18 February 2022

A veritable smorgasbord

I’m not even going to pretend I had time to write anything thoughtful this week [what’s new? Ed.]. So enjoy the links!

Jeremy Paxman is unimpressed at the lack of a proper intro this week. (Image from Asbury & Asbury, https://asburyandasbury.typepad.com/blog/2014/06/mr-paxman-interrogates-the-poets.html)

A few things to pull out:

• Would you like to help mySociety commission some work helping civil tech to tackle problems of accessibility and inclusivity? You have until 4 March to join an Action Lab (aka working group) that will do exactly that. More on the TICTeC Labs project I’m helping with here.
• Speaking of veritable smorgasbords, we’ve got a great line up for the 27th Data Bites — speakers will cover insights from user data, public attitudes towards data and AI, managing knowledge assets and data sharing governance. Sign up here.
• ‘I’m hosting a data game show as part of a major conference’ is not a sentence I expected to ever have to type once, let alone twice — but join me at the Turing’s AI UK for round two.
• You’ll have seen links to Jack Monroe’s work highlighting the impact of inflation on the weekly shop in recent editions. Here’s the latest.
• The Orwell Youth Prize (I’m a trustee of the Orwell Foundation) is currently open for entries. There’s a special introductory event for teachers in early March — details here. The Youth Prize’s Big Brother, the main Orwell Prize, is also currently open for entries for the year’s best political books and journalism.
• Which British thinktank has the best logo? Hours (well, at least 39 minutes) of fun here.
• Wondering if a career in thinktankery and public policy could be for you? Here’s an essential event. (And here’s a previous edition.)
• It’s a year since I wrote a guide for how to do dataviz as a thinktank for Smart Thinking. Any excuse to link to it.
• The great David Spiegelhalter was on Desert Island Discs last week. Here he is making a cameo appearance in a video of one of his choices.
• And thanks if you’ve either suggested something for the new IfG project I’m working on around government data sharing, or filled in the IfG/CIPFA survey about Performance Tracker (or both, you particularly brilliant person, you). There’s still time if you’ve not yet done so.

Have a great weekend
Gavin

Enjoying Warning: Graphic Content?

Tell your friends — forward this email, and they can:

• Subscribe via email
• Follow on Twitter
• Follow on Medium
• View archive on Tumblr

Or:

• Buy me a coffee (thank you!)
• Follow me, Gavin Freeguard, on Twitter
• Visit my website (I’m available for work!)

Today’s links:

Graphic content

Fools Russia in

• How a Ukraine Conflict Could Reshape Europe’s Reliance on Russia* (New York Times)
• Russian Buildup Near Ukraine Features Potent Weapons Systems, Well-Trained Troops* (Wall Street Journal)
• Where Military Forces Are Assembling Around Russia and Ukraine* (Bloomberg)
• Russian gas threat in Europe (Reuters)
• How the UK’s “golden visa” system has favoured Russian and Chinese investors* (New Statesman)

Viral content

• Was Britain smart with Covid, or just lucky? (Sunday Times)
• Did Scotland’s cautious coronavirus approach yield results?* (FT)
• Was Sweden’s Covid-19 policy really successful?* (New Statesman)

Side effects

• Pandemic triggers exodus of older people from UK workforce* (FT)
• Prisons, Water Infrastructure And Broadband: Where States Are Spending Their Pandemic Relief Funding (FiveThirtyEight)
• Inside the anti-vaccine mandate protests disrupting trade (Reuters)

UK politics

• Johnson’s new chief whip has work cut out to tame a party with a taste for rebellion (IfG)
• Social background of Members of Parliament 1979–2019 (Commons Library)
• Boris Johnson’s plan for “high-wage, high-skill” Britain is falling short* (New Statesman)
• Climate backlash* (Tortoise)

US politics

• Democratic donors cross party lines to support anti-Trump Republicans* (FT)
• Are progressive prosecutors to blame for an American homicide wave?* (The Economist)
• America’s Supreme Court confirmations are more arduous than ever* (The Economist)

China

• China makes Olympian effort to cut pollution but remains short of WHO standards* (FT)
• How Nationalism in China Has Dethroned Nike, Adidas* (Bloomberg)

Tonga

• Tonga Volcano Plume Reached the Mesosphere (NASA Earth Observatory)
• TONGA ERUPTION: The perfect storm (Reuters)

Sport

• How to detect nationalism in winter-sport judges* (The Economist)
• Women’s figure skating is underway… (New York Times — article*)
• How the Quad Jump Is Changing Women’s Figure Skating* (New York Times)
• The U.S.-Canada hockey rivalry is almost always gold* (Washington Post)
• Crypto groups take top slots at the Super Bowl* (FT)

Text appeal

• What are the best examples of text-based data visualisation? (Tiziana Alocci)
• What makes writing more readable? (The Pudding)

Everything else

• Do we have your attention? How people focus and live in the modern information environment (King’s College London — summary)
• French election polls: the race for the presidency* (FT)
• Wind groups wrestle with ‘perfect storm’ of supply woes and rising material costs* (FT)
• Investors bought a record share of homes in 2021. See where.* (Washington Post)
• Asked to help, Post readers sent searing evidence about dozens more enslavers in Congress* (Washington Post)
• How sex and race affect academic research* (The Economist)
• Are meditation apps effective?* (The Economist)
• BEST OF THE VISUALISATION WEB… OCTOBER 2021 (Visualising Data)

Meta data

Information health

• ‘Digital and data’ in Health and social care integration: joining up care for people, places and populations (DHSC)
• COPI notices extended from 31 March 2022 to 30 June 2022 (via Owen Boswarva)

