Paper by Ricardo Perez-Truglia: “In 2001, Norwegian tax records became easily accessible online, allowing individuals to observe the incomes of others. Because of self-image and social-image concerns, higher income transparency can increase the differences in well-being between rich and poor. We test this hypothesis using survey data from 1985-2013. We identify the causal effect of income transparency on subjective well-being by using differences-in-differences, triple-differences, and event-study analyses. We find that higher income transparency increased the happiness gap between rich and poor by 29% and the life satisfaction gap by 21%. Additionally, higher income transparency corrected misperceptions about the income distribution and changed preferences for redistribution. Last, we use the estimates for back-of-the-envelope calculations of the value of self-image and social-image….(More)”
The Wisdom of the Many in Global Governance: An Epistemic-Democratic Defence of Diversity and Inclusion
Paper by Stevenson, H. : “Over the past two decades, a growing body of literature has highlighted moral reasons for taking global democracy seriously. This literature justifies democracy on the grounds of its intrinsic value. But democracy also has instrumental value: the rule of the many is epistemically superior to the rule of one or the rule of the few. This paper draws on the tradition of epistemic democracy to develop an instrumentalist justification for democratizing global governance. The tradition of epistemic democracy is enjoying a renaissance within political theory and popular non-fiction, yet its relevance for international relations remains unexplored. I develop an epistemic-democratic framework for evaluating political institutions, which is constituted by three principles. The likelihood of making correct decisions within institutions of global governance will be greater when (1) human development and capacity for participation is maximised; (2) the internal cognitive diversity of global institutions is maximised; and (3) public opportunities for sharing objective and subjective knowledge are maximised. Applying this framework to global governance produces a better understanding of the nature and extent of the ‘democratic deficit’ of global governance, as well as the actions required to address this deficit….(More)”
E-Regulation and the Rule of Law: Smart Government, Institutional Information Infrastructures, and Fundamental Values
Rónán Kennedy in Information Polity: “Information and communications technology (ICT) is increasingly used in bureaucratic and regulatory processes. With the development of the ‘Internet of Things’, some researchers speak enthusiastically of the birth of the ‘Smart State’. However, there are few theoretical or critical perspectives on the role of ICT in these routine decision-making processes and the mundane work of government regulation of economic and social activity. This paper therefore makes an important contribution by putting forward a theoretical perspective on smartness in government and developing a values-based framework for the use of ICT as a tool in the internal machinery of government.
It critically reviews the protection of the rule of law in digitized government. As an addition to work on e-government, a new field of study, ‘e-regulation’ is proposed, defined, and critiqued, with particular attention to the difficulties raised by the use of models and simulation. The increasing development of e-regulation could compromise fundamental values by embedding biases, software errors, and mistaken assumptions deeply into government procedures. The article therefore discusses the connections between the ‘Internet of Things’, the development of ‘Ambient Law’, and how the use of ICT in e-regulation can be a support for or an impediment to the operation of the rule of law. It concludes that e-government research should give more attention to the processes of regulation, and that law should be a more central discipline for those engaged in this activity….(More)“
Accountable Algorithms
Paper by Joshua A. Kroll et al: “Many important decisions historically made by people are now made by computers. Algorithms count votes, approve loan and credit card applications, target citizens or neighborhoods for police scrutiny, select taxpayers for an IRS audit, and grant or deny immigration visas.
The accountability mechanisms and legal standards that govern such decision processes have not kept pace with technology. The tools currently available to policymakers, legislators, and courts were developed to oversee human decision-makers and often fail when applied to computers instead: for example, how do you judge the intent of a piece of software? Additional approaches are needed to make automated decision systems — with their potentially incorrect, unjustified or unfair results — accountable and governable. This Article reveals a new technological toolkit to verify that automated decisions comply with key standards of legal fairness.
We challenge the dominant position in the legal literature that transparency will solve these problems. Disclosure of source code is often neither necessary (because of alternative techniques from computer science) nor sufficient (because of the complexity of code) to demonstrate the fairness of a process. Furthermore, transparency may be undesirable, such as when it permits tax cheats or terrorists to game the systems determining audits or security screening.
The central issue is how to assure the interests of citizens, and society as a whole, in making these processes more accountable. This Article argues that technology is creating new opportunities — more subtle and flexible than total transparency — to design decision-making algorithms so that they better align with legal and policy objectives. Doing so will improve not only the current governance of algorithms, but also — in certain cases — the governance of decision-making in general. The implicit (or explicit) biases of human decision-makers can be difficult to find and root out, but we can peer into the “brain” of an algorithm: computational processes and purpose specifications can be declared prior to use and verified afterwards.
The technological tools introduced in this Article apply widely. They can be used in designing decision-making processes from both the private and public sectors, and they can be tailored to verify different characteristics as desired by decision-makers, regulators, or the public. By forcing a more careful consideration of the effects of decision rules, they also engender policy discussions and closer looks at legal standards. As such, these tools have far-reaching implications throughout law and society.
