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Initiated by Amber van den Bos, sociologist - went into IT; then Balance Score Card; then Data Warehouse, all which is now known as Data Science (refers to them as "labels in motion"). Today, Amber is a self-named "data plumber".
Amber has a dream: a true democracy, a society in which we are all grown-ups who make decisions, and are accountable for our decisions. But there is a problem: Amber knows how to deal with information, can analyze it, knows the gaps in the information, however she herself feels resistance in asking governments & digging into information when looking at government documents.
Why is it, that Amber, as a highly-skilled person, feels this way? And more importantly, how do the "near-drop-outs", the rest of the society feel about this information overload?
These "not-so-high-skilled" people are asked to "look here, look there" and don't trust themselves to speak up, so they shut up! The scenario is that these people drop out of society, look to people like Amber, and expect her (and "us") to make the decisions. Is this what we want for our society? Citizens are dropping out of democracy?
Choosing a School in the NL, Example
Arne speaks of the example of chosing schools; and how digital literacy has made us less equal than we used to be.
"i pick this school"
"a second website of the ratings"
--> why not create a platform that incorporates both? Because some people choose not to choose!
People have to make a choice - do we really want everyone to profit from the access to information? (Use case)
Data Communication
Peter works in building tools for communicating data, where he
- evaluates the effect of this data
- understands that people don't know the source of where to find data
- finds it important, that transparency is communication - the first step. Second step: get the communication right.
However, oftentimes, people don't even know how to formulate the question of "what they are looking for" - a skill people where lacking in (Peter Millenaar's example)
The problem is: a data specialist can visualize the data, but even the managers sometimes don't understand
It is difficulty is that they don't understand that other people don't understand
Interesting fact: In the NL, 10% are functionally illiterate - these individuals can't even read government documents; However, governments and information needs to be accessible to 100% of the population.
Jussi, Finland Open Data - 17 years of government data expertise
implements of making information so accessible like Google
He suggests to add stories - the specialist looks at the data
Push versus pull
Rob works for the city of Amsterdam
- make it available for the government
Rob:
Laziness matters; people prefer comfort over lengthy texts
Isn't it scary, that Google has 10% of search results "prepared"
If no one can check and hold accountable, what is going
Health insurance Example
In the NL, there used to be only one Health insurance. Now there are 60 options; run by about 4 companies
How about giving lesser options? Will people trust the algorithm of lesser choice?
Solution: A trustworthy, non commercial and transparent party - access to the information.
Against a system that is opt-in. Kill the default.
Summary
- Motivation
- Access to information
- Follow Up action
Actions: look into use case