ePA Week 6 - Application of New Technologies

            Local governments often rely on volunteers to perform certain tasks. The economic downturn that began in 2007 has, however, significantly tightened local government budgets and, at least in Arizona, encouraged many cities and towns to rely more heavily on volunteers in order to continue to provide certain services (League of Arizona Cities and Towns, 2010). A brief (and unscientific) survey of the websites of several cities in the Phoenix metropolitan area showed that, while these cities are using their websites to publicize volunteer opportunities, they are not yet leveraging the kinds of technologies and strategies discussed in module 3 to facilitate relationships between volunteers and government.

            Currently, local governments in the Phoenix area tend to recruit volunteers by posting opportunities on their websites, providing a phone number and an email link to the contact person in charge of the opportunity, and providing a downloadable application for potential volunteers that generally needs to be filled out and returned to the city. This approach is problematic for several reasons. First, if a potential volunteer does not see an opportunity on the website that meets his or her skills or interests, the individual may decide not to fill out an application. Second, the process for applying to volunteer, though not overly cumbersome, requires downloading, printing, filling out and mailing the application. Third, someone at the city must sort through the applications, vet the potential volunteers and pass the information on to the relevant departments.

This process could be significantly improved to encourage more citizens to volunteer and to promote more use of volunteers in local government using the following strategy:

·      Local governments should frame volunteer opportunities as evolving and constantly arising, encouraging people to register to become a volunteer whether they have a specific opportunity in mind or not.

·      Registration should be online and similar to creating a profile on a social networking site. It should also include information for vetting purposes, such as references.

·      Registration should include the ability to link one’s volunteer profile to a Facebook, LinkedIn or other social networking profile. Such links allow the city to publicize the “good deeds” of the volunteer to his or her professional and personal networks.

·      Registration should include certain categorical data about the skills and interests of the individual that an automated recommendation system (a la Amazon.com) could use to match the volunteer with available opportunities within the city as they arise.

·      Anyone within the local government should be able to browse this network of volunteer profiles when in need of a volunteer. These users should also be able to input categorical data about the opportunity to allow automatic recommendation of volunteers, and to search by keyword for profiles that meet their needs.

·      Local government employees who work with these volunteers should be able to rate the volunteers after their service in order to provide a “reputation” for the volunteers that other employees in the city can use to assess the quality of volunteers. This information should remain internal to the city to protect the privacy of volunteers.

·      Any volunteer who linked to a social networking profile during registration should automatically receive a post on that profile from the city celebrating their service to the community after each volunteer activity.

·      Volunteers should also earn “points” for volunteer hours and should earn “badges” or some other awards for certain levels and types of service (for example a special badge for volunteering for multiple departments within the city) similar to the way Foursquare rewards people for “check-ins” at various locations and times. This information should be heavily publicized on the city website. 

This approach aims to influence three of the four constraints of behavior outlined by Lessig (2006): architecture (by creating a new volunteer registration system that eases the process of connecting volunteers and volunteer seekers), the market (by lowering the opportunity costs of volunteering for citizens and city workers, by creating a new “currency” or reward structure for volunteers, and by giving volunteer seekers a way to judge the value of potential volunteers) and norms (by attempting to alter the community or societal view of volunteering to help city government such that more individuals see it as an acceptable and even desirable activity). As such, this approach follows Lessig’s recommendation that any attempt to regulate behavior should address multiple constraints in order to be successful.

This approach also applies the views of Shirky (2010) who, drawing on the previous work of Granovetter (1973) and Christakis and Fowler (2008), argues that social networks (including, but not limited to the digital kind) can be an important method of spreading both positive and negative behavior, and that even loose social networks can be influential. This argument specifically speaks to the importance of linking volunteer profiles to profiles on other social networking platforms and using those connections to praise volunteers for their efforts.

References

Christakis, N., & Fowler, J. (2008). Social networks and happiness. Edge. Retrieved from http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/christakis_fowler08/christakis_fowler08_index.html

Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), pp. 1360-1380.

League of Arizona Cities and Towns. (2010). Collaboration: Cities and towns leveraging resources to better serve citizens. Arizona City and Town (Winter 2011). Retrieved from www.azleague.org

Lessig, L. (2006). Code version 2.0. New York, NY: Basic Books. Kindle edition.

Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. New York, NY: The Penguin Press. Kindle edition.

ePA Week 6 - Mixing Personal, Professional and Private Spaces

The article I chose argues that supposedly anonymous data collected and stored by a variety of entities is actually quite easy to connect back to its original source. Often a savvy individual can trace anonymous data to the person from whom it came with as little as a birthdate, a zip code and the individual’s sex. Most current laws dealing with the anonymization of data, however, only specify the removal of “unique” identifiers such as names, addresses, usernames, IP addresses, etc. If the stored data is your Netflix rental history, you might be slightly concerned that your friends or co-workers might discover you’ve rented “Weekend at Bernie’s III” eight times this year. But what if the data was your health records? Or worse? The article is an especially good read for this course because it argues that any changes to privacy laws designed to address this issue will have to balance the value of privacy (via anonymity) with the ideal of keeping certain data useful from the standpoint of research (sounds like someone has been reading Lessig).

ePA Week 5 - eCommunities

            The Anderson video on social media driving innovation is quite intriguing. It not only makes sense from a logical standpoint, but it also parallels the views of urban economists such as Edward L. Glaeser, who believes densely packed cities are the hubs of innovation. In a recent op/ed in Scientific American, Glaeser wrote:

[C]ities bring opportunities for wealth and for the creative inspiration that can result only from face-to-face contact with others. In fact, the crush of people living in close quarters fosters the kind of collaborative creativity that has produced some of humanity's best ideas… By supercharging the flow of ideas, cities foster economic prosperity, innovation, better health -- and even new ways to govern ourselves (Glaeser, 2011, p. 50).

While Glaeser does acknowledge that social media can help foster such collaborations, he believes face-to-face contact will continue to be the dominant mechanism of innovation in the future.

I believe, however, to downplay the power of social media as a potentially dominant mode of collaboration is a mistake. While online interactions certainly are different from face-to-face interactions and they can present new challenges - such as those outlined by Tutton (2009, November 9) in the article about using Second Life for work collaborations – these challenges are likely to decrease with time as people become more comfortable using the medium. For the generation of children who will never know a world without social media, such collaborations are likely to become the norm. That means that interactions such as TED’s collaboration with a man living in the Kibera Slums in Kenya are likely to increase exponentially in the future. If you believe that innovation truly does stem from connecting people with ideas so they can learn from and build off of one another, then the connection of billions of people through social media and other online platforms should be a boon for innovative ideas, as long as those connections can be made.

Jamie Heywood’s video is a great example of an innovative approach to a problem with the healthcare system that Jody Heymann identified 16 years ago: medical research does not provide information on the specific experiences of patients with particular conditions to allow doctors to adequately inform their patients about such things as prognoses, the benefits and drawbacks of treatment options and the potential side effects of drugs; moreover, even when doctors have this information they tend not to discuss such topics with patients (Heymann, 1995). By giving patients the power to interact with each other and share and aggregate data, Heywood has found a way to cut out the middleman, so to speak. And while the information on his site isn’t scientific, that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful and beneficial to patients. It is encouraging to hear that some doctors have appreciated the data patients have collected via patientslikeme.

Jeremy Rifkin’s video, contrasted with a few other articles in this module, raises a major question: if empathy is required to save civilization, and, as Peggy Orenstein argues in her article about using Twitter (Orenstein, 2010, July 30), the dominant technologies of the day such as Facebook and Twitter at least appear to be making people more self-centered and narcissistic - which is the opposite of empathic according to psychopathologist Simon Baron-Cohen (Witchalls, 2011, April 5) - are we doomed? If empathy is an innate characteristic, we may be OK. If it is learned, however, does that imply we are raising a generation of children who will grow up to be adults with what we now consider to be personality disorders? I suspect the answer is that, like many other traits, empathy contains a genetic and an environmental component (though obviously, according to the Witchalls article the scientific evidence is unclear). As a policy geek, this makes me wonder how policy can encourage empathy, potentially using new technology, while not raising any political hackles (I’m guessing empathy could be equated with communism in more than a few minds out there). I’ll get back to you on that one.

I found a group I’d be interested in joining on meetup pretty quickly. It is the Chandler/Gilbert Wine Meetup Group, and they have an event scheduled at a wine bar near my house next Wednesday night (alas I have class and cannot attend). Since this group requires a fee and I am unclear whether I can attend future events, I did not sign up yet but I may do so in the future.

I spent nearly three hours in Second Life and didn’t feel like I learned a whole lot – seems like there’s a pretty steep learning curve toward being able to be functional, especially for a non-gaming newbie like me. I spent a lot of time hunting around Help Island and the NCI (New Citizens Incorporated) islands trying to learn what I was doing. The tutorials on Welcome Island helped for learning the basics of moving around, but most of what I learned about what is happening inside Second Life and the rules and norms governing that behavior I found in documents written by NCI and accessed through kiosks in various places. I only spoke with one other person via IM and that was to tell them that I wasn’t interested in joining their group. I did, however, overhear a conversation between two people who were using the microphones on their computers to have a conversation.

