Who is 'data' really ?

I have been listening recently to discussions about data, often in the context of transforming something or often with critical implications for some bottom line, at other times with claims about it being by nature 'disruptive'.

But increasingly I am beginning to suspect that many of these intertwined discussions are fundamentally different ones. Or at least, that people mean quite different things and actually have quite different thought processes behind how they wish to present 'data' in any given case.

For example if I am talking with people about Open Data it is quite a lot easier. The crowd who do this are very clear about what this means for them. Here and here are posts from Open Knowledge advocating for these standards.

Data varies in terms of structure, use, and things like relevance and other qualities in different contexts. 

Then there are different types of data: open data, big data, etc...and the boundaries sometimes get blurred.

In terms of big data for example the defnition put forward by SAP from a business perspective points you to the qualities of the data, eg Volume, variety, velocity, validity.

This is a much more technical and ‘neutral’ definition really compared to the definition of 'big data' from UN Global Pulse for example. From the outset the concern is less about users, sources or use cases for the data.

Does it matter which definition we use? Well, I think it does but often in subtle ways. Agencies like UN Global Pulse are fairly clear about focusing on big data for global development. So it is really looking at a use case or context for application. I think it is also worth bearing in mind that the document seems to locate the construction of this definition at some time subsequent to meetings of the World Economic Forum and also of the G20.

To me this raises another associated question sort of by implication. For any agency or policy mission it is almost impossible to escape this - it is part of the whole business of making policy. In fact it is really hard to talk about something without thinking about what it is for. Inevitably the interests of certain groups become represented in the process.

So for UN Global Pulse we are looking at big data within international development or developing countries particularly with the G20 in mind, so with an emphasis on economic activity. Consider also that UN Global Pulse does not have direct involvement with UN agencies such as the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, or the United National Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc). So you might potentially expect a different vision again could easily come from other areas within the UN even.

Robert Kirkpatrick, who is the director of UN Global Pulse , gives a pretty clear interview here about what UN Global Pulse is, as he says it is a sort of R&D lab based in New York, Jakarta and Kampala.

There are reasons why it matters, and what the 'user case' is going to be. For example the issue of privacy particularly is one of the most obvious problematic areas with how big data is being presented and discussed in this document for me. If you look at the diagram from the World Economic Forum white paper that UN Pulse uses here, you can see that privacy concerns do surface at two levels but not at all clearly for private industry:

It simply mentions questions about ‘Ownership of sensitive data’.

In terms information streams relevant to global development it highlights these four:
- Data exhaust
- Online information
- Physical sensors
- Citizen reporting

Recently at the Open Development Camp in Amsterdam, I was able to listen to discussions and work going on around this area particular.  I think it is one that has been overlooked, but partly also crowded out by the language that gets adopted, in exactly the way it has been above. In a way it also has been silenced.

Check out the presentation here from the ODC in Amsterdam on "Responsible Development Data" and also download a copy of the great handbook that was written during the booksprint with the Engine Room and check out some of the discussion going on around this at Open Knowledge.

In case you want to see the other great presentations from ODC, they are all available on Vimeo here

So why does matter who creates the frameworks? Well, although the WEF sees a role for the private sector in the diagram above in terms of ‘managing and collecting’ consumer data, the vision in this document seems to mostly skip over how one huge area of data could really be made use of to protect people from shocks and price changes. That is of course the data produced and held by corporations on their own activities and those of consumers. It does mention how we could make inferences about the prices of food from interactions via mobile phones with banks, but it does not say how we could inform consumers or even small businesses about the movements of global corporations, exchange rates or even of their own government in order to manage price shocks for example.

Furthermore the use of terms such as ‘stock levels’ of data, and the constant reference to measuring things such as school attendance is more suggestive to me of seeking to optimise and work around concerns about human capital, productivity and efficiency. In short it tends to situate human activity and society very much within the gaze of a corporate understanding of the world.

The microeconomic / optimisation of bounded rationality type decision-making  / predicitive modelling and closed feedback loop type solutions all appear founded on a concept of living in a world founded upon a paradigm of inevitable risks and shocks. I personally think this is a dangerous and slightly spurious argument. It serves I think to lead us to default to placing nearly no emphasis on deliberative proceedures or processes. I mean if we are talking about work in 'international development' then really it presents quite limited scope for human agency in the conception of big data for development here.

It really seems to be advocating for a sort of social fire alarm and spinkler system powered by streams of automatic data. But it assumes in a way that we are living inside the machine, and like Sunstein and Thaler’s idea of the nudge, it is not really about choice but about modifying choice architectures that sustain an equilibrium around a volatility inherent in the system, both via feeback loops and millions of automatic corrections. All of this for me almost instantly assumes that forms of consent to this are automatic or simply fundamentally broken or degraded to a virtually meaningless degree.

Today another important document was released by the Independent Expert Advisory Group on ‘data revolution and sustainable development'.

NGO's particularly have been critical of the weak representation of CSO's around the UN 'data revolution' discussions, see here and also here.

The press conference just went out here.

You can access the document itself and also details of the consultation and judge for youself if you think that it represents a fair process or not. Here is the report in full.

It looks at two key areas in terms of the 'data revolution' for sustainable development:

• The challenge of invisibility (gaps in what we know from data, and when we find out)
• The challenge of inequality (gaps between those who with and without information, and what they need to know make their own decisions)

I will be continuing to blog about it in my next post. 

