BusinessDay 28 Feb 2018

28 BUSINESS DAY
Wednesday 28 February 2018
Leadership
SHAPING PEOPLE INTO A TEAM
How the data that internet companies
collect can be used for the public good
From climate change to terrorism,
the difficulties confronting
policymakers around the
world are unprecedented in their
variety and complexity. Our existing
policy toolkit seems stale and outdated.
Increasingly, it’s clear that
we need not only new solutions
but also new methods for arriving
at solutions.
Data, and new methods for organizations
to collaborate in order
to extract insights from that data,
are likely to become more central
to meeting these challenges.
We live in a quantified era. It is
estimated that 90% of the world’s
data was generated in the last two
years — from which entirely new
inferences can be extracted and
applied to help address some of
today’s most vexing problems.
In particular, the vast streams
of data generated by social media
platforms can offer insights into
societal patterns and behaviors.
This information poses its own
challenges, particularly those associated
with privacy and security,
but it also represents a tremendous
potential for mobilizing new
forms of intelligence.
In a recent report, we examine
ways to harness this potential
while addressing the challenges.
Developed in collaboration with
Facebook, the report seeks to understand
how public and private
organizations can join forces to
use social media data — through
data collaboratives — to mitigate
and perhaps solve some of our
most intractable policy dilemmas.
DATA COLLABORATIVES:
PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNER-
SHIPS FOR THE DATA AGE
For all of data’s potential to
address public challenges, most
data generated today is collected
by the private sector. Typically
ensconced in corporate databases,
and tightly held in order to maintain
competitive advantage, this
data contains tremendous possible
insights and avenues for policy innovation.
But because the analytical
expertise brought to bear on it
is narrow and access is limited by
private ownership, this data’s vast
potential often goes untapped.
Data collaboratives offer a
way around this limitation. They
represent an emerging publicprivate
partnership model, in
which participants from different
areas , including the private sector,
government and civil society ,
come together to exchange data
and pool expertise in order to create
public value.
While still an emerging practice,
examples of such partnerships exist
around the world. For example,
the California Data Collaborative
is a data pooling effort involving
a coalition of water utilities, cities
and water retailers dedicated to
creating an integrated, Californiawide
platform to provide accurate
technical analysis and improved
operational decision-making. Recently,
we announced the creation
of a data collaborative in partnership
with UNICEF, Universidad del
Desarrollo, Telefónica R&D Center,
ISI Foundation and DigitalGlobe
to leverage mobile phone and
satellite imagery to increase our
understanding of how megacities
like Santiago, Chile, can create safer,
more-efficient mobility solutions for
women and girls.
HOW THE EXCHANGE OF
DATA CAN HELP SOLVE PUBLIC
PROBLEMS
At a broad level, data collaboratives
can help to unlock insights
from vast, untapped stores of private
sector data. But toward what
purpose? Our research, applied to
social media data and viewed more
generally, indicates five public-value
propositions. These include:
SITUATIONAL AWARENESS
AND RESPONSE.Social media data,
including shares, tweets, updates
and search data, can help nongovernmental
and humanitarian
organizations better understand
demographic trends, public sentiment
and the geographic distribution
of various phenomena, such
as disease.
Consider Facebook’s Disaster
Maps initiative, which seeks to fill
any gaps in traditional data sources
and to inform relief efforts. Following
natural disasters, Facebook
shares aggregated location, movement
and self-reported safety data
collected through its platform with
partner organizations, including
UNICEF and the World Food Program.
KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND
TRANSFER. Data collaboratives can
bring together (or “join”) widely
dispersed data sets, in the process
creating a better understanding
of possible correlations as well as
which variables make a difference
for which types of problem. For example,
the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology’s Electome Project
analyzed massive Twitter data sets
to improve reporting during the
2016 U.S. presidential election.
PUBLIC SERVICE DESIGN AND
DELIVERY. Private data sets often
contain a wealth of information
that can enable more-accurate
modeling of public services and
help guide service delivery. For
example, Waze has partnered with
over 60 cities to share its crowdsourced
traffic data to improve
urban planning and ease urban
congestion.
IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND
EVALUATION. Finally, data collaboratives
can aid in monitoring,
evaluation and improvement.
By leveraging social media data,
public-interest actors can rapidly
assess the results of their actions to
iterate on products and programs
when necessary. This is what Sport
England did, for instance, when it
used Twitter data to better understand
women’s views on exercise
as part of its #ThisGirlCan campaign
aimed at improving women’s
health and physical activity.
PROFESSIONALIZING THE
RESPONSIBLE USE OF PRIVATE
DATA FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD
For all its promise, the practice
of data collaboratives remains ad
hoc and limited. In part, this is a
result of the lack of a well-defined,
professionalized concept of data
stewardship within corporations.
Today, each attempt to establish
a cross-sector partnership built
on the analysis of social media
data requires significant and timeconsuming
efforts, and businesses
rarely have the personnel required
to undertake them.
As a consequence, the process
of establishing data collaboratives
and leveraging privately held data
for evidence-based policymaking
and service delivery is onerous,
generally one-off, not informed by
best practices and prone to dissolution
when the champions involved
move on to other functions.
By establishing data stewardship
as a corporate function and
by creating the methods and tools
needed for responsible data-sharing,
the practice of data collaboratives
can become regularized and
de-risked.
If early efforts toward this end
are meaningfully scaled and expanded,
data stewards across the
private sector can act as change
agents responsible for determining
what data to share and when, and
how to act on the insights gathered.
Still, many companies continue
to balk at the prospect of sharing
“their” data, which is an understandable
response given the reflex
to guard corporate interests. But our
research has indicated that many
benefits can accrue not only to data
recipients but also to those who
share it. Data collaboration is not a
zero-sum game.
(Stefaan G. Verhulst is co-founder
and chief of research and development
at the GovLab, based at New
York University’s Tandon School of
Engineering. Andrew Young is director
of knowledge at the GovLab.)
c
2017 Harvard Business School Publishing Corp. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate