DSN Bookmarks: Pandemics, Data, and Civic Technology
Welcome to Data Stewards Network (DSN) Bookmarks — a biweekly curation of news, research, and other insights related to the systemic, sustainable, and responsible management of data for public benefit. If you would like to receive our resource curation in your inbox every week, subscribe here. Have an interesting article, report, or initiative worth sharing? Send it to us at datastewards@thegovlab.org
As part of the Call for Action to build the data infrastructure and ecosystem for responding to dynamic societal threats, The GovLab is crowdsourcing a Living Repository of Data Collaboratives in Response to COVID-19. As of late April 1st, the document features over 100 data collaboratives seeking to address the spread of COVID-19 and its secondary effects. Click the links above to submit your project.
NEWS
The London College of Political Technologists are coordinating crowdsourcing efforts around the Coronavirus Tech Handbook. The resource collects useful tools, websites, and data relating to the pandemic that technologists can use to develop solutions or otherwise inform themselves.
Commission tells carriers to hand over mobile data in coronavirus fight, by Mark Scott, et al at Politico, describes the European Commission’s efforts to gain access to telecom data to inform COVID-19 response.
Gian Volpicelli, in Wired, wrote Hidden data is revealing the true scale of the coronavirus outbreak, discussing how “satellite images, internet speed, and traffic information reveal what governments won’t” about COVID-19.
In the New York Times, Paul Mozur, Raymond Zhong and Aaron Krolik look at the Alipay Health Code smartphone app, the color-coded tool used by the government to respond to coronavirus. They note the app shares information with police and has caused local unease due to a lack of transparency in how it operates.
In Foreign Affairs, Jaron Lanier and E. Glen Weyl argued that Civic Technology Can Help Stop a Pandemic, making a case for technological intervention to stop the COVID-19 pandemic.
ANALYSIS
Coronavirus: seven ways collective intelligence is tackling the pandemic, by Aleks Berditchevskaia and Kathy Peach in The Conversation, suggests that digital technology is “augmenting human intelligence with machine intelligence, and helping us to generate new insights from novel sources of data” and provide seven ways of tackling COVID-19 pandemic.
Niam Yaraghi at Brookings describes how The US lacks health information technologies to stop COVID-19 epidemic, including the legal and data infrastructure necessary to unlock the value of untraditional data sources for healthcare provision.
On LinkedIn, Data Stewards Network member Richard Benjamins of Telefonica argues that, “We can do better with Big Data for Social Good, and we should!”
A new World Economic Forum report considers how to ramp up Global Data Access for Solving Rare Disease, including through the creation of a federated data system to “aggregate remote data sets for querying while still allowing for localized, data control and security.”
Governments could track COVID-19 lockdowns through social media posts, by Alfred Ng in C-NET, discusses how social media data “could be used by companies and governments to help maintain quarantines during the coronavirus outbreak.”
In Stat News, Rebecca Robbins asks: Can location data from smartphones help slow the spread of coronavirus?, with a focus on Facebook’s collaboration with academic and nonprofit researchers.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
COVID-19 outbreak response: first assessment of mobility changes in Italy following lockdown, a paper by Emanuele Pepe, et al and released through the COVID-19 Mobility Monitoring project, is the result of a collaboration between the ISI Foundation, Cuebiq, and University of Turin aimed at determining the “near real-time the effects of public health policies on the mobility patterns and social mixing in Italy.”
BBVA Research released Monitoring Coronavirus outbreak using Big Data, a new study capturing public perceptions on issues such as the policy response to the pandemic and its likely economic impacts. The study is based on the analysis of data on “use of the media, social networks and Google searches.”
Data Stewards Network member Leo Ferres, at Data Science Institute, analyzed anonymous cellphone data and published the insights of mobility in Santiago, Chile following actions taken to slow down COVID-19. The analysis confirms a decrease in activity in commercial places and an increase of activity in residential places.
In the second report from the COVID-19 Mobility Monitoring project, data scientists at the ISI Foundation and University of Turin analyzed data from the location intelligence company Cuebiq to “assess the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions like mobility restrictions and social distancing.” The graph below represents the average degree of proximity between individuals in three Italian regions since the start of February. The red vertical lines represent three major governmental interventions:
- “February 25, 2020: school closure and mobility restrictions imposed on Lombardy, Veneto, Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna, Liguria and Friuli.
- March 8, 2020: lockdown of the Lombardy region and additional provinces in Piedmont, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Marche.
- March 12, 2020: national lockdown.”
DATA RESPONSIBILITY
The Global Privacy Assembly released a statement from its executive committee on the current COVID-19 pandemic. It notes its support for authorities to be able to communicate directly with people and for government bodies to share information necessary for pandemic response. The GPA is also compiling resources to support data protection in these activities.
The European Data Protection Board released a Statement on the processing of personal data in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak, which clarifies that, “Data protection rules (such as GDPR) do not hinder measures taken in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic,” though analyses of “electronic communication data” are subject to additional rules.
In the Washington Post, Craig Timberg and Drew Harwell report on privacy concerns associated with Government efforts to track virus through phone location data.
Kelly Servick’s Cellphone tracking could help stem the spread of coronavirus. Is privacy the price? in Science Magazine considers potential benefits and privacy risks of COVID-19 contact tracing.
In Privacy and Pandemics at the Bertelsmann Foundation blog, Emily Benson suggests a cautious approach to combatting the pandemic as it relates to undermining existing privacy laws.
You can also find additional resources related to data stewardship and data collaboration here.
