6 May 2022

Short and sweet

This week’s list of links is again a bit shorter (/more manageable) than usual thanks to the bank holiday in the UK — said bank holiday also making this week feel much busier as I had various events to chair.

The audience at this week’s Data Bites anticipating my intro as they realised it was Star Wars Day (alt: GIF with Luke Skywalker telling Chewbacca he has a very bad feeling about this)

So I’ll keep the intro short as well:

• Catch up on this week’s cyber/defence Data Bites special, complete with Star Wars Day references — and put Wednesday 8 June in your diary for the next one
• I enjoyed co-chairing the Royal Statistical Society’s latest Covid-19 evidence session, on the statistical resources available to government(s) in the UK — video to follow, but here’s a thread from RSS CEO, Stian Westlake
• Our latest mySociety TICTeC Labs Civic Tech Surgery, where we discuss some common challenges facing the global civic tech community and commission a solution, will be on storytelling and reach and is happening next Thursday
• ‘A 100% bar chart would have made this point even more clearly’ — the latest in
  a series
• Plug to buy tickets to the New Tottenham Singers’ 10th anniversary concert
  on 18 June — and please do donate to help us keep going if you can’t make it.

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!)

And:

• Check out (and add to) this list of other data-related newsletters and podcasts (etc)

Today’s links:

Graphic content

Ukraine

• Which countries have pledged the most support to Ukraine?* (The Economist)
• Ukraine war: Russia accused of targeting hospitals in ‘terror bombing’ campaign (Sky News)
• Satellite internet is a hot new commodity in Ukraine* (The Economist)
• Why weapons crucial to the war in Ukraine are in short supply* (The Economist)
• The war in Ukraine has caused a labour crunch on Britain’s farms* (The Economist)

A Roe back on rights

• Majority of women ages 15 to 44 would face new post-Roe abortion limits* (Washington Post)
• Religion, not gender, is the best predictor of views on abortion* (The Economist)
• Lack of abortion access will set US women back, economists warn* (FT from 2021)
• A Supreme Court leak portends tighter abortion laws in America* (The Economist)
• Repeal of Roe risks exacerbating the US’s most shameful statistic* (FT)
• How access to abortion changes if Roe v. Wade is overturned (Reuters)
• Supreme Court Could Jeopardize Abortion Access for 36 Million People* (Bloomberg)
• Where Abortion Could Be Banned Without Roe v. Wade* (New York Times)
• What Americans Really Think About Abortion (FiveThirtyEight from 2021)
• States Aren’t Waiting For The Supreme Court To Rule On Abortion (FiveThirtyEight)
• Where State Abortion Laws Stand if Roe v. Wade Is Overturned* (Wall Street Journal)
• Threat to abortion is just the beginning of the assault on rights* (New Statesman)

Viral content, side effects

• UK accused of leaving Covid immunocompromised ‘out to dry’* (FT)
• COVID-19: The return of city life after coronavirus rules — new data reveals who is moving and where in England (Sky News)
• How Covid-19 Transformed the U.S. Economy* (Bloomberg)
• How the pandemic has changed American homebuyers’ preferences* (The Economist)

#LocalElections2022

• The 2022 local elections liveblog and Mapping the local election results across Great Britain (New Statesman)
• Election results: Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales (BBC News)
• Elections 2022: live council results for England, Scotland and Wales (The Guardian)
• RESULTS CENTRE (Sky News)
• Boris Johnson braced for Lib Dem assault on Tory ‘blue wall’* (FT)
• UK council wards and the Index of Multiple Deprivation (Colin Angus)
• Blackpool South took a gamble on the Tories. Has it paid off?* (New Statesman)

UK

• Neighbourhood services under strain: How a decade of cuts and rising demand for social care affected local services (IfG)
• A new quarterly issues tracker, showing the most important issue in all 632 GB constituencies (Survation and Royal Holloway, University of London via Chris Hanretty)
• How Right to Buy fuelled the housing crisis* (New Statesman)
• UK-German trade falls sharply since Brexit vote, data show* (FT)

US

• Inside the Apocalyptic Worldview of ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’* (New York Times)
• Peter Thiel re-emerges as political force by bankrolling Trump-friendly Senate bids* (FT)

Climate of fear

• Record India heatwave raises power cut fears* (FT)
• California fires threaten unbuilt housing (Reuters)
• DEVOURING THE RAINFOREST* (Washington Post)
• addresspollution.org
• How polluted is your local area? (New Statesman)
• Dirty air affects 97% of UK homes, data shows (The Guardian)

