Exploring Open Charity Data with Nominet Trust
[Summary: notes from a pilot one-day working on open data opportunities in third-sector organisations]
On Friday I spent the day with Nominet Trust for the second of a series of charity ‘Open Data Days’ exploring how charities can engage with the rapidly growing and evolving world of open data. The goal of these hands-on workshops is to spend just one working day looking at what open data might have to offer to a particular organisation and, via some hands-on prototyping and skill-sharing, to develop an idea of the opportunities and challenges that the charity needs to explore to engage more with open data.
The results of ten open data days will be presented at a Nominet Trust, NCVO and Big Lottery Fund conference later in the year, but for now, here’s a quick run-down / brain-dump of some of the things explored with the Nominet Trust team.
What is Open Data anyway?
Open data means many different things to different people – so it made sense to start the day looking at different ways of understanding open data, and identifying the ideas of open data that chimed most with Ed and Kieron from the Nominet Trust Team.
The presentation below runs through five different perspectives on open data, from understanding open data as a set of policies and practices, to looking at how open data can be seen as a political movement or a movement to build foundations of collaboration on the web.
Reflecting on the slides with Ed and Kieron highlighted that the best route into exploring open data for Nominet Trust was looking at the idea that ‘open data is what open data does’ which helped us to set the focus for the day on exploring practical ways to use open data in a few different contexts. However, a lot of the uses of open data we went on to explore also chime in with the idea of a technical and cultural change that allows people to perform their own analysis, rather than just taking presentations of statistics and data at face value.
Mapping opportunities for open data
Even in a small charity there are many different places open data could have an impact. With Nominet Trust we looked at a number of areas where data is in use already:
- Informing calls for proposals – Nominet Trust invite grant applications for ideas that use technology for disruptive innovation in a number of thematic areas, with two main thematic areas of focus live at any one time. New thematic areas of focus are informed by ‘State of the Art’ review reports. Looking at one of these it quickly becomes clear these are data-packed resources, but that the data, analysis and presentation are all smushed together.
- Throughout the grant process – Nominet Trust are working not only to fund innovative projects, but also to broker connections between projects and to help knowledge and learning flow between funded projects. Grant applications are made online, and right now, details of successful applicants are published on the Trust’s websites. A database of grant investment is used to keep track of ongoing projects.
- Evaluation - the Trust are currently looking at new approaches to evaluating projects, and identifying ways to make sure evaluation contributes not only to an organisations own reflections on a project, but also to wider learning about effective responses to key social issues.
With these three areas of data focus, we turned to identify three data wishes to guide the rest of the open data day. These were:
- Being able to find the data we need when we need it
- Creating actionable tools that can be embedded in different parts of the grant process - and doing this with open platforms that allow the Nominet Trust team to tweak and adapt these tools.
- Improving evaluation – with better data in, and better day out
Pilots, prototypes and playing with data
The next part of our Open Data Day was to roll up our sleeves and to try some rapid experiments with a wide range of different open data tools and platforms. Here are some the experiments we tried:
Searching for data
We imagined a grant application looking at ways to provide support to young people not in education, employment or training in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and set the challenge of finding data that could support the application, or that could support evaluation of it. Using the Open Data Cook Book guide to sourcing data, Ed and Keiron set off to track down relevant datasets, eventually arriving at a series of spreadsheets on education stats in London on the London Skills and Employment Observatory website via the London Datastore portal. Digging into the spreadsheets allowed the team to put claims that could be made about levels of education and employment exclusion in RBKC in context, looking at the difference interpretations that might be drawn from claims made about trends and percentages, and claims about absolute numbers of young people affected.
Learning: The data is out there; and having access to the raw data makes it possible to fact-check claims that might be made in grant applications. But, the data still needs a lot of interpretation, and much of the ‘open data’ is hidden away in spreadsheets.
Publishing open data
Most websites are essentially databases of content with a template to present them to human readers. However, it’s often possible to make the ‘raw data’ underlying the website available as more structured, standardised open data. The Nominet Trust website runs on Drupal and includes a content type for projects awarded funding which includes details of the project, it’s website address, and the funding awarded.
Using a demonstration Drupal website we explored how the Drupal Views and the Views Bonus Pack open source modules it was easy to create a ‘CSV’ open data download of information in the website.
The sorts of ‘projects funded’ open data this would make available from Nominet Trust might be of interest to sites like OpenlyLocal.com which are aggregating details of funding to many different organisations.
Learning: You can become an open data publisher very easily, and by hooking into existing places where ‘datasets’ are kept, keeping your open data up-to-date is simple.
Mashing-up datasets
Because open datasets are often provided in standardised forms, and the licenses under which data is published allow flexible re-use of the data, it becomes easy to mash-up different datasets, generating new insights by combining different sources.
We explored a number of mash-up tools. Firstly, we looked at using Google Spreadsheets and Yahoo Pipes to filter a dataset ready to combine it with other data. The Open Data Cook Book has a recipe that involves scraping data with Google Spreadsheets, and a Yahoo Pipes recipe on combing datasets.
Then we turned to the open data powertool that is Google Refine. Whilst Refine runs in a web browser, it is software you install on your own computer, and it keeps the data on your machine until you publish it – making a good tool for a charity to use to experiment with their own data, before deciding whether it will be published as open data or not.
We started by using Google Refine to explore data from OpenCharities.org - taking a list of all the charities with the word ‘Internet’ in their description that had been exported from the site, and using the ‘Facets’ feature (and a Word Facet) in Google Refine to look at the other terms they used in their descriptions. Then we turned to a simple dataset of organisations funded by Nominet Trust, and explored how by using API access to OpenlyLocal.com’s spending dataset we could get Google Refine to fetch details of which Nominet Trust funded organisations had also recieved money from particular local authorities or big funders like Big Lottery Fund and the Arts Council. This got a bit technical, so a step-by-step How To will have to wait – but the result was an interesting indication of some of the organisations that might turn out to be common co-funders of projects with Nominet Trust – a discovery enabled by those funders making their funding information available as open data.
