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)”
Designing a toolkit for policy makers
Laurence Grinyer at UK’s Open Policy Making Blog: “At the end of the last parliament, the Cabinet Office Open Policy Making team launched the Open Policy Making toolkit. This was about giving policy makers the actual tools that will enable them to develop policy that is well informed, creative, tested, and works. The starting point was addressing their needs and giving them what they had told us they needed to develop policy in an ever changing, fast paced and digital world. In a way, it was the culmination of the open policy journey we have been on with departments for the past 2 years. In the first couple of months we saw thousands of unique visits….
Our first version toolkit has been used by 20,000 policy makers. This gave us a huge audience to talk to to make sure that we continue to meet the needs of policy makers and keep the toolkit relevant and useful. Although people have really enjoyed using the toolkit, user testing quickly showed us a few problems…
We knew what we needed to do. Help people understand what Open Policy Making was, how it impacted their policy making, and then to make it as simple as possible for them to know exactly what to do next.
So we came up with some quick ideas on pen and paper and tested them with people. We quickly discovered what not to do. People didn’t want a philosophy— they wanted to know exactly what to do, practical answers, and when to do it. They wanted a sort of design manual for policy….
How do we make user-centered design and open policy making as understood as agile?
We decided to organise the tools around the journey of a policy maker. What might a policy maker need to understand their users? How could they co-design ideas? How could they test policy? We looked at what tools and techniques they could use at the beginning, middle and end of a project, and organised tools accordingly.
We also added sections to remove confusion and hesitation. Our opening section ‘Getting started with Open Policy Making’ provides people with a clear understanding of what open policy making might mean to them, but also some practical considerations. Sections for limited timeframes and budgets help people realise that open policy can be done in almost any situation.
And finally we’ve created a much cleaner and simpler design that lets people show as much or little of the information as they need….
So go and check out the new toolkit and make more open policy yourselves….(More)”
Innovating and changing the policy-cycle: Policy-makers be prepared!
Marijn Janssen and Natalie Helbig in Government Information Quarterly: “Many policy-makers are struggling to understand participatory governance in the midst of technological changes. Advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) continue to have an impact on the ways that policy-makers and citizens engage with each other throughout the policy-making process. A set of developments in the areas of opening government data, advanced analytics, visualization, simulation, and gaming, and ubiquitous citizen access using mobile and personalized applications is shaping the interactions between policy-makers and citizens. Yet the impact of these developments on the policy-makers is unclear. The changing roles and need for new capabilities required from the government are analyzed in this paper using two case studies. Salient new roles for policy-makers are outlined focused on orchestrating the policy-making process. Research directions are identified including understand the behavior of users, aggregating and analyzing content from scattered resources, and the effective use of the new tools. Understanding new policy-makers roles will help to bridge the gap between the potential of tools and technologies and the organizational realities and political contexts. We argue that many examples are available that enable learning from others, in both directions, developed countries experiences are useful for developing countries and experiences from the latter are valuable for the former countries…(More)”
The Smart City and its Citizens
Paper by Carlo Francesco Capra on “Governance and Citizen Participation in Amsterdam Smart City…Smart cities are associated almost exclusively with modern technology and infrastructure. However, smart cities have the possibility to enhance the involvement and contribution of citizens to urban development. This work explores the role of governance as one of the factors influencing the participation of citizens in smart cities projects. Governance characteristics play a major role in explaining different typologies of citizen participation. Through a focus on Amsterdam Smart City program as a specific case study, this research examines the characteristics of governance that are present in the overall program and within a selected sample of projects, and how they relate to different typologies of citizen participation. The analysis and comprehension of governance characteristics plays a crucial role both for a better understanding and management of citizen participation, especially in complex settings where multiple actors are interacting….(More)”
7 Ways Local Governments Are Getting Creative with Data Mapping
Ben Miller at GovTech: “As government data collection expands, and as more of that data becomes publicly available, more people are looking to maps as a means of expressing the information.
And depending on the type of application, a map can be useful for both the government and its constituents. Many maps help government servants operate more efficiently and savemoney, while others will answer residents’ questions so they don’t have to call a government worker for theanswer…..
Here are seven examples of state and local governments using maps to help themselves and the people they serve.
1. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, IOWA GET LOCAL AND CURRENT WITH THE WEATHER
As Winter Storm Jonas was busy dropping nearly 30 inches of snow on the nation’s capital, officials in D.C. were working to clear it. And thanks to a mapping application they launched, citizens could see exactly how the city was going about that business.
