Matthew S Mayernik at Big Data and Society: “The movements by national governments, funding agencies, universities, and research communities toward “open data” face many difficult challenges. In high-level visions of open data, researchers’ data and metadata practices are expected to be robust and structured. The integration of the internet into scientific institutions amplifies these expectations. When examined critically, however, the data and metadata practices of scholarly researchers often appear incomplete or deficient. The concepts of “accountability” and “transparency” provide insight in understanding these perceived gaps. Researchers’ primary accountabilities are related to meeting the expectations of research competency, not to external standards of data deposition or metadata creation. Likewise, making data open in a transparent way can involve a significant investment of time and resources with no obvious benefits. This paper uses differing notions of accountability and transparency to conceptualize “open data” as the result of ongoing achievements, not one-time acts….(More)”.
Avoiding Garbage In – Garbage Out: Improving Administrative Data Quality for Research
Blog by China Layne: “In June, I presented the webinar, “Improving Administrative Data Quality for Research and Analysis”, for members of the Association of Public Data Users (APDU). APDU is a national network that provides a venue to promote education, share news, and advocate on behalf of public data users.
The webinar served as a primer to help smaller organizations begin to use their data for research. Participants were given the tools to transform their administrative data into “research-ready” datasets.
I first reviewed seven major issues for administrative data quality and discussed how these issues can affect research and analysis. For instance, issues with incorrect value formats, unit of analysis, and duplicate records can make the data difficult to use. Invalid or inconsistent values lead to inaccurate analysis results. Missing or outlier values can produce inaccurate and biased analysis results. All these issues make the data less useful for research.
Next, I presented concrete strategies for reviewing the data to identify each of these quality issues. I also discussed several tips to make the data review process easier, faster, and easy to replicate. Most importantly among these tips are: (1) reviewing everyvariable in the data set, whether you expect problems or not, and (2) relying on data documentation to understand how the data should look….(More)”.
Justice in Algorithmic Robes
Editorial by Joseph Savirimuthu of a Special Issue of the International Review of Law, Computers & Technology: “The role and impact of algorithms has attracted considerable interest in the media. Its impact is already being reflected in adjustments made in a number of sectors – entertainment, travel, transport, cities and financial services. From an innovation point of view, algorithms enable new knowledge to be created and identify solutions to problems. The emergence of smart sensing technologies, 3D printing, automated systems and robotics is seamlessly being interwoven into discourses such as ‘the collaborative economy’, ‘governance by platforms’ and ‘empowerment’. Innovations such as body worn cameras, fitness trackers, 3D printing, smart meters, robotics and Big Data hold out the promise of a new algorithmic future. However, the shift in focus from natural and scarce resources towards information also makes individuals the objects and the mediated construction of access and knowledge infrastructures now provide the conditions for harnessing value from data. The increasing role of algorithms in environments mediated by technology also coincide with growing inter-disciplinary scholarship voicing concerns about the vulnerability of the values we associate with fundamental freedoms and how these are being algorithmically reconfigured or dismantled in a systematic manner. The themed issue, Justice in Algorithmic Robes, is intended to initiate a dialogue on both the challenges and opportunities as digitalization ushers in a period of transformation that has no immediate parallels in terms of scale, speed and reach. The articles provide different perspectives to the transformation taking place in the digital environment. The contributors offer an inter-disciplinary view of how the digital economy is being invigorated and evaluate the regulatory responses – in particular, how these transformations interact with law. The different spheres covered in Justice in Algorithmic Robes – the relations between the State and individuals, autonomous technology, designing human–computer interactions, infrastructures of trust, accountability in the age of Big Data, and health and wearables – not only reveal the problem of defining spheres of economic, political and social activity, but also highlight how these contexts evolve into structures for dominance, power and control. Re-imagining the role of law does not mean that technology is the problem but the central idea from the contributions is that how we critically interpret and construct Justice in Algorithmic Robes is probably the first step we must take, always mindful of the fact that law may actually reinforce power structures….(Full Issue)”.
Data and the City
Book edited by Rob Kitchin, Tracey P. Lauriault, and Gavin McArdle: “There is a long history of governments, businesses, science and citizens producing and utilizing data in order to monitor, regulate, profit from and make sense of the urban world. Recently, we have entered the age of big data, and now many aspects of everyday urban life are being captured as data and city management is mediated through data-driven technologies.
