Governments Want Citizens to Transact Online: And This Is How to Nudge Them There

by Peter John 10/04/2017

Peter John and Toby Blume design and report a randomised control trial that encouraged users of a disability parking scheme to renew online.

by Peter John 10/04/2017

A randomised control trial that “nudged” users of a disability parking scheme to renew online showed a six percentage point increase in online renewals. Image: Wendell (Flickr).

In an era when most transactions occur online, it’s natural for public authorities to want the vast bulk of their contacts with citizens to occur through the Internet. But they also face a minority for whom paper and face-to-face interactions are still preferred or needed—leading to fears that efforts to move services online “by default” might reinforce or even encourage exclusion. Notwithstanding these fears, it might be possible to “nudge” citizens from long-held habits by making online submission advantageous and other routes of use more difficult. Behavioural public policy has been strongly advocated in recent years as a low-cost means to shift citizen behaviour, and has been used to reform many standard administrative processes in government. But how can we design non-obtrusive nudges to make users shift channels without them losing access to services? In their new Policy & Internet article “Nudges That Promote Channel Shift: A Randomised Evaluation of Messages to Encourage Citizens to Renew Benefits Online” Peter John and Toby Blume design and report a randomised control trial that encouraged users of a disability parking scheme to renew online. They found that by simplifying messages and adding incentives (i.e. signalling the collective benefit of moving online) users were encouraged to switch from paper to online channels by about six percentage points. As a result of the intervention and ongoing efforts by the Council, virtually all the parking scheme users now renew online. The finding that it’s possible to appeal to citizens’ willingness to act for collective benefit is encouraging. The results also support the more general literature that shows that citizens’ use of online services is based on trust and confidence with public services and that interventions should go with the grain of citizen preferences and norms. We caught up with Peter John to discuss his findings, and the role of behavioural public policy in government: Ed.: Is it fair to say that the real innovation of behavioural…

Ethics, Governance & Security, Wellbeing

Five Pieces You Should Probably Read On: Reality, Augmented Reality and Ambient Fun

by David Sutcliffe 03/03/2017

Things you should probably know, and things that deserve to be brought out for another viewing. This week: Reality, Augmented Reality and Ambient Fun!

by David Sutcliffe 03/03/2017

This is the third post in a series that will uncover great writing by faculty and students at the Oxford Internet Institute, things you should probably know, and things that deserve to be brought out for another viewing. This week: Reality, Augmented Reality and Ambient Fun! The addictive gameplay of Pokémon GO has led to police departments warning people that they should be more careful about revealing their locations, players injuring themselves, finding dead bodies, and even the Holocaust Museum telling people to play elsewhere. Our environments are increasingly augmented with digital information: but how do we assert our rights over how and where this information is used? And should we be paying more attention to the design of persuasive technologies in increasingly attention-scarce environments? Or should we maybe just bin all our devices and pack ourselves off to digital detox camp? 1. James Williams: Bring Your Own Boundaries: Pokémon GO and the Challenge of Ambient Fun 23 July 2016 | 2500 words | 12 min | Gross misuses of the “Poké-” prefix: 6 “The slogan of the Pokémon franchise is ‘Gotta catch ‘em all!’ This phrase has always seemed to me an apt slogan for the digital era as a whole. It expresses an important element of the attitude we’re expected to have as we grapple with the Sisyphean boulder of information abundance using our woefully insufficient cognitive toolsets.” Pokémon GO signals the first mainstream adoption of a type of game—always on, always with you—that requires you to ‘Bring Your Own Boundaries’, says James Williams. Regulation of the games falls on the user; presenting us with a unique opportunity to advance the conversation about the ethics of self-regulation and self-determination in environments of increasingly persuasive technology. 2. James Williams: Orwell, Huxley, Banksy 24 May 2014 | 1000 words | 5 min “Orwell worried that what we fear could ultimately come to control us: the “boot stamping on a human…

Economics, Governance & Security

Could data pay for global development? Introducing data financing for global good

by admin 03/01/2017

Are there ways in which the data economy could directly finance global causes such as climate change prevention, poverty alleviation and infrastructure?

