Next Tues­day a few of us at Microsoft Research are host­ing a day-long dia­logue to dis­cuss the inter­min­glings of data and social/civic life. We’re bring­ing togeth­er a mix of social the­o­rists, com­men­ta­tors and pol­i­cy advis­ers with the hope of draw­ing out pos­si­bil­i­ties for doing pol­i­cy mak­ing (as well as tech­nol­o­gy design) dif­fer­ent­ly. Our pre­am­ble for the event fol­lows (a print­able PDF can be down­loaded here):

Dialogues on data, policy and civic life

The graphs below present two fair­ly typ­i­cal exam­ples of visu­al­i­sa­tions chart­ing some kind of data over time. In this case, they are the data a few of us at Microsoft Research in Cam­bridge have begun to col­lect of vehi­cle and bicy­cle jour­neys out­side our office build­ing. They show the vol­ume of jour­neys along Teni­son Road, record­ed over twen­ty-four hours. The first indi­cates the den­si­ty of the traf­fic and the sec­ond presents the direc­tion of that traffic.


But why are we col­lect­ing this data? How and where will it cir­cu­late? And to what end? We might ask, as well, what rights we have to cap­ture, store and present the data? Who should have rights to the data? How will it be used? In short, in what ways do the flows of traf­fic on Teni­son Road mat­ter, and to whom?
It’s pre­cise­ly this line of ques­tion­ing that has moti­vat­ed our traf­fic-mon­i­tor­ing exer­cise and more gen­er­al­ly a year­long project we are embark­ing on with the peo­ple liv­ing and work­ing on Teni­son Road. The project — hand­i­ly called the Teni­son Road project — stems from some trou­bles we’ve had with all the excite­ment about data being report­ed by the pop­u­lar press and matched by at least some of the claims com­ing from our tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-mind­ed com­rades. It is hard not to open a news­pa­per, jour­nal issue or con­fer­ence pro­ceed­ings with­out see­ing some­thing about data. On the one hand we have some pret­ty exag­ger­at­ed claims envi­sion­ing data (espe­cial­ly Big Data) as the final answer for under­stand­ing just about any­thing that’s hith­er­to been too com­plex to under­stand. On the oth­er, we see an abun­dance of sto­ries pre­dict­ing that a sur­veil­lance soci­ety afford­ed by the pro­lif­er­a­tion of per­son­al data is set to dis­man­tle civic life as we know it. Run­ning along­side this is a dis­cus­sion on appro­pri­ate pol­i­cy frame­works that might enable the poten­tial of data, while min­i­miz­ing the risks and pro­tect­ing the rights of cit­i­zens — encap­su­lat­ed by the Euro­pean Union’s focus this past year on gain­ing approval for the draft Data Pro­tec­tion Regulation.
No mat­ter how you cut it, how­ev­er, it’s abun­dant­ly clear that where data extends into the every­day — and is mobilised with many het­ero­ge­neous motives — there are some pro­found­ly chal­leng­ing tech­ni­cal, social and eth­i­cal issues at stake. On Teni­son Road at least, we’ve found such issues to be deeply inter­twined, imme­di­ate­ly rais­ing ques­tions around how par­tic­u­lar actors are pri­ori­tised and priv­i­leged and whether there may be dif­fer­ent and pos­si­bly bet­ter ways to dis­trib­ute agency. We’ve found there to be a trou­bling (if not alto­geth­er unsur­pris­ing) degree of nuance and com­plex­i­ty, and some real uncer­tain­ty about how things might be better.
Per­haps too often, Big Data — and data in gen­er­al — is dis­cussed in the abstract, and the ten­den­cy is to over­look these nuances and com­plex­i­ties. The impact of forms of dig­i­tal data on indi­vid­u­als and soci­eties are not ful­ly under­stood. There is a dearth of evi­dence on the role of data in every­day life: how peo­ple think about it and its effects on com­mu­ni­ties and col­lec­tive deci­sion-mak­ing. In the­o­ry, bet­ter evi­dence should lead to improved pol­i­cy mak­ing, both in its effec­tive­ness and imple­men­ta­tion. Prac­ti­cal­ly, how this might hap­pen is far from clear.
It is with these, if you will, ‘trou­bles’ in mind that we’ve planned this day of dia­logue, bring­ing togeth­er the­o­rists, pol­i­cy mak­ers, and com­men­ta­tors. The dia­logues will invite provo­ca­tions and con­tro­ver­sies as ways of get­ting at prob­lem­at­ic issues at the inter­sec­tion of pol­i­cy mak­ing, tech­nol­o­gy design and civic life. These may describe sit­u­a­tions where the bound­aries between peo­ple, tech­nolo­gies and con­cepts are vague, con­test­ed or oth­er­wise ‘messy’. Our hope is that they will also be gen­er­a­tive and invite insights into design­ing more appro­pri­ate tech­nolo­gies, pol­i­cy frame­works and civic engagements.
The struc­ture of the dia­logue day is delib­er­ate­ly open so that impor­tant mat­ters of con­cern can be iden­ti­fied col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly, and unrav­elled at length dur­ing what we’re ambi­tious­ly think­ing of as ‘un-ses­sions’. Reports from oth­er pol­i­cy forums hint at a range of rich top­ics that might be sig­nif­i­cant to those of us work­ing at the inter­sec­tions of data, pol­i­cy and civic life.¹ Pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions that have focused on the inter­ac­tions between dif­fer­ent groups, such as indi­vid­u­als, organ­i­sa­tions and gov­ern­ments, often draw on the metaphor of ‘ecosys­tems’. Think­ing through the inter­play with­in such sys­tems, pol­i­cy mak­ers are chal­lenged to medi­ate between the rights and respon­si­bil­i­ties of var­i­ous actors. Con­cepts of risk and harm are to be bal­anced against emerg­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for the pro­duc­tion of var­i­ous forms of val­ue. More­over, as data sub­jects or cit­i­zens, indi­vid­u­als are fig­ured as hav­ing par­tic­u­lar rights — most obvi­ous­ly to secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy. There are ques­tions around how these should be bal­anced against the ben­e­fits to larg­er social group­ings such as soci­eties and nation-states.