Data and the City is the first edited collection to provide an interdisciplinary analysis of how this new era of urban big data is reshaping how we come to know and govern cities, and the implications of such a transformation. This book looks at the creation of real-time cities and data-driven urbanism and considers the relationships at play. By taking a philosophical, political, practical and technical approach to urban data, the authors analyse the ways in which data is produced and framed within socio-technical systems. They then examine the constellation of existing and emerging urban data technologies. The volume concludes by considering the social and political ramifications of data-driven urbanism, questioning whom it serves and for what ends.
This book, the companion volume to 2016’s Code and the City, offers the first critical reflection on the relationship between data, data practices and the city, and how we come to know and understand cities through data. It will be crucial reading for those who wish to understand and conceptualize urban big data, data-driven urbanism and the development of smart cities….(More)”
Carnegie Mellon scientists use app to track foul odors in Pittsburgh
Ashley Murray at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “If you smell something, say something. Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University want Pittsburghers to put their collective noses to the task and report foul smells using a mobile reporting application called Smell PGH.
Since the app launched last year, more than 1,300 users have reported foul smells more than 4,300 times — most of which they’ve described as “industrial,” “sulfur” or “woodsmoke.”
The app was developed at CMU’s Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment (CREATE) Lab.
“The app is really about the community,” said Beatrice Dias, project director at the CREATE Lab. “To show that you’re not alone in your negative experiences of pollution impact.”
Smartphone users can create a “smell report” within the app, which has the capability to alert the Allegheny County Health Department.
Health department spokeswoman Melissa Wade said the agency has received and followed-up on 3,000 reports generated from the app.
Users can also view a real-time map of all smell reports in and around the city. A new feature added last month allows users to go back in time and play a time-lapse animation of little colored triangles — green, yellow and red, symbolizing varying degrees of smell — that pop up and disappear as odors were reported….
“The goal is I’m trying to predict the smell in the next few hours, like a weather forecast,” Mr. Hsu said. “Let’s say today from 12 to 1 p.m. we have 10 smell reports. I can check not only the smell reports, but the data from other sensor stations around Pittsburgh, so I know during this hour what the reading is of all the air-quality related variables, like PM 2.5, like sulfur and nitrogen oxides, [and] the wind speed, the wind direction. There are a lot of parameters we need to consider.”…
Another goal of this citizen science initiative, Mr. Hsu said, is to improve communication between the public and governmental regulation agencies, like the health department.
“Before this technology if you smelled something bad, you might not be sure if this came from ambient air, your neighborhood or just traffic issues,” Mr. Hsu said. “But if you use the app, you can see a lot of your neighbors are reporting, too. And then maybe the government can use this to see the problems in a city.”…(More)”.
Children and the Data Cycle: Rights And Ethics in a Big Data World
Gabrielle Berman andKerry Albright at UNICEF: “In an era of increasing dependence on data science and big data, the voices of one set of major stakeholders – the world’s children and those who advocate on their behalf – have been largely absent. A recent paper estimates one in three global internet users is a child, yet there has been little rigorous debate or understanding of how to adapt traditional, offline ethical standards for research involving data collection from children, to a big data, online environment (Livingstone et al., 2015). This paper argues that due to the potential for severe, long-lasting and differential impacts on children, child rights need to be firmly integrated onto the agendas of global debates about ethics and data science. The authors outline their rationale for a greater focus on child rights and ethics in data science and suggest steps to move forward, focusing on the various actors within the data chain including data generators, collectors, analysts and end-users. It concludes by calling for a much stronger appreciation of the links between child rights, ethics and data science disciplines and for enhanced discourse between stakeholders in the data chain, and those responsible for upholding the rights of children, globally….(More)”.
The Problem With Participatory Democracy Is the Participants
Eitan D. Hersh in the New York Times: “…For years, political scientists have studied how people vote, petition, donate, protest, align with parties and take in the news, and have asked what motivates these actions. The typical answers are civic duty and self-interest.
But civic duty and self-interest do not capture the ways that middle- and upper-class Americans are engaging in politics. Now it is the Facebooker who argues with friends of friends he does not know; the news consumer who spends hours watching cable; the repeat online petitioner who demands actions like impeaching the president; the news sharer willing to spread misinformation and rumor because it feels good; the data junkie who frantically toggles between horse races in suburban Georgia and horse races in Britain and France and horse races in sports (even literal horse races).
What is really motivating this behavior is hobbyism — the regular use of free time to engage in politics as a leisure activity. Political hobbyism is everywhere.
There are several reasons. For one, technology allows those interested in politics to gain specialized knowledge and engage in pleasing activities, like reinforcing their views with like-minded friends on Facebook. For another, our era of relative security (nearly a half-century without a conscripted military) has diminished the solemnity that accompanied politics in the past. Even in the serious moments since the 2016 election, political engagement for many people is characterized by forwarding the latest clip that embarrasses the other side, like videos of John McCain asking incomprehensible questions or Elizabeth Warren “destroying” Betsy DeVos.