The District of Columbia’s snow map lets users enter an address, and then shows what snow plows did near that address within a given range of days. The map also shows where the city received 311 requests for snow removal and gives users a chance to look at recent photos from road cameras showing driving conditions…..
2. LOS ANGELES MAPS EL NIÑO RESOURCES, TRENDS
Throughout the winter, weather monitoring experts warned the public time and again that an El Niño system was brewing in the Pacific Ocean that looked to be one of the largest, if not the largest, ever. That would mean torrents of rain for a parched state that’s seen mudslides and flooding during storms in the past.
So to prepare its residents, the city of Los Angeles published a map in January that lets users see both decision-informing trends and the location of resources. Using the application, one can toggle layers that let them know what the weather is doing around the city, where traffic is backed up, where the power is out, where they can find sand bags to prevent flood damage and more….
3. CALIFORNIA DIVES DEEP INTO AIR POLLUTION RISKS
….So, faced with a legislative mandate to identify disadvantaged communities, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment decided that it wouldn’t just examine smog levels — it also would also take a look at the prevalence of at-risk people across the state.
The result is a series of three maps, the first two examining both factors and the third combining them. That allows the state and its residents to see the places where air pollution is the biggest problem for people it poses a greater risk to….
4. STREAMLINING RESIDENT SERVICE INFORMATION
The city of Manassas, Va., relied on an outdated paper map and a long-time, well-versed staffer to answer questions about municipal curbside pickup services until they launched this map in 2014. The map allows users to enter their address, and then gives them easy-to-read information about when to put out various things on their curb for pickup.
That’s useful because the city’s fall leaf collection schedule changes every year. So the map not only acts as a benefit to residents who want information, but to city staff who don’t have to deal with as many calls.
The map also shows users the locations of resources they can use and gives them city phone numbers in case they still have questions, and displays it all in a popup pane at the bottom of the map.
5. PLACING TOOLS IN THE HANDS OF THE PUBLIC
A lot of cities and counties have started publishing online maps showing city services and releasing government data.
But Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia stand out as examples of maps that take the idea one step further — because each one offers a staggering amount of choices for users.
Chicago’s new OpenGrid map, just launched in January, is a versatile map that lets users search for certain data like food inspection reports, street closures, potholes and more. That’s enough to answer a lot of questions, but what adds even more utility is the map’s various narrowing tools. Users can narrow searches to a zip code, or they can draw a shape on the map and only see results within that shape. They can perform sub-searches within results and they can choose how they’d like to see the data displayed.
Philadelphia’s platform makes use of buttons, icons and categories to help users sift through the spatially-enabled data available to them. Options include future lane closures, bicycle paths, flu shots, city resources, parks and more.
Boston’s platform is open for users to submit their own maps. And submit they have. The city portal offers everything from maps of bus stops to traffic data pulled from the Waze app.
6. HOUSTON TRANSFORMS SERVICE REQUEST DATA
A 311 service functions as a means of bringing problems to city staff’s attention. But the data itself only goes so far — it needs interpretation.
Houston’s 311 service request map helps users easily analyze the data so as to spot trends. The tool offers lots of ways to narrow data down, and can isolate many different kinds of request so users can see whether one problem is reported more often in certain areas.
7. GUIDING BUSINESS GROWTH
For the last several years, the city of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., has been designing all sorts of maps through its Rancho Enterprise Geographic Information Systems (REGIS) project. Many of them have served specific city purposes, such as tracking code enforcement violations and offering police a command system tool for special events.
The utilitarian foundation of REGIS extends to its public-facing applications as well. One example is INsideRancho, a map built with economic development efforts in mind. The map lets users search and browse available buildings to suit business needs, narrowing results by square footage, zoning and building type. Users can also find businesses by name or address, and look at property exteriors via an embedded connection with Google Street View….(More)”
Distributed ledger technology: beyond block chain
UK Government Office for Science: “In a major report on distributed ledgers published today (19 January 2016), the Government Chief Scientist, Sir Mark Walport, sets out how this technology could transform the delivery of public services and boost productivity.
A distributed ledger is a database that can securely record financial, physical or electronic assets for sharing across a network through entirely transparent updates of information.
Its first incarnation was ‘Blockchain’ in 2008, which underpinned digital cash systems such as Bitcoin. The technology has now evolved into a variety of models that can be applied to different business problems and dramatically improve the sharing of information.
Distributed ledger technology could provide government with new tools to reduce fraud, error and the cost of paper intensive processes. It also has the potential to provide new ways of assuring ownership and provenance for goods and intellectual property.
Distributed ledgers are already being used in the diamond markets and in the disbursing of international aid payments.