Learning: Mash-ups can generate new insights – although many mash-ups still involve a bit of technical heavy-lifting and it can take some time to really explore all the possibilities.
Open data for evaluation
Open data can be both an input and an output of evaluation. We looked at a simple approach using Google Spreadsheets to help a funder create evaluation online evaluation tools for funded projects.
With a Google Docs account, we looked at creating a new ‘Form’. Google Forms are easy to create, and let you design a set of simple survey elements that a project can fill in online, with the results going directly into an online Google Spreadsheet. In the resulting spreadsheet, we added an extra tab for ‘Baseline Data’, and exploring how the =ImportData() formula in Google Spreadsheet can be used to pull in CSV files of open data from a third party, keeping a sheet of baseline data up-to-date. Finally, we looked at the ‘Publish as a Web Page’ feature of Google Spreadsheets which makes it possible to provide a simple CSV file output from a particular sheet.
In this way, we saw that a funder could create an evaluation form template for projects in a Google Form/Spreadsheet, and with shared access to this spreadsheet, could help funded projects to structure their evaluations in ways that helped cross-project comparison. By using formulae to move a particular sub-set of the data to a new sheet in the Spreadsheet, and then using the ‘Publish as a Web Page’ feature, non-private information could be directly published as open data from here.
Learning: Open data can be both an input to, and an output from, evaluation.
Embeddable tools and widgets
Working with open data allows you to present one interpretation or analysis of some data, but also allow users of your website or resources to dig more deeply into the data and find their own angles, interpretations, or specific facts.
When you add a ‘Gadget’ chart to a Google Spreadsheet of data you can often turn it into a widget to embed in a third party website. Using some of the interactive gadgets allows you to make data available in more engaging ways.
Platforms like IBM’s Many Eyes also let you create interactive graphs that users can explore.
Sometimes, interactive widgets might already be available, as in the case of Interactive Population pyramids from ONS. The Nominet Trust state of the art review on Aging and use of the Internet includes a static image of a population pyramid, but many readers could find the interactive version more useful.
Learning: If you have data in a report, or on a web page, you can make it interactive by publishing it as open data, and then using embeddable widgets.
Looking ahead
The Open Data Day ended with a look at some of the different ways to take forward learning from our pilots and prototypes. The possibilities included:
Sooner
- Quick wins: Making funded project data available as structured open data. As this information is already published online, there are not privacy issues with making it available in a more structured format.
- Developing small prototypes taking the very rough proof-of-concept ideas from the Open Data Day on a stage, and using this to inform plans for future developments. Some of the prototypes might be interactive widgets.
- A ‘fact check’ experiment: taking a couple of past grant applications, and using open data resources to fact-check the claims made in those applications. Reflecting on whether this process offers useful insights and how it might form part of future processes.
- Commissioning open data along with research: when Nominet Trust commissions future State of the Art reviews it could include a request for the researcher to prepare a list of relevant open datasets as well, or to publish data for the report as open data.
Later
- Explore open data standards such as the International Aid Transparency Initiative Standard for publishing project data in a more detailed form.
- Building our own widgets and tools: for example, tools to help applicants find relevant open data to support their application, or tools to give trustees detailed information on applicant organisations to help their decision making.
- Building generalisable tools and contributing to the growth of a common resource of software and tools for working with open data, as well as just building things for direct organisational use.
Where next?
This was just the second of a series of Open Data Days supported by Nominet Trust. I’m facilitating one more next month, and there are a team of other consultants working with varied other charities over the coming weeks. So far I’ve been getting a sense of the wide range of possible areas open data can fit into charity work (it feels quite like exploring the ways social media could work for charities did back in 2007/8…), but there’s also much work to be done identifying some of the challenges that charities might face, and sustainable ways to overcome them. Lots more to learn….
Evaluating the Autumn Statement Open Data Measures
[Summary: Is government is meeting the challenge of building an open data infrastructure for the UK? A critical look at the Autumn Statement Open Data Measures.]
For open data advocates, the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement published on Tuesday, underlined how far open data has moved from a small geeks issue, to an increasingly common element in Government policy. The statement itself included a section announcing new data, and renewing the argument that Public Sector Information (PSI) can play a role in both economic growth, and public service standards.
1.125 Making more public sector information available will help catalyse new markets and innovative products and services as well as improving standards and transparency in public services. The Government will open up access to core public datasets on transport, weather and health, including giving individuals access to their online GP records by the end of this Parliament. The Government will provide up to £10 million over five years to establish an Open Data Institute to help industry exploit the opportunities created through release of this data
And accompanying this the Cabinet Office published a paper of Further Detail on Open Data Measures in the Autumn Statement, including an updated on the fate of the proposed Public Data Corporation consulted on earlier in the year. Although this paper includes a number of positive announcements when it comes to the release of new datasets such as detailed transport and train timetable data, the overall document shows that government continues to fudge key reforms to bring the UK’s open data infrastructure into the 21st Century, and displays some worrying (though perhaps unsurprising) signs of open data rhetoric being hijacked to advance non-open personal data sharing projects, and highly political uses of selective open data release.
In order to put forward a constructive critique, let us take the governments intent at face value (the intent to use PSI and open data to promote economic growth, and to improve standards in public services), and then suggest where the Open Data Measures either fall short of this, or where they should otherwise give cause for concern.
A strategic approach to data?
Firstly, let’s consider the particular datasets being made available: there are commitments to provide train and bus timetable information, highways and traffic data, land registry ‘price paid’ data, Met Office weather data and companies house datasets all under some form of open license. However, the commitments to other datasets, such as key ordnance survey mapping data, train ticket price data, and the national address gazetteer are much more limited, with only a limited ‘developers preview’ of the gazetteer being suggested. There appears to be little coherence to what is being made available as open data, nor a clear assessment of how the particular datasets in question will support economic development and public accountability. If we take seriously the idea that open government data provides key elements of infrastructure for both enterprise and civic engagement in a digital economy, then we need a clear strategic approach to build and invest in that infrastructure: focussing attention on the datasets that matter most rather than seeing piecemeal release of data [1].
