HOW TO GET OPEN DATA IN THE HANDS OF ACTIVISTS Aslam Khan - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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HOW TO GET OPEN DATA IN THE HANDS OF ACTIVISTS Aslam Khan - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Dec 08, 2022 35 likes •549 views

HOW TO GET OPEN DATA IN THE HANDS OF ACTIVISTS Aslam Khan @aslamkhn Activism Open Data Aslam Khan / @aslamkhn Activist by default if you lived on the receiving end of apartheid in South Africa 1977 1985 1986 1988 1993 8y 16 17 19

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HOW TO GET OPEN DATA IN THE HANDS OF ACTIVISTS

Aslam Khan @aslamkhn

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Open Data Activism

Aslam Khan / @aslamkhn
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SLIDE 3

1977

School Protest 8y

1985

State of Emer gency 16 Detention without trial

1986

17

1988

19 Worker & Student Pressure

1993

Brink of Civil War 23

Activist by default

if you lived on the receiving end of apartheid in South Africa
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1969 23 years 1992

22 born

Would data have been valuable to me - in both eras? 2 1 y e a r s

now

2013

I want to believe so

but

I'm not sure

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This is Cape Town, South Africa

Khayelitsha
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This is Khayelitsha, Cape Town

It means New Home in isiXhosa
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SLIDE 7
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SLIDE 8 satellite dish
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SLIDE 9 chemical toilet ditto ditto

There is (almost) no bulk sewage

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SLIDE 10 source: ewn.co.za

People protested

using the most shocking means imaginable
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More Importantly...

Why did nearly 4 million residents of Cape T

  • wn not know about this issue?

How wide spread is this problem? Why did we let this degrade into a battle for political points?

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SLIDE 12

because it was just noisy people

(perception!)
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SLIDE 13 Khayelitsha 29 sq.km 400,00 people

Look at the data behind the protest

This touches the mind first, then the heart (a little) all figures are approximate 13.7k people/sq.km 2000 people share eleven flush toilets Everyone in Denmark will live into about 400 sq.km not 43k sq.km
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SLIDE 14 Durbanville 27 sq.km 55,000 people 2,000 people/sq.km 1 flush toilet per house 4 people per flush toilet Khayelitsha 29 sq.km 400,00 people 13.7k people/sq.km 180 people per flush toilet 25km

Facts stick when it touches hearts

make it concrete and tangible so that it appeals to everyone, not just the disenfranchised On average, Khayelitsha toilets are used every 8 minutes so that each person can use a flush toilet once a day
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Wikipedia Report of the Khayelitsha 'Mshengu' T

  • ilet Social Audit

Open Data for Africa Statistics South Africa

Where did I find these facts?

There is data available, but it is scattered, and not all open data

various news web sites

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What would we do differently if we had access to data?

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Offering data to social activists has little value

We need to distill data into facts that are simple, precise and easily understood that appeals to hearts and minds

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common knowledge

Social activists need to share

we need tools to access discoveries and distribute widely
  • pen data

Digital activists need to discover

we need tools to discover facts in data and publish discoveries

freedom to distribute freedom to discover

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SLIDE 19
  • pen data

freedom to discover

frictionless sharing of data sets ability to "mix-in" and explore varied data sets location independence of data sets

What tools do digital activists need?

Digital activists do not need campaign tools
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software freedoms

freedom to execute and modify freedom to distribute freedom to share changes

Pre-requisites

Normally codified in licenses

data freedoms

free to access, reuse, redistribute available as a whole machine readable
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SLIDE 21
  • pen data

freedom to discover

frictionless sharing of data sets ability to "mix-in" and explore varied data sets location independence of data sets

What tools do digital activists need?

Digital activists do not need campaign tools
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Frictionless Data Sharing

  • pen data
standards based Lowest common denominator standards allow for richly adorned data sets simplest machine readable formats are anemic

The constraint is meta data

Must provide metadata early When/How do we get metadata?
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Concept Meta Data

definition

variables

classification context

semantics

domain
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SLIDE 24 Can we compare poverty between countries?

Why metadata is the biggest constraint

mostly because of changes in context and time US Census Bureau UNESCO World Bank WHO multiple definitions of poverty threshold South Africa adjustment for Sub-Sahara and medium income economies poverty metadata
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SLIDE 25 poverty Can we compare poverty between countries?

No metadata, No analysis

metadata It's difficult to compare because the metadata is different for each country BUT without metadata it is impossible
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SLIDE 26 HIGH barrier to get in HIGH cost of conformance

The problem with a strict standard format

The problem with any standard is that compliance is a choice

But the cost of metadata remains, regardless of compliance

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Frictionless Data Sharing

I doubt we can ever remove the cost of metadata completely
  • pen data
simplest extensible format for metadata simplest machine readable format for data Open Knowledge Foundation's Data P ackage Standard is a step in the right direction http://data.okfn.org/standards/data-package JSON for metadata + CSV for tabular data
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SLIDE 28
  • pen data

freedom to discover

frictionless sharing of data sets ability to "mix-in" and explore varied data sets location independence of data sets

What tools do digital activists need?

