Monitoring Arms Control Compliance With Web Intelligence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chris Holden and Maynard Holliday at Commons Lab: “Traditional monitoring of arms control treaties, agreements, and commitments has required the use of National Technical Means (NTM)—large satellites, phased array radars, and other technological solutions. NTM was a good solution when the treaties focused on large items for observation, such as missile silos or nuclear test facilities. As the targets of interest have shrunk by orders of magnitude, the need for other, more ubiquitous, sensor capabilities has increased. The rise in web-based, or cloud-based, analytic capabilities will have a significant influence on the future of arms control monitoring and the role of citizen involvement.
Since 1999, the U.S. Department of State has had at its disposal the Key Verification Assets Fund (V Fund), which was established by Congress. The Fund helps preserve critical verification assets and promotes the development of new technologies that support the verification of and compliance with arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament requirements.
Sponsored by the V Fund to advance web-based analytic capabilities, Sandia National Laboratories, in collaboration with Recorded Future (RF), synthesized open-source data streams from a wide variety of traditional and nontraditional web sources in multiple languages along with topical texts and articles on national security policy to determine the efficacy of monitoring chemical and biological arms control agreements and compliance. The team used novel technology involving linguistic algorithms to extract temporal signals from unstructured text and organize that unstructured text into a multidimensional structure for analysis. In doing so, the algorithm identifies the underlying associations between entities and events across documents and sources over time. Using this capability, the team analyzed several events that could serve as analogs to treaty noncompliance, technical breakout, or an intentional attack. These events included the H7N9 bird flu outbreak in China, the Shanghai pig die-off and the fungal meningitis outbreak in the United States last year.
h7n9-for-blog
 
For H7N9 we found that open source social media were the first to report the outbreak and give ongoing updates.  The Sandia RF system was able to roughly estimate lethality based on temporal hospitalization and fatality reporting.  For the Shanghai pig die-off the analysis tracked the rapid assessment by Chinese authorities that H7N9 was not the cause of the pig die-off as had been originally speculated. Open source reporting highlighted a reduced market for pork in China due to the very public dead pig display in Shanghai. Possible downstream health effects were predicted (e.g., contaminated water supply and other overall food ecosystem concerns). In addition, legitimate U.S. food security concerns were raised based on the Chinese purchase of the largest U.S. pork producer (Smithfield) because of a fear of potential import of tainted pork into the United States….
To read the full paper, please click here.”

Complexity, Governance, and Networks: Perspectives from Public Administration

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Paper by Naim Kapucu: “Complex public policy problems require a productive collaboration among different actors from multiple sectors. Networks are widely applied as a public management tool and strategy. This warrants a deeper analysis of networks and network management in public administration. There is a strong interest in both in practice and theory of networks in public administration. This requires an analysis of complex networks within public governance settings. In this this essay I briefly discuss research streams on complex networks, network governance, and current research challenges in public administration.”

Digital Footprints: Opportunities and Challenges for Online Social Research

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Paper by Golder, Scott A. and Macy, Michael for the Annual Review of Sociology: “Online interaction is now a regular part of daily life for a demographically diverse population of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. These interactions generate fine-grained time-stamped records of human behavior and social interaction at the level of individual events, yet are global in scale, allowing researchers to address fundamental questions about social identity, status, conflict, cooperation, collective action, and diffusion, both by using observational data and by conducting in vivo field experiments. This unprecedented opportunity comes with a number of methodological challenges, including generalizing observations to the offline world, protecting individual privacy, and solving the logistical challenges posed by “big data” and web-based experiments. We review current advances in online social research and critically assess the theoretical and methodological opportunities and limitations. [J]ust as the invention of the telescope revolutionized the study of the heavens, so too by rendering the unmeasurable measurable, the technological revolution in mobile, Web, and Internet communications has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of ourselves and how we interact…. [T]hree hundred years after Alexander Pope argued that the proper study of mankind should lie not in the heavens but in ourselves, we have finally found our telescope. Let the revolution begin. —Duncan Watts”

Transforming Performance Measurement for the 21st Century

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Paper by Harry P. Hatry at the Urban Institute: “While substantial progress has been made in spreading performance measurement across the country and world, much of the information from performance measurement systems has been shallow. Modern technology and the considerable demand for information on progress in achieving the outcomes of public programs and policies are creating major opportunities for considerably improving the usefulness of performance information. This report provides a number of recommendations to help public and private service organizations take advantage of these opportunities, particularly for:(a) selecting appropriate performance indicators and data collection procedures; (b) analyzing and reporting the information; and (c) using the information to improve services. Read complete document: PDF ”

