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…

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…

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…

Governance & Security

Crowdsourcing ideas as an emerging form of multistakeholder participation in Internet governance

by Roxana Radu 21/10/2015

Assessing the extent to which crowdsourcing represents an emerging opportunity of participation in global public policymaking.

by Roxana Radu 21/10/2015

What are the linkages between multistakeholder governance and crowdsourcing? Both are new—trendy, if you will—approaches to governance premised on the potential of collective wisdom, bringing together diverse groups in policy-shaping processes. Their interlinkage has remained under explored so far. Our article recently published in Policy and Internet sought to investigate this in the context of Internet governance, in order to assess the extent to which crowdsourcing represents an emerging opportunity of participation in global public policymaking. We examined two recent Internet governance initiatives which incorporated crowdsourcing with mixed results: the first one, the ICANN Strategy Panel on Multistakeholder Innovation, received only limited support from the online community; the second, NETmundial, had a significant number of online inputs from global stakeholders who had the opportunity to engage using a platform for political participation specifically set up for the drafting of the outcome document. The study builds on these two cases to evaluate how crowdsourcing was used as a form of public consultation aimed at bringing the online voice of the “undefined many” (as opposed to the “elected few”) into Internet governance processes. From the two cases, it emerged that the design of the consultation processes conducted via crowdsourcing platforms is key in overcoming barriers of participation. For instance, in the NETmundial process, the ability to submit comments and participate remotely via www.netmundial.br attracted inputs from all over the world very early on, since the preparatory phase of the meeting. In addition, substantial public engagement was obtained from the local community in the drafting of the outcome document, through a platform for political participation—www.participa.br—that gathered comments in Portuguese. In contrast, the outreach efforts of the ICANN Strategy Panel on Multistakeholder Innovation remained limited; the crowdsourcing platform they used only gathered input (exclusively in English) from a small group of people, insufficient to attribute to online public input a significant role in the reform of ICANN’s multistakeholder processes. Second, questions around how crowdsourcing should…

Economics, Governance & Security

Uber and Airbnb make the rules now — but to whose benefit?

by admin 27/07/2015

Outlining a more nuanced theory of institutional change that suggests that platforms’ effects on society will be complex and influence different people in different ways.

by admin 27/07/2015

The "Airbnb Law" was signed by Mayor Ed Lee in October 2014 at San Francisco City Hall, legalising short-term rentals in SF with many conditions. Image of protesters by Kevin Krejci (Flickr).

Ride-hailing app Uber is close to replacing government-licensed taxis in some cities, while Airbnb’s accommodation rental platform has become a serious competitor to government-regulated hotel markets. Many other apps and platforms are trying to do the same in other sectors of the economy. In my previous post, I argued that platforms can be viewed in social science terms as economic institutions that provide infrastructures necessary for markets to thrive. I explained how the natural selection theory of institutional change suggests that people are migrating from state institutions to these new code-based institutions because they provide a more efficient environment for doing business. In this article, I will discuss some of the problems with this theory, and outline a more nuanced theory of institutional change that suggests that platforms’ effects on society will be complex and influence different people in different ways. Economic sociologists like Neil Fligstein have pointed out that not everyone is as free to choose the means through which they conduct their trade. For example, if buyers in a market switch to new institutions, sellers may have little choice but to follow, even if the new institutions leave them worse off than the old ones did. Even if taxi drivers don’t like Uber’s rules, they may find that there is little business to be had outside the platform, and switch anyway. In the end, the choice of institutions can boil down to power. Economists have shown that even a small group of participants with enough market power—like corporate buyers—may be able to force a whole market to tip in favour of particular institutions. Uber offers a special solution for corporate clients, though I don’t know if this has played any part in the platform’s success. Even when everyone participates in an institutional arrangement willingly, we still can’t assume that it will contribute to the social good. Cambridge economic historian Sheilagh Ogilvie has pointed out that an institution that…

Economics, Governance & Security, Politics & Government

Why are citizens migrating to Uber and Airbnb, and what should governments do about it?

by admin 27/07/2015

What if we dug into existing social science theory to see what it has to say about economic transformation and the emergence of markets?

by admin 27/07/2015

Protest for fair taxi laws in Portland; organisers want city leaders to make ride-sharing companies play by the same rules as cabs and Town cars. Image: Aaron Parecki (Flickr).

Cars were smashed and tires burned in France last month in protests against the ride hailing app Uber. Less violent protests have also been staged against Airbnb, a platform for renting short-term accommodation. Despite the protests, neither platform shows any signs of faltering. Uber says it has a million users in France, and is available in 57 countries. Airbnb is available in over 190 countries, and boasts over a million rooms, more than hotel giants like Hilton and Marriott. Policy makers at the highest levels are starting to notice the rise of these and similar platforms. An EU Commission flagship strategy paper notes that “online platforms are playing an ever more central role in social and economic life,” while the Federal Trade Commission recently held a workshop on the topic in Washington. Journalists and entrepreneurs have been quick to coin terms that try to capture the essence of the social and economic changes associated with online platforms: the sharing economy; the on-demand economy; the peer-to-peer economy; and so on. Each perhaps captures one aspect of the phenomenon, but doesn’t go very far in helping us make sense of all its potentials and contradictions, including why some people love it and some would like to smash it into pieces. Instead of starting from the assumption that everything we see today is new and unprecedented, what if we dug into existing social science theory to see what it has to say about economic transformation and the emergence of markets? Economic sociologists are adamant that markets don’t just emerge by themselves: they are always based on some kind of an underlying infrastructure that allows people to find out what goods and services are on offer, agree on prices and terms, pay, and have a reasonable expectation that the other party will honour the agreement. The oldest market infrastructure is the personal social network: traders hear what’s on offer through word of mouth and…

Politics & Government, Social Data Science

How big data is breathing new life into the smart cities concept

by Jonathan Bright 23/07/2015

If all the cars have GPS devices, all the people have mobile phones, and all opinions are expressed on social media, then do we really need the city to be smart at all?

by Jonathan Bright 23/07/2015

“Big data” is a growing area of interest for public policy makers: for example, it was highlighted in UK Chancellor George Osborne’s recent budget speech as a major means of improving efficiency in public service delivery. While big data can apply to government at every level, the majority of innovation is currently being driven by local government, especially cities, who perhaps have greater flexibility and room to experiment and who are constantly on a drive to improve service delivery without increasing budgets. Work on big data for cities is increasingly incorporated under the rubric of “smart cities”. The smart city is an old(ish) idea: give urban policymakers real time information on a whole variety of indicators about their city (from traffic and pollution to park usage and waste bin collection) and they will be able to improve decision making and optimise service delivery. But the initial vision, which mostly centred around adding sensors and RFID tags to objects around the city so that they would be able to communicate, has thus far remained unrealised (big up front investment needs and the requirements of IPv6 are perhaps the most obvious reasons for this). The rise of big data—large, heterogeneous datasets generated by the increasing digitisation of social life—has however breathed new life into the smart cities concept. If all the cars have GPS devices, all the people have mobile phones, and all opinions are expressed on social media, then do we really need the city to be smart at all? Instead, policymakers can simply extract what they need from a sea of data which is already around them. And indeed, data from mobile phone operators has already been used for traffic optimisation, Oyster card data has been used to plan London Underground service interruptions, sewage data has been used to estimate population levels, the examples go on. However, at the moment these examples remain largely anecdotal, driven forward by a few…

Health, Social Data Science, Wellbeing

How can big data be used to advance dementia research?

by admin 16/03/2015

As dementia is believed to be influenced by a wide range of social, environmental and lifestyle-related factors, this behavioural data has the potential to improve early diagnosis

by admin 16/03/2015

Image by K. Kendall of "Sights and Scents at the Cloisters: for people with dementia and their care partners"; a program developed in consultation with the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain, Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Columbia University, and the Alzheimer's Association.

Dementia affects about 44 million individuals, a number that is expected to nearly double by 2030 and triple by 2050. With an estimated annual cost of USD 604 billion, dementia represents a major economic burden for both industrial and developing countries, as well as a significant physical and emotional burden on individuals, family members and caregivers. There is currently no cure for dementia or a reliable way to slow its progress, and the G8 health ministers have set the goal of finding a cure or disease-modifying therapy by 2025. However, the underlying mechanisms are complex, and influenced by a range of genetic and environmental influences that may have no immediately apparent connection to brain health. Of course medical research relies on access to large amounts of data, including clinical, genetic and imaging datasets. Making these widely available across research groups helps reduce data collection efforts, increases the statistical power of studies and makes data accessible to more researchers. This is particularly important from a global perspective: Swedish researchers say, for example, that they are sitting on a goldmine of excellent longitudinal and linked data on a variety of medical conditions including dementia, but that they have too few researchers to exploit its potential. Other countries will have many researchers, and less data. ‘Big data’ adds new sources of data and ways of analysing them to the repertoire of traditional medical research data. This can include (non-medical) data from online patient platforms, shop loyalty cards, and mobile phones — made available, for example, through Apple’s ResearchKit, just announced last week. As dementia is believed to be influenced by a wide range of social, environmental and lifestyle-related factors (such as diet, smoking, fitness training, and people’s social networks), and this behavioural data has the potential to improve early diagnosis, as well as allow retrospective insights into events in the years leading up to a diagnosis. For example, data on changes in shopping…

