Aleem Walji at SSI Review: “When I joined the World Bank five years ago to lead a new innovation practice, the organization asked me to help expand the space for experimentation and learning with an emphasis on emergent technologies. But that mandate was intimidating and counter-intuitive in an “expert-driven” culture. Experts want detailed plans, budgets, clear success indicators, and minimal risk. But innovation is about managing risk and navigating uncertainty intelligently. You fail fast and fail forward. It has been a step-by-step process, and the journey is far from over, but the World Bank today sees innovation as essential to achieving its mission.
It’s taught me a lot about seeding innovation in a culture of expertise, including phasing change across approaches to technology, teaming, problem solving, and ultimately leadership.
Innovating technologies: As a newcomer, my goal was not to try to change the World Bank’s culture. I was content to carve out a space where my team could try new things we couldn’t do elsewhere in the institution, learn fast, and create impact. Our initial focus was leveraging technologies with approaches that, if they took root, could be very powerful.
Over the first 18 to 24 months, we served as an incubator for ideas and had a number of successes that built on senior management’s support for increased access to information. The Open Data Initiative, for example, made our trove of information on countries, people, projects, and programs widely available and searchable. To our surprise, people came in droves to access it. We also launched the Mapping for Results initiative, which mapped project results and poverty data to show the relationship between where we lend and where the poor live, and the results of our work. These programs are now mainstream at the World Bank and have penetrated other development institutions….
Innovating teams: The lab idea—phase two—would require collaboration and experimentation in an unprecedented way. For example, we worked with other parts of the World Bank and a number of outside organizations to incubate the Open Development Technology Alliance, now part of the digital engagement unit of the World Bank. It worked to enhance accountability, and improve the delivery and quality of public services through technology-enabled citizen engagement such as using mobile phones, interactive mapping, and social media to draw citizens into collective problem mapping and problem solving….
Innovating problem solving: At the same time, we recognized that we face some really complex problems that the World Bank’s traditional approach of lending to governments and supervising development projects is not solving. For this, we needed another type of lab that innovated the very way we solve problems. We needed a deliberate process for experimenting, learning, iterating, and adapting. But that’s easier said than done. At our core, we are an expert-driven organization with know-how in disciplines ranging from agricultural economics and civil engineering to maternal health and early childhood development. Our problem-solving architecture is rooted in designing technical solutions to complicated problems. Yet the hardest problems in the world defy technical fixes. We work in contexts where political environments shift, leaders change, and conditions on the ground constantly evolve. Problems like climate change, financial inclusion, food security, and youth unemployment demand new ways of solving old problems.
The innovation we most needed was innovation in the leadership architecture of how we confront complex challenges. We share knowledge and expertise on the “what” of reform, but the “how” is what we need most. We need to marry know-how with do-how. We need multiyear, multi-stakeholder, and systems approaches to solving problems. We need to get better at framing and reframing problems, integrative thinking, and testing a range of solutions. We need to iterate and course-correct as we learn what works and doesn’t work in which context. That’s where we are right now with what we call “integrated leadership learning innovation”—phase four. It’s all about shaping an innovative process to address complex problems….”
Get the Data Button
BetaNYC: “A Web Button to Link Web Projects with their Source Data
How to use
When building a website, report, map, data visualization, or any other project, use this button to link to the underlying data. That’s it! Tell your friends! Let’s make this a thing!
Born on a discussion of the NYC Open Data Working Group on 14 November 2014.
Icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com is licensed by CC BY 3.0“
The Next Frontier of Engagement: Civic Innovation Labs
Maayan Dembo at Planetizen: “As described by Clayton Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business School who developed the term “disruptive innovation,” a successful office for social innovation should employ four main tactics to accomplish its mission. First, governments should invest “in innovations that are developed and identified by citizens outside of government who better understand the problems.” Second, the office should support “‘bottom-up’ initiatives, in preference to ‘trickle-down’ philanthropy—because the societal impact of the former is typically greater.” Third, Christensen argues that the office should utilize impact metrics to measure performance and, finally, that it should also invest in social innovation outside of the non-profit sector.
Los Angeles’ most recent citizen-driven social innovation initiative, the Civic Innovation Lab, is an 11-month project aimed at prototyping new solutions for issues within the city of Los Angeles. It is supported by the HubLA, Learn Do Share, the Los Angeles *City Tech Bullpen, and Innovate LA, a membership organization within the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. Private and public sector support for such labs, in one of the largest cities in America, is highly unprecedented, and because this initiative in Los Angeles is a new mechanism explicitly supported by the public sector, it warrants a critical check on its motivations and accomplishments. Depending on its success, the Civic Innovation Lab could serve as a model for future municipalities.
The Los Angeles Civic Innovation Lab operates in three main phases: 1) workshops where citizens learn about the possibilities of Open Data and discuss what deep challenges face Los Angeles (called the “Discover, Define, Design” stage), 2) a call for solutions to solve the design challenges brought to light in the first phase, and 3) a six-month accelerator program to prototype selected solutions. I participated in the most recent Civic Innovation Lab session, a three-day workshop concluding the “Discover, Define, Design” phase….”
