April 29
8am-10am (EDT/Boston Time)
Acquiring a Social License for Data Reuse through Co-Determination of Data Responsibility Frameworks and the Questions that Matter
We live in a world characterized by increased complexity. From climate change, to global pandemics, to rising and systematic inequality, there is a sense that old solutions to public problems are no longer sufficient.
The work of the Data Program at the GovLab at New York University Tandon School of Engineering begins from the premise that innovation in data collaboration, stewardship, and re-use can help address some of these problems. A wide body of evidence has irrefutably established that data can help improve our understanding of the world, tease out the root causes of various phenomena, forecast future conditions and opportunities, and evaluate and iterate on potential solutions.
Yet current practice in data re-use in the public interest is misaligned with public perceptions, not targeted at the questions that would be transformative if answered, and undertaken in the absence of a clear social license.
This session will explore new ways to engage people in co-determining:
how data should be (or should not) be re-used to address societal challenges through the convening of data assemblies—with a focus on The GovLab’s Data Assembly in New York City; and
what the key societal and community questions are that we should re-use data for - with a focus on our 100 Questions Initiative.
8am: Introduction to The GovLab and our focus on RE-USE OF DATA through Data Collaboratives (Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder, The GovLab)
8:10am-9:10am: The Data Assembly
This session will introduce a new methodology designed and implemented by The GovLab to solicit diverse, actionable public input on data re-use for crisis response in the United States.
8:10am: Co-Determining a Data Responsibility Framework for Data Re-Use (Andrew Young and Stefaan Verhulst, The GovLab)
The approach, built around the engagement of three distinct mini-publics, aims to provide a pathway for institutions on the supply and demand side of data reuse efforts to better reflect public perspectives and gain a social license for their work. The first implementation of the Data Assembly methodology in New York City focused on data re-use and COVID-19 and generated a Responsible Data Re-Use Framework to inform the city’s response.
8:25am: Reflections from the field
Adrienne Schmoeker, former Deputy Chief Analytics Officer for the City of New York: Leveraging citizen engagement in the development of city data partnerships;
Jaclyn Sawyer, Director of Data Services and Program Analytics at Breaking Ground: Engaging with hard to reach populations around data.
Stefaan Verhulst (moderator)
8:55am: Q&A
9:10am: Break
9:15am-10:00am: THE 100 QUESTIONS
This session will focus on The 100 Questions Initiative - a new participatory methodology of questioning to co-determine knowledge and data gaps in various policy domains.
9:15am: How to determine what the Questions are that Matter that could be Answered by Data? (Andrew Young and Fiona Cece, The GovLab)
The 100 Questions initiative co-determines and curates the most pressing, high-impact questions that could be answered if data and data science were unlocked and used in a responsible manner. These questions are developed through a methodology that relies on bilinguals - experts who possess both domain knowledge and data science expertise - to create an agenda of high-impact questions, and then on the public to subsequently prioritize questions on this agenda.
9:45am: Q and A (moderated by Stefaan Verhulst)
Resources referenced in this session
Young, Andrew, Stefaan G. Verhulst, Nadiya Safonova, and Andrew J. Zahuranec. “The Data Assembly Responsible Data Re-Use Framework.” The GovLab, November 2020. https://thedataassembly.org/files/nyc-data-assembly-report.pdf
Zahuranec, Andrew J., Andrew Young, and Stefaan G. Verhulst. “How can stakeholder engagement and mini-publics better inform the use of data for pandemic response?” OECD Participo. February 19, 2021. https://medium.com/participo/how-can-stakeholder-engagement-and-mini-publics-better-inform-the-use-of-data-for-pandemic-response-ea1cc5b1ee68
Verhulst, Stefaan G., “Raw data won't solve our problems — asking the right questions will” Apolitical, September 2019. https://apolitical.co/en/solution_article/raw-data-wont-solve-our-problems-asking-the-right-questions-will
Brown, Jeffrey, and Stefaan G. Verhulst. “10 Questions That Will Determine the Future of Work” Brink. March 2021. https://www.brinknews.com/ten-questions-that-will-determine-the-future-of-work-coronavirus/
As we near the end of the Sprint, we want participants to take a look at the artifacts that they have created and determine which would make the best examples to add into the repository. Give that we have 25 participants, rather than offering some 25 artifacts for nearly every week, we figured it would be more ideal to gain more specific collection. Please complete this form that identifies your 3 best artifacts for the Research Sprint. Depending on the selections, we may follow up with additional requests or ask for some edits.
Note: Also, you are welcome to update your artifacts as you submit them if you feel like there is more context or edits that you would like to make now that we are later in the sprint.
Continuing to draw upon the research from the Sprint and the the Bibliography from Week 2, participants should continue adding and refining the Wikipedia entry draft.
For this week, we strongly encourage you to do a peer-review of each others sections now that a rough draft is near completion. Participants should coordinate on the Wikipedia Slack channel or via the document itself to have participants read and review sections that they have not written themselves to provide useful, relevant, and tactful feedback to enhance the article.
Towards the end of next week, we will also be soliciting some of the programming committee for the Sprint to provide feedback as well via the comments on the article draft.
By next Thursday (5/6/2021), all sections should be close to or entirely peer-reviewed.
Stefaan G. Verhulst is Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Officer of the Governance Laboratory (The GovLab) at New York University (NYU), an action research center focused on improving governance using advances in science and technology - including data and collective intelligence. He is also, among other positions and affiliations, the Editor-in-Chief of Data & Policy, an open access journal by Cambridge University Press; the research director of the MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance; Chair of the Data for Children Collaborative with Unicef; and a member of the High-Level Expert Group to the European Commission on Business-to-Government Data Sharing. In 2018 he was recognized as one of the 10 Most Influential Academics in Digital Government globally (as part of the Top 100 in Digital Government) by the global policy platform Apolitical.
Before joining NYU full time, Verhulst spent more than a decade as Chief of Research for the Markle Foundation, where he continues to serve as Senior Advisor. Previously at Oxford University he was the UNESCO Chairholder in Communications Law and Policy for the UK where he co-founded and was the Head of the Program in Comparative Media Law and Policy, He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Socio Legal Studies and the Socio Legal Fellow of Wolfson College, and is still an emeritus fellow at Oxford. He also taught several years at the London School of Economics; and was Founder and Co-Director of the International Media and Info-Comms Policy and Law Studies (IMPS) at the University of Glasgow School of Law.
He has published widely - including seven books- and is asked regularly to present at international conferences including TED. Numerous organizations have sought his counsel - including the WorldBank; IDB, USAID, DFID, IDRC, AFP, the European Commission, Council of Europe, the World Economic Forum, UNICEF, OECD, Un-OCHA, UNDP and several other international bodies.
Andrew Young is the Knowledge Director at The GovLab, where he leads research efforts focusing on the impact of technology on public institutions. Among the grant-funded projects he has directed are a global assessment of the impact of open government data; the development of a principles and practices for the responsible handling of data for and about children by humanitarian and development organizations; comparative benchmarking of government innovation efforts against those of other countries; a methodology for leveraging corporate data to benefit the public good; and crafting the experimental design for testing the adoption of technology innovations in federal agencies. Andrew has authored or co-authored a number of extended works on new approaches for improving governance with technology, including the books The Global Impact of Open Data and Open Data in Developing Economies.
Fiona Cece is a Research Fellow at The GovLab and the Project Lead for The 100 Questions Initiative. At GovLab, she has also contributed to the Open Data Policy Lab’s inaugural Data Stewardship Course, among other projects that seek to leverage data and technology for public value. Prior to joining GovLab, Fiona worked in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General at the United Nations, where she helped support decision-making fora and provide country-level policy analyses for the Executive and Deputy Committee levels. Additionally, she has provided research support to The Economist Intelligence Unit for a project regarding digital well-being policies in the Middle East and North Africa region and editorial support to the Journal of Public Policy. She holds a B.A. in Economics from Barnard College and a M.Sc. in Politics and Policy Analysis from Bocconi University in Milan, Italy.
Jaclyn Sawyer is a community data specialist, currently serving as the Director of Data Services and Program Analytics at Breaking Ground, an organization that provides a spectrum of homeless outreach and housing services in New York City. In this capacity, she built and leads an interdisciplinary data team of technologists and social workers that develop software and conduct analysis, led by Design Justice principles. She lectures at Columbia University where she co-developed an emerging tech and society course for social workers to bring the missing voices into data practice and reimagine the future of work. She is deeply invested in community built and supported internet and technology projects.
Adrienne Schmoeker is the former Deputy Chief Analytics Officer for the City of New York. During her tenure with the City of New York she led the team at the NYC Mayor's Office of Data Analytics, grew the NYC Open Data Program, co-founded NYC Open Data Week and was part of the founding team in the inaugural NYC CTO's Office. Adrienne is currently advising urban tech startups, helping design data programs and consulting on government technology programs.