by admin 03/01/2017

“If data is the new oil, then why aren’t we taxing it like we tax oil?” That was the essence of the provocative brief that set in motion our recent 6-month research project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The results are detailed in the new report: Data Financing for Global Good: A Feasibility Study. The parallels between data and oil break down quickly once you start considering practicalities such as measuring and valuing data. Data is, after all, a highly heterogeneous good whose value is context-specific—very different from a commodity such as oil that can be measured and valued by the barrel. But even if the value of data can’t simply be metered and taxed, are there other ways in which the data economy could be more directly aligned with social good? Data-intensive industries already contribute to social good by producing useful services and paying taxes on their profits (though some pay regrettably little). But are there ways in which the data economy could directly finance global causes such as climate change prevention, poverty alleviation and infrastructure? Such mechanisms should not just arbitrarily siphon off money from industry, but also contribute value back to the data economy by correcting market failures and investment gaps. The potential impacts are significant: estimates value the data economy at around seven percent of GDP in rich industrialised countries, or around ten times the value of the United Nations development aid spending goal. Here’s where “data financing” comes in. It’s a term we coined that’s based on innovative financing, a concept increasingly used in the philanthropical world. Innovative financing refers to initiatives that seek to unlock private capital for the sake of global development and socially beneficial projects, which face substantial funding gaps globally. Since government funding towards addressing global challenges is not growing, the proponents of innovative financing are asking how else these critical causes could be funded. An existing example of innovative financing is the…

Ethics, Governance & Security

Should there be a better accounting of the algorithms that choose our news for us?

by David Sutcliffe 07/12/2016

The algorithms technology rely upon create a new type of curated media that can undermine the fairness and quality of political discourse.

by David Sutcliffe 07/12/2016

The Facebook Wall, by René C. Nielsen (Flickr).

A central ideal of democracy is that political discourse should allow a fair and critical exchange of ideas and values. But political discourse is unavoidably mediated by the mechanisms and technologies we use to communicate and receive information—and content personalisation systems (think search engines, social media feeds and targeted advertising), and the algorithms they rely upon, create a new type of curated media that can undermine the fairness and quality of political discourse. A new article by Brent Mittlestadt explores the challenges of enforcing a political right to transparency in content personalisation systems. Firstly, he explains the value of transparency to political discourse and suggests how content personalisation systems undermine open exchange of ideas and evidence among participants: at a minimum, personalisation systems can undermine political discourse by curbing the diversity of ideas that participants encounter. Second, he explores work on the detection of discrimination in algorithmic decision making, including techniques of algorithmic auditing that service providers can employ to detect political bias. Third, he identifies several factors that inhibit auditing and thus indicate reasonable limitations on the ethical duties incurred by service providers—content personalisation systems can function opaquely and be resistant to auditing because of poor accessibility and interpretability of decision-making frameworks. Finally, Brent concludes with reflections on the need for regulation of content personalisation systems. He notes that no matter how auditing is pursued, standards to detect evidence of political bias in personalised content are urgently required. Methods are needed to routinely and consistently assign political value labels to content delivered by personalisation systems. This is perhaps the most pressing area for future work—to develop practical methods for algorithmic auditing. The right to transparency in political discourse may seem unusual and farfetched. However, standards already set by the U.S. Federal Communication Commission’s fairness doctrine—no longer in force—and the British Broadcasting Corporation’s fairness principle both demonstrate the importance of the idealised version of political discourse described here. Both precedents…

Economics, Governance & Security

The blockchain paradox: Why distributed ledger technologies may do little to transform the economy

by admin 21/11/2016

Applying elementary institutional economics to examine what blockchain technologies really do in terms of economic organisation, and what problems this gives rise to.

by admin 21/11/2016

Bitcoin’s underlying technology, the blockchain, is widely expected to find applications far beyond digital payments. It is celebrated as a “paradigm shift in the very idea of economic organisation”. But the OII’s Professor Vili Lehdonvirta contends that such revolutionary potentials may be undermined by a fundamental paradox that has to do with the governance of the technology. I recently gave a talk at the Alan Turing Institute (ATI) under the title The Problem of Governance in Distributed Ledger Technologies. The starting point of my talk was that it is frequently posited that blockchain technologies will “revolutionise industries that rely on digital record keeping”, such as financial services and government. In the talk I applied elementary institutional economics to examine what blockchain technologies really do in terms of economic organisation, and what problems this gives rise to. In this essay I present an abbreviated version of the argument. Alternatively you can watch a video of the talk below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNrzE_UfkTw&w=640&h=360 First, it is necessary to note that there is quite a bit of confusion as to what exactly is meant by a blockchain. When people talk about “the” blockchain, they often refer to the Bitcoin blockchain, an ongoing ledger of transactions started in 2009 and maintained by the approximately 5,000 computers that form the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network. The term blockchain can also be used to refer to other instances or forks of the same technology (“a” blockchain). The term “distributed ledger technology” (DLT) has also gained currency recently as a more general label for related technologies. In each case, I think it is fair to say that the reason that so many people are so excited about blockchain today is not the technical features as such. In terms of performance metrics like transactions per second, existing blockchain technologies are in many ways inferior to more conventional technologies. This is frequently illustrated with the point that the Bitcoin network is limited by design…

