research paper / thesis / dissertation

Blockchain-like ID may mean end of paper birth certificates

Curated on September 28, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Chris Baraniuk at New Scientist: “There’s a new way to prove you are who you say you are – inspired by the tech underpinning bitcoin. Usually, when you need to verify your identity, the process is archaic, insecure and time-consuming. You get a copy of your birth certificate in the post, put it in an envelope and hope it gets to whoever is asking for it. In the digital era, this should take seconds.

But putting something as sensitive as a birth certificate online risks identity theft in the era of hacks and leaks. Now, the US state of Illinois is experimenting with a secure way of putting control of that data into its citizens’ hands, with the help of distributed ledgers, similar to the blockchain used by bitcoin.

Just last month, Illinois announced a pilot project to create “secure ‘self-sovereign’ identity” for Illinois citizens wishing to access their birth certificate. The idea is to use a blockchain-like distributed ledger that allows online access only to the people owning the ID, and any third parties granted their permission.

Illinois is working with software firm Evernym of Herriman, Utah, to create a record of who should be able to access data from the state’s birth register. Once this is done, no central authority should be required, just your say-so.They’re not the only ones. According to a report by Garrick Hileman and Michael Rauchs at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, UK, governments are increasingly experimenting with it, including the UK and Brazil.

Activists have long called for people to have greater control of their data. Hacks and leaks are making it too risky for authorities to be the central repository of citizens’ most vital information.

With distributed ledgers, all participants within a network can have their own identical copy of data like access permissions – so no one can view cryptographically sealed birth certificate data unless they’re meant to. Blockchains are a type of distributed ledger that gets the whole network to observe and verify transactions – such as when someone sends a bitcoin to their friend….(More)”.

The ‘Five Safes’: a framework for planning, designing and evaluating data access solutions

Curated on September 28, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Felix Ritchie: “The ‘Five Safes’ is a popular way to structure thinking about data access solutions. Originally used mainly by statistical agencies and social science academics, in recent years it has been adopted more widely across government, health organisations and private sector bodies. This paper explains the Five Safes, how the concept is used to organise and simplify decision-making, and how it helps to address concerns of different constituencies. We show how it aligns to recent regulation, anticipating the shift towards multi-dimensional data management strategies. We provide a number of practical examples as case studies for further information. We also briefly consider what issues the Five Safes does not address, and how the framework sits within a wider body of work on data access which challenges traditional data access models…(More)”.

A Rights-based Approach to Information in Humanitarian Assistance

Curated on September 26, 2017October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Daniel P. Scarnecchia, Nathaniel A. Raymond, Faine Greenwood, Caitlin Howarth and Danielle N. Poole: “Crisis-affected populations and humanitarian aid providers are both becoming increasingly reliant on information and communications technology (ICTs) for finding and provisioning aid. This is exposing critical, unaddressed gaps in the legal and ethical frameworks that traditionally defined and governed the professional conduct of humanitarian action. The most acute of these gaps is a lack of clarity about what human rights people have regarding information in disaster, and the corresponding obligations incumbent upon governments and aid providers. This need is lent urgency by emerging evidence demonstrating that the use of these technologies in crisis response may be, in some cases, causing harm to the very populations they intend to serve. Preventing and mitigating these harms, while also working to responsibly ensure access to the benefits of information during crises, requires a rights-based framework to guide humanitarian operations. In this brief report, we provide a commentary that accompanies our report, the Signal Code: A Human Rights Approach to Information During Crisis, where we have identified five rights pertaining to the use of information and data during crisis which are grounded in current international human rights and customary law. It is our belief that the continued relevance of the humanitarian project, as it grows increasingly dependent on the use of data and ICTs, urgently requires a discussion of these rights and corresponding obligations….(More)”.

Privacy and Outrage

Curated on September 25, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jordan M. Blanke: “Technology has dramatically altered virtually every aspect of our life in recent years. While technology has always driven change, it seems that these changes are occurring more rapidly and more extensively than ever before. Society and its laws will evolve; but it is not always an easy process. Privacy has changed dramatically in our data-driven world – and continues to change daily. It has always been difficult to define exactly what privacy is, and therefore, it is even more difficult to propose what it should become. As the meaning of privacy often varies from person to person, it is difficult to establish a one-size-fits-all concept. This paper explores some of the historical, legal and ethical development of privacy, discusses how some of the normative values of privacy may survive or change, and examines how outrage has been – and will continue to be – a driver of such change….(More)”.

