Paper by Frank A. Pasquale: “For many legal futurists, attorneys’ work is a prime target for automation. They view the legal practice of most businesses as algorithmic: data (such as facts) are transformed into outputs (agreements or litigation stances) via application of set rules. These technophiles promote substituting computer code for contracts and descriptions of facts now written by humans. They point to early successes in legal automation as proof of concept. TurboTax has helped millions of Americans file taxes, and algorithms have taken over certain aspects of stock trading. Corporate efforts to “formalize legal code” may bring new... (More >)
Algorithm Observatory: Where anyone can study any social computing algorithm.
About: “We know that social computing algorithms are used to categorize us, but the way they do so is not always transparent. To take just one example, ProPublica recently uncovered that Facebook allows housing advertisers to exclude users by race. Even so, there are no simple and accessible resources for us, the public, to study algorithms empirically, and to engage critically with the technologies that are shaping our daily lives in such profound ways. That is why we created Algorithm Observatory. Part media literacy project and part citizen experiment, the goal of Algorithm Observatory is to provide a collaborative... (More >)
The Unlinkable Data Challenge: Advancing Methods in Differential Privacy
National Institute of Standards and Technology: “Databases across the country include information with potentially important research implications and uses, e.g. contingency planning in disaster scenarios, identifying safety risks in aviation, assist in tracking contagious diseases, identifying patterns of violence in local communities. However, included in these datasets are personally identifiable information (PII) and it is not enough to simply remove PII from these datasets. It is well known that using auxiliary and possibly completely unrelated datasets, in combination with records in the dataset, can correspond to uniquely identifiable individuals (known as a linkage attack). Today’s efforts to remove PII... (More >)
The Researcher Passport: Improving Data Access and Confidentiality Protection
Report by Margaret C. Levenstein, Allison R.B. Tyler, and Johanna Davidson Bleckman: “Research and evidence-building benefit from the increased availability of administrative datasets, linkage across datasets, detailed geospatial data, and other confidential data. Systems and policies for provisioning access to confidential data, however, have not kept pace and indeed restrict and unnecessarily encumber leading-edge science. One series of roadblocks can be smoothed or removed by establishing a common understanding of what constitutes different levels of data sensitivity and risk as well as minimum researcher criteria for data access within these levels. This report presents the results of a recently... (More >)
Big Data against Child Obesity
European Commission: “Childhood and adolescent obesity is a major global and European public health problem. Currently, public actions are detached from local needs, mostly including indiscriminate blanket policies and single-element strategies, limiting their efficacy and effectiveness. The need for community-targeted actions has long been obvious, but the lack of monitoring and evaluation framework and the methodological inability to objectively quantify the local community characteristics, in a reasonable timeframe, has hindered that. Big Data based Platform Technological achievements in mobile and wearable electronics and Big Data infrastructures allow the engagement of European citizens in the data collection process, allowing us... (More >)
Data Governance in the Digital Age
Centre for International Governance Innovation: “Data is being hailed as “the new oil.” The analogy seems appropriate given the growing amount of data being collected, and the advances made in its gathering, storage, manipulation and use for commercial, social and political purposes. Big data and its application in artificial intelligence, for example, promises to transform the way we live and work — and will generate considerable wealth in the process. But data’s transformative nature also raises important questions around how the benefits are shared, privacy, public security, openness and democracy, and the institutions that will govern the data revolution.... (More >)
Ten Reasons Not to Measure Impact—and What to Do Instead
Essay by Mary Kay Gugerty & Dean Karlan in the Stanford Social Innovation Review: “Good impact evaluations—those that answer policy-relevant questions with rigor—have improved development knowledge, policy, and practice. For example, the NGO Living Goods conducted a rigorous evaluation to measure the impact of its community health model based on door-to-door sales and promotions. The evidence of impact was strong: Their model generated a 27-percent reduction in child mortality. This evidence subsequently persuaded policy makers, replication partners, and major funders to support the rapid expansion of Living Goods’ reach to five million people. Meanwhile, rigorous evidence continues to further... (More >)
City Data Exchange – Lessons Learned From A Public/Private Data Collaboration
Report by the Municipality of Copenhagen: “The City Data Exchange (CDE) is the product of a collaborative project between the Municipality of Copenhagen, the Capital Region of Denmark, and Hitachi. The purpose of the project is to examine the possibilities of creating a marketplace for the exchange of data between public and private organizations. The CDE consists of three parts: A collaboration between the different partners on supply, and demand of specific data; A platform for selling and purchasing data aimed at both public, and private organizations; An effort to establish further experience in the field of data exchange... (More >)
Free Speech is a Triangle
Essay by Jack Balkin: “The vision of free expression that characterized much of the twentieth century is inadequate to protect free expression today. The twentieth century featured a dyadic or dualist model of speech regulation with two basic kinds of players: territorial governments on the one hand, and speakers on the other. The twenty-first century model is pluralist, with multiple players. It is easiest to think of it as a triangle. On one corner are nation states and the European Union. On the second corner are privately-owned Internet infrastructure companies, including social media companies, search engines, broadband providers, and... (More >)
Doing Research In and On the Digital: Research Methods across Fields of Inquiry
Book edited by Cristina Costa and Jenna Condie: “As a social space, the web provides researchers both with a tool and an environment to explore the intricacies of everyday life. As a site of mediated interactions and interrelationships, the ‘digital’ has evolved from being a space of information to a space of creation, thus providing new opportunities regarding how, where and, why to conduct social research. Doing Research In and On the Digital aims to deliver on two fronts: first, by detailing how researchers are devising and applying innovative research methods for and within the digital sphere, and, secondly,... (More >)