Collective Action, Democracy, Ethics, Governance & Security, Politics & Government

Exploring the Ethics of Monitoring Online Extremism

by Bertram Vidgen 23/03/2016

Exploring the complexities of policing the web for extremist material, and its implications for security, privacy and human rights.

by Bertram Vidgen 23/03/2016

(Part 2 of 2) The Internet serves not only as a breeding ground for extremism, but also offers myriad data streams which potentially hold great value to law enforcement. The report by the OII’s Ian Brown and Josh Cowls for the VOX-Pol project: Check the Web: Assessing the Ethics and Politics of Policing the Internet for Extremist Material explores the complexities of policing the web for extremist material, and its implications for security, privacy and human rights. In the second of a two-part post, Josh Cowls and Ian Brown discuss the report with blog editor Bertie Vidgen. Read the first post. Ed: Josh, political science has long posed a distinction between public spaces and private ones. Yet it seems like many platforms on the Internet, such as Facebook, cannot really be categorised in such terms. If this correct, what does it mean for how we should police and govern the Internet? Josh: I think that is right—many online spaces are neither public nor private. This is also an issue for some for privacy legal frameworks (especially in the US). A lot of the covenants and agreements were written forty or fifty years ago, long before anyone had really thought about the Internet. That has now forced governments, societies and parliaments to adapt these existing rights and protocols for the online sphere. I think that we have some fairly clear laws about the use of human intelligence sources, and police law in the offline sphere. The interesting question is how we can take that online. How can the pre-existing standards, like the requirement that procedures are necessary and proportionate, or the ‘right to appeal’, be incorporated into online spaces? In some cases there are direct analogies. In other cases there needs to be some re-writing of the rule book to try figure out what we mean. And, of course, it is difficult because the internet itself is always changing! Ed: So…

Democracy, Ethics, Governance & Security, Politics & Government

Assessing the Ethics and Politics of Policing the Internet for Extremist Material

by Bertram Vidgen 18/02/2016

Exploring the complexities of policing the web for extremist material, and its implications for security, privacy and human rights.

by Bertram Vidgen 18/02/2016

In terms of counter-speech there are different roles for government, civil society, and industry. Image by Miguel Discart (Flickr).

The Internet serves not only as a breeding ground for extremism, but also offers myriad data streams which potentially hold great value to law enforcement. The report by the OII’s Ian Brown and Josh Cowls for the VOX-Pol project: Check the Web: Assessing the Ethics and Politics of Policing the Internet for Extremist Material explores the complexities of policing the web for extremist material, and its implications for security, privacy and human rights. Josh Cowls discusses the report with blog editor Bertie Vidgen.* *please note that the views given here do not necessarily reflect the content of the report, or those of the lead author, Ian Brown. Ed: Josh, could you let us know the purpose of the report, outline some of the key findings, and tell us how you went about researching the topic? Josh: Sure. In the report we take a step back from the ground-level question of ‘what are the police doing?’ and instead ask, ‘what are the ethical and political boundaries, rationale and justifications for policing the web for these kinds of activity?’ We used an international human rights framework as an ethical and legal basis to understand what is being done. We also tried to further the debate by clarifying a few things: what has already been done by law enforcement, and, really crucially, what the perspectives are of all those involved, including lawmakers, law enforcers, technology companies, academia and many others. We derived the insights in the report from a series of workshops, one of which was held as part of the EU-funded VOX-Pol network. The workshops involved participants who were quite high up in law enforcement, the intelligence agencies, the tech industry civil society, and academia. We followed these up with interviews with other individuals in similar positions and conducted background policy research. Ed: You highlight that many extremist groups (such as Isis) are making really significant use of online platforms to organise,…

Governance & Security

New Voluntary Code: Guidance for Sharing Data Between Organisations

by Alison Holt 08/01/2016

For data sharing between organisations to be straight forward, there needs to a common understanding of basic policy and practice.

by Alison Holt 08/01/2016

Many organisations are coming up with their own internal policy and guidelines for data sharing. However, for data sharing between organisations to be straight forward, there needs to a common understanding of basic policy and practice. During her time as an OII Visiting Associate, Alison Holt developed a pragmatic solution in the form of a Voluntary Code, anchored in the developing ISO standards for the Governance of Data. She discusses the voluntary code, and the need to provide urgent advice to organisations struggling with policy for sharing data. Collecting, storing and distributing digital data is significantly easier and cheaper now than ever before, in line with predictions from Moore, Kryder and Gilder. Organisations are incentivised to collect large volumes of data with the hope of unleashing new business opportunities or maybe even new businesses. Consider the likes of Uber, Netflix, and Airbnb and the other data mongers who have built services based solely on digital assets. The use of this new abundant data will continue to disrupt traditional business models for years to come, and there is no doubt that these large data volumes can provide value. However, they also bring associated risks (such as unplanned disclosure and hacks) and they come with constraints (for example in the form of privacy or data protection legislation). Hardly a week goes by without a data breach hitting the headlines. Even if your telecommunications provider didn’t inadvertently share your bank account and sort code with hackers, and your child wasn’t one of the hundreds of thousands of children whose birthdays, names, and photos were exposed by a smart toy company, you might still be wondering exactly how your data is being looked after by the banks, schools, clinics, utility companies, local authorities and government departments that are so quick to collect your digital details. Then there are the companies who have invited you to sign away the rights to your data and possibly your…

Collective Action, Governance & Security, Politics & Government

Controlling the crowd? Government and citizen interaction on emergency-response platforms

by Gregory Asmolov 07/12/2015

Government involvement in crowdsourcing efforts can actually be used to control and regulate volunteers from the top down—not just to “mobilise them”.

by Gregory Asmolov 07/12/2015

RUSSIA, NEAR RYAZAN - 8 MAY 2011: Piled up wood in the forest one winter after a terribly huge forest fire in Russia in year 2010. Image: Max Mayorov (Flickr).

There is a great deal of interest in the use of crowdsourcing tools and practices in emergency situations. Gregory Asmolov’s article Vertical Crowdsourcing in Russia: Balancing Governance of Crowds and State–Citizen Partnership in Emergency Situations (Policy and Internet 7,3) examines crowdsourcing of emergency response in Russia in the wake of the devastating forest fires of 2010. Interestingly, he argues that government involvement in these crowdsourcing efforts can actually be used to control and regulate volunteers from the top down—not just to “mobilise them”. My interest in the role of crowdsourcing tools and practices in emergency situations was triggered by my personal experience. In 2010 I was one of the co-founders of the Russian “Help Map” project, which facilitated volunteer-based response to wildfires in central Russia. When I was working on this project, I realised that a crowdsourcing platform can bring the participation of the citizen to a new level and transform sporadic initiatives by single citizens and groups into large-scale, relatively well coordinated operations. What was also important was that both the needs and the forms of participation required in order to address these needs be defined by the users themselves. To some extent the citizen-based response filled the gap left by the lack of a sufficient response from the traditional institutions.[1] This suggests that the role of ICTs in disaster response should be examined within the political context of the power relationship between members of the public who use digital tools and the traditional institutions. My experience in 2010 was the first time I was able to see that, while we would expect that in a case of natural disaster both the authorities and the citizens would be mostly concerned about the emergency, the actual situation might be different. Apparently the emergence of independent, citizen-based collective action in response to a disaster was considered as some type of threat by the institutional actors. First, it was a threat to…

Ethics, Governance & Security

Government “only” retaining online metadata still presents a privacy risk

by Brent Mittelstadt 30/11/2015

When considered in relation to individuals’ privacy, metadata should not be viewed as fundamentally different to data about the content of a communication.

by Brent Mittelstadt 30/11/2015

Since 13 October 2015 telecommunications providers in Australia have been required to retain metadata on communications for two years. Image by h2hox (Flickr)

Issues around data capture, retention and control are gaining significant attention in many Western countries—including in the UK. In this piece originally posted on the Ethics Centre Blog, the OII’s Brent Mittelstadt considers the implications of metadata retention for privacy. He argues that when considered in relation to individuals’ privacy, metadata should not be viewed as fundamentally different to data about the content of a communication. Australia’s new data retention law for telecommunications providers, comparable to extant UK and US legislation, came into effect 13 October 2015. Telecoms and ISPs are now required to retain metadata about communications for two years to assist law enforcement agencies in crime and terrorism investigation. Despite now being in effect, the extent and types of data to be collected remain unclear. The law has been widely criticised for violating Australians’ right to privacy by introducing overly broad surveillance of civilians. The Government has argued against this portrayal. They argue the content of communications will not be retained but rather the “data about the data”—location, time, date and duration of a call. Metadata retention raises complex ethical issues often framed in terms of privacy which are relevant globally. A popular argument is that metadata offers a lower risk of violating privacy compared to primary data—the content of communication. The distinction between the “content” and “nature” of a communication implies that if the content of a message is protected, so is the privacy of the sender and receiver. The assumption that metadata retention is more acceptable because of its lower privacy risks is unfortunately misguided. Sufficient volumes of metadata offer comparable opportunities to generate invasive information about civilians. Consider a hypothetical. I am given access to a mobile carrier’s dataset that specifies time, date, caller and receiver identity in addition to a continuous record of location constructed with telecommunication tower triangulation records. I see from this that when John’s wife Jane leaves the house, John often calls Jill and visits…