Quantifying the Interoperability of Open Government Datasets

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Paper by Pieter Colpaert, Mathias Van Compernolle, Laurens De Vocht, Anastasia Dimou, Miel Vander Sande, Peter Mechant, Ruben Verborgh, and Erik Mannens, to be published in Computer: “Open Governments use the Web as a global dataspace for datasets. It is in the interest of these governments to be interoperable with other governments worldwide, yet there is currently no way to identify relevant datasets to be interoperable with and there is no way to measure the interoperability itself. In this article we discuss the possibility of comparing identifiers used within various datasets as a way to measure semantic interoperability. We introduce three metrics to express the interoperability between two datasets: the identifier interoperability, the relevance and the number of conflicts. The metrics are calculated from a list of statements which indicate for each pair of identifiers in the system whether they identify the same concept or not. While a lot of effort is needed to collect these statements, the return is high: not only relevant datasets are identified, also machine-readable feedback is provided to the data maintainer.”

Using predictive analytics and rapid-cycle evaluation to improve program design and results

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

An interview with Scott Cody, Vice President, Mathematica Policy Research and GovInnovator Blog  (Podcast: Play in new window | Download): “What are predictive analytics and rapid-cycle evaluation and how can public agencies and programs use them to improve program delivery and outcomes? To explore these questions, we’re joined by Scott Cody. He’s a Vice President of Mathematica Policy Research and the co-author, with Andrew Asher, of a recent paper “Smarter, Better, Faster: The Potential for Predictive Analytics and Rapid-Cycle Evaluation to Improve Program Development and Outcomes,” published by the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.”

Selected Readings on Economic Impact of Open Data

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The Living Library’s Selected Readings series seeks to build a knowledge base on innovative approaches for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of governance. This curated and annotated collection of recommended works on the topic of open data was originally published in 2014.

Open data is publicly available data – often released by governments, scientists, and occasionally private companies – that is made available for anyone to use, in a machine-readable format, free of charge. Considerable attention has been devoted to the economic potential of open data for businesses and other organizations, and it is now widely accepted that open data plays an important role in spurring innovation, growth, and job creation. From new business models to innovation in local governance, open data is being quickly adopted as a valuable resource at many levels.

Measuring and analyzing the economic impact of open data in a systematic way is challenging, and governments as well as other providers of open data seek to provide access to the data in a standardized way. As governmental transparency increases and open data changes business models and activities in many economic sectors, it is important to understand best practices for releasing and using non-proprietary, public information. Costs, social challenges, and technical barriers also influence the economic impact of open data.

These selected readings are intended as a first step in the direction of answering the question of if we can and how we consider if opening data spurs economic impact.

Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)

Annotated Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)

Bonina, Carla. New Business Models and the Values of Open Data: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities. NEMODE 3K – Small Grants Call 2013. http://bit.ly/1xGf9oe

  • In this paper, Dr. Carla Bonina provides an introduction to open data and open data business models, evaluating their potential economic value and identifying future challenges for the effectiveness of open data, such as personal data and privacy, the emerging data divide, and the costs of collecting, producing and releasing open (government) data.

Carpenter, John and Phil Watts. Assessing the Value of OS OpenData™ to the Economy of Great Britain – Synopsis. June 2013. Accessed July 25, 2014. http://bit.ly/1rTLVUE

  • John Carpenter and Phil Watts of Ordnance Survey undertook a study to examine the economic impact of open data to the economy of Great Britain. Using a variety of methods such as case studies, interviews, downlad analysis, adoption rates, impact calculation, and CGE modeling, the authors estimates that the OS OpenData initiative will deliver a net of increase in GDP of £13 – 28.5 million for Great Britain in 2013.

Capgemini Consulting. The Open Data Economy: Unlocking Economic Value by Opening Government and Public Data. Capgemini Consulting. Accessed July 24, 2014. http://bit.ly/1n7MR02

  • This report explores how governments are leveraging open data for economic benefits. Through using a compariative approach, the authors study important open data from organizational, technological, social and political perspectives. The study highlights the potential of open data to drive profit through increasing the effectiveness of benchmarking and other data-driven business strategies.