Digital activists do not need campaign tools
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Why do we need data exploration tools?

LOW barrier to get in Cost of computation (analysis) What is the effort to get knowledge out? constraint shifts (frictionless data sharing)
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Why do we need to compose data sets?

because that is where the interesting and relevant facts lurk

When is per capita income interesting?

Correlation between infant mortality and per capita income? … between parent to child HIV infections and per capita income?

Digital activists are in the business of data science - not campaigning

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What do we need for discovering facts?

Split into individual columns and compose columns ad-lib treat every column as a data set

&

Find all other occurrences of a single value remove all duplications in every column and join on “value” then look for trends if we make the above easy then the cost is mental effort I DON’T KNOW Set-based? Graph-based? something else? how?!?
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Is there such a data discovery tool?

QlikView

fails freedom pre-requisites http://www.qlikview.com/
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  • pen data

freedom to discover

frictionless sharing of data sets ability to "mix-in" and explore varied data sets location independence of data sets

What tools do digital activists need?

Digital activists do not need campaign tools
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“

Peer-to-peer software, if we could make it work, would seem to give the best of both worlds: the freedom to modify how a program functions on our local computers as well as the ability to share and collaborate with others across the Internet.

Why do we need location independence?

for the same reason that bit torrent is popular
  • - Aaron Swartz
A Programable Web: An Unfinished Work http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00481ED1V01Y201302WBE005
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The attraction of peer to peer

but I think we need a more research to make this work we get location independence for free the publisher is relieved of the burden to share distribution is the responsibility of those that want it
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To turn Open Data into Common Knowledge

so that we can spend our effort almost exclusively on the mental (analysis) battle simple data format extensible meta data format

lower the cost of participation

compose into new data sets compute power to discover

lower the cost of discovery

peer to peer distribution

lower the cost of sharing

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common knowledge

freedom to distribute

knowledge close at hand ability to reach people ability to receive feedback

What tools do social activists need?

Social activists also need tools for campaigning
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Reminder

this applies regardless of scale - from few to thousands to millions of people

activism is a call for a gathering of people to exert pressure for

(social, political, environmental, economic)

change

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Most commonly...

to stop exploitation to alleviate under-development under-development is the result of unfair agreements for access to resources

(in other words)
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Activism is an effort to ...

…establish new relationships. A balancing via fair and equal agreements

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common knowledge

freedom to distribute

knowledge close at hand ability to reach people ability to receive feedback

What tools do social activists need?

Social activists also need tools for campaigning
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federated wikis is an interesting development How can we make knowledge accessible?

  • verlaps with location independence for digital activists
https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki Wiki is centralised with many editors Federated wiki belongs to a single person Sharing is achieved between wikis
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common knowledge

freedom to distribute

knowledge close at hand ability to reach people ability to receive feedback

What tools do social activists need?

Social activists also need tools for campaigning
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How can we reach people?

this is not about about twitter and social media

Awareness is the first stage of involvement for activists

NOT shotgun marketing V ery specific and tar geted messages It can be private too! lots of marketing strategy involved
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common knowledge

freedom to distribute

knowledge close at hand ability to reach people ability to receive feedback

What tools do social activists need?

Social activists also need tools for campaigning
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How can we receive feedback?

this starts overlapping with campaign tools quite quickly The channel you reach out is not necessarily the channel for feedback about shifting people through various stages from being aware to or ganiser
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Open Data is NOT the end game

it is just a pre-requisite for us to carve out new social relationships frictionless data sets makes it easier to to compose new data sets at will discover new facts so that we can that can be shared independent of where it is located can distribute it so that social activists it becomes common knowledge and eventually
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fight against corruption

How much is being siphoned off? What is the money trail? At what cost to our people?

call for economic boycott

Why must we sacrifice for freedom? What pressure will our sacrifice have on the ruling white minority?

Common knowledge is valuable

It is valuable to any person that values living together

1992

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How soon before Open Data is used for exploitation instead of good?

Ideologically speaking...

This is important in the bigger picture of digital activism

What are the consequences if we consider data as a “natural” resource? In the internet of things privacy is the next freedom.

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“

Magic machine cannot match Human being human being African idea -- make the future clear They are the scatterlings of Africa Each uprooted one On the road to Phelamanga Beneath the copper sun And for the scatterlings of Africa The journey has begun

  • - Johnny Clegg
Scatterlings of Africa

* * The place at the end of lies. It is the place beyond

  • ur imagination where ultimate truth prevails.
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Common Knowledge

Activism

Aslam Khan / @aslamkhn