data science

President Obama Signs Executive Order Making Presidential Innovation Fellows Program Permanent

Curated on August 18, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

White House Press Release: “My hope is this continues to encourage a culture of public service among our innovators, and tech entrepreneurs, so that we can keep building a government that’s as modern, as innovative, and as engaging as our incredible tech sector is. To all the Fellows who’ve served so far – thank you. I encourage all Americans with bold ideas to apply. And I can’t wait to see what those future classes will accomplish on behalf of the American people.” –- President Barack Obama

Today, President Obama signed an executive order that makes the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program a permanent part of the Federal government going forward. The program brings executives, entrepreneurs, technologists, and other innovators into government, and teams them up with Federal employees to improve programs that serve more than 150 million Americans.

The Presidential Innovation Fellows Program is built on four key principles:

Recruit the best our nation has to offer: Fellows include entrepreneurs, startup founders, and innovators with experience at large technology companies and startups, each of whom leverage their proven skills and technical expertise to create huge value for the public.
Partner with innovators inside government: Working as teams, the Presidential Innovation Fellows and their partners across the government create products and services that are responsive, user-friendly, and help to improve the way the Federal government interacts with the American people.
Deploy proven private sector strategies: Fellows leverage best practices from the private sector to deliver better, more effective programs and policies across the Federal government.
Focus on some of the Nation’s biggest and most pressing challenges: Projects focus on topics such as improving access to education, fueling job creation and the economy, and expanding the public’s ability to access their personal health data.

Additional Details on Today’s Announcements

The Executive Order formally establishes the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program within the General Services Administration (GSA), where it will continue to serve departments and agencies throughout the Executive Branch. The Presidential Innovation Fellow Program will be administered by a Director and guided by a newly-established Advisory Board. The Director will outline steps for the selection, hiring, and deployment of Fellows within government….

Fellows have partnered with leaders at more than 25 government agencies, delivering impressive results in months, not years, driving extraordinary work and innovative solutions in areas such as health care; open data and data science; crowd-sourcing initiatives; education; veterans affairs; jobs and the economy; and disaster response and recovery. Examples of projects include:

Open Data

When government acts as a platform, entrepreneurs, startups, and the private sector can build value-added services and tools on top of federal datasets supported by federal policies. Taking this approach, Fellows and agency stakeholders have supported the creation of new products and services focused on education, health, the environment, and social justice. As a result of their efforts and the agencies they have worked with:….

Jobs and the Economy

Fellows continue to work on solutions that will give the government better access to innovative tools and services. This is also helping small and medium-sized companies create jobs and compete for Federal government contracts….

Digital Government

The Presidential Innovation Fellows Program is a part of the Administration’s strategy to create lasting change across the Federal Government by improving how it uses technology. The Fellows played a part in launching 18F within the General Services Administration (GSA) and the U.S. Digital Services (USDS) team within the Office of Management and Budget….

Supporting Our Veterans

…Built a one-stop shop for finding employment opportunities. The Veterans Employment Center was developed by a team of Fellows working with the Department of Veterans Affairs in connection with the First Lady’s Joining Forces Initiative and the Department of Labor. This is the first interagency website connecting Veterans, transitioning Servicemembers, and their spouses to meaningful employment opportunities. The portal has resulted in cost savings of over $27 million to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Education

…More than 1,900 superintendents pledged to more effectively leverage education technology in their schools. Fellows working at the Department of Education helped develop the idea of Future Ready, which later informed the creation of the Future Ready District Pledge. The Future Ready District Pledge is designed to set out a roadmap to achieve successful personalized digital learning for every student and to commit districts to move as quickly as possible towards our shared vision of preparing students for success. Following the President’s announcement of this effort in 2014, more than 1,900 superintendents have signed this pledge, representing 14 million students.

Health and Patient Care

More than 150 million Americans are able to access their health records online. Multiple rounds of Fellows have worked with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to expand the reach of theBlue Button Initiative. As a result, patients are able to access their electronic health records to make more informed decisions about their own health care. The Blue Button Initiative has received more than 600 commitments from organizations to advance health information access efforts across the country and has expanded into other efforts that support health care system interoperability….

