Public-Private Partnerships for Statistics: Lessons Learned, Future Steps

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Nicholas Robin, Thilo Klein and Johannes Jütting for Paris 21: “Non-offcial sources of data, big data in particular, are currently attracting enormous interest in the world of official statistics. An impressive body of work focuses on how different types of big data (telecom data, social media, sensors, etc.) can be used to fll specifc data gaps, especially with regard to the post-2015 agenda and the associated technology challenges. The focus of this paper is on a different aspect, but one that is of crucial importance: what are the perspectives of the commercial operations and national statistical offces which respectively produce and might use this data and which incentives, business models and protocols are needed in order to leverage non-offcial data sources within the offcial statistics community?

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) offer signifcant opportunities such as cost effectiveness, timeliness, granularity, new indicators, but also present a range of challenges that need to be surmounted. These comprise technical diffculties, risks related to data confdentiality as well as a lack of incentives. Nevertheless, a number of collaborative projects have already emerged and can be

Nevertheless, a number of collaborative projects have already emerged and can be classified into four ideal types: namely the in-house production of statistics by the data provider, the transfer of private data sets to the end user, the transfer of private data sets to a trusted third party for processing and/or analysis, and the outsourcing of national statistical office functions (the only model which is not centred around a data-sharing dimension). In developing countries, a severe lack of resources and particular statistical needs (to adopt a system-wide approach within national statistical systems and fill statistical gaps which are relevant to national development plans) highlight the importance of harnessing the private sector’s resources and point to the most holistic models (in-house and third party) in which the private sector contributes to the processing and analysis of data. The following key lessons are drawn from four case studies….(More)”

The Digital Equilibrium Project

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release by The Digital Equilibrium Project: “Cybersecurity, government and privacy experts are banding together as part of The ‘Digital Equilibrium Project’ to foster a new, productive dialogue on balancing security and privacy in the connected world. The project aims to address the underlying issues fueling acrimonious debates like the contentious court order between Apple and the U.S. Government.

  • The diverse group includes current and former leaders of some of the world’s largest cybersecurity firms and organizations, former officials in the NSA and national law enforcement, and leaders of some of the nation’s most influential privacy organizations. These individuals believe new thinking and collaboration is needed to avert potential catastrophes as the digital and physical worlds become more interdependent.
  • The group will release its foundational paper ‘Balancing Security and Privacy in the Connected World’ on Tuesday, March 1st at the RSA Conference – the world’s largest cybersecurity conference.
  • This project and related paper, months in the making, seek to end the kinds of standoffs we are seeing between Apple and the U.S. Government, addressing the underlying lack of social norms and legal constructs for the digital world.
  • They will convene a mid-year summit to craft a framework or ‘constitution’ for the digital world. The intent of this constitution is to help guide policy creation, broker compromise and serve as the foundation for decision making around cybersecurity issues. Senior executives from the Justice Department, Apple and other technology firms will be invited to participate…..

Next week the group will publish its foundational paper, crafted over extensive meetings, interviews and working sessions. The paper is meant to foster a new, collaborative discussion on the most pressing questions that could determine the future safety and social value of the Internet and the digital technologies that depend on it. In addition to releasing the paper at the RSA Conference, members of the group will discuss the paper and related issues during a main-stage panel session moderated by Art Coviello, former Executive Chairman of RSA Security, and James Kaplan, a McKinsey partner, on Thursday, March 3rd. Panel members will include: Michael Chertoff, Executive Chairman of The Chertoff Group and former Secretary of Homeland Security; Trevor Hughes, President and CEO of the International Association of Privacy Professionals; Mike McConnell, former Director of the NSA and Director, National Intelligence; and Nuala O’Connor, President and CEO, Center for Democracy & Technology.

The paper urges governments, corporations and privacy advocates to put aside the polarizing arguments that have cast security and privacy as opposing forces, and calls for a mid-year summit meeting between these parties to formulate a new structure for advancement of these pressing issues. It poses four fundamental questions that must be addressed to ensure the digital world can evolve in ways that ensure individual privacy while enabling the productivity and commercial gains that can improve quality of life around the globe. The four questions are:

  • What practices should organizations adopt to achieve their goals while protecting the privacy of their customers and other stakeholders?
  • How can organizations continue to improve the protection of their digital infrastructures and adopt privacy management practices that protect their employees?
  • What privacy management practices should governments adopt to maintain civil liberties and expectations of privacy, while ensuring the safety and security of their citizens, organizations, and critical infrastructure?
  • What norms should countries adopt to protect their sovereignty while enabling global commerce and collaboration against criminal and terrorist threats?