Deloitte. Open Growth: Stimulating Demand for Open Data in the UK. Deloitte Analytics. December 2012. Accessed July 24, 2014. http://bit.ly/1oeFhks

  • This early paper on open data by Deloitte uses case studies and statistical analysis on open government data to create models of businesses using open data. They also review the market supply and demand of open government data in emerging sectors of the economy.

Gruen, Nicholas, John Houghton and Richard Tooth. Open for Business: How Open Data Can Help Achieve the G20 Growth Target.  Accessed July 24, 2014, http://bit.ly/UOmBRe

  • This report highlights the potential economic value of the open data agenda in Australia and the G20. The report provides an initial literature review on the economic value of open data, as well as a asset of case studies on the economic value of open data, and a set of recommendations for how open data can help the G20 and Australia achieve target objectives in the areas of trade, finance, fiscal and monetary policy, anti-corruption, employment, energy, and infrastructure.

Heusser, Felipe I. Understanding Open Government Data and Addressing Its Impact (draft version). World Wide Web Foundation. http://bit.ly/1o9Egym

  • The World Wide Web Foundation, in collaboration with IDRC has begun a research network to explore the impacts of open data in developing countries. In addition to the Web Foundation and IDRC, the network includes the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, the Open Development Technology Alliance and Practical Participation.

Howard, Alex. San Francisco Looks to Tap Into the Open Data Economy. O’Reilly Radar: Insight, Analysis, and Reach about Emerging Technologies.  October 19, 2012.  Accessed July 24, 2014. http://oreil.ly/1qNRt3h

  • Alex Howard points to San Francisco as one of the first municipalities in the United States to embrace an open data platform.  He outlines how open data has driven innovation in local governance.  Moreover, he discusses the potential impact of open data on job creation and government technology infrastructure in the City and County of San Francisco.

Huijboom, Noor and Tijs Van den Broek. Open Data: An International Comparison of Strategies. European Journal of ePractice. March 2011. Accessed July 24, 2014.  http://bit.ly/1AE24jq

  • This article examines five countries and their open data strategies, identifying key features, main barriers, and drivers of progress for of open data programs. The authors outline the key challenges facing European, and other national open data policies, highlighting the emerging role open data initiatives are playing in political and administrative agendas around the world.

Manyika, J., Michael Chui, Diana Farrell, Steve Van Kuiken, Peter Groves, and Elizabeth Almasi Doshi. Open Data: Unlocking Innovation and Performance with Liquid Innovation. McKinsey Global Institute. October 2013. Accessed July 24, 2014.  http://bit.ly/1lgDX0v

  • This research focuses on quantifying the potential value of open data in seven “domains” in the global economy: education, transportation, consumer products, electricity, oil and gas, health care, and consumer finance.

Moore, Alida. Congressional Transparency Caucus: How Open Data Creates Jobs. April 2, 2014. Accessed July 30, 2014. Socrata. http://bit.ly/1n7OJpp

  • Socrata provides a summary of the March 24th briefing of the Congressional Transparency Caucus on the need to increase government transparency through adopting open data initiatives. They include key takeaways from the panel discussion, as well as their role in making open data available for businesses.

Stott, Andrew. Open Data for Economic Growth. The World Bank. June 25, 2014. Accessed July 24, 2014. http://bit.ly/1n7PRJF

  • In this report, The World Bank examines the evidence for the economic potential of open data, holding that the economic potential is quite large, despite a variation in the published estimates, and difficulties assessing its potential methodologically. They provide five archetypes of businesses using open data, and provides recommendations for governments trying to maximize economic growth from open data.

Designing an Online Civic Engagement Platform: Balancing “More” vs. “Better” Participation in Complex Public Policymaking