Big Data and Literacy

In my last post I wanted to try to pin-point some ideas that seemed important to me in reference to the discussion going on at ETMOOC and with Mozilla around digital literacy and web literacy. It has been really engaging with some great discussions on these topics with people via ETMOOC, and through the Webmaker network, and via Twitter as well.

There is so much more I'd like to say on the topic of digital literacy and web literacy. I should maybe also mention that a book on the subject has recently been written by Mark Pegrum in Australia, who as a teacher to myself and others during teacher training college in 2009 was instrumental in opening up this world and the wider world of education to me. More information about his work can be found on his wikispaces here and his new book is here.

But for now, I feel I want to introduce another aspect to the discussion, which relates directly to what the web would look like if everyone was participating to build a better readable and writable web.

That aspect is data. I think your personal data is an important place to begin in literacy. The second lesson most illiterate adult learners discover, once they can write and read letters and sentences - is that those letters and words serve most often to be used somewhere to fill in a form. They are essential of course, because they give access to rights, privileges and freedom. It gives a person the capability and ability to find a postcode and to send a letter for example.

Although it isn't always that simple. That form might equally be used by the government of an oppressive regime to deny you those very same basic human rights and privileges as well. It is no wonder then that the young Eritrean adult learners in my refugee classes, seemed often to look at my exercises based on form filling in class with a slight degree of suspicion. They were well aware of where all this learning could lead them, despite my own idealistic intentions as they had witnessed how their own government had systematically used schooling and the education system as a means to oppress and dominate its citizens.

Although the fact that this has been going on and has been well documented by Human Rights Watch since 2009 seems not to feature highly in the press. It certainly seems to be of little interest to the UK, Australian, Canadian and Chinese mining companies who are rushing in to try and grab a piece of the profits from exporting Eritrea's largely untapped mineral wealth.

It has been selected to be the most repressive nation on earth by Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights Watch, with the highest number of journalists jailed per capita. Afewerki regime's has effectively turned the nation into a giant prison. It has become one of the top ten refugee producing countries in the world.

So I think as I had mentioned in looking at literacy before, the limits of discourse around it as a tool tend to also reflect the concerns of those who hold power over others. That may be due to the state's need to control its citizens, or due to a religious movement's need to control its faithful. So sudden periods of mass expansion of literacy have often been linked to turbulent revolutions in the past. Good examples of this might include the Protestant reformation or the rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia in the early 20th century, who orchestrated at that time one of the most effective drives to expand basic literacy in the world.

In my post on digital literacy I also mentioned that it seemed to me that we need to bear in mind the context in which we are speaking of literacy today. In the current shift in economic terms towards human capital becoming the new currency it is less important that you be able to operate within the formal bureaucratic structure of the state, to use the right language to fill in forms and to lift yourself up to work in a white collar job.

You are not just the ward of some state anymore. It is quickly becoming clear that the networks themselves rather than the organs of the state have become the nodes of control and also the new commodity, and you are situated within them in one way or another. A worker's new value is to be flexible and to be able to learn all that they need to learn as they go, to serve more effectively as the intersection between ever expanding and powerful networks. This is also why we require a new form of 'literacy' for the digital world.

That is also why your data and your use of data as a 'digitally literate' person is important and why it is increasingly becoming evident that the state does not really hold its traditional monopoly over it any longer. In sum, information as Doug Laney the originator of the discipline of infonomics has clearly announced, has become an essential asset for companies, intangible as it may be. Big data in this discussion will continue to draw increasing attention as it focuses on opportunities to deploy information in transformative ways as Gartner's 2013 research agenda is seeking to realize.

The World Economic Forum recently summed up some of its thinking around the emergence of personal data as a new asset class in these terms on its website:

"Personal data is becoming a new economic “asset class”, a valuable resource for the 21st century that will touch all aspects of society... to unlock the full potential of personal data, a balanced ecosystem with increased trust between individuals, government and the private sector is necessary"

The key questions that have been brought to the discussion here by the World Economic Forum have been seeking implicitly to leverage personal data, and indeed information itself for economic growth. Some of the questions for example posed in their recent report, Rethinking Personal Data: Strengthening Trust are:

• Who owns personal data?
• How do we protect individual privacy?
• How should rules for usage be formed and what is the role of context in establishing permissions?
• How should organizations that use personal data be held accountable, both for securing data and for adhering to the agreed-upon rules?
• What is the role of regulators given the global flow of personal data?

And so logically a framework around digital literacies has implications for how emerging information-related skills and practices should be planned, considered and and acquired. It also has implications for how data will then be distributed, transformed, managed, consumed and produced by these new digital skill bearers and literates through such practices.

If you see what I am getting at here. If we are going to talk about web-literacy and digital literacies and about (re) making a better web, it is going to be essential that we do not lose sight of this in the background. The key principles that will serve as the anchor points for global digital governance of the future web will fundamentally change our understanding of web-literacy and digital literacy as well.

And if you think that this should be something that people should have a lot more say about, then I think you would not be wrong. The World Economic Forum however has kindly congregated a useful network of experts to conduct a methodologically sophisticated exercise to suggest a pathway for solutions to begin to be articulated, which is described in this short video clip about the topic here:

 
This all brings to my mind so many questions and considerations that I think I would not do much justice to here for now. I would point out though in the clip the prominence of data literacy in the thinking of our experts.

Of course I would absolutely appreciate it if people did have any feedback on this, and to share their ideas or to critique the ones I have put forward as well.

This post also I hope points forwards towards the next topic that will feature in the ETMOOC adventure next week which will be the wider Open Movement and Open Access, and Open Educational Resources.

I look forward to continuing the discussion then :)