4 November 2022

It’s quizness time

Yes, the sparkly gold jacket is out of the wardrobe. The contestants — Full Fact’s Andy Dudfield and Tony Blair Institute for Global Change’s Kirsty Innes — are ready (and regretting their life choices). The questions have (pretty much) been written…

Title sequins: It’s nearly time for episode 3 of The Data Game [photo of gold sequin jacket]

Join me at the ODI Summit next Tuesday, 8 November, for episode 3 of The Data Game, the world’s first and best (and only) data gameshow. There is of course lots of other exciting stuff going on at the summit. And you can watch episode 1 (from the 2021 ODI Summit) and episode 2 (from the Alan Turing Institute’s AIUK 2022) in the meantime.

A few other things:

• I say this every month but… we had a great Data Bites this Wednesday, hearing about emerging risks and resilience from Meta, Cabinet Office, the ONS Data Science Campus and Ordnance Survey. Catch up on video and audio here, and live tweets here.
• My next big event after the ODI Summit will be the Think Data for Government conference — full details here.
• It looks like we have new data and digital ministers after the latest reshuffle — Jeremy Quin is (back) in charge at Cabinet Office, while Michelle Donelan and Julia Lopez stay and Paul Scully joins the data/digital team at DCMS.

Have a good weekend
Gavin

Enjoying Warning: Graphic Content?

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Today’s links:

Graphic content

A feast for the Census

• Census maps (ONS — and thread)
• Population and household estimates, England and Wales: Census 2021, unrounded data (ONS)
• Household and resident characteristics, England and Wales: Census 2021 (ONS)
• International migration, England and Wales: Census 2021 (ONS)
• One in six people living in England and Wales born outside UK, census reveals (The Guardian)
• Voices of our ageing population: Living longer lives (ONS)

Cost of living

• Cost of living: Out of region placements for homeless and at-risk households double in three years (Sky News)
• A quarter of Britons are using credit cards for essentials while 9 in 10 worry about cost of living for the country as a whole (Ipsos)
• European consumers cut back on discretionary spending* (FT)
• How bad will Britain’s recession be?* (The Economist)
• Inflation is too high when the public notices it* (The Economist)

UK

• How does Labour win a majority? (Sunday Times)
• Our first Cabinet League Table of the Sunak premiership. Braverman is fifth from bottom. (ConservativeHome)
• Now that Sunak is PM, how do he and Starmer compare in the eyes of the public? (YouGov)
• Westminster turmoil propels an army of ‘Spads’ into big business* (Sunday Times)
• You’re not getting old; prime ministers really are getting greener (The Economist)
• Mind the (credibility) gap: Autumn Statement preview (Resolution Foundation — and more)
• Jeremy Hunt’s options for saving £50bn* (FT)
• The UK has one of the lowest rates of asylum applications in Europe* (New Statesman)
• UK car production has plummeted* (New Statesman)
• The State of the State 2022–23: from the pandemic to a cost of living crisis (Reform)
• UK trade tracker: August 2022 (UK in a Changing Europe)
• Undersea Britain: How cables and pipelines connect us to the world — and leave us vulnerable (Sunday Times)

Data, digital, tech

• Public attitudes to data and AI: Tracker survey (Wave 2) (CDEI)
• UK Consumer Digital Index 2022 (Lloyd’s)
• How will Elon Musk shape Twitter?* (The Economist)

Ukraine

• Ukraine war: Cost-of-living crisis could erode public support for sanctions against Russia (Sky News)
• How Ukrainians Are Protecting Their Centuries-Old Culture From Putin’s Invasion (Bloomberg)
• How Russia Pays for War (New York Times)

US

• Election forecast (FiveThirtyEight)
• America’s 2022 midterm elections* (The Economist)
• Who will win the US House and Senate?* (New Statesman)
• Abortion, marijuana, voting: The big issues in state ballot measures in 2022 (Washington Post)
• How Arizona became ground zero for election deniers* (FT)
• Candidates Keep Pushing Election Denial Online — Because It Works (Bloomberg)
• Abortions in Ohio decline post-Dobbs (Axios)
• A Surge of Overseas Abortion Pills Blunted the Effects of State Abortion Bans (New York Times)

Energy and environment

• Here are a few key @OurWorldInData resources that will hopefully help you understand global emissions, energy and climate (Our World in Data)
• We have never observed warmth like this in Europe so late in the year (Scott Duncan)
• Global carbon emissions tracker 2022: How do countries compare?* (New Statesman)
• The cost of getting South Africa to stop using coal* (FT)
• Mild autumn weather has sent European gas prices plummeting* (The Economist)

Everywhere else

• How a night of Halloween revelry turned to disaster in South Korea (Reuters)
• Brazil Election Live Results (Bloomberg)
• Brazil election 2022: live results as Lula beats Bolsonaro to return as president (The Guardian)
• Lula’s election as Brazilian president brings hope for the Amazon* (New Statesman)
• You might think deglobalisation has something to do with reducing inequality, but the evidence says otherwise (FT)
• Australia’s richer areas more likely to have people working from home in pandemic, analysis finds (The Guardian)
• House prices are falling across the world* (New Statesman)

#dataviz

• Announcing the 2022 IIB Awards Shortlist (Information is Beautiful Awards)
• #30DayMapChallenge
• There are some v good recommendations to @UKGSS about improved communications and importantly on dashboards — the good and the bad (Darren Waters)