The Digital Equilibrium Project’s foundational paper will available for download on March 1st at www.digitalequilibriumproject.com”

Open Data Button

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Access Button: “Hidden data is hindering research, and we’re tired of it. Next week we’ll release the Open Data Button beta as part of Open Data Day. The Open Data Button will help people find, release, and share the data behind papers. We need your support to share, test, and improve the Open Data Button. Today, we’re going to provide some in depth info about the tool.

You’ll be able to download the free Open Data Button on the 29th of February. Follow the launch conversation on Twitter and at #opendatabutton.

How the Open Data Button works

You will be able to download the Open Data Button on Chrome, and later on Firefox. When you need the data supporting a paper (even if it’s behind a paywall), push the Button. If the data has already been made available through the Open Data Button, we’ll give you a link. If it hasn’t, you’ll be able to start a request for the data. Eventually, we want to search a variety of other sources for it – but can’t yet (read on, we need your help with that).

The request will be sent to the author. We know sharing data can be hard and there’s sometimes good reasons not to. The author will be able to respond to it by saying how long it’ll take to share the data – or if they can’t. If the data is already available, the author can simply share a URL to the dataset. If it isn’t, they can attach files to a response for us to make available. Files shared with us will be deposited in the Open Science Framework for identification and archiving. The Open Science Framework supports data sharing for all disciplines. As much metadata as possible will be obtained from the paper, the rest we’ll ask the author for.

The progress of this request is tracked through our new “request” pages. On request pages others can support a request and be sent a copy of the data when it’s available. We’ll map requests, and stories will be searchable – both will now be embeddable objects.

Once available, we’ll send data to people who’ve requested it. You can award an Open Data Badge to the author if there’s enough supporting information to reproduce the data’s results.

At first we’ll only have a Chrome add-on, but support for Firefox will be available from Firefox 46. Support for a bookmarklet will also be provided, but we don’t have a release date yet….(More)”

 

Want To Complain To Cambodia’s Gov’t? There’s An App for That

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Joshua Wilwohl in Forbes: “A new mobile and web application will help Cambodians better track complaints registered with local governments, but part of the app’s effectiveness hinges on whether the country’s leaders are receptive to the technology.

Known as Transmit, the app works by allowing selected government and grassroots leaders to enter in complaints made by citizens during routine community council meetings.

The app then sends the complaints to an online database. Once in the database, the government officials referenced by the issues can address them and indicate the status of the complaints.

The database is public and offers registered users the opportunity to comment on the complaints.

Currently, citizens register complaints with pen and paper or in a spreadsheet on an official’s computer….

Earlier this month, Pact began training officials in Pursat province to use the app and will expand training this week to local governments and community-based organizations in Kampong Cham, Battambang and Mondulkiri provinces, saidCenter.

But the app relies on government officials using the technology to keep the community informed about the progress of the complaints—a task that may be easier said than done in a country that is well-documented for its lack of transparency…(More)”

From Freebase to Wikidata: The Great Migration

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Thomas Pellissier Tanon et al: “Collaborative knowledge bases that make their data freely available in a machine-readable form are central for the data strategy of many projects and organizations. The two major collaborative knowledge bases are Wikimedia’s Wikidata and Google’s Freebase. Due to the success of Wikidata, Google decided in 2014 to offer the content of Freebase to the Wikidata community. In this paper, we report on the ongoing transfer efforts and data mapping challenges, and provide an analysis of the effort so far. We describe the Primary Sources Tool, which aims to facilitate this and future data migrations. Throughout the migration, we have gained deep insights into both Wikidata and Freebase, and share and discuss detailed statistics on both knowledge bases….(More)”

