Re: web census

On 20 Aug 2014, at 3:21 am, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:

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> On 19 August 2014 16:23, Tim Holborn <timothy.holborn@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
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> building a thing called ‘web-civics’, was thinking about data, the issues with public data (or lack thereof).  thought perhaps a well organised census, perhaps supported by the likes of google, Facebook, schema.org might provide new data, for research in social-sciences areas that is otherwise missing.
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> often, even the homeless have a Facebook account...
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> thoughts?
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> If there could be a way for the census to be able to make sure people dont use sock puppet identities or the sybil attack [1], I think that could be useful.  But I've yet to work out how you can do that without a central institution.  This becomes particularly useful when you are doing things like giving out money, eg a basic income.  You would not want a single person to claim a basic income twice, or more times.
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i think in this instance, it would be the use of SNS ID’d to create linked-data, which in-turn is anonymised for the purpose of supporting the creation and development of public data, on a civics basis, by the people for the people.  If a well organised, well supported web-census, were to gain traction - then solutions around dynamically supporting that data could support improvements overtime. 

I’m sure they’re examples in the past where the majors got together to do something that was good for humans.  

Google infrastructure, such as http://www.freebase.com/ should be capable of lowering the resolution on results. Schema.org capable of addressing the query schema - which might also be useful in other areas, like lowering the GPS resolution output on popular applications, like FB Messenger…  or perhaps identifying who was once a parent, and therefore find it difficult to get any sort of advertising targeted at them in relation to what might have been a traumatic experience.

With regard to Public Data
Statistics can be generated via political purpose, so an organisation is commissioned to generate stats for a specific cause. this does not reduce the benefit of the data, its’ just that it’s not necessarily representative of the broader socio-economic environment; which in-turn can mean that statistics relate to that specific cause should not be used to represent more than the statistics generated discover.  

In the sector of homelessness, statistics can be segmented based on policy.  So, a particular race of people who have different forms of government support may not appear due to financing categories; or, the need to have a mailing address in-order to participate, by way of systems, in the statistical collection process.

A debate undeniably exists around identity - surely; and, it is a governments sovereign duty to serve the people who are in its care, as to fundamentally provide - safety. 

The web changes the world so very quickly; some of the more sophisticated cultural traits of industry, can be radically influenced, in an unfortunately disruptive fashion, as to improve human service for the benefit of all.

The body of public service that manage public data are not the representatives of the people, who are elected from time-to-time.  Unfortunately, elected members may suffer from political difficulties should they seek to push or adjust the attitudes of public-service stakeholders surrounding the merits of public data; in making information available for research, review and social-studies / improvements.   It seems to get more complicated from thereon in.   in Australia a massive sector of public spending is social-services, and the organisation managing that http://www.humanservices.gov.au/corporate/publications-and-resources/statistical-information-and-data/ (noting that some data / statistical resources from such agencies has dramatically decreased in the past few years…) with higher levels of government having interesting definitions of data / metadata http://www.zdnet.com/australias-chief-law-officer-brands-metadata-a-contestable-concept-7000023859/ 

yet arguably; one of the underlying difficulties being experienced is in making attempts, to seek to explain the benefit of organisations supporting data-use, for the benefit of citizens as the primary interest group, and given the nature of the technology field - i’m not sure we’re without options.

> Timbl uses preferredURI in his FOAF, so that may have a way of aggregating a keyring of identities into a single preferred point of entry.
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This use-case, isn’t so much about FOAF or ID (mind, some of the systems kingsley builds are notable for this type of use-case).  It is targeting the decentralised way linked-data can be used to generate data that is useful for people, in a civics application.  FB Graph, and other related initiatives resource inordinate amounts of data https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6sOi9FOz2o for the purpose of improving advertising products.  Using very similar functionality (arguably the same systems) demonstrating the use of these systems, for social-good - for civics…  

So long as the initial system were developed in a meaningfully logical way, i’d imagine that the next issue might be about improving that resource.  I envisage it as a form of publicly usable service targeting social-studies, and other educational users.  perhaps the ability to generate info-graphics for Facebook posts, etc.  The operation of it, would need to have filters that provide the (above mentioned) means to reduce resolution as to support functional privacy.

the most difficult part, would be in obtaining the support of major SNS Vendors, to work together on a product that was end-user focused.  might be good for their innovation cycles though, a company who focuses on the needs of the people are certainly more capable of better applying themselves to the task of producing useful, meaningful, highly regarded products.

seems like a no-brainer.  In terms of ROI - if it were produced, and made useful the benefit would be in seeing the links used within research studies for papers that overtime change the lives of people, for better.  that’s not even considering the potential use-cases for businesses - providing of course - some sort of underlying agreement were made accessible that supports the fundamentals, like privacy.  I think wikipedia is integrated into FB so they’ve got an answer for a bunch of stuff in the form of a page?  

anyhow.  just an idea i thought had merit.  a useful application of linked-data. a way i considered those working within large organisations, might see an opportunity to do something meaningful within the space.

> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack
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> tim.h.
> http://www.webcivics.net/
> https://twitter.com/WebCivics
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