Clear institutional arrangements and governance?
Secondly, although the much disliked ‘Public Data Corporation’ proposal to integrate the main trading funds and establish a common (and non-open) regime for their data, has disappeared from the Measures, the alternative institutional arrangements right now appear inadequate to meet key goals of releasing infrastructure data to support economic development, and removing the inefficiencies in the current system which has government buying data off itself, reducing usage and limiting innovation.
The Open Data Measures propose the creation of a ‘Public Data Group (PDG)’ to include the trading funds who retain their trading role, selling core data and value-added services, although with a new responsibility to better collaborate and drive efficiency. The responsibility to promote availability of open data is split off to a ‘Data Strategy Board (DSB)’, which, in the current proposal, will receive a subsidy in it’s first year to ‘buy’ data from the PSG for the public, will in future years rely for it’s funding on a proportion of the dividends paid from the PDG. It is notable that the DSB is only responsible for ‘commissioning and purchasing of data for free release’ and not for ‘open’ release (the difference is in the terms of re-use of the data), which may mean in effect the DSB is only able to ‘rent’ data from the PDG, or that any data it is able to release will be a snapshot in time extract of core reference data, not a sustainable move of core reference data into the public domain.
So – in effect whilst the PDC has disappeared, and there is a split between the bodies with an interest in maximising return on data (PDG), and a body increasing supply of public data (DSB) – the body seeking public data will be reliant upon the profitability of the PDG in order to have the funding it needs to secure the release of data that, if properly released in free forms, would likely undermine the current trading revenue model of the PDG. That doesn’t look like the foundation for very independent and effective governance or regulation to open up core reference data!
Furthermore, whilst the proposed terms for the DSB terms state that “Data users from outside the public sector, including representatives of commercial re-users and the Open Data community, will represent at least 30% of the members of DSB”, there are also challenges ahead to ensure data users from civil society interests are represented on the board, including established civil society organisations from beyond the technology-centric element of the open data community (the local authority or government members of the board will not be ‘open data’ people, but simply data people – who want better access to the resources they may already be using; we should be identifying similar actors from civil society to participate – understanding the role of the DSB as one of data governance through the framework of an open data strategy).
Open data as a cloak for personal data projects and political agendas?
Thirdly, and turning to some of the other alarm bells that ring in the Open Data Measures, the first measures in the Cabinet Office’s paper are explicitly not about open data as public data, but are about the restricted sharing of personal medical records with life-science research firms – with the intent of developing this sector of the economy. With a small nod to “identifying specified datasets for open publication and linkage”, the proposals are more centrally concerned with supporting the development of a Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) which will contain interlinked ‘unidentifiable, individual level’ health records, by which I interpret the ability to identify a particular individual with some set of data points recorded on them in primary and secondary care data, without the identity of the person being revealed.
The place of this in open data measures raises a number of questions, such as whether the right constituencies have been consulted on these measures and why such a significant shift in how the NHS may be handing citizens personal data is included in proposals unlikely to be heavily scrutinised by patient groups? In the past, open data policies have been very clear that ‘personal data’ is out of scope – and the confusion here raises risks to public confidence in the open data agenda. Leaving this issue aside for the moment, we also need to critically explore the evidence that the release of detailed health data will “reinforce the UK’s position as a global centre for research and analytics and boost UK life sciences”. In theory, if life science data is released digitally and online, then the firms that can exploit it are not only UK firms – but the return on the release of UK citizens personal data could be gained anywhere in the world where the research skills to work with it exist.
When we look at the other administrative datasets proposed for release in the Measures the politicisation of open data release is evident: Fit Note Data; Universal Credit Data; and Welfare Data (again discussed for ‘linking’ implying we’re not just talking about aggregate statistics) are all proposed for increased release, with specific proposals to “increase their value to industry”. By contrast, no mention of releasing more details on the tax share paid by corporations, where the UK issues arms export licenses, or which organisations are responsible for the most employment law violations. Although the stated aims of the Measures include increasing “transparency and accountability” it would not be unreasonable to read the detail of the measures as very one-sided on this point: and emphasising industry exploitation of data far more than good governance and citizen rights with respect to data.
The blurring of the line between ‘personal data’ and ‘open data’, and the state’s assumption of the right to share personal data for industrial gain should give cause for concern, and highlights the need for build a stronger constituency scrutinising government open data action.
Building capacity to use data?
Fourthly, and perhaps most significantly if we are taking seriously the goal of seeing open data not only lead to economic development, but also to better public services, the measures contain a dearth of funding or support to truly support the sorts of skills development and organisational change that will be needed to have effective use of open data in the UK.
The Measures announce the creation of an Open Data Institute, with the possibility of £10m match funding over 5 years, to “help business exploit the opportunities created by release of public data” which does have the potential to address much needed research to the gap in understanding and practice on how to build sustainable enterprise with open data. However, beyond this, there is little in the measures to foster the development of data skills more widely in government, in the economy and in civil society.
We know that open data alone is not enough to drive innovation: it’s a raw material to be combined with others in an information economy and information society. There are significant skills development needs to equip the UK to make the most of open data – and the Measures fall short on meeting that challenge.
A constructive critique?
Many of the detailed measures from the Autumn Statement are still draft – subject to further consultation. As a package, it’s not one to be accepted or rejected out of hand. Rather – there is a need for continued engagement by a broad constituency, including members of the broad based ‘open data community’ to address the measures one-by-one as government works to fill in the details over coming months.
Footnotes
[1] An open data infrastructure: The idea of open data as digital infrastructure for the nation has a number of useful consequences. It can help us to develop our thinking about the state’s responsibility with respect to datasets. Just as in the development of our physical infrastructure the state both invested directly in provision of roads and railways, has adopted previously privately created infrastructure (the turnpikes for examples), and encouraged private investment within frameworks of government regulation, a strategic approach to public data infrastructure would not just be about pre-existing datasets having an open license slapped on them – but would involve looking at a range of strategies to provide the open data foundations for economic and civic activity. Government may need to act as guarantor of specific datasets, if not core provider. When we think infrastructure projects, we can think critically about who benefits from particular projects: and can have an open debate about where limited state resources to support a sustainable open data infrastructure should go. The infrastructure metaphor also helps us start to distinguish different sorts of government data, recognising that performance data and personal data may need to be handled within different arrangements and frameworks from core reference data like mapping and transport systems information. In the later case, there is a strong argument to secure a guarantee of the continued funding of these resources as public goods, free at the point of use, kept in public trust, and maintained to high standards of consistency. Other arrangements are likely to lead to over-charging and under-use of core reference datasets, with deadweight loss of benefit – and particularly excluding civic uses and benefits. In the case of other datasets generated by government in the day to day conduct of business (performance data; aggregate medical records, etc.), it may be more appropriate to recognise that while there is benefit to be gained from the open release of these (a) for civic use; and (b) for commercial use, this will vary significantly on a case-by-case basis, and the release of the data should not create an ongoing obligation on government to continue to collect and produce the data once it is no longer useful for government’s primary purpose.)
What does successful e-participation look like?
[Summary: expanding on scribbled notes from a recent workshop on e-participation]
A few weeks ago I took part in the YouthPart launch workshop in Berlin at the kind invitation of Nadine Karbach. YouthPart is a new project, led by the German International Youth Service exploring e-participation for youth engagement. I was there to give a short 10-minute input on some elements of youth e-participation in the UK (slideshare slides here). During one of the break-out discussions, I was on a table exploring the question “What does successful e-participation look like?”.
At first, the discussion centred on the fact that the success of e-participation should be measured just the same as the success of any participation: for Practical Participation that would mean can we measure what’s changed (doc) for the people involved and for the wider community. But there also developed an interesting thread of questions about the unique success criteria that we could apply to e-participation projects, particularly e-participation for young people. Some of the questions that might point us towards success criteria that I jotted down here:
- Was the platform and process selected appropriate?
Did it set reasonable expectations about the decisions that were being made, and the scope for influencing change? Did it give people the freedom to express their views on the issue at hand? Did it keep discussions adequately focussed? Did it allow you to give participants feedback on what changed as a result of their input? Was it cost effective? Did technical problems get in the way of people participating?Whilst e-participation isn’t just about the platform, choosing the right platform for the right process matters. It is often tempting for e-participation projects to try and build their own platforms (I’m certainly guilty of going down this route in the past), but more often than not, there are good tried and tested platforms out there: the trick is in finding the right one and pairing it with the right process and facilitation support.
- Did your e-participation tilt the balance of power in favour of young people?
Young people often face significant inequalities of power when it comes to participating in policy making: whether explicit (not being able to vote; not given a shared role in decision making), or implicit (lack of experience makes it tricker to make your point; limited time to engage with an issue because of pressures of school or college make ‘competing’ with full-time lobbyists and advocates difficult etc.).Good e-participation should address these power imbalances, and should work to rebalance power in young people’s favour.
- Is it inclusive?
Have all the groups affected by the decisions being made been able to input? Have you seen a diverse range of views and opinions? How could you choice of platform or process exclude particular groups? Have you reached out in a range of communities? If you have been reaching out through social networks, how have you checked that you are not just going to easy-to-reach networks?E-participation often involved disintermediation of the youth participation process: young people are invited to input directly into discussion and decision making, without facilitation in groups or from workers. That can make for a more inclusive process, but it can also leave some people out.
E-participation might need to be part of a blended strategy that involved online and offline working. Reaching out to different groups is just as important online as offline.
- Are the parameters of your e-participation transparent, and open to critique
Lawrence Lessig’s idea that ‘Code is Law‘ highlights that in digital environments the limits we set to what can be done can act as firm, but often invisible, restrictions on our actions. Whereas in a face-to-face workshop that asks people to fill in boxes on a flip-chart with ideas someone can scribble ideas in the margins – outside the set boxes and categories – the digital world often doesn’t offer these opportunities. Whilst in a face-to-face setting someone can more easily question the way of workshop is being facilitated if they feel there is a bias in it – that’s often harder to do when the ‘facilitation’ is coded into an e-participation platform.Thinking critically about the constraints built into an e-participation platform, and making sure you are sensitive to participants questioning your assumptions about the parameters is important.
- Does this e-participation project increase the chance of the organisation/young people creating change next time?
One of the big observations of workshop participants was that bad participation experiences can put people off civic engagement for life; but that you can’t expect every participation experience to lead to change clearly enough or fast enough to satisfy many young people engaging with a participation opportunity for the first time.So, if you’re not sure your project will lead to a satisfying and positively reenforcing experience of change for young participants, should you try starting it at all? Or should you avoid building expectations you might risk seeing crushed? Well – one way to guide the design of a project might be to think: it should have the maximum chance of making change this time, but it should also build participants capacity, skills and opportunities to create change in future.
Challenging Myths about Young People and the Internet
[Summary: Workshop report from the Internet Governance Forum, Nairobi, 2011]
I facilitated a workshop at this year’s Internet Governance Forum on the topic ‘Challenging Myths about Young People and the Internet‘. The workshop report is available on the IGF Website, and also available to read below. I hope it can act as a useful resource in any policy work around young people and the Internet. Both the USA IGF, and Child Net’s Youth IGF Project held their own discussions and debates on the topic of ‘myths about young people and the Internet’ in the run up to the forum, and it seems to work well as a discussion format to dig deeper to understand young people’s online experiences.
I also shared some of the myths from the workshop in a recent keynote to the EU Safer Internet Forum, the slides from which you can also find below.