Sir Mark Walport said:
Distributed ledger technology has the potential to transform the delivery of public and private services. It has the potential to redefine the relationship between government and the citizen in terms of data sharing, transparency and trust and make a leading contribution to the government’s digital transformation plan.
Any new technology creates challenges, but with the right mix of leadership, collaboration and sound governance, distributed ledgers could yield significant benefits for the UK.
The report makes a number of recommendations which focus on ministerial leadership, research, standards and the need for proof of concept trials.
They include:
- government should provide ministerial leadership to ensure that it provides the vision, leadership and the platform for distributed ledger technology within government; this group should consider governance, privacy, security and standards
- government should establish trials of distributed ledgers in order to assess the technology’s usability within the public sector
- government could support the creation of distributed ledger demonstrators for local government that will bring together all the elements necessary to test the technology and its application.
- the UK research community should invest in the research required to ensure that distributed ledgers are scalable, secure and provide proof of correctness of their contents….View the report ‘Distributed ledger technology: beyond block chain’.”
The impact of open access scientific knowledge
Jack Karsten and Darrell M. West at Brookings: “In spite of technological advancements like the Internet, academic publishing has operated in much the same way for centuries. Scientists voluntarily review their peers’ papers for little or no compensation; the paper’s author likewise does not receive payment from academic publishers. Though most of the costs of publishing a journal are administrative, the cost of subscribing to scientific journals nevertheless increased 600 percent between 1984 and 2002. The funding for the research libraries that form the bulk of journal subscribers has not kept pace, leading to campaigns at universities including Harvard to boycott for-profit publishers.
Though the Internet has not yet brought down the price of academic journal subscriptions, it has led to some interesting alternatives. In 2015, the Twitter hashtag #icanhazPDF was created to request copies of papers located behind paywalls. Anyone with access to a specific paper can download it and then e-mail it to the requester. The practice violates the copyright of publishers, but puts papers in reach of researchers who would otherwise not be able to read them. If a researcher cannot read a journal article in the first place, they cannot go on to cite it, which raises the profile of the cited article and the journal that published it. The publisher is caught between two conflicting goals: to increase the number of citations for their articles and earning revenue to stay in business.
Thinking outside the journal
A trio of University of Chicago researchers examines this issue through the lens of Wikipedia in a paper titled “Amplifying the Impact of Open Access: Wikipedia and the Diffusion of Science.” Wikipedia makes a compelling subject for scientific diffusion given its status as one of the most visited websites in the world, attracting 374 million unique visitors monthly as of September 2015. The study found that on English language articles, Wikipedia editors are 47 percent more likely to cite an article from an open access journal. Anyone using Wikipedia as a first source for information on a subject is more likely to read information from open source journals. If readers click through the links to cited articles, they can read the actual text of these open-source journal articles.
Given how much the federal government spends on scientific research ($66 billion on nondefense R&D in 2015), it has a large role to play in the diffusion of scientific knowledge. Since 2008, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has required researchers who publish in academic journals to also publish in PubMed, an online open access journal. Expanding provisions like the NIH Public Access Policy to other agencies and to recipients of federal grants at universities would give the public and other researchers a wealth of scientific information. Scientific literacy, even on cutting-edge research, is increasingly important when science informs policy on major issues such as climate change and health care….(More)”
Crowdsourcing Diagnosis for Patients With Undiagnosed Illnesses: An Evaluation of CrowdMed
Objective: To describe CrowdMed and provide an independent assessment of its impact.
Methods: Patients submit their cases online to CrowdMed and case solvers sign up to help diagnose patients. Case solvers attempt to solve patients’ diagnostic dilemmas and often have an interactive online discussion with patients, including an exchange of additional diagnostic details. At the end, patients receive detailed reports containing diagnostic suggestions to discuss with their physicians and fill out surveys about their outcomes. We independently analyzed data collected from cases between May 2013 and April 2015 to determine patient and case solver characteristics and case outcomes.
Results: During the study period, 397 cases were completed. These patients previously visited a median of 5 physicians, incurred a median of US $10,000 in medical expenses, spent a median of 50 hours researching their illnesses online, and had symptoms for a median of 2.6 years. During this period, 357 active case solvers participated, of which 37.9% (132/348) were male and 58.3% (208/357) worked or studied in the medical industry. About half (50.9%, 202/397) of patients were likely to recommend CrowdMed to a friend, 59.6% (233/391) reported that the process gave insights that led them closer to the correct diagnoses, 57% (52/92) reported estimated decreases in medical expenses, and 38% (29/77) reported estimated improvement in school or work productivity.
