate with Sputnik-era software. A Pentagon project to modernize military technology has little to show after five years. During the coronavirus pandemic, millions of Americans struggled to get government help like unemployment insurance, vaccine appointments and food stamps because of red tape, inflexible technology and other problems.

Whether you believe that the government should be more involved in Americans’ lives or less, taxpayers deserve good value for the technology we pay for. And we often don’t get it. It’s part of Robin Carnahan’s job to take on this problem.

A former secretary of state for Missouri and a government tech consultant, Carnahan had been one of my guides to how public sector technology could work better. Then in June, she was confirmed as the administrator of the General Services Administration, the agency that oversees government acquisitions, including of technology.

Carnahan said that she and other Biden administration officials wanted technology used for fighting wars or filing taxes to be as efficient as our favorite app.

“Bad technology sinks good policy,” Carnahan told me. “We’re on a mission to make government tech more user-friendly and be smarter about how we buy it and use it.”

Carnahan highlighted three areas she wanted to address: First, change the process for government agencies to buy technology to recognize that tech requires constant updates. Second, simplify the technology for people using government services. And third, make it more appealing for people with tech expertise to work for the government, even temporarily.

All of that is easier said than done, of course. People in government have promised similar changes before, and it’s not a quick fix. Technology dysfunction is also often a symptom of poor policies.

But in Carnahan’s view, one way to build faith in government is to prove that it can be competent. And technology is an essential area to show that…(More)”.