Collecting extensive data on citizens can improve policy making
Data science has made companies such as Google and Facebook extremely wealthy. The insights and predictive capacity of their platforms have revolutionized industries and provided consumers with more informed choice, customized solutions and efficient service delivery.
In return, consumers share a lot of their personal data with these companies and others like them — enough that brokering data is now a multibillion-dollar industry.
Ordinary people volunteer data points about themselves, which are aggregated into massive databases, then analyzed by scientists and machines to provide enough insights into consumer behaviour that they become predictive.
Governments around the world are already using digital tools to customize and improve services to their citizens, but what if policy-makers could use these emerging methods to predict consumer behaviour, health epidemics, the root causes of increasing crime rates, or the economic impact of a specific public policy? This is within reach.
Consider traditional law enforcement. On one hand, experts have known about the “root causes” of crime — such as poverty, racism and family violence — for decades. But to make prevention work they need to know how these factors are interacting and where interventions, such as better education or social inclusion, will have the right effect.
Figuring this out is hard — really hard. Communities are as intricate and active as a beehive; and until now we haven’t had the right data and tools to do the analysis. Prevention has been based more on intuition than evidence.
Unsurprisingly, the results have been mixed, at best, leaving decision-makers skeptical about the benefits and unwilling to invest big dollars in it.
Big Data, analytics and advancements in machine learning now make this kind of analysis possible, which, in turn, opens the door to effective crime prevention — and a lot more.
While Google and Facebook rely on gated and privately controlled data sets, civil analytics relies on the promises of the Open Government movement, which is based on transparency
Indeed, a whole new approach to policymaking is emerging. It combines the tools of data science with other new policy-making techniques to help ensure decision-making is evidence-informed. We call this approach civil analytics.
While Google and Facebook rely on gated and privately controlled data sets, civil analytics relies on the promises of the Open Government movement, which is based on transparency.
It calls on governments to open their data vaults to the public, who are then free to use this resource to help solve public issues. Civil analytics builds on this. It mobilizes Big Data, analytics and the skills of the public policy community in the pursuit of social good.
Improving the quality of public services is part of this. Just as companies such as Amazon and Apple use machine learning to find your next summer read or ideal playlist, civil analytics can and will use analytics to provide the public with highly personalized, single-window services, from income tax to health care.
Even more promising, is the potential of civil analytics to vastly improve the design and delivery of public policy over a wide range of policy areas.
Managing trade, fostering innovation, protecting the environment, ending poverty and halting crippling diseases — the possibilities for transforming our physical and social environment are limitless.
Some will say civil analytics is really part of a growing trend by governments to use Big Data and analytics as a powerful tool for law enforcement and behaviour control.
Far from a script inspired by Minority Report, we see civil analytics as a beacon of hope for democracy.
Perhaps its greatest attraction is its potential to enhance informed debate and decision-making. Indeed, civil analytics may be the only viable answer to the kind of post-truth politics now taking root.
Opportunities like this come along perhaps once in a century. Canadians could be leaders in this new field.
The question now is whether our governments and our people have the will and the imagination to seize the moment. We are hopeful. Tom Pitfield is president of Canada 2020 and Don Lenihan is senior associate. The organization has just published its paper, How Big Data is About to Explode Policy-making as We Know It: The Rise of Civil Analytics.