#and as soon as i posted about passing my test on facebook this special ed teacher from my high school dmed me like:

[venussunrise]

some trait in me that makes people desperate to employ me 

[warninggraphiccontent]

5 June 2020

A quiet week

Yeah, right.

It was Data Bites #11 on Wednesday. It was good. You can watch the video here. It will also appear here soon. There's a Twitter thread here. Previous events are here. The next one will be on 1 July. And Glyn made paella.

I wrote 3,000 words explaining how government is planning to use our personal data to combat coronavirus - contact tracing apps and much else besides...

...and I discussed data on this week's IfG podcast with team IfG, and special guest Rowland.

I wittered on a bit more on Twitter about the tenth anniversary of David Cameron's open data letter.

What are you doing this Monday morning at 0930? You're watching me interview digital government rockstar and revolutionary, Audrey Tang, about Taiwan's coronavirus response, aren't you? Register here.

We're doing a short report on digital government and coronavirus - how did existing services cope, how has it accelerated change, etc. If you're a UK civil servant, we'd be very grateful if you could spend two minutes filling out our survey on remote working tools. Thank you!

Don't forget our spreadsheet of data-related developments in the UK government's coronavirus response. And don't forget to add anything that we've forgotten to add.

There's just under a week left to enter the Orwell Youth Prize. If you know any 12-18 year olds, let them know!

Some good people doing good things:

Julian (and other former colleagues) have just launched Engage Britain, a new approach to tackling the biggest challenges facing the UK (using, in part, the same platform Taiwan uses for public engagement)

Rachel has helped bring together a number of charities to call for a data collective to get charities the data they need to make a difference; and

Hera is leaving the Open Contracting Partnership to go full-time at Chayn, a global volunteer network providing resources to help women experiencing abuse.

Giuseppe highlighted Loud Numbers, a new data sonification podcast coming later this year. Here are my data sonifications from late last year.

And to bring it full circle back to this week's Data Bites... I couldn't resist illustrating just how stupid this week's developments in parliament have been by comparing how long the voting queue of MPs was to London buses and Big Ben.*

Finally, the excellent Ben Worthy has a plea to anyone who's used parliamentary data:

Who’s Watching Parliament: help with our survey of data users

Our new project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, looks at how new data is being used to monitor parliament. We want to know more about who is using data, what they are using it for and how this could impact on their thinking about Parliament and democracy in the UK.

If you have used Parliament data, please help us by filling in our short survey.

The project is being overseen by Dr. Ben Worthy, an academic at Birkbeck College. Please ask him any questions via email.

Have a great weekend

Gavin

*Yes, I know, Big Ben is the name of the doctor.

Today's links:

Tips, tech, etc

How to hold an unconference online (James Cattell)

How Hansard is reporting parliamentary business during lockdown (Parliamentary Digital Service)

Join the COVID-19 Response Network: A Slack Workspace for Public Servants (Apolitical)

Power Dynamics and Inclusion in Virtual Meetings (Aspiration)

Working from home (Andrea Cooper)

Graphic content

#BlackLivesMatter

Minneapolis Police Use Force Against Black People at 7 Times the Rate of Whites* (New York Times)

Covid-19 pandemic hits black voters’ incomes hardest, FT poll shows* (FT)

Photos From The George Floyd Protests, City By City* (New York Times)

1,023 people have been shot and killed by police in the past year* (Washington Post)

W.E.B. Du Bois’ Visionary Infographics Come Together for the First Time in Full Color (Smithsonian Magazine)

W. E. B. Du Bois’ staggering Data Visualizations are as powerful today as they were in 1900 (Nightingale)

What W. E. B. Du Bois Conveyed in His Captivating Infographics* (The New Yorker)

Viral content: cases

UK excess deaths during pandemic reach 62,000* (FT)

UK coronavirus death toll passes 50,000, official figures show (The Guardian)

Coronavirus excess deaths: UK has one of highest levels in Europe (The Guardian)

Coronavirus in charts: the fact-checkers correcting falsehoods (Nature)

Democracies contain epidemics most effectively* (The Economist)

A deep dive into testing statistics (Ed Conway)

Disparities in the risk and outcomes of COVID-19 (Public Health England)

Exclusive: Government censored BAME covid-risk review (HSJ)

This is how many tests have been done, and those that were sent out in May (Paul Bradshaw/Flourish)

There Has Been an Increase in Other Causes of Deaths, Not Just Coronavirus* (New York Times)

Where U.S. coronavirus cases are on the rise (Reuters)

British nursing homes in crisis as deaths mount (Reuters)

Revealed: the coronavirus death toll across Britain - how many excess deaths has your area had?* (Telegraph)

Viral content: consequences

Coronavirus and unemployment: a five nation comparison (IfG)

The vaccine: the only way back to previous life (El Pais)

Trust and Behavioural Responses to COVID-19 (trustgov)