AI got ‘rithm

• The rise of AI could be a great British story. But let’s do it the right way (The Observer)
• Realising the potential of algorithmic accountability mechanisms (Ada Lovelace Institute)
• DWP faces legal action to reveal ‘algorithms’ that flag claims of benefit fraud (Mirror)
• Eric Schmidt creates $125mn fund for ‘hard problems’ in AI research* (FT)
• Europe : Analysis of the Proposal for an AI Regulation (Montreal AI Ethics Institute)
• DeepMind Has Trained an AI to Control Nuclear Fusion* (Wired)
• Facial recognition firm Clearview AI tells investors it’s seeking massive expansion beyond law enforcement* (Washington Post)
• AI Is Already Making Moral Choices for Us. Now What? (Nautilus)

UK government

• GDS signs Deloitte for digital identity mobile app (UK Authority)
• National Data Strategy Forum — Workplan 2022 Update (techUK)
• Why any changes to GDPR need to be dynamic and centered on trust (diginomica)
• Data, which direction? How can the Government best reform its data protection regime? (techUK)
• DDaT profession: Government maps out digital accessibility career (Public Technology)
• UK quantum strategy: call for evidence (BEIS)
• Britain’s Arpa is an ideological pet project that might yet succeed* (FT)
• One organisation, two leaders for digital public services in Wales (UK Authority)
• Government tech and transformation schemes hampered by officials’ ‘evasion of responsibility’ — think tank chief (Public Technology)
• Government chief digital officer post on offer for £190k (Public Technology)
• Reshuffle: A new minister for digital government? (Public Technology)
• Boris Johnson’s reshuffle leaves UK government without a minister for corruption (Insider)

Stats the way, aha aha, I like it, aha aha

• Today we release the findings of our survey of MPs, testing their statistical skills (Royal Statistical Society)
• Wrong Number: How much does numeracy really matter for policy-making? (Sam Freedman)
• Statistically Speaking: A new podcast from the Office for National Statistics (ONS)

A farewell to harms

• UK Home Office demands Big Tech block ‘legal but harmful’ posts* (FT)
• California to adopt UK-style child data law in global push against Big Tech* (FT)
• YouTube cashes in with advertisements on Covid misinformation videos* (The Times)

Poll position

• A quick short thread on the changes we are making to our methodology (Opinium)
• How big is Labour’s poll lead really?* (New Statesman)

Big tech

• Inside Facebook’s African Sweatshop (TIME)
• Nick Clegg gets bigger role at Facebook owner Meta (BBC News)
• Google/DeepMind class action ends* (GDR)
• Are the tech giants finally getting their houses in order? (BBC News)
• The metaverse is a new word for an old idea* (MIT Technology Review)

A Russia blood to the head

• ‘Kill Your Commanding Officer’: On the Front Lines of Putin’s Digital War With Ukraine (Politico)
• Ukraine crisis: Is Russia waging an information war? (BBC News)

Share and share alike

• Privacy Preserving Attribution for Advertising (Mozilla)
• Enabling data sharing for social benefit through data trusts (GPAI)
• Assessing risk when sharing data: a guide (ODI)
• I’m increasingly interested in the idea of collaboration policy, as distinct from competition policy (James Plunkett)

Measure for measure

• Drowning in data? Is there a ‘tyranny of metrics’ in education? (HEPI)
• Short thread on managing bureaucracy and incentivising performance (Séb Krier)

Net gains, net losses

• Web3 and why there’s no turning back (James Plunkett)
• Internet Policy in Asia: What’s on the agenda for 2022? (Tony Blair Institute for Global Change)

Open for the best

• A once leading platform for open heritage data from one of the world’s major museum collections, gone (Is the British Museum’s endpoint working?)
• Think tank calls for more transparency from Scots charities (The Ferret)

Everything else

• STATEUP 21 (StateUp)
• Computer languages ranked by their impact on battery length/environment (via Lilian Edwards)
• Seven sustainability trends in location data (RICS)
• The Myth of Tech Exceptionalism (NOEMA)
• Digital technology: guide for union reps (Prospect)
• This morning I was accessing a local Council service, full of vulnerable people, that was hijacked by a commissioner looking for “user-centred feedback” ahead of a new round of procurement and contracting (Keiran Goddard)
• Post Office scandal: Public inquiry to examine wrongful convictions (BBC News)

Opportunities

• APPLY: TICTeC Action Lab #2 (mySociety)
• EVENT: Data Bites #27 (IfG)
• EVENT: How has Covid-19 changed the way government works? Whitehall Monitor 2022 report launch (IfG)
• EVENT: The Future Of The Internet: Is It Open and Free? (Interintellect, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change)
• SURVEY: Analysis in Government Month 2022 (Government Analysis Function)
• AWARD: The Florence Nightingale Award for Excellence in Healthcare Data Analytics (RSS)
• JOB: We’re hiring! Apply to be our big tech reporter (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism)
• FELLOWSHIP: DigitalFootprints: Senior Strategic Fellowship 2022 (ESRC)

And finally…

Valentine’s Day

• #ValentinesDay special (Ipsos MORI)
• It’s Valentine’s Day, so let me remind you that there is one and only one way you should be dating (Nick Jackson)

Everything else

• Worldle
• Made a joke about Al Gore inventing the internet in class today and… (Felisha Jammel)
• Anyone saying they understand what this chart means is lying (Michael Hobbes)
• Data Trap (xkcd)