Workshop 92: Challenging Myths about Young People and the Internet
Claims about youth are central to many Internet Governance discussions. However, many of the claims made about youth and the Internet are based on myth and misperception rather than on reality.
Myths come in a variety of forms. Some are compelling, but mistaken claims: intuitively plausible, but not backed by evidence and research. Others are based on stereotypes or distorted media coverage given to issues. Other myths are propagated by those with vested interests or particular agendas, seeking to secure support for their cause by making exaggerated claims.
Workshop 92 provided a space for constructive dialogue about how we should understand claims made about young people in Internet Governance. Contributions from ten panellists and the floor addressed a wide range of myths or misunderstandings about young people and technology: highlighting where we need to think more deeply before making Internet policy based upon generalisations about children, young people and young adults.
This report looks at the myths in turn, before reporting some general points from discussion at the end. The Youth Coalition on Internet Governance will continue to develop a resource based on these myths to offer as an input for future IGF sessions. A number of the myths draw on headings from a list of common myths put forward by danah boyd.
The Myths
Myth: Young people are either digital natives, or digitally naive (Sheba Mohammid)
Our descriptions of youth and technology are frequently polarised with youth described as opposite extremes: either as digital natives, with ubiquitous understanding of technology, or digitally naive, and in need of protection. This can lead to technology projects ignoring the need to do work on pedagogical systems and educating youth; or it can lead to responses that perceive only the need for control and protection of young people online.
There is limited dialogue between those who describe youth as ‘natives’ and those who focus on youth ‘naivete’. The tendency to pigeonhole young people into one category or the other prevents us from developing a deeper understanding of diverse youth experiences of networked media, and how individuals can have different experiences at different times and in different spaces.
Talking about ‘digital natives’ or ‘digital naivete’ may have intuitive and rhetorical appeal – but whenever speakers use these phrases, they gloss over the reality of young people’s online lives and can lead to unhelpful policy responses. The following myths explore in more detail the subtleties that we need to bring to our discussions.
Myth: The Internet is a dangerous, dangerous place (Alannah Travers)
“There are dangers online, as in the real world, but that doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad, or only dangerous and never good.”
Starting from the assumption that the Internet is inherently a dangerous place can have negative impacts on policy. It’s important to develop skills and resilience to protect yourself, and, as with crossing the road, once you’ve learned to manage the dangers, you can be secure and safe.
Myth: The Internet is a free playground for youth (Max Kall)
“The myth is that youth regard the Internet as a free and anarchic playground where they can do whatever they want, and actions can unfold in whichever way they desire. Young people can spend hours and hours on social networks, gaming, and the myth is that young people think it’s all free. It’s all open and whatever you do, it does not yield any negative consequences.
The opposite is actually the truth. For many young people the Internet is everything but free.”
Youth are frequently aware of the possibility of surveillance from law enforcement authorities, companies, employers or just from teachers or parents, and this can lead to ‘chilling effects’, limiting freedom of expression and democratic participation on the Internet.
The impact of these chilling effects vary from country to country, with a BBC survey finding that up to 49% of people in ‘democratic countries’ agreed with statements that the Internet is not a free space, rising to 70% is some countries. One workshop participant highlighted self-censorship by bloggers in the Congo. By contrast, in France and Kenya, the BBC survey found that 70% or more of people did regard the Internet as a free space. As with any claim about youth and the Internet we need to question the geographic and cultural specificity of the claim. Regardless, the levels of young people feeling inhibited in their free expression of political views online should be a cause for concern.
Myth: Youth don’t care about privacy (Kellye Coleman and Connor Dalby)
“…there is a myth that youth don’t care about privacy. I think youth do care but at the same time youth don’t fully understand what privacy means.”
Young people value education that empowers them to make positive privacy choices, where reasons are given for why certain privacy behaviors might be important: “If the why of privacy is shared I think we as young people can become more empowered and invested in taking actions to protect ourselves.”.
Education based on ‘fear tactics’ is less likely to be popular amongst young people: “[Scare tactics] are the wrong way to go about it. You are scaring youth to not share things they should be sharing, great things, or [scaring them to] stop using the Internet or social networks altogether. The best way to go about it is teaching about settings, not trying to scare them too much but teaching them good things that we can improve.”
Cutting through myths about youth and privacy is complicated by the ambiguity of the term. Threats to privacy can be many and varied, and different people may value particular aspects of privacy differently: some willing to trade their personal data for services from Internet companies, others seeing this as a threat to privacy. Young people’s views on privacy in particular situations, such as whether Amazon’s personalised recommendations are a positive or negative thing, are as diverse as those of the adult population.
Myth: The Internet is the ‘great equalizer’ (Matthew Jackman)
On the one hand, the Internet is a place where anyone could start a business, or choose to express themselves. On the other hand, “if you want ask someone where they would find videos they would clearly say YouTube…We find a monopoly website which control whole sectors.”
Just because the Internet presents great possibilities for access to information that doesn’t mean that everyone can access and make the most of it.
“…the Internet has potential to bring equality but with so many barriers with access, be it disability or affordability and censorship …[in practice it doesn't]“.
However, we should be careful about assuming that disabled people, for example, are not only at all. One delegate reminded the workshop that young disabled people often rely on the Internet as a first port of call for information and resources, confounding the common assumption that they are not online. Projects and policies need to address barriers to the the realization of the equalizing potential of the Internet.
Myth: All young Nigerians as cybercriminals (‘Gbenga Sesan)
“I’m sure everyone here has probably, not even probably, has, received an e-mail from somebody who claims to be a Nigerian prince.”
The stereotyping of a whole nation can have profound consequences on the young people who live there. Young Nigerians are locked out of e-commerce opportunities as services like PayPal block the Nigerian market. Young Nigerians seeking to participate in online discussions can find their e-mails deleted by spam filters. And “this myth prevents the world from knowing what exactly is going on with young Nigerians on the Internet”, such as the 2011 mobile-phone based election monitoring application development by young Nigerians, or recent investment into Nigerian online businesses.