Introducing the Digital Policy Model Canvas

Curated on September 22, 2017May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Stefaan Verhulst: “…Yesterday, the National Digital Policy Network of the World Economic Forum, of which I am a member, released a White Paper aimed at facilitating this process. The paper, entitled “Digital Policy Playbook 2017: Approaches to National Digital Governance,” examines a number of case studies from around the world to develop a “playbook” that can help leaders in designing digital policies that maximize the forthcoming opportunities and effectively meet the challenges. It is the result of a series of extensive discussions and consultations held around the world, over , and attended by leading experts from various sectors and geographies…..

How can such insights be translated into a practical and pragmatic approach to policymaking? In order to find implementable solutions, we sought to develop a “Digital Policy Model Canvas” that would guide policy makers to derive specific policies and regulatory mechanisms in an agile and iterative manner – integrating both design thinking and evidence based policy making. This notion of a canvas is borrowed from the business world. For example, in Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers, Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur introduce the idea of a “Business Model Canvas” to generate new, innovative business models that can help companies–and others–go beyond legacy systems and approaches.

Applying this approach to the world of digital policymaking and innovation, we arrive at the “Digital Policy Model Canvas” represented in the accompanying figure.

Screen Shot 2017-09-22 at 6.08.24 AM

The design and implementation of such a canvas can be applied to a specific problem and/or geographic context, and would include the following steps…(More)”.

Storm Crowds: Evidence from Zooniverse on Crowd Contribution Design

Curated on September 21, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sandra Barbosu and Joshua S. Gans: “Crowdsourcing – a collaborative form of content production based on the contributions of large groups of individuals – has proliferated in the past decade. As a result, recent research seeks to understand the factors that affect its sustainability. Prior studies have highlighted the importance of volunteers’ prosocial motivations, the sense of belonging to a community, and symbolic rewards within crowdsourcing websites. One factor that has received limited attention in the existing literature is how the design of crowdsourcingplatforms affects their sustainability.

We study whether the design element – particularly, the divisibility of contributions (i.e. whether contributing tasks are bundled together or can be carried out separately) – is a factor that affects the level and quality of crowdsourcing contributions. We investigate this in the context of Zooniverse, the world’s largest crowdsourced science site, in which volunteers contribute to scientific research by performing data processing tasks. Our choice of empirical setting is motivated by the fact that one of the Zooniverse projects, Cyclone Center, underwent a format change that decreased the divisibility of contributions, by bundling together two tasks that were previously separate. We refer to contributions for which both tasks were done as complete, and contributions for which only one task was done as incomplete. In this context, we develop a theoretical model that predicts (i) a positive relationship between contribution divisibility and the total number of contributions (i.e. complete and incomplete) per volunteer, (ii) an ambiguous relationship between contribution divisibility and the number of complete contributions per volunteer, and (iii) an ambiguous relationship between contribution divisibility and the value of complete contributions. We test these predictions empirically by exploiting the format change in Cyclone Center.

We find that after the format change, which decreased contribution divisibility, (i) the total number of contributions per volunteer decreased, (ii) the number of complete contributions made by anonymous volunteers increased, while that made by registered volunteers remained unchanged, and (iii) the value of complete contributions increased because anonymous volunteers, who increased their number of complete contributions, contributed high quality contributions. Our results have strategic implications for crowdsourcing platforms because they suggest that the design of crowdsourcing platforms, specifically the divisibility of contributions, is a factor that matters for their sustainability….(More)”

Free Speech in the Algorithmic Society: Big Data, Private Governance, and New School Speech Regulation

Curated on September 20, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jack Balkin: “We have now moved from the early days of the Internet to the Algorithmic Society. The Algorithmic Society features the use of algorithms, artificial intelligence agents, and Big Data to govern populations. It also features digital infrastructure companies, large multi-national social media platforms, and search engines that sit between traditional nation states and ordinary individuals, and serve as special-purpose governors of speech.