There was a lot more information in blogs and help files on the Second Life website that I didn’t get around to accessing. All around, I feel like I barely scratched the surface as far as learning what’s possible within this world. That said, when I learned that there are classes being taught in a number of subjects within Second Life, I had an immediate thought for an application to an issue in public administration.

In another class this semester I read about a public administrator named Claire Mostel who, in addition to her day job as an outreach coordinator for county services, designed, implemented and now runs a “Citizens Academy” to help residents of Miami-Dade County, Florida get more involved in solving problems in their communities. The twelve-week courses focus mainly on how citizens can utilize government services to address issues they would like to solve. The classes also include education about why local government works the way it does so that citizens can understand both why government does certain things and why it doesn’t do others (King and Zanetti, 2005). In a sense Mostel is tackling two problems at once: the issue of how to get more citizens engaged in civic life and the issue of dealing with disgruntled or disaffected citizens who feel government has not dealt with their concerns.

Given its ability to host online classrooms, Second Life could be a medium to spread this kind of education to more places and people. Since these classes would require no physical space, the costs associated with implementing these classes could potentially be much less than conducting them in a physical location. Moreover, the online medium could make it easier for some people to attend the classes, as long as they had access to an Internet connection (obviously this approach necessitates also designing outreach programs for those without Internet access). Using this medium for classes is especially intriguing because it combines the interactivity of a bricks and mortar class with some of the conveniences and cost savings of an online class.

One more note about this week’s material. I think online reputation systems are one of the most innovative and empowering aspects to emerge from the Internet economy. Where it used to be you had to rely on word of mouth from friends, the news media or salespeople to learn about products of services, now there is this whole new world of sorting the good from the bad. I’m especially intrigued by systems like Airbnb that rate not only the sellers but also the buyers (in this case renters, since it is a service for finding short-term rentals for travel) or websites like Slashdot where, as Eric points out, the readers rate the comments of other readers to help sort the useful from the not so useful. While I’m not naïve enough to think that these systems cannot be rigged or abused, I do have the sense that the websites that use them for the most part take them seriously and try and keep them honest. I see applications for this in the future of P.A., more on this next week.

References

Glaeser, E. (2011). Engines of innovation. Scientific American, 305(3), 50-55.

Heymann, J. (1995). Equal partners: A physician’s call for a new spirit of medicine. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

King, C. S., & Zanetti, L. A. (2005). Transformational public service: Portraits of theory in practice. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Orenstein, P. (2010, July 30). I tweet, therefore I am. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com

Tutton, M. (2009, November 9). Going to the virtual office in Second Life. CNN.com. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com

Witchalls, W. (2011, April 5). Why a lack of empathy is the root of all evil. The Independent. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk

Week 4: News Article Analysis: Cell Phone Location Data

A New York Times article from July 6, 2009, outlines the growing use of cell phone location data by law enforcement to track the movements of suspects or fugitives in real time, to identify suspects or narrow down suspect lists, to investigate the prior movements of suspected criminals well after the crime occurred, and for other investigative needs (Barnard, 2009, July 6). The location data, created by cell phones as they communicate with cell towers so calls can be routed to the phones, is often collected and stored by cell phone companies, though how much data is collected and for how long it is stored remains unclear, according to another New York Times article (Cohen, 2011, March 26). According to the 2009 New York Times article, most people have no idea their cell phones are creating a record of their movements, and law enforcement is gaining access to this data from cell carriers at an increasing rate, often without obtaining a warrant. Access to such data varies by carrier and region, and law-enforcement use has varied widely, including a sheriff in Alabama tracking his own daughter who was late returning from a date, the apprehension of fugitives, the successful release of a kidnapping victim and the successful prosecution of high-profile murder cases (Barnard, 2009, July 6).

This situation pits the value of individual privacy against law enforcement’s duty to maintain public safety. It also pits customers’ desires to control data that they may feel is private with the companies’ wishes to use that data for business purposes. The dividing lines between these competing values and interests are not currently clear, as discussed below.

According to Lessig (2006), before the rise of digital technologies individuals had several protections of their privacy, both in private and public spaces. Trespass law and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution placed limits on the ability of both private individuals and the government to enter the “protected space” (p. 201) of an individual residence, even for the purpose of law enforcement. Architecture, such as doors, windows and locks, and norms of behavior about personal space complemented the restrictions of the law, according to Lessig. Meanwhile, he argues, even though the law did not prohibit the use of individual information gathered in public spaces by private or government entities, this use was still constrained by the relatively high cost of both monitoring behavior in public (for example through surveillance) and the difficulty of searching the record of behavior in public (for example by polling witnesses to the behavior). As such, a balance existed between protecting individual privacy and allowing law enforcement to infringe on that privacy when necessary to protect public safety.