Everything else

• IN THE DARK: Seven years, 60 countries, 935 internet shutdowns — How authoritarian regimes found an off switch for dissent. (Rest of World)
• The global stagflation shock of 2022: how bad could it get?* (FT)
• Big Money Backs Tiny Loans That Lead to Debt, Despair and Even Suicide* (Bloomberg)
• A workshop student asked me for places to go to see collections of great data viz (Stephanie Evergreen)

Meta data

Keep the FOIA burning

• Michael Gove smeared us. Now we have been vindicated by an official inquiry (openDemocracy)
• ‘Substandard’: MPs tell Cabinet Office to ‘drive cultural shift’ on freedom of information (Civil Service World)
• PACAC makes the positive case for FOI, but there is more work to do (mySociety)

Bills, bills, bills

• UK ministers ditch plans to empower tech regulator* (FT)
• Why the UK will pay for its delay over Big Tech* (FT)
• UK watchdog will have power to impose huge fines on big tech firms (The Guardian)
• Sleepwalking into censorship: a reply to Nadine Dorries* (The Spectator)

Data: this time it’s personal

• Who cares what the public think? UK public attitudes to regulating data and data-driven technologies (Ada Lovelace Institute — thread, roundtable write-up)
• Radical plans to transform NHS drawn up at drug firms and No 10 roundtable (The Guardian)
• Why oligarchs love European data-protection laws* (1843)
• Policymakers need data about us despite privacy fears (The Guardian)
• Honey, let’s track the kids: the rise of parental surveillance (The Observer)
• Data Broker Is Selling Location Data of People Who Visit Abortion Clinics (Motherboard)

AI got ‘rithm

• Welcome to techUK’s AI week 2022 (techUK)
• It’s Time to Open the Black Box of Social Media (Scientific American)
• To make AI fair, here’s what we must learn to do (Nature)

UK government

• What is Technology Innovation exploration and why do we do it? (Defra digital, data and technology)
• UKHSA plans nationwide ‘surveillance system’ for antibiotic resistance (Public Technology)
• Cost-of-living crisis: ONS to explore web scraping data to track supermarket prices (Public Technology)
• GOV.UK Verify Sign up contract extension (Cabinet Office statement to UK Parliament)
• Government says One Login programme on track (UKAuthority)
• Rishi Sunak reportedly blocked from higher benefit rise by ageing IT system (The Guardian)
• Priti Patel faces first legal challenges as Rwanda refugee plan branded ‘immoral’ (Mirror)
• I’m stepping down as National Director for Digital Transformation @NHSEngland today (Matthew Gould)
• Time for a change: amending the Code of Practice to allow alternative release times for official statistics (Office for Statistics Regulation)

Everything else

• Even if you use the @ElectoralCommUK you’ll be using Democracy Club data (Mevan Babakar)
• Open banking and Australia’s data-sharing regime: six lessons for Europe (LSE Business Review)
• Elon Musk Is Right That Twitter Should Follow the First Amendment (The Atlantic — although…)
• The Genres of Data Stories (Elevate)
• #data people, I need you! I am looking for a template/canvas about setting data governance for a data project. Does anyone know of a good one and can save me time from creating one? (Mor Rubinstein)
• Justice Committee publishes new report on court capacity recommending urgent action on data collection (The Legal Education Foundation)

Opportunities

• CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Market demand for data assurance products and services (ODI)
• APPOINTMENT: Non-Executive Board Member (ICO)
• JOB: Managing Director, Research and Information & House of Commons Librarian (House of Commons)
• JOB: Deputy Director GOV.UK User Experience and Platform (GDS)
• JOB: Deputy Director Identity Delivery (GDS)
• JOB: Senior Data Scientist for Levelling Up (DLUHC)
• JOB: Senior Data Engineer for Levelling Up (DLUHC)
• JOB: Senior Data Journalist (ONS)
• JOB: Senior Data Scientist (ONS)
• JOB: Lead Analyst (ONS)
• JOB: Data Analyst (Defra)
• JOB: Senior Programme Manager — Data and Digitalisation (Ofgem)
• JOB: Senior Researcher (Health and COVID-19 technologies) — maternity leave cover (Ada Lovelace Institute)

And finally…

• One Hundred Thousand Suns: Rohini Devasher (ODI)
• We found this cool study about randomness that we wanted to show you. (The Pudding)
• Happy #StarWarsDay! (YouGov)