Part I of this Article provides an accessible and concise introduction to foundational computer science concepts that can be used to verify and demonstrate compliance with key standards of legal fairness for automated decisions without revealing key attributes of the decision or the process by which the decision was reached. Part II then describes how these techniques can assure that decisions are made with the key governance attribute of procedural regularity, meaning that decisions are made under an announced set of rules consistently applied in each case. We demonstrate how this approach could be used to redesign and resolve issues with the State Department’s diversity visa lottery. In Part III, we go further and explore how other computational techniques can assure that automated decisions preserve fidelity to substantive legal and policy choices. We show how these tools may be used to assure that certain kinds of unjust discrimination are avoided and that automated decision processes behave in ways that comport with the social or legal standards that govern the decision. We also show how algorithmic decision-making may even complicate existing doctrines of disparate treatment and disparate impact, and we discuss some recent computer science work on detecting and removing discrimination in algorithms, especially in the context of big data and machine learning. And lastly in Part IV, we propose an agenda to further synergistic collaboration between computer science, law and policy to advance the design of automated decision processes for accountability….(More)”
Smart City and Smart Government: Synonymous or Complementary?
Paper by Leonidas G. Anthopoulos and Christopher G. Reddick: “Smart City is an emerging and multidisciplinary domain. It has been recently defined as innovation, not necessarily but mainly through information and communications technologies (ICT), which enhance urban life in terms of people, living, economy, mobility and governance. Smart government is also an emerging topic, which attracts increasing attention from scholars who work in public administration, political and information sciences. There is no widely accepted definition for smart government, but it appears to be the next step of e-government with the use of technology and innovation by governments for better performance. However, it is not clear whether these two terms co-exist or concern different domains. The aim of this paper is to investigate the term smart government and to clarify its meaning in relationship to the smart city. In this respect this paper performed a comprehensive literature review analysis and concluded that smart government is shown not to be synonymous with smart city. Our findings show that smart city has a dimension of smart government, and smart government uses smart city as an area of practice. The authors conclude that smart city is complimentary, part of larger smart government movement….(More)”
Emerging urban digital infomediaries and civic hacking in an era of big data and open data initiatives
Chapter by Thakuriah, P., Dirks, L., and Keita, Y. in Seeing Cities Through Big Data: Research Methods and Applications in Urban Informatics (forthcoming): “This paper assesses non-traditional urban digital infomediaries who are pushing the agenda of urban Big Data and Open Data. Our analysis identified a mix of private, public, non-profit and informal infomediaries, ranging from very large organizations to independent developers. Using a mixed-methods approach, we identified four major groups of organizations within this dynamic and diverse sector: general-purpose ICT providers, urban information service providers, open and civic data infomediaries, and independent and open source developers. A total of nine organizational types are identified within these four groups. We align these nine organizational types along five dimensions accounts for their mission and major interests, products and services, as well activities they undertake: techno-managerial, scientific, business and commercial, urban engagement, and openness and transparency. We discuss urban ICT entrepreneurs, and the role of informal networks involving independent developers, data scientists and civic hackers in a domain that historically involved professionals in the urban planning and public management domains. Additionally, we examine convergence in the sector by analyzing overlaps in their activities, as determined by a text mining exercise of organizational webpages. We also consider increasing similarities in products and services offered by the infomediaries, while highlighting ideological tensions that might arise given the overall complexity of the sector, and differences in the backgrounds and end-goals of the participants involved. There is much room for creation of knowledge and value networks in the urban data sector and for improved cross-fertilization among bodies of knowledge….(More)”
Big data privacy: the datafication of personal information
Jens-Erik Mai in The Information Society: “In the age of big data we need to think differently about privacy. We need to shift our thinking from definitions of privacy (characteristics of privacy) to models of privacy (how privacy works). Moreover, in addition to the existing models of privacy—surveillance model and capture model, we need to also consider a new model —the datafication model presented in this paper, wherein new personal information is deduced by employing predictive analytics on already-gathered data. These three models of privacy supplement each other; they are not competing understandings of privacy. This broadened approach will take our thinking beyond current preoccupation with whether or not individuals’ consent was secured for data collection to privacy issues arising from the development of new information on individuals’ likely behavior through analysis of already collected data – this new information can violate privacy but does not call for consent….(More)”
EU e-Government Action Plan 2016-2020. Accelerating the digital transformation of government
Q and A: “The e-Government Action Plan includes 20 initiatives to be launched in 2016 and 2017 (full list). Several of them aim to accelerate the implementation of existing legislation and related take-up of online public services. The Commission will notably support the transition of Member States towards full e-procurement, use of contract registers and interoperable e-signatures.
Another part of this set of initiatives focuses on cross-border digital public services. For example, the Commission will submit a proposal to create a Single Digital Gateway as a one-stop entry point for business and people to all Digital Single Market related information, assistance, advice and problem-solving services and making sure that the most frequently used procedures for doing business across borders can be completed fully online. The ESSI (Electronic Exchange of Social Security Information) will help national administrations to electronically share personal social information between Member States, thereby making it easier for people to live and work across borders.