Lessig (2006) argues that digital technology has radically altered this balance by making behavior in all spaces both more easily monitored and more searchable. Meanwhile, he states, the law has not significantly adapted to these technologies by expanding notions of privacy or clarifying what is considered private and what is not in regard to collecting, storing and using such data. The issue of cell phone companies collecting and storing location data on subscribers and law enforcement agents using this information illustrates Lessig’s argument quite well, although the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals did recently uphold judges’ ability to require law enforcement to obtain a warrant to gain access to cell phone tracking information (United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, 2010). Still, this court decision only applies to cases in the Third Circuit, and it does not require warrants to access location data, it merely allows judges to necessitate a warrant in cases where they believe the fourth amendment might be violated (Bankston, 2010, December 15).

Solutions to this issue could take many forms. Lessig (2006) outlines four constraints that regulate behavior: the law, social norms, the market and architecture. In the current situation, changes in the architecture of communications technology have weakened the traditional privacy protections provided by the law (trespass law and the Fourth Amendment), architecture (the difficulty of searching for evidence of behavior in public space) and the market (the high cost of monitoring behavior in public space). One solution to this issue is for lawmakers to extend “ownership” of the information obtained from a customer’s cell phone – including location data and call, text and email logs – to said customer and requiring law enforcement to obtain the owner's consent or warrants for any use of this data. Additionally, because the cell companies are collecting and storing the data, the law could allow companies to use this data for certain internal business purposes, such as marketing and other uses to be determined through consultation with industry representatives, but to require the customer’s consent for any transfer of that data to an outside party.

As previously stated, the issue here involves balancing individual privacy protection with public safety (a balance that has recently shifted away from protecting privacy) while also balancing the privacy interests of customers with the business interests of companies in regard to cell phone data. In the current situation, law enforcement’s access to this data varies widely and is open to abuse, while the customer’s rights are also varying and unclear. Meanwhile, businesses appear to have free reign to use the data while customer’s have no control over its use.

According to Lessig (2006), the most effective regulatory solutions often address multiple constraints at once. Moreover, he argues, a change in one constraint can have effects on other constraints or even lead to reactive changes in other constraints. While the suggested solution appears to only address one constraint (law), the changes in the law outlined here are also meant to try and influence the other regulatory constraints and to anticipate potential reactions to the changes in an attempt to balance the various ideals and interests of affected parties, as discussed below.

The main impetus of the proposed solution is to try and restore the previous balance between individual privacy and public safety that existed before changes in the communications architecture weakened traditional privacy protections. It does so by using the law to extend ownership of cell phone data to the customer, while allowing law enforcement to access this data through the same process that they would follow to access paper files stored in an individual’s home. Law enforcement agents might argue that the proposed law’s warrant requirement will unduly constrain their behavior, hampering their ability to promote public safety, especially in emergency situations. Consider the alternative of maintaining the status quo, however.

If law enforcement continues to use this data unevenly, inconsistently and even inappropriately (or is perceived by the public to be doing so), one could easily see a situation where public pressure could start to mount to limit or outlaw the collection of such data. This could take any number of forms, from demands for laws prohibiting data collection and storage, to a law mandating changes in cell communication architecture that made the routing of calls more anonymous, to pressure from consumers on companies to stop collecting and storing this data. By extending traditional privacy protections to this data in regard to government access, the proposed solution aims to satisfy most individuals that access to their data is subject to the protections of the Fourth Amendment. Doing so intends to influence a majority of citizens to hopefully agree that law enforcement will only use this data for legitimate public safety concerns so they will not demand more stringent controls that might lead to decreased public safety.

Simply extending ownership of the data to the customer, however, could potentially affect the market constraint on company behavior by taking away the incentive to collect and store such data. Such an outcome could obviously negatively affect public safety since, if the data doesn’t exist, law enforcement cannot access it in appropriate situations. As such, by allowing companies to use the data for legitimate, internal business purposes, the proposed solution aims to keep the market constraint on company behavior relatively stable by maintaining an incentive for companies to collect and store the data. Doing so keeps the balance between individual privacy and public safety from swinging too far in the direction of privacy by hopefully maintaining law enforcement’s ability to access this data when necessary.

References

Bankston, K. (2010, December 15). EFF location privacy victory at third circuit stands, with implications far beyond your cell phone [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/eff-location-privacy-victory-third-circuit-stands

Barnard, A. (2009, July 6). Growing presence in the courtroom: Cellphone data as witness. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/

Cohen, N. (2011, March 26). It’s tracking your every move and you may not even know. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/

Lessig, L. (2006). Code: Version 2.0. New York, NY: Basic Books.

United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (2010). In the matter of the application of the United States of America for an order directing a provider of electronic communication service to disclose records to the government. Philadelphia, PA: United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Retrieved from http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/