Trust in UK government and news media COVID-19 information down, concerns over misinformation from government and politicians up (Reuters Institute)

Next Wave of U.S. Job Cuts Targets Millions of Higher-Paid Workers* (Bloomberg)

American retailers have laid off or furloughed one-fifth of their workers* (The Economist)

Only 12% of Brits think MPs should have to physically be in Commons to vote during COVID-19 crisis (YouGov)

Is Britain easing lockdown too soon?* (New Statesman)

Anti-viral content

Environmental justice (IPPR)

The hospital corridor (Dr Kate McLean)

Ministerial directions (IfG)

Ministerial moves (me for IfG)

Air pollution in China back to pre-Covid levels and Europe may follow (The Guardian)

‘Going in the Wrong Direction’: More Tropical Forest Loss in 2019* (New York Times)

Meta data

Viral content: contact details

Personal data and coronavirus (me for IfG)

Spot the difference – explaining the Covid-19 apps (ODI)

Germany and Korea expose flaws in the NHS track and trace plan* (Wired)

The coronavirus pandemic highlights the need for a surveillance debate beyond ‘privacy’ (Inforrm)

UK ‘test and trace’ service did not complete mandatory privacy checks (Politico)

Book excerpt: Developing for privacy in the pandemic (Heather Burns)

Viral content: lies, damn lies and...

Sir David Norgrove response to Matt Hancock regarding the Government’s COVID-19 testing data (UK Statistics Authority - more)

Statistics Watchdog Still Not Satisfied With ‘Trustworthiness’ Of Covid Test Figures (Huffington Post)

Informing the pandemic response: What’s next from the ONS? (ONS)

‘No part of the economy remains untouched’: update on how the ONS is measuring the impact of COVID-19 (ONS)

Interview with Sir Ian Diamond, National Statistician of the United Kingdom (UN)

Viral content: everything else

Why we’re calling for a data collective (Catalyst)

The problem of modelling: Public policy and the coronavirus (TLS)

Excess mortality during the Covid-19 pandemic (FT)

AI firm that worked with Vote Leave given new coronavirus contract (The Guardian)

Flawed data casts cloud over Spain’s lockdown strategy* (FT - thread)

Vital data and research projects to tackle COVID-19 searchable via new developments in online health data portal (HDR UK)

Covid, hysteresis, and the future of work (VoxEU)

Big tech

Welcome to the United States of Amazon* (Tortoise)

Whole Foods Just Fired an Employee Who Kept Track of Coronavirus Cases (Vice)

Facebook’s Smooth New Political Fixer (Politico)

Facebook Employees Stage Virtual Walkout to Protest Trump Posts* (New York Times)

Anti-viral content: digital government

More must be done to realise the value of geospatial data (Public Technology)

Facing up to the digital identity challenge (HM Land Registry)

Vision, Voice, and Technology: Is There a Global “Open Government” Trend?* (Administration & Society)

Archival Catalogue Record Identifiers (Down the Code Mine)

SHARED, CROSS-GOVERNMENT PLATFORMS (Jerry Fishenden)

Anti-viral content: everything else

When the Robot You Consider Family Tries to Sell You Something (Slate)

Measurement for Learning: A Different Approach to Improvement (Centre for Public Impact)

Fact-checking the president:  A study in post-truth (Martin Gurri)

Us folks at @fullfact have produced a prototype API for how our fact checks related to the coronavirus could be made available as a machine readable view (Andy Dudfield)

Who governs? A new global dataset on members of cabinets (Jacob Nyrup and Stuart Bramwell, via Tim)

The police want your phone data. Here’s what they can get — and what they can’t. (recode)

Why Information Matters (The New Atlantis)

Eye-catching advances in some AI fields are not real (Science)

Opportunities

EVENT: How Taiwan became a coronavirus success story (IfG)

JOB: Head of Geovation (Ordnance Survey)

JOB: Head of Digital Inclusion, Accessibility & Standards (HMRC)

JOB: Technical writer (GDS)

JOBS: Product people (GOV.UK)

JOB: Senior Data Analyst (Lower) (Citizens Advice - more)

JOB: ANALYST, DIGITAL RESEARCH UNIT (Institute for Strategic Dialogue)

JOB: Data Scientist / Mid-Level / Senior Data Scientist (Flowminder)

JOB: Technology Editor (Rest of World)

JOB: Research Fellow, TrustGov Project (University of Southampton)

JOB: Learning and Development Specialist – Data Trainer - maternity cover (ODI)

And finally...

Urban henges… or streets of the rising sun (Victoria Crawford)

Taking Lessons From a Bloody Masterpiece* (New York Times)

When you're building a general course about artificial intelligence, you come across some good memes. (Mindy McAdams)

How Pi was nearly changed to 3.2 (Numberphile)

next slide please (Darren Dutton)