Finally, the action plan aims to ensure that high-quality digital public services are designed for users and encourage their participation.
The plan will be regularly reviewed and if needed completed. An online platform for users will ensure that ideas and feedback are collected.
What is the “once-only” principle?
The “once-only” principle means that citizens and businesses should supply the same information only once to a public administration. Public administration internally shares this data, so that no additional burden falls on citizens and businesses. It calls for a reorganisation of public sector internal processes, rather than forcing businesses and citizens to fit around these processes.
The Commission will launch a pilot project with Member States to apply once-only principle across borders, with €8 million funding from Horizon 2020. This pilot will test out a technical once-only solution for businesses working in different EU Member States. Another activity will explore the once-only concept for citizens, and support networking and discussions on how this could be implemented, in due respect of the legal framework on personal data protection and privacy.
What is the digitisation of company law?
A number of EU company rules were conceived in a pre-digital era, when every form had to be completed on paper. As a result, many companies cannot fully benefit from digital tools where it comes to fulfilling company law requirements or interacting with business registers because many of the rules and processes are still paper-based.
The Commission will work on ways to achieve simpler and less burdensome solutions for companies, by facilitating the use of digital solutions throughout a company’s lifecycle in the interaction between companies and business registers, including in cross-border situations.
For instance, in order to set up as a company in a Member State, it is necessary to register that company in a business register. The Commission will look at how and in what ways online registration procedures could be made available in order to reduce the administrative burden and costs of founding a new company. Also, under EU law, companies are obliged to file a number of documents and information in business registers. Cost and time savings for companies could be generated through better use of digital tools when a company needs to submit and disclose new documents or up-date those throughout its lifecycle, for instance when the company name changes.
How will the Single Digital Gateway help European businesses and citizens?
The Single Digital Gateway will link up (not replace) relevant EU and national websites, portals, assistance services and procedures in a seamless and user-friendly way. Over time it will offer users a streamlined, comprehensive portal to find information, initiate and complete transactions with Member States’ administrations across the EU. The most frequently used administrative procedures will be identified and be brought fully online, so that no offline steps like printing and sending documents on paper will be needed.
This will save time and thereby costs for businesses and citizens when they want to engage in cross-border activities like setting up a business, exporting, moving or studying in another EU Member State.
How will interconnecting businesses registers, insolvency registers, and making the e-Justice portal a one-stop shop for justice help businesses?
These initiatives will help businesses trade within the EU with much more confidence. Not only will they be able to find the relevant information on other businesses themselves, but also on their possible insolvency, through the different interconnections of registers. This will increase transparency and enhance confidence in the Digital Single Market.
Interconnecting business registers will also ensure that business registers can communicate to each other electronically in a safe and secure way and that information is up-to-date without any additional red tape for companies.
The European e-Justice Portal provides a lot of additional information in case of problems, including tools to find a lawyer or notary, and tools for the exercise of their rights. It gives businesses easy access to information needed before entering into a business arrangement, as well as the confidence that if things go wrong, a solution is near at hand…. (More)”
Crowdsourcing healthcare costs: Opportunities and challenges for patient centered price transparency
Paper by Zachary F. Meisel, Lauren A. Houdek VonHoltz, and Raina M. Merchant in Healthcare: “Efforts to improve health care price transparency have garnered significant attention from patients, policy makers, and health insurers. In response to increasing consumer demand, state governments, insurance plans, and health care providers are reporting health care prices. However, such data often do not provide consumers with the most salient information: their own actual out-of-pocket cost for medical care. Although untested, crowdsourcing, a mechanism for the public to help answer complex questions, represents a potential solution to the problem of opaque hospital costs. This article explores, the challenges and potential opportunities for crowdsourcing out-of-pocket costs for healthcare consumers….(More)”.
The Secret in the Information Society
Philosophy & Technology: “Who can still keep a secret in a world in which everyone and everything are connected by technology aimed at charting and cross-referencing people, objects, movements, behaviour, relationships, tastes and preferences? The possibilities to keep a secret have come under severe pressure in the information age. That goes for the individual as well as the state. This development merits attention as secrecy is foundational for individual freedom as well as essential to the functioning of the state. Building on Simmel’s work on secrecy, this paper argues that the individual’s secrets should be saved from the ever-expanding digital transparency. The legitimate function of state secrecy in turn needs rescuing from a culture of secrecy and over-classification that has exploded in recent years. Contrary to popular expectation, the digital revolution adds another layer of secrecy that is increasingly hidden behind the facade of the ‘big usable systems’ we work and play with every day. Our dependence on information systems and their black-boxed algorithmic analytical core leads to a certain degree of Weberian (re) enchantment that may increase the disconnect between the system, user and object….(More)”