Group items tagged

In 2008, police forces across the United Kingdom (UK) launched an online crime mapping tool "to help improve the credibility and confidence that the public had in police-recorded crime levels, address perceptions of crime, promote community engagement and empowerment, and support greater public service transparency and accountability." How effective has this large scale digital mapping effort been? "There continues to be a lack of evidence that publishing crime statistics using crime mapping actually supports improvements in community engagement and empowerment." This blog post evaluates the project's impact by summarizing the findings from a recent peer-reviewed study entitled: "Engagement, Empowerment and Transparency: Publishing Crime Statistics using Online Crime Mapping." Insights from this study have important implications for crisis mapping projects.

What data can and cannot do Jonathan Gray argues that aspiring data journalists and civic data hackers should strive to cut back on data-driven hype and to cultivate a more critical literacy towards their subject matter

"We live in an age of sharing. As consumers and online, we regularly share personal information, and generate new data through our browsing or purchasing history. Businesses and government are increasingly aware of the value of this information, which can result in better and cheaper services for customers, new sources of income for businesses and improved public services. But the question of who owns this information, and how it is collected, stored and used, is becoming a major consumer rights issue. It is crucial, therefore, that people are at the heart of any new settlement. The Data Dialogue sets out the results of the largest ever poll of public attitudes on personal information and data- sharing. Based on a representative sample of 5,000 adults, the report finds a growing crisis in consumer confidence over how government and business handle personal data, and discomfort about the way in which personal information and data are currently being used. The report argues that this loss of confidence could have a knock-on effect on the economy and on the quality of services available to consumers. However, it also finds that views about sharing change when people are given more control and choice about what data is shared, and when the benefit of sharing that data is made clear to them. It therefore suggests that consumers should be engaged in an honest dialogue about how data are collected and used, and be given meaningful choice and control over the information they share. That will be good for business and consumers alike."

"Digital maps on smartphones are brilliantly useful tools, but what sort of information do they gather about us - and how do they shape the way we look at the world?"

"A learning tool is a tool to create or deliver learning content/solutions for others, or a tool for your own personal or professional learning. Here is the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2012 as voted for by 582 learning professionals worldwide. Below is the slideset available via Slideshare and beneath it the textual list.  Other pages are available as follows:"

"The Government Digital Strategy sets out how government will redesign its digital services to make them so straightforward and convenient that all those who can use them prefer to do so. This strategy: Follows the March 2012 Budget commitment to digital services being the default Has been developed collaboratively across government, as part of the Civil Service Reform Plan Will be followed up with departmental digital strategies, to be published in December 2012 The strategy also describes how delivering services digitally will result in savings of £1.7 to £1.8 billion each year, and commits government to the following actions:"

"Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has revealed telehealth services are set to be rolled out to 100,000 people next year."

"Two more interesting analyses of the Google Fiber project (about which more here), following on from this previous post. An article in the Wall Street Journal ("Web rivals want what Google got") reports that rivals are seeking the same concessions Google obtained from Kansas City to support their network builds:"

"For more on the potential of broadband in general and the National Broadband Network in particular, the Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society's Annual Report and Symposium presentation is well worth a look. Three slides from the presentation caught my eye. They capture the importance of concurrency (multiple simultaneous accesses to multiple applications, something I've discussed in this previous post) very well, and also nicely illustrate the wide range of applications that next generation access can support: "

People Powered Health is a programme from NESTA, working with the Innovation Unit, to support the design and delivery of innovative services for people that are living with long term health conditions The programme focuses on co-production - that people's needs are better met when they are involved in an equal and reciprocal relationship with professionals - working together to get things done.  It is a radical approach to public services that is built around six characteristics:  Recognising people as assets Building on people's capabilities Promoting mutuality and reciprocity Developing peer support networks Breaking down barriers between professionals and users Facilitating rather than delivering

Sitting at your desk in the middle of the day, yet another email notification pops up in the corner of the screen, covering the figures you're trying to digest in the complicated spreadsheet in front of you.

Creating a smart Europe through next generation broadband access will alleviate economic pressures and make the EU globally competitive, argues Frost & Sullivan's Saverio Romeo

Investment in super-fast broadband could create thousands of jobs and bring millions of pounds into the Scottish economy in the next 15 years, according to a report. Investment by BT in the service has already made the technology available to more than 270,000 Scottish homes and businesses, and the company expects the number to rise to around 836,000 by spring 2013.