Meta data

Deeply DPDIB

• New consultation could delay UK’s post-Brexit data laws (Tech Monitor)
• The risk of losing our EU data adequacy agreement is real (Computer Weekly)

A farewell to harms

• Online Safety Bill to return with watered down rules on ‘legal but harmful’ content after free speech backlash (i)
• Online Harms Update (Carnegie UK)
• What has happened to the Online Safety Bill? (BBC Radio 4 Today)
• Freedom of Expression (Communications and Digital Committee Report) (House of Lords)

UK government

• Oversight of digital government changes hands again as Quin appointed at Cabinet Office (Public Technology)
• An ideas accelerator: how the UK’s Data Challenge built two new public services (Global Government Forum)
• Future-ready public services: Developing capacity and resilience in the Civil Service (Henley Business School)
• UKCloud in liquidation: Troubled public sector cloud provider hit with winding up order (Computer Weekly)
• How our new data strategy will support the UK economy (HM Land Registry)
• Interview: Deputy National Statistician on the future of census data (Government Transformation Magazine)
• Energy Price Guarantee: Schedule 5 in the scheme documents provides further detail on Government collection of meter data and other personal data (via Owen Boswarva)
• I’m coming up to 1.5 years working at the science-policy interface for the UK Civil Service. What have I learnt about using evidence to inform policy? (Dr Niki Rust)

Health and care

• Public services in a digital future (Toby Nangle)
• ‘Contentious’ US tech firm to harvest patient data in NHSE waiting list push* (HSJ)
• Lessons learned for health and social care statistics from the COVID-19 pandemic: 2022 update (OSR)
• The UK Health Camp Unconference 2022 (Public Digital)

Several more times unto the breach, dear friends

• Cab sec urged to investigate if Braverman email breach broke insider-trading law (Civil Service World)
• Ministers creating ‘wild west’ conditions with use of personal phones (The Guardian)
• Royal Mail data breach sees customer information shared with other users (Tech Monitor)

Musk we?

• Welcome to hell, Elon (The Verge)
• Elon Musk’s Twitter Will Be Chaos* (Wired)
• The twisty, drama-filled Elon Musk-Twitter saga: a timeline (The Guardian)
• Musk is right: we do need a digital town square* (FT)
• Elon Musk doesn’t know what it takes to make a digital town square* (MIT Technology Review)
• Twitter’s problems: a roundup (Noahpinion)
• ‘Mischief and delay’: How Musk and Twitter finally sealed the deal* (FT)
• From Musk to Brussels: three leading experts on the future of free speech online (Reuters Institute)
• ELON MUSK’S DISASTROUS WEEKEND ON TWITTER* (The Atlantic)
• These two tweets are next to one another in my favourites, and I think together they do a good job of pointing to what might come next (via Rachel Coldicutt)
• Twitter verification is the line between order and chaos (The Verge)
• Elon Musk tweets misinformation about Paul Pelosi (Axios)

Big tech

• Are We Living Under ‘Technofeudalism’?* (New York Magazine)
• Facebook probably has your phone number, even if you never shared it. Now it has a secret tool to let you delete it.* (Insider)
• Uber hopes to hail new era of stability after a wild 10-year ride (The Observer)
• Ways to think about a metaverse (Benedict Evans)
• How Facebook and TikTok are helping push Stop the Steal in Brazil* (Washington Post)

AI got ‘rithm

• AI experts question tech industry’s ethical commitments (Computer Weekly)
• Police use of live facial recognition “unethical” and possibly illegal (Tech Monitor)
• AI-generated art sparks furious backlash from Japan’s anime community (Rest of World)

Net gains and losses

• Can a new form of cryptography solve the internet’s privacy problem? (The Observer)
• The UK terror survivors tracked down by ‘disaster trolls’ (BBC News)
• Wikidata is turning 10! (Wikidata)

Everything else

• Our first strategy is released (Open Data Manchester)
• ESRC Digital Good Network
• The Building Blocks to Data Sharing (PwC)
• Our work supported by @boell_eu on diverging #EU & #UK regulatory approaches on #dataprotection #contentmoderation & #competition (Open Rights Group)
• Our #FutureOfBritain platform argues that technology should be at the centre of solving Britain’s challenges (Tony Blair Institute for Global Change)
• The #Data4Covid19 Review (The GovLab)
• Innovation in Ukraine: Building resilience through digital strength (PUBLIC, GovTech Summit)
• Inside the BBC reckoning over its economic coverage* (New Statesman)

Opportunities

• Call for Evidence launched to identify geospatial opportunities (Geospatial Commission)
• EVENT: SIGN UP! Help renew the UK Open Government Network (Involve, Open Government Network)
• EVENT: Web3 and communities at risk: Myths and problems with current experiments (Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy)
• DWP relaunches £200k bid to attract CDIO (Public Technology)
• JOB: Data Architect/Scientist (Grade 6) (10 Downing Street/Cabinet Office)
• JOB: Head of Technology (Centre for Digital Public Services)

And finally…

• Hallowe’en… (@BadDataTakes)
• I think I’ve identified a possible cause for the apparent jump in inflation in Northern Ireland compared with Great Britain in April 2022 (Peter Donaghy)
• Magnetic north, true north and grid north align over Great Britain for the first time in history (Ordnance Survey)
• A few years back I stood outside Wells Cathedral for a full day and photographed the impact of the light on the front facade (Andy Marshall)