The association in popular conciousness of Nigeria with cybercrime is a modern stereotype: but a particularly harmful one to youth and one that needs to be challenged.
Myth: Social media is addictive (Dan Skipper)
Claims about youth ‘Internet addiction’ or ‘addiction’ to social media are common in policy debates, and at the Internet Governance Forum: often leading to polarised arguments. Although a small number of people may exhibit “compulsively driven behaviour with negative consequences” in relation to the social media, and many young people prefer not to be without access to social media for long periods, general claims about youth Internet addiction are based more in rhetoric and myth than in evidence; and a focus on ‘addiction’ can divert a focus on important issues such as whether people are enjoying a great enough diversity of online experiences.
“I think social media is not addictive, just a luxury people enjoy using so you could in a way argue anything is addictive if you are saying social media is addictive. If you play a sport and you love playing and you play it every chance you get, same with being on social media. If you enjoy social media, you use it as much as you can. I don’t think you can say it is an addiction.”
Myth: Young People are all creating their own online content (Gitte Stald)
It is commonly claimed that the Internet allows young people to become ‘content creators’, yet The EU Kids Online Research has found that very few young people are actually creating their own content online. “What the majority do is very mundane, and not creative.”
This can be seen as a missed opportunity both because young people are not exploring creative skills, and because it is recognised that there is a lack of good quality content for young people online – and peer-created content could help address this.
Myth: The digital is separate from the real world (Naveed-ul-haq)
Discussions of ‘cyberspace’, or ‘the virtual world’ or even ‘spending time online’ often have an implicit assumption that the digital world is separate from the real world. But for many young people (and adults) it is more accurate the say that the digital world is simply an integral part of the real world for many people.
“The most important thing that we do in our real world is communicate. How do we communicate with others and with people around us and talk about digital world? There are five billion mobile users: so we cannot say that digital world is separate than real world.”
However, policy makers, parents and teachers often frame discussions with an artificial divide between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ which doesn’t reflect the reality of young people’s lives, increasingly including the reality in developing world contexts too, where mobile phones mean everyone is carrying a connection to the digital world around with them.
Taking forward discussions
Delegate noted that simply presenting the myths challenged in the workshop would be a useful input to future IGF debates: allowing workshops planned in future to avoid framing debates around myths, and to ask better questions. Particular themes included
The importance of evidence
The session highlighted that two forms of evidence are vitally important. Firstly, high quality statistical evidence (particularly from studies using shared methods to promote International comparison) helping us to understand the prevalence of a wide range of online issues – from safety issues, to freedom of expression issues – and helping us to see the local variations in issues of importance at any particular time. We need evidence to help both highlight difference between contexts as well as commonality. Secondly, we need evidence and input from a diverse range of stakeholders, including diverse groups of children, young people and young adults – able to offer insights into the varied online experiences and opinions of youth.
The diversity of youth experience
The workshop discussions demonstrated that challenging myths and generalisations requires us to engage with a diversity of views and approaches to address key Internet issues. We were reminded that “we’ll not have one answer that fits all… what might work in developed countries might not work in developing countries”, and a debate between young panelists and delegates highlighted the range of different views held on whether censorship, web blocking and filtering was every appropriate.
A shared responsibility
One delegate issued a challenge to young people to think about how they can work to dispel myths about youth and the Internet, and another mentioned the possibility of using social media to challenge myths. The importance of challenging myths in local and regional debates was also raised.
Next steps
The Youth Coalition on Internet Governance (www.ycig.org) will continue to develop resources based on the workshop transcript and report.
Random Hacks of Kindness – Oxford – 3rd/4th December
[Summary: Volunteer for Random Hacks of Kindness, Oxford]
Random Hacks of Kindness events bring together digital innovators to work on building practical open technology with the goal of making the world a better place. As a follow up to the open data day held in Oxford last December, this year White October are hosting a Random Hacks of Kindness weekend on the 3d and 4th December set up in partnership with Oxfam.
The event is on the look out for designers, developers, data wranglers and others who are willing to give up a weekend to work on practical solutions to key social problems… and maybe even to take forward the ideas after the weekend.
You can find more details and sign-up here.
I’m sure we’ll be linking up with some of the parallel open data day hacking going on too.
Deeper and wider: dialogue at the Internet Governance Forum
[Summary: Reflections from the 2011 Internet Governance Forum]
I was asked by Nominet to put together some reflections on this years IGF for their blog ahead of the Parliament and the Internet Conference last week. As I’ve not posted about IGF since I got back, it’s also reposted here…
The challenge faced by the Internet Governance Forum is a big one: to convene open multi-stakeholder dialogue on extremely diverse Internet issues in order to help shape global Internet policy and practice. Sometimes it can feel like an event of fragmented workshops, repeating year-on-year without making progress: but within the packed agenda are discussions and insights and ideas that really can move the dialogue forward.
Deeper dialogue on youth
This year I had my first experience convening an IGF workshop, benefiting from the open agenda setting process to see my suggestion of a workshop on ‘Challenging Myths about Young People and the Internet’ (#92) make it onto the programme. The workshop, involving young people, young adults and adults from across the world dug into common claims about young people and the Internet, such as ‘young people don’t care about privacy’, or ‘young people consider the Internet to be a free, anarchic spaces where they can do what they want’, and ‘young people are addicted to the Internet’. Rather than reject these myths out of hand, the panellists and participants in the workshop sought to show how both the myths, and their opposites, hide the subtle realities of young people’s lives in a digital world: and how the continued use of simplistic myths harms policy making. Instead of making bald claims about young people’s lack of belief in privacy, panellists argued we should look at how young people act in practice, and should offer education that supports young people to improve their privacy protection, rather than running ‘messaging campaigns’ that assume young people need to be scared into acting on privacy. And instead of over-using phrases like ‘Internet addiction’, we should understand the Internet as a space where young people are engaged in many different activities (to paraphrase one participant: ‘The Internet gives you access to just about anything, so you’re going to use it a lot!’), and where any critique needs to be more targeted and nuanced. The ‘chilling effects’ of online monitoring on young people’s online freedoms; the prejudice young nigerians face because of perceptions about nigerian cybercrime; and the need to avoid basing our understanding of young people on claims about ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital naiveté’ were also addressed.
