Leveraging Telecom Data to Aid Humanitarian Efforts
Oct 08, 2020 04:37 pm
Data Collaborative Case Study by Michelle Winowatan, Andrew J. Zahuranec, Andrew Young, and Stefaan Verhulst: “Following the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, Flowminder, a data analytics nonprofit, and NCell, a mobile operator in Nepal, formed a data collaborative. Using call detail records (CDR, a type of mobile operator data) provided by NCell, Flowminder estimated the number of people displaced by the earthquake and their location. The result of the analysis was provided to various humanitarian agencies responding to the crisis in Nepal to make humanitarian aid delivery more efficient and targeted.
Data Collaboratives Model: Based on our typology of data collaborative practice areas, the initiative follows the trusted intermediary model of data collaboration, specifically a third-party analytics approach. Third-party analytics projects involve trusted intermediaries — such as Flowminder — who access private-sector data, conduct targeted analysis, and share insights with public or civil sector partners without sharing the underlying data. This approach enables public interest uses of private-sector data while retaining strict access control. It brings outside data expertise that would likely not be available otherwise using direct bilateral collaboration between data holders and users….(More)”.
Brendan Foht at New Atlantis: “If there is one thing about the coronavirus pandemic that both sides of the political spectrum seem to agree on, it’s that the science that bears on it should never be “politicized.” From the left, former CDC directors of the Obama and Clinton administrations warn of how the Trump administration has politicized the agency’s science: “The only valid reason to change released guidelines is new information and new science — not politics.” From the right, the Wall Street Journalfrets about the scientific journal Nature publishing a politically charged editorial about why China shouldn’t be blamed for the coronavirus: “Political pressure has distorted scientific judgment.” What both sides assume is that political authorities should defer to scientists on important decisions about the pandemic, but only insofar as science itself is somehow kept free from politics.
But politicization, and even polarization, are not always bad for science. There is much about how we can use science to respond to the pandemic that is inescapably political, and that we cannot simply leave to scientists to decide.
There is, however, a real problem with how political institutions in the United States have engaged with science. Too much of the debate over coronavirus science has centered on how bad the disease really is, with the administration downplaying its risks and the opposition insisting on its danger. One side sees the scientists warning of peril as a political obstacle that must be overcome. The other side sees them as authorities to whom we must defer, not as servants of the public who could be directed toward solving the problem. The false choice between these two perspectives on how science relates to politics obscures a wide range of political choices the country faces about how we can make use of our scientific resources in responding to the pandemic….(More)”.
Book by Ronald Deibert: “Digital technologies have given rise to a new machine-based civilization that is increasingly linked to a growing number of social and political maladies. Accountability is weak and insecurity is endemic, creating disturbing opportunities for exploitation.
Drawing from the cutting-edge research of the Citizen Lab, the world-renowned digital security research group which he founded and directs, Ronald J. Deibert exposes the impacts of this communications ecosystem on civil society. He tracks a mostly unregulated surveillance industry, innovations in technologies of remote control, superpower policing practices, dark PR firms, and highly profitable hack-for-hire services feeding off rivers of poorly secured personal data. Deibert also unearths how dependence on social media and its expanding universe of consumer electronics creates immense pressure on the natural environment.?In order to combat authoritarian practices, environmental degradation, and rampant electronic consumerism, he urges restraints on tech platforms and governments to reclaim the internet for civil society…(More)”.
Digital Government Initiative in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Oct 08, 2020 07:41 am
Compendium, prepared by the Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government (DPIDG) of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA): “…aims to capture emerging trends in digital responses of the United Nations Member States against the COVID-19 pandemic, and provide a preliminary analysis of their main features….
The initiatives listed in this compendium were submitted by Member States in response to a call for inputs launched by UN DESA/DPIDG in April/May 2020. The compendium lists selected initiatives according to major categories of action areas. While this publication does not list all initiatives submitted by Member States, the complete list can be accessed here: https://bit.ly/EGOV_COVID19_APPS .
If data is 21st century oil, could foundations be the right owners?
Oct 08, 2020 07:25 am
Felix Oldenburg at Alliance: “What are the best investments for a foundation? This important question is one many foundation professionals are revisiting in light of low interest rates, high market volatility, and fears of deep economic trouble ahead. While stories of success certainly exist and are worth learning from, even the notorious lack of data cannot obscure the inconvenient truth that the idea of traditional endowments is in trouble.