Then there are the well-intentioned policy innovations over the years that were meant to make politics more open but in doing so exposed politics to hobbyists: participatory primaries, ballot initiatives, open-data policies, even campaign contribution limits. The contribution rules that are now in place favor the independent vanity projects of wealthy egomaniacs instead of allowing parties to raise money and build durable local support.
The result of this is political engagement that takes the form of partisan fandom, the seeking of cheap thrills, and amateurs trying their hand at a game — the billionaire funding “super PACs” all the way down to the everyday armchair quarterback who professes that the path to political victory is through ideological purity. (In the face of a diverse and moderate country, the demand for ideological purity itself can be a symptom of hobbyism: If politics is a sport and the stakes are no higher, why not demand ideological purity if it feels good?)….
What, exactly, is wrong with political hobbyism? We live in a democracy, after all. Aren’t we supposed to participate? Political hobbyism might not be so bad if it complemented mundane but important forms of participation. The problem is that hobbyism is replacing other forms of participation, like local organizing, supporting party organizations, neighbor-to-neighbor persuasion, even voting in midterm elections — the 2014 midterms had the lowest level of voter participation in over 70 years.
The Democratic Party, the party that embraces “engagement,” is in atrophy in state legislatures across the country. Perhaps this is because state-level political participation needs to be motivated by civic duty; it is not entertaining enough to pique the interest of hobbyists. The party of Hollywood celebrities also struggles to energize its supporters to vote. Maybe it is because when politics is something one does for fun rather than out of a profound moral obligation, the citizen who does not find it fun has no reason to engage. The important parts of politics for the average citizen simply may not be enjoyable….
An unqualified embrace of engagement, without leaders channeling activists toward clear goals, yields the spinning of wheels of hobbyism.
Democrats should know that an unending string of activities intended for instant gratification does not amount to much in political power. What they should ask is whether their emotions and energy are contributing to a behind-the-scenes effort to build local support across the country or whether they are merely a hollow, self-gratifying manifestation of the new political hobbyism….(More)”
The solution to US politics’ Facebook problem is Facebook
Parag Khanna in Quartz: “In just one short decade, Facebook has evolved from a fast-growing platform for sharing classmates’ memories and pet photos to being blamed for Donald Trump’s election victory, promoting hate speech, and accelerating ISIS recruitment. Clearly, Facebook has outgrown its original mission.
It should come as no surprise then that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has in the past few months issued a long manifesto explaining the company’s broader aim to foster global connectivity, given a commencement speech at Harvard focused on the need for people to feel a meaningful “sense of purpose,” as well as more recently changed the company’s mission to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”
In truth, Facebook has been doing this all along. In just a three year period between 2011-2014, the average number of international “friends” Facebook members have (whether from rich or poor countries) doubled and in many cases tripled. There is no denying that without Facebook, people would have much less exposure to people they would never meet, and therefore opportunities to gain wider perspectives (irrespective of whether they confirm or contradict one’s own). Then there are charities and NGOs from UNICEF to Human Rights Watch that raise millions of dollars on Facebook and other online platforms such as Avaaz and Change.org.
Facebook has just crossed two billion monthly users, meaning more people express their views on it each month than will vote in all elections in the world this year. That makes Facebook the largest player in wide array of social media tools that are the epicenter–and the lightening rod–for our conversation about technology and politics. Ironically, though, while so many of these innovations come out of the US, the American approach to using digital technology for better governance is at best pathetic…. Sloppy analysis, a cynical Kommentariat and an un-innovative government have led America down the path of ignoring most of the positive ways digital governance can unfold. Fortunately, there are plenty of lessons from around the world for those who care to look and learn.
Citizen engagement is an obvious start. But this should be more than just live-streamed town halls and Q&As in the run-up to elections. European governments such as the UK use Facebook pages to continuously gather policy proposals on public spending priorities. In Estonia, electronic voting is the norm. In the world’s oldest direct democracy, Switzerland, citizen petitions and initiatives are being digitized for even more transparent and inclusive deliberation. In Australia, the Flux movement is allowing all citizens to cast digital ballots on specific policy issues and submit them straight to parliament. Meanwhile, America has the Koch Brothers and the NRA…..
Even governments that are less respected in the West because their regimes do not resemble our own do a better job of harnessing social media. Sheikh Mohammed, ruler of Dubai, uses Facebook to crowdsource suggestions for infrastructure projects and other ideas from a population that is a whopping 90 percent foreign.