Although many of the myths addressed in this workshop will, I’m sure, turn up as claims in other transcripts from this years IGF (mostly because of misunderstandings, but also because simplistic emotive claims about ‘youth’ are used by some to further their own interests and agendas), members of the Youth Coalition on Internet Governance will be collaboratively writing up the outcomes of the Challenging Myths workshop as a resource for future IGF discussions with the hope of helping to shape a deeper dialogue about youth and the Internet.
Widening access to the IGF
The dialogue in Workshop 92 also reached wider than I’d anticipated: with e-Participation allowing remote Panellists to join the workshop from Pakistan, and a remote-hub joining the discussion from Syracuse University in the USA. If the 2010 IGF was when remote participation came of age with over 30 remote hubs, 2011 was the year that e-Participation was recognises as a fundamental part of the way IGF does business. A workshop on e-Participation principles identified the need to build on existing platforms like the volunteer-developed Remote Participation through webcasts and WebEx, and on the social media aggregation on the platform I’ve been experimenting with over the past few years with the support of Diplo, to work towards year-round e-Participation in the IGF that continues to improve the inclusiveness and accessibility of forum discussions to all. The potential of ‘data mining’ the rich transcript and report archives that have built up over the years of the IGF, to help visualise the changing discourse, was also raised in workshops and the closing plenary: highlighting a continued drive towards institutional innovation to support better dialogue on key Internet policy issues.
Emerging issues: open data
A number of worshops in Nairobi developed an IGF focus on the growing areas of ‘open data’. I participated in one panel on ‘Privacy and Security in a Linked/Open/Realtime data world’ that took a wide-ranging look at emerging issues around open data, from open government data like the International Aid Transparency Initiative data I spoke on, to the data from citizens sourced by Ushahidi explored by Eric Hershman, and data aggregated from social media and other sources addressed by Robet Kirkpatric talking about UN Global Pulse. With the need to critically explore open data initiatives, their technical and policy frameworks, and their social impacts, becoming more pressing, I’m sure an IGF thread on open data will return in 2012.
So: time to start looking forward to IGF2012? Well, yes and no. As Ginger Paque reminded us a in a number of sessions, IGF doesn’t just talk place once a year. With online networks like the Diplo Internet Goverance Community, and regional IGFs taking place across the world, the IGF process is going on year round – and the wider, deeper dialogue is needed year round too.
PhD and Practice
[Summary: study as part of practice]
This week was my first as a full-time PhD student with the Web Science Doctoral Training Centre and the Social Science department at Southampton University. It’s just under a year since I put in an application to start, and the start-date has pretty much fallen in one of the busiest month I’ve known: in part as I’ve tried (and failed) to sequence projects to finish before I started, and as a number of exciting events, projects and deadlines with the Internet Governance Forum, and International Aid Transparency Initiative, and Journal of Community Informatics and work on young people and technology, have all converged on the last and next few weeks.
Which makes for an interesting start to a PhD. But I hope, a positive one: with a clear reminder that I want three years of PhD not to be about three-years of stepping away from or outside of practice, looking to specialize into some narrow disciplinary structure for the purpose of a future academic careers; but to be about connecting research, theory and practice in mutually supporting ways.
I originally titled this post ‘Creating creative tension: PhD and Practice’ – as right now it feels like that is what I’m doing: setting up an interesting tension between the drivers in a number of projects to deliver some clear outcomes, and the drivers of early PhD study to spend time widening the horizons of my reading, broadening out with no outcomes yet in mind. But I’m not sure ‘in tension’ is the best way to keep practice and study over the coming years: so, time to dig out a reading list on theory, practice and praxis.
A logistical note:
Taking on a full-time PhD does mean that I’ve got limited personal capacity for new freelance projects over the coming months and I’ll be focussing on projects that overlap with my area of study on open data and civic engagement. Practical Participation more generally however continues to take on projects with Bill Badham and Alex Farrow leading on all things youth-engagement.
The Risk-Opportunity discourse is broken: Rethinking responses
[Summary: Slides and paper given at EU Kids Online Conference yesterday]
Yesterday I rather hurriedly (last presenting slot of the workshop at the end of a long day…) presented at the EU Kids Online conference around the draft model that emerged from the Youth Work Online Month of Action and other prior work to use the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as the core of a model for broader and more effective research, policy and practice thinking about young people’s online lives. Below you can find a copy of the slides, annotated to explain what would otherwise be a series of rather uninformative words and images, and the working paper based on this can be found here (of follow this direct link to the PDF).
I’m speaking again around this idea of rethinking responses to young people’s online lives, and about the need to reframe the discourse and debate (something danah boyd has just this week again reminded us of the need for with a deeply insightful paper and article), at the EU Safer Internet Forum conference in October, and yesterdays brief presentation has already giving rise to some good suggestions of ways to refine the above – so I’ll blog some more on it soon.
Digital innovations are not always digital (and other reflections on youth-focussed digital innovation lab design)
Filed under: Digital Government, digital inclusion, Innovation, Youth Participation, Youth Work 2.0
[Summary: assorted learning from participation and hack-days applied to ideas about a youth-focussed digital innovation lab.]
Right Here, Comic Relief and Nominet Trust have a really interesting tender out right now for someone to deliver two ‘Innovation Labs’ focussed on helping “young people to look after their mental health and to access appropriate help and support”.
They describe how the labs should provide young people with “the opportunity to work with mental health, youth work and design professionals to design digital tools that will meet their needs.” If it weren’t for the unknowns of the schedule for my PhD that starts in October, it’s exactly the sort of project Practical Participation would be putting in a proposal for*, but, with the freedom to adopt a more open innovation exchange style bit of sharing around a proposal, and having been unable to resist jotting a few notes about how I might approach the tender, here’s a few quick reflections on youth-focussed digital innovation labs, drawing on learning from previous participation projects.