Linked Open Economy: Take Full Advantage of Economic Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Michalis N. Vafopoulos et al: “For decades, information related to public finances was out of reach for most of the people. Gradually, public budgets and tenders are becoming openly available and global initiatives promote fiscal transparency and open product and price data. But, the poor quality of economic open data undermines their potential to answer interesting questions (e.g. efficiency of public funds and market processes). Linked Open Economy (LOE) has been developed as a top-level conceptualization that interlinks the publicly available economic open data by modelling the flows incorporated in public procurement together with the market process to address complex policy issues. LOE approach is extensively used to enrich open economic data ranging from budgets and spending to prices. Developers, professionals, public administrations and any other interested party use and customize LOE model to develop new systems, to enable information exchange between systems, to integrate data from heterogeneous sources and to publish open data related to economic activities….(More)”

Another Tale of Two Cities: Understanding Human Activity Space Using Actively Tracked Cellphone Location Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Yang Xu et al: “Activity space is an important concept in geography. Recent advancements of location-aware technologies have generated many useful spatiotemporal data sets for studying human activity space for large populations. In this article, we use two actively tracked cellphone location data sets that cover a weekday to characterize people’s use of space in Shanghai and Shenzhen, China. We introduce three mobility indicators (daily activity range, number of activity anchor points, and frequency of movements) to represent the major determinants of individual activity space. By applying association rules in data mining, we analyze how these indicators of an individual’s activity space can be combined with each other to gain insights of mobility patterns in these two cities. We further examine spatiotemporal variations of aggregate mobility patterns in these two cities. Our results reveal some distinctive characteristics of human activity space in these two cities: (1) A high percentage of people in Shenzhen have a relatively short daily activity range, whereas people in Shanghai exhibit a variety of daily activity ranges; (2) people with more than one activity anchor point tend to travel further but less frequently in Shanghai than in Shenzhen; (3) Shenzhen shows a significant north–south contrast of activity space that reflects its urban structure; and (4) travel distance in both cities is shorter around noon than in regular work hours, and a large percentage of movements around noon are associated with individual home locations. This study indicates the benefits of analyzing actively tracked cellphone location data for gaining insights of human activity space in different cities….(More)”

On Researching Data and Communication

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Andrew Schrock: “We are awash in predictions about our data-driven future. Enthusiasts believe it will offer new ways to research behavior. Critics worry it will enable powerful regimes of institutional control. Both visions, although polar opposites, tend to downplay the importance of communication. As a result, the role of communication in human-centered data science has rarely been considered. This article fills this gap by outlining three perspectives on data that foreground communication. First, I briefly review the common social scientific perspective: “communication as data.” Next, I elaborate on two less explored perspectives. A “data as communication” perspective captures how data imperfectly carry meanings and guide action. “Communication around data” describes communication in organizational and institutional data cultures. I conclude that communication offers nuanced perspectives to inform human-centered data science. Researchers should embrace a robust agenda, particularly when researching the relationship between data and power…(More)”

Private Provision of Public Goods via Crowdfunding

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Robert Chovanculiak and Marek Hudík: “Private provision of public goods is typically associated with three main problems: (1) high organization costs, (2) the assurance problem, and (3) the free-rider problem. We argue that technologies which enable crowdfunding (the method of funding projects by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people via the internet), have made the overall conditions for private provision of public goods more favorable: these technologies lowered the organization costs and enabled to employ more efficient mechanisms which reduce the assurance and free-rider problems. It follows that if the reason for government provision of public goods is higher efficiency as suggested by the standard theory, then with the emergence of crowdfunding we should observe a decline of the government role in this area….(More)”

Google Votes: A Liquid Democracy Experiment on a Corporate Social Network

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Steve Hardt and Lia C. R. Lopes: “This paper introduces Google Votes, an experiment in liquid democracy built on Google’s internal corporate Google+ social network. Liquid democracy decision-making systems can scale to cover large groups by enabling voters to delegate their votes to other voters. This approach is in contrast to direct democracy systems where voters vote directly on issues, and representative democracy systems where voters elect representatives to vote on issues for them. Liquid democracy systems can provide many of the benefits of both direct and representative democracy systems with few of the weaknesses. Thus far, high implementation complexity and infrastructure costs have prevented widespread adoption. Google Votes demonstrates how the use of social-networking technology can overcome these barriers and enable practical liquid democracy systems. The case-study of Google Votes usage at Google over a 3 year timeframe is included, as well as a framework for evaluating vote visibility called the “Golden Rule of Liquid Democracy”….(More)”