Conclusions: Some patients with undiagnosed illnesses reported receiving helpful guidance from crowdsourcing their diagnoses during their difficult diagnostic journeys. However, further development and use of crowdsourcing methods to facilitate diagnosis requires long-term evaluation as well as validation to account for patients’ ultimate correct diagnoses….(More)”
Hacking the streets: ‘Smart’ writing in the smart city
Spencer Jordan at FirstMonday: “Cities have always been intimately bound up with technology. As important nodes within commercial and communication networks, cities became centres of sweeping industrialisation that affected all facets of life (Mumford, 1973). Alienation and estrangement became key characteristics of modernity, Mumford famously noting the “destruction and disorder within great cities” during the long nineteenth century. The increasing use of digital technology is yet another chapter in this process, exemplified by the rise of the ‘smart city’. Although there is no agreed definition, smart cities are understood to be those in which digital technology helps regulate, run and manage the city (Caragliu,et al., 2009). This article argues that McQuire’s definition of ‘relational space’, what he understands as the reconfiguration of urban space by digital technology, is critical here. Although some see the impact of digital technology on the urban environment as deepening social exclusion and isolation (Virilio, 1991), others, such as de Waal perceive digital technology in a more positive light. What is certainly clear, however, is that the city is once again undergoing rapid change. As Varnelis and Friedberg note, “place … is in a process of a deep and contested transformation”.
If the potential benefits from digital technology are to be maximised it is necessary that the relationship between the individual and the city is understood. This paper examines how digital technology can support and augment what de Certeau calls spatial practice, specifically in terms of constructions of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ (de Certeau, 1984). The very act of walking is itself an act of enunciation, a process by which the city is instantiated; yet, as de Certeau and Bachelard remind us, the city is also wrought from the stories we tell, the narratives we construct about that space (de Certeau, 1984; Bachelard, 1994). The city is thus envisioned both through physical exploration but also language. As Turchi has shown, the creative stories we make on these voyages can be understood as maps of that world and those we meet (Turchi, 2004). If, as the situationists Kotányi and Vaneigem stated, “Urbanism is comparable to the advertising propagated around Coca-Cola — pure spectacular ideology”, there needs to be a way by which the hegemony of the market, Benjamin’s phantasmagoria, can be challenged. This would wrestle control from the market forces that are seen to have overwhelmed the high street, and allow a refocusing on the needs of both the individual and the community.
This article argues that, though anachronistic, some of the situationists’ ideas persist within hacking, what Himanen (2001) identified as the ‘hacker ethic’. As Taylor argues, although hacking is intimately connected to the world of computers, it can refer to the unorthodox use of any ‘artefact’, including social ‘systems’ . In this way, de Certeau’s urban itineraries, the spatial practice of each citizen through the city, can be understood as a form of hacking. As Wark states, “We do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present.” If the city itself is called into being through our physical journeys, in what de Certeau called ‘spaces of enunciation’, then new configurations and possibilities abound. The walker becomes hacker, Wark’s “abstractors of new worlds”, and the itinerary a deliberate subversion of an urban system, the dream houses of Benjamin’s arcades. This paper examines one small research project, Waterways and Walkways, in its investigation of a digitally mediated exploration across Cardiff, the Welsh capital. The article concludes by showing just one small way in which digital technology can play a role in facilitating the re-conceptualisation of our cities….(More)”
When Does ICT-Enabled Citizen Voice Lead to Government Responsiveness?
Paper by Tiago Peixoto and Jonathan Fox (Worldbank): “This paper reviews evidence on the use of 23 information and communication technology (ICT) platforms to project citizen voice to improve public service delivery. This meta-analysis focuses on empirical studies of initiatives in the global South, highlighting both citizen uptake (‘yelp’) and the degree to which public service providers respond to expressions of citizen voice (‘teeth’). The conceptual framework further distinguishes between two trajectories for ICT-enabled citizen voice: Upwards accountability occurs when users provide feedback directly to decision-makers in real time, allowing policy-makers and program managers to identify and address service delivery problems – but at their discretion. Downwards accountability, in contrast, occurs either through real time user feedback or less immediate forms of collective civic action that publicly call on service providers to become more accountable and depends less exclusively on decision- makers’ discretion about whether or not to act on the information provided. This distinction between the ways in which ICT platforms mediate the relationship between citizens and service providers allows for a precise analytical focus on how different dimensions of such platforms contribute to public sector responsiveness. These cases suggest that while ICT platforms have been relevant in increasing policymakers’ and senior managers’ capacity to respond, most of them have yet to influence their willingness to do so….(More)”