I would argue that in order to unleash the potential of foundations, we should turn the question around, perhaps back on its feet: For which assets are foundations the best owners?
In the still dawning digital age, one fascinating answer may stare you right in the face as you read this. How much is your personal data worth? Your social media information, search and purchase history, they are the source of much of the market value of the fastest growing sector of our time. A rough estimate of market valuation of the major social platforms divided by their active users arrives at more than $1,000 USD per user, not differentiating by location or other factors. This sum is more than the median per capita wealth in about half the world’s countries. And if the trend continues, this value may continue to grow – and with it the big question of how to put one of the most valuable resource of our time to use for the good of all.
Acting as guardians of digital commons, data-endowed foundations could negotiate conditions for the commercial use of its assets, and invest the income to create equal digital opportunities, power 21st century education, and fight climate change.
Foundation ownership in the data sector may sound like a wild idea at first. Yet foundations and their predecessors have played the role of purpose-driven owners of critical assets and infrastructures throughout history. Monasteries (called ‘Stifte’ in German, the root of the German word for foundations) have protected knowledge and education in libraries, and secured health care in hospitals. Trusts have created affordable much of the social housing in the exploding cities of the 19th century. The German Marshall Plan created an endowment for economic recovery that is still in existence today.
The proposition is simple: Independent ownership for the good of all, beyond the commercial or national interests of individual corporations of governments, in perpetuity. Acting as guardians of digital commons, data-endowed foundations could negotiate conditions for the commercial use of its assets, and invest the income to create equal digital opportunities, power 21st century education, and fight climate change. An ideal model of ownership would also include a form of governance exercised by the users themselves through digital participation and elections. A foundation really only relies on one thing, a stable frame of rights in its legal home country. This is far from a trivial condition, but again history shows how many foundations have survived depressions, wars, and revolutions….(More)”
COVID-19 Is Challenging Medical and Scientific Publishing
Oct 08, 2020 07:17 am
Article by By Vilas Dhar, Amy Brand & Stefano Bertozzi: “We need a transformation in how early data is shared. But the urgent need for peer-reviewed science, coupled with the potential harms of unreviewed publication, has set the stage for a public discussion on the future of academic publishing. It’s clear that we need rapid, transparent peer review that allows reviewers, authors, and readers to engage with one another, and for dynamic use of technology to accelerate publishing timelines without reducing academic rigor or researcher accountability. However, the field of academic publishing will need significant financial support to catalyze these changes.
Philanthropic organizations, as longtime supporters of scientific research, must be at the vanguard of the effort to fund improvements in how science is curated, reviewed, and published. When the MIT Press first began to address the need for the rapid dissemination of COVID-19-related research and scholarship—by making a selection relevant e-books and journal articles freely available, as well as developing a new, rapid publication model for books, under the imprint First Reads—senior staff were interested in undertaking bolder efforts to address the specific problems engendered by the pandemic. The proliferation of preprints related to COVID-19 was already apparent, as was the danger of un-vetted science seeding mainstream media stories with deleterious results.
Rapid Reviews: COVID-19 (RR:C19) is an innovation in open publishing that allows for rigorous, transparent peer review that is publicly shared in advance of publication. We believe that pushing the peer review process further upstream—so that it occurs at the preprint stage—will benefit a wide variety of stakeholders: journalists, clinicians, researchers, and the public at large. …
With this and future efforts, we’ve identified five key opportunities to align academic publishing priorities with the public good:
Transparency: Redesign and incentivize the peer review process to publish all peer reviews alongside primary research, reducing duplicate reviews and allowing readers and authors to understand and engage with the critiques.
Accountability: The roles of various authors on any given manuscript should be clearly defined and presented for the readers. When datasets are used, one or more of the authors should have explicit responsibility for verifying the integrity of the data and should document that verification process within the paper’s methodology section.
Urgency: Scientific research can be slow moving and time consuming. Publishing data does not have to be. Publishing houses should build networks of experts who are able to dedicate time to scrutinizing papers in a timely manner with the goal of rapid review with rigor.
Digital-First Publishing: While science is a dynamic process of continued learning and exploration, much of scientific publishing conforms to outdated print models. Academic journals should explore opportunities to deploy AI-powered tools to identify peer-reviewers or preprint scholarship and digital publishing platforms to enable more visible communication and collaboration about research findings. Not only can reviews be closer to real-time, but authors can easily respond and modify their work for continuous quality improvement.
Funding: Pioneering new solutions in academic publishing will require significant trial and error, at a time when traditional business models such as library subscriptions are in decline. Philanthropies should step forward to provide catalytic risk financing, testing new models and driving social good outcomes….(More)”.
UK passport photo checker shows bias against dark-skinned women
Oct 08, 2020 06:57 am
Maryam Ahmed at BBC News: “Women with darker skin are more than twice as likely to be told their photos fail UK passport rules when they submit them online than lighter-skinned men, according to a BBC investigation.
One black student said she was wrongly told her mouth looked open each time she uploaded five different photos to the government website.
This shows how “systemic racism” can spread, Elaine Owusu said.
The Home Office said the tool helped users get their passports more quickly.
“The indicative check [helps] our customers to submit a photo that is right the first time,” said a spokeswoman.
“Over nine million people have used this service and our systems are improving.
“We will continue to develop and evaluate our systems with the objective of making applying for a passport as simple as possible for all.”
Skin colour
The passport application website uses an automated check to detect poor quality photos which do not meet Home Office rules. These include having a neutral expression, a closed mouth and looking straight at the camera.
BBC research found this check to be less accurate on darker-skinned people.
More than 1,000 photographs of politicians from across the world were fed into the online checker.
The results indicated:
Dark-skinned women are told their photos are poor quality 22% of the time, while the figure for light-skinned women is 14%
Dark-skinned men are told their photos are poor quality 15% of the time, while the figure for light-skinned men is 9%
Photos of women with the darkest skin were four times more likely to be graded poor quality, than women with the lightest skin….(More)”.
David Gerard at Foreign Policy: “The U.K.’s response to COVID-19 is widely regarded as scattershot and haphazard. So how did they get here?
Excel is a top-of-the-line spreadsheet tool. A spreadsheet is good for quickly modeling a problem—but too often, organizations cut corners and press the cardboard-and-string mock-up into production, instead of building a robust and unique system based on the Excel proof of concept.
Excel is almost universally misused for complex data processing, as in this case—because it’s already present on your work computer and you don’t have to spend months procuring new software. So almost every business has at least one critical process that relies on a years-old spreadsheet set up by past staff members that nobody left at the company understands.
That’s how the U.K. went wrong. An automated process at Public Health England (PHE) transformed the incoming private laboratory test data (which was in text-based CSV files) into Excel-format files, to pass to the Serco Test and Trace teams’ dashboards.
Unfortunately, the process produced XLS files—an outdated Excel format that went extinct in 2003—which had a limit of 65,536 rows, rather than the around 1 million-row limit in the more recent XLSX format. With several lines of data per patient, this meant a sheet could only hold 1,400 cases. Further cases just fell off the end.
Technicians at PHE monitoring the dashboards noticed on Oct. 2 that not all data that had been sent in was making it out the other end. The data was corrected the next day, and PHE announced the issue the day after.
It’s not clear if the software at PHE was an Excel spreadsheet or an in-house program using the XLS format for data interchange—the latter would explain why PHE stated that replacing it might take months—but the XLS format would have been used on the assumption that Excel was universal.
And even then, a system based on Excel-format files would have been an improvement over earlier systems—the system for keeping a count of COVID-19 cases in the U.K. was, as of May, still based on data handwritten on cards….
The process that went wrong was a workaround for a contract issue: The government’s contract with Deloitte to run the testing explicitly stipulated that the company did not have to report “Pillar 2” (general public testing) positive cases to PHE at all.
Since a test-and-trace system is not possible without this data, PHE set up feeds for the data anyway, as CSV text files directly from the testing labs. The data was then put into this system—the single system that serves as the bridge between testing and tracing, for all of England. PHE had to put in place technological duct tape to make a system of life-or-death importance work at all….
The Brookings Institution report Doomed: Challenges and solutions to government IT projects lists factors to consider when outsourcing government information technology. The outsourcing of tracking and tracing is an example where the government has assumed all of the risk, and the contractor assumes all of the profit. PHE did one thing that you should never do: It outsourced a core function. Running a call center or the office canteen? You can outsource it. Tracing a pandemic? You must run it in-house.
If you need outside expertise for a core function, use contractors working within a department. Competing with the private sector on pay can be an issue, but a meaningful project can be a powerful incentive….(More)”.
Scotland’s future vision discussed today in first Citizens’ Assembly
Oct 07, 2020 09:15 pm
Article by Richard Mason: “The group of 100 broadly representative Scots have been meeting throughout the year to discuss some of the country’s major constitutional issues.
Members have been asked to consider three questions, the first of which is: “What kind of country are we seeking to build?”
The assembly will meet online to develop the vision, having examined issues such as finances and taxation, and discussed how decisions are taken for and about Scotland. A report of the meeting will be published on October 9
The other two parts of the Assembly’s remit – how to best overcome the challenges the country faces, including Brexit, and how to empower people to make “informed choices” about Scotland’s future – will be addressed in a final report by the end of the year.
Assembly convener Kate Wimpress said: “The meeting this weekend will see a group of people from all walks of life across Scotland come together to agree a shared vision of our country’s future.
“The Citizens’ Assembly’s vision for Scotland will help give a roadmap for the country at an uncertain and difficult time.
“Our members have worked hard together across the months, and it’s exciting to witness their efforts now coming to fruition.”
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced the creation of the Citizens’ Assembly and outlined its remit, but she stressed it would be independent from Government following criticism it was set up to garner independence support.
Constitution Secretary Michael Russell said the Scottish Government is spending £1.37 million to fund six assembly meetings, which were held in person before moving online following the coronavirus lockdown….(More)”
Dispatches from the Behavioral Scientists Fighting Coronavirus in the Global South
Oct 07, 2020 08:42 pm
Introduction by Neela Saldanha & Sakshi Ghai: “We are in the middle of a global pandemic, one that has infected more than 35 million people worldwide and killed over 1 million. Almost nine months after the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a “public health emergency of international concern,” the primary strategies we have to prevent the spread of an invisible and often deadly virus are behavioral—keeping a distance, wearing masks, washing hands. No wonder behavioral science has been thrust into the spotlight. Behavioral scientists have been advising national and local governments, as well as healthinstitutions around the world about the best ways to help people collectively adhere to new behaviors.
Although the pandemic rages globally, 7 of the 10 worst outbreaks in the world are in countries in the Global South. These countries have very different social, cultural, and economic contexts from those in the Global North. Mitigating the pandemic in these countries is not simply a matter of importing recommendations from the north. As Saugato Dutta pointed out, “advice that can seem grounded in universal human tendencies must be careful not to ignore the context in which it is applied.”
What are the elements of context that we need to attend to? What issues are behavioral scientists in Nairobi or New Delhi grappling with as they tackle the virus? What can we learn from the interventions deployed in Brazil or in the Philippines? And how can these lessons inspire the rest of the world?
We thought the best way to understand these questions was simply to ask behavioral scientists in those countries. And so, in this special collection, we have curated dispatches from behavioral scientists in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America to learn what’s different about tackling coronavirus.
Our goal is to learn from the work they have done, understand the unique challenges they face, and get their view on what behavioral science needs to focus on to benefit the 80 percent of the world population that lives in these countries. We also hope that this collection will spark ideas and seed collaborations among behavioral scientists in the Global South and North alike. The current situation demands it….(More)”.
Conducting City Diplomacy: A Survey of International Engagement in 47 Cities
Oct 07, 2020 08:36 pm
Paper by Anna Kosovac, Kris Hartley, Michele Acuto, and Darcy Gunning: “The impact of global challenges such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic manifests most acutely in urban settings, rendering cities essential players on the global stage.
In the 2018 report Toward City Diplomacy, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs presented findings from a survey of 27 cities on the capacity of local governments around the world to network internationally—and the perceived barriers to that engagement. The report found that cities “need to invest in resources, expertise, and capacity to manage their relationships and responsibilities to conduct city diplomacy effectively.”
In our new survey of 47 cities, we find that advice to still ring true. City officials broadly recognize the importance of engaging internationally but lack the necessary formal diplomacy training and resources for conducting that engagement to maximum effect. Nevertheless, cities maintain a strong commitment to global agendas, and international frameworks are increasingly influential in municipal affairs. For example, more than half of survey respondents said they track their city’s performance against the metrics of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Furthermore, we found that cities and their leaders are confident in their capacity to tackle global challenges. For instance, the majority of survey respondents said that city governments have greater potential for impact on climate change mitigation than their national government counterparts do, especially when acting collaboratively through city networks and multilateral urban programs.
The individual stories of five cities whose officials participated in the study offer lessons for a variety of challenges and approaches to city diplomacy. Based on the survey results, we discuss the three primary obstacles cities must overcome in order to strengthen the role of city diplomacy globally: inadequate funding and resources for international engagement, insufficient training in city diplomacy, and the failure of national and multilateral bodies to fully recognize and formalize city engagement in diplomacy.
We conclude with a framework for ensuring that city-diplomacy efforts are systematic and institutionalized rather than reliant on the personalities and connections of powerful city leaders. This capacity-building strategy can help cities leverage international coordination, information sharing, and intersectoral collaboration to address the complex and interconnected problems that will characterize the 21st century….(More)”.
Institutional Change and Institutional Persistence
Oct 07, 2020 08:31 pm
Paper by Daron Acemoglu, Georgy Egorov, and Konstantin Sonin: “In this essay, we provide a simple conceptual framework to elucidate the forces that lead to institutional persistence and change. Our framework is based on a dynamic game between different groups, who care both about current policies and institutions and future policies, which are themselves determined by current institutional choices, and clarifies the forces that lead to the most extreme form of institutional persistence (“institutional stasis”) and the potential drivers of institutional change. We further study the strategic stability of institutions, which arises when institutions persist because of fear of subsequent, less beneficial changes that would follow initial reforms. More importantly, we emphasize that, despite the popularity of ideas based on institutional stasis in the economics and political science literatures, most institutions are in a constant state of flux, but their trajectory may still be shaped by past institutional choices, thus exhibiting “path-dependent change”, so that initial conditions determine both the subsequent trajectories of institutions and how they respond to shocks. We conclude the essay by discussing how institutions can be designed to bolster stability, the relationship between social mobility and institutions, and the interplay between culture and institutions….(More)”
Transparency and Secrecy in European Democracies: Contested Trade-offs
Oct 07, 2020 08:11 pm
Book edited by Dorota Mokrosinska: This edited volume offers a critical discussion of the trade-offs between transparency and secrecy in the actual political practice of democratic states in Europe. As such, it answers to a growing need to systematically analyse the problem of secrecy in governance in this political and geographical context.
Focusing on topical cases and controversies in particular areas, the contributors reflect on the justification and limits of the use of secrecy in democratic governance, register the social, cultural, and historical factors that inform this process and explore the criteria used by European legislators and policy-makers, both at the national and supranational level, when balancing interests on the sides of transparency and secrecy, respectively.
This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of security studies, political science, European politics/studies, law, history, political philosophy, public administration, intelligence studies, media and communication studies, and information technology sciences….(More)”.
Press Release: “The House Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee today released the findings of its more than 16-month long investigation into the state of competition in the digital economy, especially the challenges presented by the dominance of Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook and their business practices.
The report, entitled Investigation of Competition in the Digital Marketplace: Majority Staff Report and Recommendations, totals more than 400 pages, marking the culmination of an investigation that included seven congressional hearings, the production of nearly 1.3 million internal documents and communications, submissions from 38 antitrust experts, and interviews with more than 240 market participants, former employees of the investigated platforms, and other individuals. It can be downloaded by clicking here.
“As they exist today, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook each possess significant market power over large swaths of our economy. In recent years, each company has expanded and exploited their power of the marketplace in anticompetitive ways,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (NY-10) and Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David N. Cicilline (RI-01) in a joint statement. “Our investigation leaves no doubt that there is a clear and compelling need for Congress and the antitrust enforcement agencies to take action that restores competition, improves innovation, and safeguards our democracy. This Report outlines a roadmap for achieving that goal.”
After outlining the challenges presented due to the market domination of Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook, the report walks through a series of possible remedies to (1) restore competition in the digital economy, (2) strengthen the antitrust laws, and (3) reinvigorate antitrust enforcement.
The slate of recommendations include:
Structural separations to prohibit platforms from operating in lines of business that depend on or interoperate with the platform;
Prohibiting platforms from engaging in self-preferencing;
Requiring platforms to make its services compatible with competing networks to allow for interoperability and data portability;
Mandating that platforms provide due process before taking action against market participants;
Establishing a standard to proscribe strategic acquisitions that reduce competition;
Improvements to the Clayton Act, the Sherman Act, and the Federal Trade Commission Act, to bring these laws into line with the challenges of the digital economy;
Building the World We Deserve: A New Framework for Infrastructure
Oct 07, 2020 01:29 pm
Introductory letter to a new whitepaper published by Siegel Family Endowment that outlines a new framework for understanding and funding infrastructure: “This story begins, as many set in New York City do, with the subway. As transportation enthusiasts, we’re fascinated by trains, especially the remarkable system that runs above and below the city’s streets. It was the discovery of this shared passion for understanding how our subway system works that got us talking about infrastructure a few years ago.
Infrastructure, in the most traditional sense, brings to mind physical constructions: city streets, power lines, the pipes that carry water into your home. But what about all the other things that make society function? Having seen the decline in investment in the country’s physical infrastructure, and aware of the many ways the digital world is upending our definition of the term, we began exploring how Siegel Family Endowment could play a role in the future of infrastructure.
Over the past two years of research and conversations with partners across the field, we’ve realized that our nation’s infrastructure is due for a reset. Hearing the term should evoke a different image: an interconnected web of assets, seen and unseen, that make up the foundation upon which the complicated machinery of modern society operates. It’s inherently multidimensional.
In 2020, the United States has reckoned with a health pandemic and a watershed moment in the fight for racial equity. These challenges highlight how relevant it is to reconsider what society deems the most critical, foundational assets for its citizens—and to ensure they have access to those assets.
Funding infrastructure is often considered the responsibility of government agencies. Yet many of our peers in philanthropy have made important investments in the field. These include working with local governments to fund research, promote novel forms of public-private partnership, and, ultimately, better serve citizens. And if infrastructure is viewed through the broader lens we argue for in this paper, it becomes clear just how much philanthropy, the nonprofit sector, and private entities are investing in our digital and social ecosystems.
We believe that we can do more—and better—if we commit as a country to adopting some of the principles outlined in this paper. However, we also consider this the beginning of a conversation. The time for us to think bigger and bolder about infrastructure is here. Our challenge now is to design it so that more people may thrive….(More)”.
Lessons learned from AI ethics principles for future actions
Oct 07, 2020 12:15 pm
Paper by Merve Hickok: “As the use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems became significantly more prevalent in recent years, the concerns on how these systems collect, use and process big data also increased. To address these concerns and advocate for ethical and responsible development and implementation of AI, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), research centers, private companies, and governmental agencies published more than 100 AI ethics principles and guidelines. This first wave was followed by a series of suggested frameworks, tools, and checklists that attempt a technical fix to issues brought up in the high-level principles. Principles are important to create a common understanding for priorities and are the groundwork for future governance and opportunities for innovation. However, a review of these documents based on their country of origin and funding entities shows that private companies from US-West axis dominate the conversation. Several cases surfaced in the meantime which demonstrate biased algorithms and their impact on individuals and society. The field of AI ethics is urgently calling for tangible action to move from high-level abstractions and conceptual arguments towards applying ethics in practice and creating accountability mechanisms. However, lessons must be learned from the shortcomings of AI ethics principles to ensure the future investments, collaborations, standards, codes or legislation reflect the diversity of voices and incorporate the experiences of those who are already impacted by the biased algorithms….(More)”.
Social license for the use of big data in the COVID-19 era
Oct 06, 2020 08:46 pm
Commentary by James A. Shaw, Nayha Sethi & Christine K. Cassel: “… Social license refers to the informal permissions granted to institutions such as governments or corporations by members of the public to carry out a particular set of activities. Much of the literature on the topic of social license has arisen in the field of natural resources management, emphasizing issues that include but go beyond environmental stewardship4. In their seminal work on social license in the pulp and paper industry, Gunningham et al. defined social license as the “demands and expectations” placed on organizations by members of civil society which “may be tougher than those imposed by regulation”; these expectations thereby demand actions that go beyond existing legal rules to demonstrate concern for the interests of publics. We use the plural term “publics” as opposed to the singular “public” to illustrate that stakeholder groups to which organizations must appeal are often diverse and varied in their assessments of whether a given organizational activity is acceptable6. Despite the potentially fragmented views of various publics, the concept of social license is considered in a holistic way (either an organization has it or does not). Social license is closely related to public trust, and where publics view a particular institution as trustworthy it is more likely to have social license to engage in activities such as the collection and use of personal data7.