Governance & Security

Monitoring Internet openness and rights: report from the Citizen Lab Summer Institute 2014

by Ben Zevenbergen 12/08/2014

Informing the global discussions on information control research and practice in the fields of censorship, circumvention, surveillance and adherence to human rights.

by Ben Zevenbergen 12/08/2014

Jon Penny presenting on the US experience of Internet-related corporate transparency reporting.

根据相关法律法规和政策，部分搜索结果未予显示 could be a warning message we will see displayed more often on the Internet; but likely translations thereof. In Chinese, this means “according to the relevant laws, regulations, and policies, a portion of search results have not been displayed.” The control of information flows on the Internet is becoming more commonplace, in authoritarian regimes as well as in liberal democracies, either via technical or regulatory means. Such information controls can be defined as “[…] actions conducted in or through information and communications technologies (ICTs), which seek to deny (such as web filtering), disrupt (such as denial-of-service attacks), shape (such as throttling), secure (such as through encryption or circumvention) or monitor (such as passive or targeted surveillance) information for political ends. Information controls can also be non-technical and can be implemented through legal and regulatory frameworks, including informal pressures placed on private companies. […]” Information controls are not intrinsically good or bad, but much is to be explored and analysed about their use, for political or commercial purposes. The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab organised a one-week summer institute titled “Monitoring Internet Openness and Rights” to inform the global discussions on information control research and practice in the fields of censorship, circumvention, surveillance and adherence to human rights. A week full of presentations and workshops on the intersection of technical tools, social science research, ethical and legal reflections and policy implications was attended by a distinguished group of about 60 community members, amongst whom were two OII DPhil students; Jon Penney and Ben Zevenbergen. Conducting Internet measurements may be considered to be a terra incognita in terms of methodology and data collection, but the relevance and impacts for Internet policy-making, geopolitics or network management are obvious and undisputed. The Citizen Lab prides itself in being a “hacker hothouse”, or an “intelligence agency for civil society” where security expertise, politics, and ethics intersect. Their research adds the much-needed geopolitical angle to…

Social Data Science

Past and Emerging Themes in Policy and Internet Studies

by Vili Lehdonvirta 12/05/2014

It is simply not possible to consider public policy today without some regard for the intertwining of information technologies with everyday life and society.

by Vili Lehdonvirta 12/05/2014

We can't understand, analyse or make public policy without understanding the technological, social and economic shifts associated with the Internet. Image from the (post-PRISM) "Stop Watching Us" Berlin Demonstration (2013) by mw238.

In the journal’s inaugural issue, founding Editor-in-Chief Helen Margetts outlined what are essentially two central premises behind Policy & Internet’s launch. The first is that “we cannot understand, analyse or make public policy without understanding the technological, social and economic shifts associated with the Internet” (Margetts 2009, 1). It is simply not possible to consider public policy today without some regard for the intertwining of information technologies with everyday life and society. The second premise is that the rise of the Internet is associated with shifts in how policy itself is made. In particular, she proposed that impacts of Internet adoption would be felt in the tools through which policies are effected, and the values that policy processes embody. The purpose of the Policy and Internet journal was to take up these two challenges: the public policy implications of Internet-related social change, and Internet-related changes in policy processes themselves. In recognition of the inherently multi-disciplinary nature of policy research, the journal is designed to act as a meeting place for all kinds of disciplinary and methodological approaches. Helen predicted that methodological approaches based on large-scale transactional data, network analysis, and experimentation would turn out to be particularly important for policy and Internet studies. Driving the advancement of these methods was therefore the journal’s third purpose. Today, the journal has reached a significant milestone: over one hundred high-quality peer-reviewed articles published. This seems an opportune moment to take stock of what kind of research we have published in practice, and see how it stacks up against the original vision. At the most general level, the journal’s articles fall into three broad categories: the Internet and public policy (48 articles), the Internet and policy processes (51 articles), and discussion of novel methodologies (10 articles). The first of these categories, “the Internet and public policy,” can be further broken down into a number of subcategories. One of the most prominent of these streams…