Posted by
Hugh McGuire-2 on
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/maybe-OT-values-of-CivicAccess-tp1420p1421.html
mike,
one example from the David Simon talk was: Baltimore's police chief
promised a decrease in crime. And succeeded in dropping all crime by
40%, except murders. How did the police force achieve such success? By
changing how crimes were classified...so armed robberies became
robberies, robberies became larcenies... etc. So it was a data-shell
game, but murders did not go down because you can't hide the bodies.
In fact, nothing changed except how the stats were recorded.
Re justice: I think broadly I would equate "justice" with good
decision-making. That is, when societies make more of the kinds of
decisions that improve people's lives, it makes for a more just
society. And by opening up data to people I expect us to have "better"
decisions, hence more justice.
The thing about opening up data is that people who care can and will
look at the data, at the methods, at the background, and I think/hope
it will be harder to hide bullshit behind numbers if the data is open,
and the methodologies are known.
It would be interesting to track this particular hypothesis though ...
Right now, if all you get is a police statement that crime is going
down, and a pdf with "stats" to prove it ... you don't have much to go
on. If you get the whole dataset, it's a different matter.
So if you open things up, you are likely to have more statistical
damned liars, AND more rigorous checking, and the hope is that the
checking balances out, and overshadows the liars.
But it's an interesting caution.
h.
On Nov 18, 2008, at 5:48 PM, Michael Lenczner wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> Since we started CA, the question of common goals / values has been a
> question. I'm don't think it needs to be 100% clear but I'm glad we
> haven't assumed consensus on issues that haven't been explored, and
> I'm glad that we don't assume that we all have the same values or
> strategies for social change. I think everyone is pretty cool with
> the idea that there's people from different places on the political
> spectrum, and that we are well off coming together to work on this
> specific goal of access to civic info and data.
>
> I wanted to share my concern about another issue. I've been picking up
> on a perceived idea that we're all equally excited about data-driven
> decision making. I wonder how true that is. Personally I get
> concerned by a lot of imagined practices I see around access to data.
> There's a whole positivist / empiricist side to it that kinda freaks
> me out.
>
> I can imagine us often making better decisions with access to more
> data, but I can also imagine us making worse decisions by relying too
> much on that practice. The reason I'm here is that access to
> information is a justice issue. I don't think it is just that we
> don't have access to our own civic information, and I think that we
> would have a more just society if access to these resources were
> opened up. Redressing that injustice is a goal in itself for me and
> secondarily I'm excited about issues of transparency in terms of the
> relation between citizen and government. Data-driven decision making
> (ie: better decision) is farther down as a priority for me. Down
> further still is the goal of increased efficiency.
>
> I don't necessarily respect the evaluation + management tools that are
> currently being pushed on the non-profit sector and I would not be
> comfortable with promoting more single-minded use of those tools by
> our public bodies. There's too many difficulties around the
> production of knowledge (data) and useful framing of it for me not to
> be ambivalent about encouraging their use.
>
> That being said, I respect that there are others that have a different
> set of priorities for being here and I'm not trying to convince
> anybody. I'm glad that we are here to work together on the question
> of access and possibilities for disseminating and using that
> info/data.
>
> I've been thinking about this for a while, but Hugh posted a video by
> the journalist behind the Wire that prompted my email. It points to
> some difficulties of making decisions from a distanced, solely
> quantitative knowledge of an issue.
> via Hugh's blog
>
http://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/webcast_Simon.shtml>
> Hope that made sense.
>
> Since I'm on the topic, I'm glad that we've developed a respectful
> culture here. No flaming and there's a good dialogue between new
> people, technical experts and policy experts. Congrats for us. :-)
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