Digital innovations are not always digital
In my experience working with youth services and mental health services exploring use of digital tools, the biggest gaps between the potential of digital tools and their use in practice is not down to a lack of Apps or widgets – but comes down to a lack of training, inadequate policies, or other small barriers.
The most effective outcomes of a digital innovation lab could be how to guides for practitioners, youth-led training for mental health workers in how to engage online, or new protocols that make sure mental health staff have a framework and incentives to make use of digital tools – as much as they might be new apps and websites.
Set up to succeed
I’ve experienced and observed a number of participation projects in the past that have, mostly unintentionally, set young people up to fail by asking them to redesign services or systems without reference to the staff who operate those systems day-to-day, or the realities of the budgetary and legal constraints the services operate under. Instead of empowering young people to bring their lived experience to real problems, whilst avoiding organisational agendas crushing the ideas and insights young people can bring, participation projects can end up asking young people to solve problems without giving them all the information they need to find viable solutions.
In innovation events with both young people and adults ideas often come up which, whilst great in principle, draw on mistaken assumptions about resources that might realistically be available, or about how digital tools might be adopted and used (it’s not uncommon to hear ‘innovators’ of any age suggesting they’ll build ‘the next Facebook’ to bring together people to discuss some particular issue). Finding the balance between free-flowing innovation, and realisable ideas is a challenge – and increased if, for the majority of participants, the event is their first innovation lab, or project teams don’t have people with experience of taking an project through from idea to implementation. Finding facilitators who can combine the right balance of technical realism, with a focus on youth-led innovation, is important, as is offering training for facilitators.
Projects like Young Rewired State offer an interesting model, where young people who have participated in past events, return as young mentors in future years. Finding a community of young mentors may also prove useful for an innovation lab.
Involving adults
It’s not only mentors and digital experts who have a role to play in the design process, but also mental health professionals and volunteer adults who work day-to-day with young people. In policy consultations in the past we’ve used a ‘fish bowl’ like approach to adults involvement, starting the day with adults as observers only on the outside of circles where young people are developing plans and ideas; moving to a stage (perhaps after an hour) when young people can invite adults into the discussion, but adults can’t ‘push in’; and then (another hour or so later) moving to a stage when adults and young people participate together. Whilst artificial, in a policy consultation, this sort of process helped address issues around the balance of power between young people and adults, without removing the benefits to be found from youth-adult dialogue. In an innovation and design situation, this exact model might not be appropriate – but thinking about lightweight processes or ‘rules’ to help the relationship between young people and adults may be useful.
An alternative approach we’ve taken at past participation events is to have a parallel track of activities for workers coming to the event with young people: could you set a team of adult innovators competing with young innovators to contrast the ideas they come up with?
There are no representative young people
I’m not a representative 26 year old. There aren’t representative 17 year olds. Or 15 year olds. Or any age for that matter. People often design innovations for themselves: that doesn’t mean they’re designing for all young people. Not all young people are technology experts. In fact, most aren’t. There is no such thing as a digital native. Bringing the lived experiences of young people with experience of mental health services and challenges to the design of services is still a very very good thing. It can mean massive improvements in services. But often there’s a risk of implicitly or explicitly thinking of service-user or youth participants as ‘representatives’ – and that tends to be an unhelpful framing. Understanding participants as individuals with particular skills and insights to bring tends to work better.
Freedom and frameworks
I’ve spent most of this afternoon at the Guardian offices in London as a mentor for young hackers at Young Rewired State. Young Rewired State is a week-long event taking place across the country for young people interested in building things with open data and digital platforms. Young Rewired State centres have varied in how much structure they have had: some simply providing a room, and some mentors on hand, for young people to identify what they want to work on and get hacking. Others have supported the participants to work through a design process, offering more structured how-to guidance and support. Some young people thrive and innovate best with a framework and structure to work within. Others need the freedom from pre-planned programmes and tight agendas in order to innovate. Having no agenda at all can exclude those who need structure. But an agenda that is too tight, or a programme that is too prescriptive can miss innovation opportunities. Fortunately, the Innovation Labs tender that sparked this post highlights that the events themselves should be co-designed with young people – so there’s space to negotiate and work this one out.
Keep out of the dragons den
I’ve sat on a few ‘dragons den’ style panels recently – responding to presentations about young people’s project ideas. And I’ve yet to be convinced that they really make a useful contribution.
This post has been in the spirit of reclaiming reflective space, and has no neat ending.
*Although I’m not putting in a proposal around the labs, I’d still be really interested to get involved should a youth-engagement and effective technology focussed facilitator/action researcher/data-wrangler be useful to whoever does end up running the labs.
Event: Social Media and Youth Engagement Hotseat
[Summary: join me for an online conference hotseat on social media and youth engagement next Thursday]
Last year I was involved in a project in Nottingham called Measure-Up, exploring youth-led approaches to promoting positive activities through a range of different digital tools. It resulted in the Measure Up handbook, a step-by-step eight-week guide to using social media to promote activities for young people, and for youth projects to develop their online presence.
Next Thursday I’ll be joining some of the team who were involved to take part in an online hotseat on the LGA Communities of Practice platform sharing learning from the project. More details below:
- which social media tools young people wanted us to develop and which ones they told us they wouldn’t use
- how social media increased the uptake of positive activities
- how a youth-led approach helped to promote youth participation in a range of activities, supporting wider agendas such as anti-social behaviour, community engagement and civic participation.
- Frances Howard, Arts & Education Officer, Nottingham City Council
- Esme Macauley, Marketing and Communications manager, Nottingham City Council
- Tim Davies, Director, Practical Participation.
Tim’s Blog
This is the personal blog of Tim Davies, an independent consultant and researcher from the UK.