Dr Nicholas Christakis writes that after this pandemic people will seek extensive social interactions and predicts a second “roaring 20s”. Will privacy concerns and willingness to share data also change after the current pandemic is over?

Sharon Weinberger asks the question: what is a weapon in the Information Age? From microscopic "smart dust" tracking devices to DNA-tracing tech and advanced facial recognition software, journalist Sharon Weinberger leads a hair-raising tour through the global, unregulated bazaar of privatized mass surveillance. To rein in this growing, multibillion-dollar marketplace that often caters to customers with nefarious intents, Weinberger believes the first step is for governments to classify surveillance tools as dangerous and powerful weapons.

Electronic Frontier Foundation: The European Commission has released its public draft of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which, along with the Digital Services Act (DSA,) represents the first major overhaul of EU Internet legislation in the 21st Century. Like the DSA, the DMA takes aim at the monopolisation of the tech sector and proposes sweeping pro-competition regulations with serious penalties for noncompliance.

On Thursday, December 10, 2020, the GovLab hosted a panel discussion on “Data Collaboration in the Age of COVID-19” at the MyData Conference 2020. Facilitated by Stefaan Verhulst (Co-Founder and Chief R&D at The GovLab), panelists Kelly Jin (City of New York), Claudia Juench (Cloudera Foundation), Dave Greene (Microsoft), and JoAnn Stonier (Mastercard) discussed ways the COVID-19 response could inform efforts to foster cross-sector data reuse in a responsible, systematic, and sustainable way.

The recent publication of the After Dark report wrapped up our months long human centered design research with UN Women, which was premised on understanding the experiences of women travelling and using public transportation in the evening time. To better understand these women’s needs, concerns, attitudes and behaviours, we created a set of personas based on insights we gathered across the three cities we surveyed, as well as the anecdotes of women working blue collar, night-shift jobs.

A democratic approach to policy-making calls for reliable and timely information to ensure effective decision making. The Government of Indonesia in light of this has introduced the Satu Data Initiative to improve the quality of data governance, not just for policy-making but also to increase transparency with open data for citizens.

A great summary of the Nine Key Themes one of our invited presenters at MyData 2020 Onlince Conference Sangeet Paul Choudary have been working on during this year.