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Cynthia R. Farina et al in E-Politics: “A new form of online citizen participation in government decisionmaking has arisen in the United States (U.S.) under the Obama Administration. “Civic Participation 2.0” attempts to use Web 2.0 information and communication technologies to enable wider civic participation in government policymaking, based on three pillars of open government: transparency, participation, and collaboration. Thus far, the Administration has modeled Civic Participation 2.0 almost exclusively on a universalist/populist Web 2.0 philosophy of participation. In this model, content is created by users, who are enabled to shape the discussion and assess the value of contributions with little information or guidance from government decisionmakers. The authors suggest that this model often produces “participation” unsatisfactory to both government and citizens. The authors propose instead a model of Civic Participation 2.0 rooted in the theory and practice of democratic deliberation. In this model, the goal of civic participation is to reveal the conclusions people reach when they are informed about the issues and have the opportunity and motivation seriously to discuss them. Accordingly, the task of civic participation design is to provide the factual and policy information and the kinds of participation mechanisms that support and encourage this sort of participatory output. Based on the authors’ experience with Regulation Room, an experimental online platform for broadening effective civic participation in rulemaking (the process federal agencies use to make new regulations), the authors offer specific suggestions for how designers can strike the balance between ease of engagement and quality of engagement – and so bring new voices into public policymaking processes through participatory outputs that government decisionmakers will value.”

Towards Timely Public Health Decisions to Tackle Seasonal Diseases With Open Government Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Paper by Vandana Srivastava and Biplav Srivastava for the Workshops at the Twenty-Eighth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence : “Improving public health is a major responsibility of any government, and is of major interest to citizens and scientific communities around the world. Here, one sees two extremes. On one hand, tremendous progress has been made in recent years in the understanding of causes, spread and remedies of common and regularly occurring diseases like Dengue, Malaria and Japanese Encephalistis (JE). On the other hand, public agencies treat these diseases in an ad hoc manner without learning from the experiences of previous years. Specifically, they would get alerted once reported cases have already arisen substantially in the known disease season, reactively initiate a few actions and then document the disease impact (cases, deaths) for that period, only to forget this learning in the next season. However, they miss the opportunity to reduce preventable deaths and sickness, and their corresponding economic impact, which scientific progress could have enabled. The gap is universal but very prominent in developing countries like India.
In this paper, we show that if public agencies provide historical disease impact information openly, it can be analyzed with statistical and machine learning techniques, correlated with best emerging practices in disease control, and simulated in a setting to optimize social benefits to provide timely guidance for new disease seasons and regions. We illustrate using open data for mosquito-borne communicable diseases; published results in public health on efficacy of Dengue control methods and apply it on a simulated typical city for maximal benefits with available resources. The exercise helps us further suggest strategies for new regions that may be anywhere in the world, how data could be better recorded by city agencies and what prevention methods should medical community focus on for wider impact.
Full Text: PDF“

Open Data for economic growth: the latest evidence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Andrew Stott at the Worldbank OpenData Blog: “One of the key policy drivers for Open Data has been to drive economic growth and business innovation. There’s a growing amount of evidence and analysis not only for the total potential economic benefit but also for some of the ways in which this is coming about. This evidence is summarised and reviewed in a new World Bank paper published today.
There’s a range of studies that suggest that the potential prize from Open Data could be enormous – including an estimate of $3-5 trillion a year globally from McKinsey Global Institute and an estimate of $13 trillion cumulative over the next 5 years in the G20 countries.  There are supporting studies of the value of Open Data to certain sectors in certain countries – for instance $20 billion a year to Agriculture in the US – and of the value of key datasets such as geospatial data.  All these support the conclusion that the economic potential is at least significant – although with a range from “significant” to “extremely significant”!
At least some of this benefit is already being realised by new companies that have sprung up to deliver new, innovative, data-rich services and by older companies improving their efficiency by using open data to optimise their operations. Five main business archetypes have been identified – suppliers, aggregators, enrichers, application developers and enablers. What’s more there are at least four companies which did not exist ten years ago, which are driven by Open Data, and which are each now valued at around $1 billion or more. Somewhat surprisingly the drive to exploit Open Data is coming from outside the traditional “ICT sector” – although the ICT sector is supplying many of the tools required.
It’s also becoming clear that if countries want to maximise their gain from Open Data the role of government needs to go beyond simply publishing some data on a website. Governments need to be:

  • Suppliers – of the data that business need
  • Leaders – making sure that municipalities, state owned enterprises and public services operated by the private sector also release important data
  • Catalysts – nurturing a thriving ecosystem of data users, coders and application developers and incubating new, data-driven businesses
  • Users – using Open Data themselves to overcome the barriers to using data within government and innovating new ways to use the data they collect to improve public services and government efficiency.

Nevertheless, most of the evidence for big economic benefits for Open Data comes from the developed world. So on Wednesday the World Bank is holding an open seminar to examine critically “Can Open Data Boost Economic Growth and Prosperity” in developing countries. Please join us and join the debate!
Learn more: