PD Newsletter #46: Ethnicity data, facial recognition and the Digital Services Convening

Hello friends 👋🏾👋🏿👋🏼
Hope you’re hanging in there.

Last week Public Digital co-hosted the third annual Digital Services Convening with the Harvard Kennedy School. We welcomed representatives from more than 40 governments and around 90 people turned out – remotely of course – for each of the 8 sessions.

Digital teams' successes were celebrated, but the most valuable conversations were the ones that tackled challenges teams are facing. You can read more here and we’re working on more in-depth posts too. Watch this space.

🇪🇸 To our Spanish-speaking readers, we’re trying out a Spanish language version of the newsletter. Sign up here. Same content to begin with, but Dan and Angie are doing the hard work so you don’t have to. 😊

Amy
@amymcnichol

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Ways of working

🇸🇬 GovTech Singapore has announced gov will inject more dynamism into the country’s procurement practices through 3 new partnership models. This is how. They’re expected to improve gov’s flexibility and agility to react to changes. 80% of contracts offered will be open to small and medium-sized enterprises.

📊 Data-informed decisions

Excellent post on how Citizens Advice uses data to understand citizen’s worries and make decisions about the service. Post author Gemma Byrne has also shared traffic and searches during a PM’s speech, and following footballer Marcus Rashford’s school meals appeal (and victory), yesterday. CA shares insights with gov too. Also at CA, Dan Barrett reflects on the process and experience of building a data product in a crisis.

State of technology

❓Microsoft, Amazon and IBM announced they’re pausing selling their facial recognition technology to police following evidence showing inherent racial bias. Privacy International asks whether IBM is genuine, Amazon’s hypocrisy has been flagged, and Azeem Azhar’s Exponential View lists the questions we should ask now.

2 good podcast episodes:

1. Is this the end of facial recognition? (What next, TBD), with guest Deb Raji, technology fellow who describes the lack of diversity in face datasets as well as her colleagues’ reluctance to think about an extra dimension of representation when it is already “so hard to collect data”. Raji previously teamed up with Joy Buolamwini, founder of Algorithmic Justice League whose Coded Bias documentary is being screened online on 20 June).

2. Amazon finally sees the problem with facial recognition (Intelligencer, NY Magazine), Tech journalist Kara Swisher and Professor Scott Galloway discuss tech companies’ responsibility for the issues.
   

✅ Journalist James Ball explains why simply breaking up big tech monopolies won't solve anything. We need an “entirely new social contract [because] this isn’t just about more privacy protections: it’s about rights to our data, audits of algorithmic decision-making, registers of use, and new tax systems for a world shrunk by the web.”

💳 And this is fun. Peter from Built for Mars pits traditional and challenger banks against each other in this series of posts. “Pick a winner between Monzo, Revolut and Starling?” he says. He will in later chapters.

Digital government

👏🏿 Watch and learn

Interview with Aurdey Tang, Taiwanese Digital Minister, on how Taiwan – a country with 24 million people and regular travel to China – became a coronavirus success story (450 cases and 7 deaths at the time of recording). This is how it’s done.

🇯🇵 Accelerating digital transformation

Coronavirus has forced the Japanese health ministry to improve an outdated paper-and-fax system that had “been under debate for at least 10 years” before it was called out for inefficiency “in a war-zone-like situation where the healthcare system is about to collapse."

Open, standardised, accessible (ethnicity) data

🇨🇦 Superb collaboration between California’s Department of Public Health and the Department of Technology. Clearly annotated breakdown of coronavirus data in the state of California. The ‘who is getting infected’ section reveals significant disparities between ethnicities and includes ‘structural racism’ as a possible explanation of why, as well as poverty and an increased likelihood of having underlying conditions.

🇬🇧 Meanwhile in the UK, there’s no one source of truth.

• The ONS published an online report which includes about 5 weeks’ worth of data.

• Public Health England have published a PDF review showing a “disproportionate impact on Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups”. There’s proposed action but it doesn’t equal *actual* action... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

• The NHS has been publishing daily deaths since 2 April (ethnicity breakdown included in weekly updates), while the BBC’s once prominent daily deaths data has vanished from the homepage.

The Ethnicity facts and figures site (sole purpose to highlight disparities between the experience and treatment of different ethnic groups) – is oddly silent. There’s not a single mention of the virus on there. Why? 😶

News from Public Digital

We can help
We have many years of experience helping teams and their wider orgs reorganise, innovate and deliver quickly so they can look forward with more confidence. Drop ben@public.digital a line if you’d like some support.

On the PD blog

James Stewart has been keeping an eye on coronavirus response sites from governments around the world. His prototype shows how they perform and he wants your feedback.

Last month we welcomed 7 new affiliates to Public Digital. We’re so pleased they agreed to strengthen what is already a network we’re very proud of and thankful for. We now have 41 affiliates across 7 countries and 5 continents.

Kate Tarling blogged about 6 ways executives can support teams and change institutional ways of working.

Co-hosting the Digital Services Convening with the Harvard Kennedy School.