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The Institute of Network Cultures is looking for project managers (1,6 fte) who can start at short notice.
Job description

Date published: February 12, 2016"Bryant Walker Smith is an assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina. The university’s website says he is an internationally recognized expert on the law of self-driving vehicles. He previously led the legal aspects of automated driving program at Stanford University, according to USC.
Smith answered questions from The State about the development of driverless vehicles.

“Mounting anecdotal evidence supports the case for open government.

Mary K. Pratt at Computerworld: “Hundreds of thousands of refugees streamed into Europe in 2015 from Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. Some estimates put the number at nearly a million.

“Just as individuals use only part of their brainpower to solve most problems, governing institutions make far too little use of the skills and experience of those inside and outside of government with scientific credentials, practical skills, and ground-level street smarts. New data-rich tools—what The GovLab calls technologies of expertise—are making it possible to match the supply of citizen and civil servant talent to the demand for it in government to solve problems.

Last week, The Washington Post reported that the US and the UK were in negotiations to permit UK law enforcement agencies to request stored communications like email and chats directly from US-based providers like Facebook and Google. What’s more, the UK apparently wants these companies to be able to perform wiretaps as well.

A set of case studies examining how public institutions are using technologies of expertise
www.thegovlab.org/smarterstate
The Smarter State Case Studies

Tom Gash at Global Government Forum: “All countries face their own unique challenges but advanced democracies also have much in common: the global economic downturn, aging populations, increasingly expensive health and pension spending, and citizens who remain as hard to please as ever.

Essay by Mimi Onuoha: “The conceptual, practical, and ethical issues surrounding “big data” and data in general begin at the very moment of data collection.

Big Data and Human Development on 11 February 2016 at 13:52PM On Thursday, February 4th, approximately 20 Oxford academics met to discuss the Big Data and Development Incubator.  In an effort to understand the potential uses of ‘big data’ in the contexts of development, participants asked what techniques, data sources, and possibilities exist for harnessing new online data to address persistent concerns [...]

Teaser

In this paper, which is modeled on a similar effort in 1999 by researchers from George Washington University, Berkman Fellow Bruce Schneier and collaborator Kathleen Seidel together with Harvard College student Saranya Vijayakuma identify and survey 865 encryption products from 55 different countries, 546 of them from outside the United States.

Publication Date

11 Feb 2016
Thumbnail Image: External Links: Download the paper from SSRN

Flexible, individual or secure? How would you like to work in the future? Can companies today still cater to the expectations of all generations? And what has crowdworking, social freezing... MORE

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Report of the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy (UK): “…The Commission started by looking at how Parliament could use digital technology to work more effectively and in a way that people expect in the modern world. We also considered how digital could enhance the voting system, as this is a fundamental part of the UK’s system of representative democracy. We asked people to tell us their views online or in person and we heard from a wide a range of people.

In India, advocates of net neutrality have welcomed new rules by the telecom regulator that have blocked efforts by Facebook to offer free but limited access to the web in the country’s fast growing Internet market.
The article by Anjana Pasricha was published in Voice of America on February 9, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

The New Citizenship Project (UK): “… it’s become increasingly apparent that the shift from Consumer to Citizen isn’t just something that ought to happen, but something that is ALREADY happening, across the world and in all aspects of society.
It’s also become clear that the story we’re working with is one that many people in many organisations find exciting and empowering.  Thinking of people as Citizens rather than as Consumers is a powerful platform for ideas and initiatives that can genuinely make a difference in the world.

Zara Rahman in The Guardian: “Around the world, women’s rights advocates are crowdsourcing their own data rather than relying on institutional datasets.

BBC Trending: “An anonymous team of Iranian app developers have come up with a solution to help young fashion conscious Iranians avoid the country’s notorious morality police known in Persian as “Ershad” or guidance.
Ershad’s mobile checkpoints which usually consist of a van, a few bearded menand one or two women in black chadors, are deployed in towns across Iran andappear with no notice.

Paper by Andrew Schrock: “We are awash in predictions about our data-driven future. Enthusiasts believe it will offer new ways to research behavior. Critics worry it will enable powerful regimes of institutional control. Both visions, although polar opposites, tend to downplay the importance of communication. As a result, the role of communication in human-centered data science has rarely been considered.