The question of how the leaders of an organization might better understand whether they have social license for a particular set of activities has also been addressed in the literature. In a review of literature on social license, Moffat et al. highlighted disagreement in the research community about whether social license can be accurately measured4. Certain groups of researchers emphasize that because of the intangible nature of social license, accurate measurement will never truly be possible. Others propose conceptual models of the determinants of social license, and establish surveys that assess those determinants to indicate the presence or absence of social license in a given context. However, accurate measurement of social license remains a point of debate….(More)”.
How to fix the GDPR’s frustration of global biomedical research
Oct 06, 2020 07:40 pm
Jasper Bovenberg, David Peloquin, Barbara Bierer, Mark Barnes, and Bartha Maria Knoppers at Science: “Since the advent of the European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, the biomedical research community has struggled to share data with colleagues and consortia outside the EU, as the GDPR limits international transfers of personal data. A July 2020 ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) reinforced obstacles to sharing, and even data transfer to enable essential research into coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been restricted in a recent Guidance of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB). We acknowledge the valid concerns that gave rise to the GDPR, but we are concerned that the GDPR’s limitations on data transfers will hamper science globally in general and biomedical science in particular (see the text box) (1)—even though one stated objective of the GDPR is that processing of personal data should serve humankind, and even though the GDPR explicitly acknowledges that the right to the protection of personal data is not absolute and must be considered in relation to its function in society and be balanced against other fundamental rights. We examine whether there is room under the GDPR for EU biomedical researchers to share data from the EU with the rest of the world to facilitate biomedical research. We then propose solutions for consideration by either the EU legislature, the EU Commission, or the EDPB in its planned Guidance on the processing of health data for scientific research. Finally, we urge the EDPB to revisit its recent Guidance on COVID-19 research….(More)“.
Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside
Oct 06, 2020 04:49 pm
Book by By Xiaowei R. Wang: “In Blockchain Chicken Farm, the technologist and writer Xiaowei Wang explores the political and social entanglements of technology in rural China. Their discoveries force them to challenge the standard idea that rural culture and people are backward, conservative, and intolerant. Instead, they find that rural China has not only adapted to rapid globalization but has actually innovated the technology we all use today. From pork farmers using AI to produce the perfect pig, to disruptive luxury counterfeits and the political intersections of e-commerce villages, Wang unravels the ties between globalization, technology, agriculture, and commerce in unprecedented fashion. Accompanied by humorous “Sinofuturist” recipes that frame meals as they transform under new technology, Blockchain Chicken Farm is an original and probing look into innovation, connectivity, and collaboration in the digitized rural world.
FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today….(More)”.
Paper by Rebecca Crootof and BJ Ard: “Technological breakthroughs challenge core legal assumptions and generate regulatory debates. Practitioners and scholars usually tackle these questions by examining the impacts of a particular technology within conventional legal subjects — say, by considering how drones should be regulated under privacy law, property law, or the law of armed conflict. While individually useful, these siloed analyses mask the repetitive nature of the underlying questions and necessitate the regular reinvention of the regulatory wheel. An overarching framework — one which can be employed across technologies and across subjects — is needed.
The fundamental challenge of tech-law is not how to best regulate novel technologies, but rather how to best address familiar forms of uncertainty in new contexts. Accordingly, we construct a three-part framework, designed to encourage a more thoughtful resolution of tech-law questions. It:
(1) delineates the three types of tech-fostered legal uncertainty, which facilitates recognizing common issues;
(2) requires a considered selection between permissive and precautionary approaches to technological regulation, given their differing distributive consequences; and
(3) highlights tech-law-specific considerations when extending extant law, creating new law, or reassessing a legal regime.
This structure emphasizes the possibility of considered and purposeful intervention in the iterative and co-constructive relationship between law and technology. By making it easier to learn from the rich history of prior dilemmas and to anticipate future issues, this framework enables policymakers, judges, and other legal actors to make more just and effective regulatory decisions going forward…(More)”.