Singapore may be the most sophisticated government in this domain. Though the incumbent People’s Action Party (PAP) wins every parliamentary election hands-down, more important is the fact that surveys the public ad nauseam on issues of savings and healthcare, transit routes, immigration policy and just about everything else. Singapore is not Switzerland, but it might be the world’s most responsive government.
This is how governments that appear illegitimate according to a narrow reading of Western political theory boast far higher public satisfaction than most all Western governments today. If you don’t understand this, you probably spend too much time in a filter bubble….
The US should aspire to be a place where democracy and data reinforce rather than contradict each other….(More)
What is One Team Government?
Kit Collingwood-Richardso at Medium: “On 29th June, 186 people came together in London to talk about how we could work across disciplines to make government more effective…. Below are our current ideas on what we want it to be. We’d love your help shaping them up.
So what is One Team Government?
At its heart, it’s a community (join it here and see the bottom of this post), united and guided by a set of principles. Together, we are working to create a movement of reform through practical action.
The community is made up of people who are passionate about public sector reform (we deliberately want this to be wider than just government), with the emphasis on improving the services we offer to citizens and how we work. We believe the public sector can be brilliant, and we’re committed to making it so.
You don’t have to work for government to be in the community, nor be a public servant in the wider sense, nor indeed be in the UK; we need diverse perspectives, with people of all sectors, areas and interests helping. We think we’re unstoppable if we work together.
Our initial thinking (see below for how to help us iterate on this) is that we want the One Team Government movement to be guided by seven principles:
1. Work in the open and positively
We’re a community; everything we do will be documented and made to share. Where conversations happen that can’t be shared, the wider learning still will be. This is a reform cooperative, where we choose to be generous with knowledge. Ideas are infectious; we’ll share ours early and often….
2. Take practical action
Although talking is vital, we will be defined more by the things we do than the things we say. We will create change by taking small, measured steps every day — everything from creating a new contact in a different area or discipline, sharing something we’ve written, or giving our time to contribute to others’ work — and encouraging others to do the same. We won’t create huge plans, but do things that make a real difference today, no matter how big or small. We will document what they are.
3. Experiment and iterate
We don’t think there’s one way to ‘do’ reform. We will experiment with design, and put user-focused service design thinking into everything we do, learning from and with each other. We will test, iterate and reflect. We will be humble in our approach, focusing on asking the right questions to get to the best answers.
We will embrace small failures as opportunities to learn. We won’t get everything right, and we won’t try to. We will listen, learn and improve together.
4. Be diverse and inclusive
Our approach to inclusiveness and diversity is driven by a simple desire to better represent the citizens we serve. We’ll put effort into making that so, by balancing our events, making sure our teams are reflective of society at large and by making sure we have a range of citizen and team voices in the room with us….
5. Care deeply about citizens
We work for users and other citizens affected by our work; everything we do will be guided by our impact on them. We will talk to them, early and often; we will use the best research methods to understand them better. We will be distinguished by our empathy — for users and for each other. The policy that we develop will be tested with real people as early as possible, and refined with their needs in mind.
6. Work across borders
We believe that diverse views make our outcomes and services better. We will be characterised by our work to break down boundaries between groups. …
7. Embrace technology
We are passionate about public sector reform for the internet age. We will be a technology-enabled community, using online tools to collaborate, network and share. We will put the best of digital thinking into policy and service design, using technology to make us quicker, smarter, better and more data-driven. We will help to shape a public sector we can be proud to work in in the 21st century….(More)”.
Sqoop
DataDrivenJournalism: “Just because there’s a duty to disclose, doesn’t mean there’s a duty to make it easy. This seems to be a universally true when it comes to public records, regardless of the country or government making them available.
The consequences for journalists can be profound: hours of time spent digging through messy data, missing stories that go untold, and the opportunity costs that come with these, just to name a few.
This is a problem we set out to improve a couple of years ago in the US with the introduction of Sqoop, a free data journalism site intended to make it easier for reporters to find and track public records, starting with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Patent Office, and the federal court system, otherwise known as PACER (public access to court automated records).
Think of it as a search box across all of these public records sites (and we’re working to add others) as well as a rapid alerting service. If a journalist has saved searches for “Facebook”, “Jeffrey P. Bezos”, or “Internet of Things”, she will receive email alerts every time these search terms show up in new public filings.
Journalists can refine search results based on data source, form type, and geographic factors, and then save those searches as alerts….(More)”.