A New Ebola Crisis Page Built with Open Data
HDX team: “We are introducing a new Ebola crisis page that provides an overview of the data available in HDX. The page includes an interactive map of the worst-affected countries, the top-line figures for the crisis, a graph of cumulative Ebola cases and deaths, and over 40 datasets.
We have been working closely with UNMEER and WHO to make Ebola data available for public use. We have also received important contributions from the British Red Cross, InterAction, MapAction, the Standby Task Force, the US Department of Defense, and WFP, among others.
How we built it
The process to create this page started a couple of months ago by simply linking to existing data sites, such as Open Street Map’s geospatial data or OCHA’s common operational datasets. We then created a service by extracting the data on Ebola cases and deaths from the bi-weekly WHO situation report and making the raw files available for analysts and developers.
The OCHA Regional Office in Dakar contributed a dataset that included Ebola cases by district, which they had been collecting from reports by the national Ministries of Health since March 2014. This data was picked up by The New York Times graphics team and by Gapminder which partnered with Google Crisis Response to add the data to the Google Public Data Explorer.
As more organizations shared Ebola datasets through HDX, users started to transform the data into useful graphs and maps. These visuals were then shared back with the wider community through the HDX gallery. We have incorporated many of these user-generated visual elements into the design of our new Ebola crisis page….”
See also Hacking Ebola.
Seattle Launches Sweeping, Ethics-Based Privacy Overhaul
for the Privacy Advisor: “The City of Seattle this week launched a citywide privacy initiative aimed at providing greater transparency into the city’s data collection and use practices.
To that end, the city has convened a group of stakeholders, the Privacy Advisory Committee, comprising various government departments, to look at the ways the city is using data collected from practices as common as utility bill payments and renewing pet licenses or during the administration of emergency services like police and fire. By this summer, the committee will deliver the City Council suggested principles and a “privacy statement” to provide direction on privacy practices citywide.
In addition, the city has partnered with the University of Washington, where Jan Whittington, assistant professor of urban design and planning and associate director at the Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity, has been given a $50,000 grant to look at open data, privacy and digital equity and how municipal data collection could harm consumers.
Responsible for all things privacy in this progressive city is Michael Mattmiller, who was hired to the position of chief technology officer (CTO) for the City of Seattle in June. Before his current gig, he worked as a senior strategist in enterprise cloud privacy for Microsoft. He said it’s an exciting time to be at the helm of the office because there’s momentum, there’s talent and there’s intention.
“We’re at this really interesting time where we have a City Council that strongly cares about privacy … We have a new police chief who wants to be very good on privacy … We also have a mayor who is focused on the city being an innovative leader in the way we interact with the public,” he said.
In fact, some City Council members have taken it upon themselves to meet with various groups and coalitions. “We have a really good, solid environment we think we can leverage to do something meaningful,” Mattmiller said….
Armbruster said the end goal is to create policies that will hold weight over time.
“I think when looking at privacy principles, from an ethical foundation, the idea is to create something that will last while technology dances around us,” she said, adding the principles should answer the question, “What do we stand for as a city and how do we want to move forward? So any technology that falls into our laps, we can evaluate and tailor or perhaps take a pass on as it falls under our ethical framework.”
The bottom line, Mattmiller said, is making a decision that says something about Seattle and where it stands.
“How do we craft a privacy policy that establishes who we want to be as a city and how we want to operate?” Mattmiller asked.”
OpenUp Corporate Data while Protecting Privacy
Much of the data generated by these devices is today controlled by corporations. These companies are in effect “owners” of terabytes of data and metadata. Companies use this data to aggregate, analyze, and track individual preferences, provide more targeted consumer experiences, and add value to the corporate bottom line.
At the same time, even as we witness a rapid “datafication” of the global economy, access to data is emerging as an increasingly critical issue, essential to addressing many of our most important social, economic, and political challenges. While the rise of the Open Data movement has opened up over a million datasets around the world, much of this openness is limited to government (and, to a lesser extent, scientific) data. Access to corporate data remains extremely limited. This is a lost opportunity. If corporate data—in the form of Web clicks, tweets, online purchases, sensor data, call data records, etc.—were made available in a de-identified and aggregated manner, researchers, public interest organizations, and third parties would gain greater insights on patterns and trends that could help inform better policies and lead to greater public good (including combatting Ebola).
Corporate data sharing holds tremendous promise. But its potential—and limitations—are also poorly understood. In what follows, we share early findings of our efforts to map this emerging open data frontier, along with a set of reflections on how to safeguard privacy and other citizen and consumer rights while sharing. Understanding the practice of shared corporate data—and assessing the associated risks—is an essential step in increasing access to socially valuable data held by businesses today. This is a challenge certainly worth exploring during the forthcoming OpenUp conference!
Understanding and classifying current corporate data sharing practices
Corporate data sharing remains very much a fledgling field. There has been little rigorous analysis of different ways or impacts of sharing. Nonetheless, our initial mapping of the landscape suggests there have been six main categories of activity—i.e., ways of sharing—to date:…
Assessing risks of corporate data sharing
Although the shared corporate data offers several benefits for researchers, public interest organizations, and other companies, there do exist risks, especially regarding personally identifiable information (PII). When aggregated, PII can serve to help understand trends and broad demographic patterns. But if PII is inadequately scrubbed and aggregated data is linked to specific individuals, this can lead to identity theft, discrimination, profiling, and other violations of individual freedom. It can also lead to significant legal ramifications for corporate data providers….”
Could digital badges clarify the roles of co-authors?
at AAAS Science Magazine: “Ever look at a research paper and wonder how the half-dozen or more authors contributed to the work? After all, it’s usually only the first or last author who gets all the media attention or the scientific credit when people are considered for jobs, grants, awards, and more. Some journals try to address this issue with the “authors’ contributions” sections within a paper, but a collection of science, publishing, and software groups is now developing a more modern solution—digital “badges,” assigned on publication of a paper online, that detail what each author did for the work and that the authors can link to their profiles elsewhere on the Web.
Those organizations include publishers BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science; The Wellcome Trust research charity; software development groups Mozilla Science Lab (a group of researchers, developers, librarians, and publishers) and Digital Science (a software and technology firm); and ORCID, an effort to assign researchers digital identifiers. The collaboration presented its progress on the project at the Mozilla Festival in London that ended last week. (Mozilla is the open software community behind the Firefox browser and other programs.)
The infrastructure of the badges is still being established, with early prototypes scheduled to launch early next year, according to Amye Kenall, the journal development manager of open data initiatives and journals at BioMed Central. She envisions the badge process in the following way: Once an article is published, the publisher would alert software maintained by Mozilla to automatically set up an online form, where authors fill out roles using a detailed contributor taxonomy. After the authors have completed this, the badges would then appear next to their names on the journal article, and double-clicking on a badge would lead to the ORCID site for that particular author, where the author’s badges, integrated with their publishing record, live….
The parties behind the digital badge effort are “looking to change behavior” of scientists in the competitive dog-eat-dog world of academia by acknowledging contributions, says Kaitlin Thaney, director of Mozilla Science Lab. Amy Brand, vice president of academic and research relations and VP of North America at Digital Science, says that the collaboration believes that the badges should be optional, to accommodate old-fashioned or less tech-savvy authors. She says that the digital credentials may improve lab culture, countering situations where junior scientists are caught up in lab politics and the “star,” who didn’t do much of the actual research apart from obtaining the funding, gets to be the first author of the paper and receive the most credit. “All of this calls out for more transparency,” Brand says….”
Open Data – Searching for the right questions
Talk by Boyan Yurukov at TEDxBG: “Working on various projects Boyan started a sort of a quest for better transparency. It came with the promise of access that would yield answers to what is wrong and what is right with governments today. Over time, he realized that better transparency and more open data bring us almost no relevant answers. Instead, we get more questions and that’s great news. Questions help us see what is relevant, what is hidden, what our assumptions are. That’s the true value of data.
Boyan Yurukov is a software engineer and open data advocate based in Frankfurt. Graduated Computational Engineering with Data Mining from TU Darmstadt. Involved in data liberation, crowd sourcing and visualization projects focused on various issues in Bulgaria as well as open data legislation….
Ten Leaders In the Civic Space
List Developed by SeeClickFix:
5. OpenGov Hub
The OpenGov Hub seeks to bring together existing small and medium-sized organizations working on the broader open government agenda. …
Learn more about them here on their website.
6. Blexting
Blexting is a mobile app that lets individuals photographically survey properties and update condition information for posting and sharing. …
Read another article about them here.
9. Emerging Local Government Leaders
ELGL is a group of innovative local government leaders who are hungry to make an impact. …
Learn more about them here on their website.
10. ArchiveSocial
ArchiveSocial is a social media archiving solution that automates record keeping from social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. ….
Learn more about them here on their website.”
VoteATX
PressRelease: “Local volunteers have released a free application that helps Austin area residents find the best place to vote. The application, Vote ATX, is available at http://voteatx.us
Travis County voters have many options for voting. The Vote ATX application tries to answer the simple question, “Where is the best place I can go vote right now?” The application is location and calendar aware, and helps identify available voting places – even mobile voting locations that move during the day.
The City of Austin has incorporated the Vote ATX technology to power the voting place finder on its election page at http://www.austintexas.gov/vote
The Vote ATX application was developed by volunteers at Open Austin, and is provided as a free public service. …Open Austin is a citizen volunteer group that promotes open government, open data, and civic application development in Austin, Texas. Open Austin was formed in 2009 by citizens interested in the City of Austin web strategy. Open Austin is non-partisan and non-endorsing. It has conducted voter outreach campaigns in every City of Austin municipal election since 2011. Open Austin is on the web at www.open-austin.org“