Although a shared vocab­u­lary is emerg­ing in this area, many dif­fer­ences remain in how pol­i­cy prob­lems are under­stood and artic­u­lat­ed; indeed we antic­i­pate that par­tic­i­pants in our dia­logue day will bring along a wide range of per­spec­tives. Rather than assum­ing con­sen­sus, we want to turn atten­tion to the prac­tice of prob­lem-mak­ing itself. How do we cur­rent­ly for­mu­late the chal­lenges and promis­es of data in pol­i­cy-mak­ing? How are the actors involved (such as indi­vid­u­als and organ­i­sa­tions) bound­ed and framed? The many posi­tions gen­er­at­ed dur­ing the dia­logue day pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to delib­er­ate­ly com­pli­cate and thick­en the issues. How can we learn from each oth­er in order to pose bet­ter or dif­fer­ent prob­lems? How might provo­ca­tions or con­tro­ver­sies chal­lenge us to artic­u­late actors dif­fer­ent­ly? How might engag­ing with the prac­tice of prob­lem-mak­ing in crit­i­cal, inven­tive or spec­u­la­tive ways shift the con­cerns that emerge? How might these shifts result in bet­ter tech­nolo­gies, poli­cies, and eth­i­cal sys­tems that can help address the chal­lenges posed?
Here at Microsoft Research, in the con­text of the Teni­son Road project, doing prob­lem-mak­ing dif­fer­ent­ly has meant grap­pling with how indi­vid­u­als are tied togeth­er in com­plex ways, as part of net­works, groups or com­mu­ni­ties. We have had to reflect on what cit­i­zen­ship might mean in the design and devel­op­ment of this research. Our expe­ri­ences res­onate with chal­lenges in the devel­op­ment of data pol­i­cy. We might ask what kinds of col­lec­tives are evoked by ideas of the ‘com­mu­nal’ or ‘greater good’? Like­wise, this research has involved assem­bling a diverse group of peo­ple from Teni­son Road and beyond. We are con­stant­ly ques­tion­ing (and being ques­tioned about) what par­tic­i­pa­tion might mean, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the project devel­ops to address com­mu­ni­ty con­cerns over time. Pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in pol­i­cy con­texts is often under­stood as a ‘good,’ but how is par­tic­i­pa­tion allowed to unfold? How might we unpack phras­es such as ‘cit­i­zen empow­er­ment’? These are exam­ples of the kinds of top­ics that might be raised for fur­ther dis­cus­sion dur­ing the un-ses­sions, depend­ing on the inter­ests and align­ments of attendees.
One of the most impor­tant out­comes of the dia­logue day will be a list of ques­tions that can set us on an appro­pri­ate course to address the objec­tives dis­cussed above. We are also craft­ing a dynam­ic com­mu­ni­ty of inter­est that can pur­sue the devel­op­ment of approach­es that may poten­tial­ly lead to solu­tions. The ques­tions can be used to inform future meet­ings or events, but we hope they may gen­er­ate insights that can ulti­mate­ly and prac­ti­cal­ly inform the devel­op­ment of data pol­i­cy and form the bases for an active and grow­ing com­mu­ni­ty of inter­est­ed parties.
The list of ques­tions will be cir­cu­lat­ed to par­tic­i­pants, along with a sum­ma­ry report that attempts to detail the dis­cus­sions that took place on the day. We encour­age any sub­mis­sions, con­tri­bu­tions or changes to this doc­u­ment. Final­ly, we will pro­duce a com­men­tary — in the form of a posi­tion paper of sorts — that flesh­es out in greater depth the con­nec­tions between these dis­cus­sions and the ques­tions that are emerg­ing from the Teni­son Road project. This will draw on soci­o­log­i­cal lit­er­a­tures, par­tic­u­lar­ly those spe­cif­ic to the study of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. We imag­ine that this might be one of a series of posi­tion papers and invite par­tic­i­pants of the dia­logue day to con­tribute. Our hope is that this will be the begin­ning of a con­tin­u­ing dia­logue, host­ed here at Microsoft Resarch or by oth­ers in the emerg­ing network.
The vision of a data-rich and hyper-con­nect­ed world presents some of the most chal­leng­ing ques­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the inter­sec­tion of data, pol­i­cy and civic life. We are pleased to be facil­i­tat­ing such a knowl­edge­able group of peo­ple from diverse back­grounds, to begin work­ing through these ‘trou­bles’.
¹Exam­ples include:
(a) World Eco­nom­ic Forum reports, avail­able here.
(b) strands of the 2013 Big Data Euro­pean Con­fer­ence, see here.
© the Inter­na­tion­al Insti­tute of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions work­shop on “Cre­at­ing a User-Cen­tred Data Ecosys­tem: Con­text and Pol­i­cy,” see here.
More infor­ma­tion about the Teni­son Road project is avail­able here.
This doc­u­ment has been authored by Lara Hous­ton, Alex Tay­lor and Car­olyn Nguyen.