Disaster Response and Recovery

Communities are piloting crowdsourcing tools to assess damage after disasters. Fellows developed the GeoQ platform with FEMA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency that crowdsources photos of disaster-affected areas to assess damage over large regions. This information helps the Federal government better allocate critical response and recovery efforts following a disaster and allows local governments to use geospatial information in their communities…. (More)

Mining Administrative Data to Spur Urban Revitalization

Curated on August 14, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New paper by Ben Green presented at the 21th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining: “After decades of urban investment dominated by sprawl and outward growth, municipal governments in the United States are responsible for the upkeep of urban neighborhoods that have not received sufficient resources or maintenance in many years. One of city governments’ biggest challenges is to revitalize decaying neighborhoods given only limited resources. In this paper, we apply data science techniques to administrative data to help the City of Memphis, Tennessee improve distressed neighborhoods. We develop new methods to efficiently identify homes in need of rehabilitation and to predict the impacts of potential investments on neighborhoods. Our analyses allow Memphis to design neighborhood-improvement strategies that generate greater impacts on communities. Since our work uses data that most US cities already collect, our models and methods are highly portable and inexpensive to implement. We also discuss the challenges we encountered while analyzing government data and deploying our tools, and highlight important steps to improve future data-driven efforts in urban policy….(More)”

‘Smart Cities’ Will Know Everything About You

Curated on July 13, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Mike Weston in the Wall Street Journal: “From Boston to Beijing, municipalities and governments across the world are pledging billions to create “smart cities”—urban areas covered with Internet-connected devices that control citywide systems, such as transit, and collect data. Although the details can vary, the basic goal is to create super-efficient infrastructure, aid urban planning and improve the well-being of the populace.

A byproduct of a tech utopia will be a prodigious amount of data collected on the inhabitants. For instance, at the company I head, we recently undertook an experiment in which some staff volunteered to wear devices around the clock for 10 days. We monitored more than 170 metrics reflecting their daily habits and preferences—including how they slept, where they traveled and how they felt (a fast heart rate and no movement can indicate excitement or stress).

If the Internet age has taught us anything, it’s that where there is information, there is money to be made. With so much personal information available and countless ways to use it, businesses and authorities will be faced with a number of ethical questions.

In a fully “smart” city, every movement an individual makes can be tracked. The data will reveal where she works, how she commutes, her shopping habits, places she visits and her proximity to other people. You could argue that this sort of tracking already exists via various apps and on social-media platforms, or is held by public-transport companies and e-commerce sites. The difference is that with a smart city this data will be centralized and easy to access. Given the value of this data, it’s conceivable that municipalities or private businesses that pay to create a smart city will seek to recoup their expenses by selling it….

Recent history—issues of privacy and security on social networks and chatting apps, and questions about how intellectual-property regulations apply online—has shown that the law has been slow to catch up with digital innovations. So businesses that can purchase smart-city data will be presented with many strategic and ethical concerns.

What degree of targeting is too specific and violates privacy? Should businesses limit the types of goods or services they offer to certain individuals? Is it ethical for data—on an employee’s eating habits, for instance—to be sold to employers or to insurance companies to help them assess claims? Do individuals own their own personal data once it enters the smart-city system?

With or without stringent controlling legislation, businesses in a smart city will need to craft their own policies and procedures regarding the use of data. A large-scale misuse of personal data could provoke a consumer backlash that could cripple a company’s reputation and lead to monster lawsuits. An additional problem is that businesses won’t know which individuals might welcome the convenience of targeted advertising and which will find it creepy—although data science could solve this equation eventually by predicting where each individual’s privacy line is.

A smart city doesn’t have to be as Orwellian as it sounds. If businesses act responsibly, there is no reason why what sounds intrusive in the abstract can’t revolutionize the way people live for the better by offering services that anticipates their needs; by designing ultraefficient infrastructure that makes commuting a (relative) dream; or with a revolutionary approach to how energy is generated and used by businesses and the populace at large….(More)”

Why Protecting Data Privacy Matters, and When

Curated on July 7, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Anne Russell at Data Science Central: “It’s official. Public concerns over the privacy of data used in digital approaches have reached an apex. Worried about the safety of digital networks, consumers want to gain control over what they increasingly sense as a loss of power over how their data is used. It’s not hard to wonder why. Look at the extent of coverage on the U.S. Government data breach last month and the sheer growth in the number of attacks against government and others overall. Then there is the increasing coverage on the inherent security flaws built into the internet, through which most of our data flows. The costs of data breaches to individuals, industries, and government are adding up. And users are taking note…..
If you’re not sure whether the data fueling your approach will raise privacy and security flags, consider the following. When it comes to data privacy and security, not all data is going to be of equal concern. Much depends on the level of detail in data content, data type, data structure, volume, and velocity, and indeed how the data itself will be used and released.