The Algorithmic Society presents two central problems for freedom of expression. First, Big Data allows new forms of manipulation and control, which private companies will attempt to legitimate and insulate from regulation by invoking free speech principles. Here First Amendment arguments will likely be employed to forestall digital privacy guarantees and prevent consumer protection regulation. Second, privately owned digital infrastructure companies and online platforms govern speech much as nation states once did. Here the First Amendment, as normally construed, is simply inadequate to protect the practical ability to speak.

The first part of the essay describes how to regulate online businesses that employ Big Data and algorithmic decision making consistent with free speech principles. Some of these businesses are “information fiduciaries” toward their end-users; they must exercise duties of good faith and non-manipulation. Other businesses who are not information fiduciaries have a duty not to engage in “algorithmic nuisance”: they may not externalize the costs of their analysis and use of Big Data onto innocent third parties.

The second part of the essay turns to the emerging pluralist model of online speech regulation. This pluralist model contrasts with the traditional dyadic model in which nation states regulated the speech of their citizens.

In the pluralist model, territorial governments continue to regulate the speech directly. But they also attempt to coerce or co-opt owners of digital infrastructure to regulate the speech of others. This is “new school” speech regulation….(More)”.

Misconceptions About Nudges

Curated on September 14, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New paper by Cass R. Sunstein: “Some people believe that nudges are an insult to human agency; that nudges are based on excessive trust in government; that nudges are covert; that nudges are manipulative; that nudges exploit behavioral biases; that nudges depend on a belief that human beings are irrational; and that nudges work only at the margins and cannot accomplish much. These are misconceptions. Nudges always respect, and often promote, human agency; because nudges insist on preserving freedom of choice, they do not put excessive trust in government; nudges are generally transparent rather than covert or forms of manipulation; many nudges are educative, and even when they are not, they tend to make life simpler and more navigable; and some nudges have quite large impacts….(More)”

Why Competition in the Politics Industry is Failing America – A strategy for reinvigorating our democracy

Curated on September 14, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New report by Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter: “Many Americans are disgusted and concerned about the dysfunction and abysmal results from Washington, D.C., and so are we. However, this paper is not about adding to the depressing national dialog about politics, but about how to change the system by taking action that will work.

Too many people—including many pundits, political scientists, and politicians themselves—are laboring under a misimpression that our political problems are inevitable, or the result of a weakening of the parties, or due to the parties’ ideological incoherence, or because of an increasingly polarized American public. Those who focus on these reasons are looking in the wrong places. The result is that despite all the commentary and attention on politics in recent years, there is still no accepted strategy to reform the system and things keep getting worse.

We need a new approach. Our political problems are not due to a single cause, but rather to a failure of the nature of the political competition that has been created. This is a systems problem.

We are not political scientists, political insiders, or political experts. Instead, we bring a new analytical lens to understanding the performance of our political system: the lens of industry competition. This type of analysis has been used for decades to understand competition in other industries, and sheds new light on the failure of politics because politics in America has become, over the last several decades, a major industry that works like other industries.

We use this lens to put forth an investment thesis for political reform and innovation. What would be required to actually change the political outcomes we are experiencing? What would it take to better align the political system with the public interest and make progress on the nation’s problems? And, which of the many political reform and innovation ideas that have been proposed would actually alter the trajectory of the system?

Politics in America is not a hopeless problem, though it is easy to feel this way given what we experience and read about every day. There are promising reforms already gaining traction including important elements of the strategy we propose. It is up to us as citizens to recapture our democracy—it will not be self-correcting. We invite you to personally engage by investing both your time and resources—and by mobilizing those around you—in what we believe is the greatest challenge facing America today.

It is often said that “We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.” Today the challenge for Americans is to participate not only as voters, but also to participate in the reform of the political system itself. This is our democracy, and the need is urgent.

This report is about politics, but it is not political. The problem isnot Democrats or Republicans or the existence of parties per se. The problem is not individual politicians; most who seek and hold public office are genuinely seeking to make a positive contribution. The real problem is the nature of competition in the politics industry…(More)”