First there is the data where security and privacy has always mattered and for which there is already an existing and well galvanized body of law in place. Foremost among these is classified or national security data where data usage is highly regulated and enforced. Other data for which there exists a considerable body of international and national law regulating usage includes:

Proprietary Data – specifically the data that makes up the intellectual capital of individual businesses and gives them their competitive economic advantage over others, including data protected under copyright, patent, or trade secret laws and the sensitive, protected data that companies collect on behalf of its customers;

Infrastructure Data – data from the physical facilities and systems – such as roads, electrical systems, communications services, etc. – that enable local, regional, national, and international economic activity; and

Controlled Technical Data – technical, biological, chemical, and military-related data and research that could be considered of national interest and be under foreign export restrictions….

The second group of data that raises privacy and security concerns is personal data. Commonly referred to as Personally Identifiable Information (PII), it is any data that distinguishes individuals from each other. It is also the data that an increasing number of digital approaches rely on, and the data whose use tends to raise the most public ire. …

A third category of data needing privacy consideration is the data related to good people working in difficult or dangerous places. Activists, journalists, politicians, whistle-blowers, business owners, and others working in contentious areas and conflict zones need secure means to communicate and share data without fear of retribution and personal harm. That there are parts of the world where individuals can be in mortal danger for speaking out is one of the reason that TOR (The Onion Router) has received substantial funding from multiple government and philanthropic groups, even at the high risk of enabling anonymized criminal behavior. Indeed, in the absence of alternate secure networks on which to pass data, many would be in grave danger, including those such as the organizers of the Arab Spring in 2010 as well as dissidents in Syria and elsewhere….(More)”

Handbook: How to Catalyze Humanitarian Innovation in Computing Research Institutes

Curated on June 17, 2015October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Patrick Meier: “The handbook below provides practical collaboration guidelines for both humanitarian organizations & computing research institutes on how to catalyze humanitarian innovation through successful partnerships. These actionable guidelines are directly applicable now and draw on extensive interviews with leading humanitarian groups and CRI’s including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UN Global Pulse, Carnegie Melon University (CMU), International Business Machines (IBM), Microsoft Research, Data Science for Social Good Program at the University of Chicago and others.

This handbook, which is the first of its kind, also draws directly on years of experience and lessons learned from the Qatar Computing Research Institute’s (QCRI) active collaboration and unique partnerships with multiple international humanitarian organizations. The aim of this blog post is to actively solicit feedback on this first, complete working draft, which is available here as an open and editable Google Doc. …(More)”

The death of data science – and rise of the citizen scientist

Curated on June 11, 2015November 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Ben Rossi at Information Age: “The notion of data science was born from the recent idea that if you have enough data, you don’t need much (if any) science to divine the truth and foretell the future – as opposed to the long-established rigours of statistical or actuarial science, which most times require painstaking efforts and substantial time to produce their version of ‘the truth’. …. Rather than embracing this untested and, perhaps, doomed form of science, and aimlessly searching for unicorns (also known as data scientists) to pay vast sums to, many organisations are now embracing the idea of making everyone data and analytics literate.

This leads me to what my column is really meant to focus on: the rise of the citizen scientist.

The citizen scientist is not a new idea, having seen action in the space and earth sciences world for decades now, and has really come into its own as we enter the age of open data.

Cometh the hour

Given the exponential growth of open data initiatives across the world – the UK remains the leader, but has growing competition from all locations – the need for citizen scientists is now paramount.

As governments open up vast repositories of new data of every type, the opportunity for these same governments (and commercial interests) to leverage the passion, skills and collective know-how of citizen scientists to help garner deeper insights into the scientific and civic challenges of the day is substantial.

They can then take this knowledge and the collective energy of the citizen scientist community to develop common solution sets and applications to meet the needs of all their constituencies without expending much in terms of financial resources or suffering substantial development time lags.

This can be a windfall of benefits for every level or type of government found around the world. The use of citizen scientists to tackle so-called ‘grand challenge’ problems has been a driving force behind many governments’ commitment to and investment in open data to date.

There are so many challenges in governing today that it would be foolish not to employ these very capable resources to help tackle them.

The benefits manifested from this approach are substantial and well proven. Many are well articulated in the open data success stories to date.

Additionally, you only need to attend a local ‘hack fest’ to see how engaged citizen scientists can be of any age, gender and race, and feel the sense of community that these events foster as everyone focuses on the challenges at hand and works diligently to surmount them using very creative approaches.

As open data becomes pervasive in use and matures in respect to the breadth and richness of the data sets being curated, the benefits returned to both government and its constituents will be manifold.

The catalyst to realising these benefits and achieving return on investment will be the role of citizen scientists, which are not going to be statisticians, actuaries or so-called data gurus, but ordinary people with a passion for science and learning and a desire to contribute to solving the many grand challenges facing society at large….(More)

Governing methods: policy innovation labs, design and data science in the digital governance of education

Curated on June 2, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Ben Williamson in the Journal of Educational Administration and History: “Policy innovation labs are emerging knowledge actors and technical experts in the governing of education. The article offers a historical and conceptual account of the organisational form of the policy innovation lab. Policy innovation labs are characterised by specific methods and techniques of design, data science, and digitisation in public services such as education. The second half of the article details how labs promote the use of digital data analysis, evidence-based evaluation and ‘design-for-policy’ techniques as methods for the governing of education. In particular, they promote the ‘computational thinking’ associated with computer programming as a capacity required by a ‘reluctant state’ that is increasingly concerned to delegate its responsibilities to digitally enabled citizens with the ‘designerly’ capacities and technical expertise to ‘code’ solutions to public and social problems. Policy innovation labs are experimental laboratories trialling new methods within education for administering and governing the future of the state itself….(More)”

Data Science and Ebola

Curated on April 19, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Inaugural Lecture by Aske Plaat on the acceptance of the position of professor of Data Science at the Universiteit Leiden: “…Today, everybody and everything produces data. People produce large amounts of data in social networks and in commercial transactions. Medical, corporate, and government databases continue to grow. Ten years ago there were a billion Internet users. Now there are more than three billion, most of whom are mobile.1 Sensors continue to get cheaper and are increasingly connected, creating an Internet of Things. The next three billion users of the Internet will not all be human, and will generate a large amount of data. In every discipline, large, diverse, and rich data sets are emerging, from astrophysics, to the life sciences, to medicine, to the behavioral sciences, to finance and commerce, to the humanities and to the arts. In every discipline people want to organize, analyze, optimize and understand their data to answer questions and to deepen insights. The availability of so much data and the ability to interpret it are changing the way the world operates. The number of sciences using this approach is increasing. The science that is transforming this ocean of data into a sea of knowledge is called data science. In many sciences the impact on the research methodology is profound—some even call it a paradigm shift.

…I will address the question of why there is so much interest in data. I will answer this question by discussing one of the most visible recent challenges to public health of the moment, the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa…(More)”

Big Data for Social Good

Curated on March 22, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction to a Special Issue of the Journal “Big Data” by Catlett Charlie and Ghani Rayid: “…organizations focused on social good are realizing the potential as well but face several challenges as they seek to become more data-driven. The biggest challenge they face is a paucity of examples and case studies on how data can be used for social good. This special issue of Big Data is targeted at tackling that challenge and focuses on highlighting some exciting and impactful examples of work that uses data for social good. The special issue is just one example of the recent surge in such efforts by the data science community. …

This special issue solicited case studies and problem statements that would either highlight (1) the use of data to solve a social problem or (2) social challenges that need data-driven solutions. From roughly 20 submissions, we selected 5 articles that exemplify this type of work. These cover five broad application areas: international development, healthcare, democracy and government, human rights, and crime prevention.

“Understanding Democracy and Development Traps Using a Data-Driven Approach” (Ranganathan et al.) details a data-driven model between democracy, cultural values, and socioeconomic indicators to identify a model of two types of “traps” that hinder the development of democracy. They use historical data to detect causal factors and make predictions about the time expected for a given country to overcome these traps.

“Targeting Villages for Rural Development Using Satellite Image Analysis” (Varshney et al.) discusses two case studies that use data and machine learning techniques for international economic development—solar-powered microgrids in rural India and targeting financial aid to villages in sub-Saharan Africa. In the process, the authors stress the importance of understanding the characteristics and provenance of the data and the criticality of incorporating local “on the ground” expertise.

In “Human Rights Event Detection from Heterogeneous Social Media Graphs,” Chen and Neil describe efficient and scalable techniques to use social media in order to detect emerging patterns in human rights events. They test their approach on recent events in Mexico and show that they can accurately detect relevant human rights–related tweets prior to international news sources, and in some cases, prior to local news reports, which could potentially lead to more timely, targeted, and effective advocacy by relevant human rights groups.

“Finding Patterns with a Rotten Core: Data Mining for Crime Series with Core Sets” (Wang et al.) describes a case study with the Cambridge Police Department, using a subspace clustering method to analyze the department’s full housebreak database, which contains detailed information from thousands of crimes from over a decade. They find that the method allows human crime analysts to handle vast amounts of data and provides new insights into true patterns of crime committed in Cambridge…..(More)