IRC-Galleria

Using civil society's expertise to predict and foresee social issues

Civil society's knowledge
Civil society is well positioned to forecast and anticipate societal issues using its empirical and on-the-ground expertise. Taking advantage of this knowledge is critical to achieving the government's leveling-up plan.

There is a chance for civil society to identify a number of crucial Social Missions for post-Covid recovery, similar to the Grand Challenges outlined in the Industrial Strategy. This is a lot greater shift than looking for first-order efficiencies like data sharing and better administrative systems can provide: it's an opportunity to regroup, rethink structures, and come up with inventive ideas that can help more people have a brighter future.

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These missions should be lean, iterative, local or regionally focused, and incentivize replication and maintenance so that they may be easily transferred from one location to another.

This essay argues for these Social Missions, highlighting the possibility for civil society to take the lead, the importance of alternatives to Silicon Valley-owned digital infrastructure, the importance of public trust, and lean ways of sharing capabilities across sectors.

From responders to forecasters, here are a few things to keep in mind.

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The PM's evocation of the sector's "inventiveness, flexibility, and can-do spirit" implies that civil society, in its broadest sense, is regularly relied upon to respond to societal problems as they arise. This is a chance that has been squandered. If the UK wants to rebuild itself with an emphasis on innovation, civil society's empirical knowledge is copious — but underutilised.

This is not a proposal for cross-sector data exchange, but for ambitious Social Missions shaped by community groups, charities, and social entrepreneurs' ongoing informal horizon scanning.

It also mirrors the goal of the BEIS UK Research and Development Roadmap, which asks how the UK might "engage in new and imaginative ways to ensure that our science, research, and innovation system is responsive to the needs and ambitions of our society" (1 July 2020). This may not appear to address civil society at first glance, but a closer analysis reveals that the sector plays an important role in the innovation pipeline, unleashing benefits in health, wellbeing, and prosperity.

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If HMG is serious about reaching net zero carbon emissions, a resilient economy, environment, and society, and a better quality of life for all, civil society must play a key role in determining those objectives. The formation of Social Missions would enable lean, scalable cross-sector cooperation by gaining insight from those working on the frontlines of Britain's inequities.

2. Alternatives are required

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WhatsApp, Facebook, Zoom, and Google Meet were all essential in the swift reaction of civil society to the Coronavirus outbreak. New Mutual Aid groups have sprung up all over the country; playgroups, choirs, church meetings, and pub quizzes have all gone virtual; and Catalyst data reveals that 66 percent of all charities are now doing all of their work online. All of this is taking place on digital infrastructure provided by American firms. In many cases, it is free at the time of use, and suppliers are under no duty to continue to provide a free, dependable, or privacy-protecting service.

While these technologies have given a much-needed short-term solution, Silicon Valley platforms cannot serve as the underlying or long-term infrastructure for civil society in the United Kingdom. Bringing together the public, commercial, and community sectors to identify and, if necessary, develop the technology required to solve critical societal challenges would reduce reliance on these platforms.

3. Data, trust, and innovation

In a country dedicated to regeneration and upward mobility, algorithmic oppression has no place.

All data and technology utilised in Societal Missions must be proportionate, rights-respecting, and avoid reproducing underlying social inequality and bias.

Civil society is already working to ensure that everyone has access to good work, safe housing, healthy food, clean air, and education and care. The data needed to address these issues is among the most intimate of all personal data; any innovation programme aimed at ensuring a more equal future must not take advantage of this, and public trust must be earned.

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The potential of public and stakeholder backlash against insensitive innovation is highlighted in Nesta's latest paper, Innovation after Lockdown. Rolling out post-hoc damage limitation for overly ambitious or rights infringing technology, as demonstrated with the NHSX track and trace app, is costly and time-consuming.

Furthermore, the work of researchers such as Safiya Umoja Noble, Virginia Eubanks, Cathy O'Neil, Meredith Broussard, Ruha Benjamin, and others shows that the indiscriminate use of data and emerging technology risks entrenching historic social bias and injustice if proper standards are not in place.

Data-driven judgments, rather than bringing freedom, are already limiting human potential and deepening inequality. Inadequately controlled algorithms already govern access to information, work, housing, credit, and justice. Extending these new oppressive measures has no place in a country committed to renewal and upward mobility.

This isn't to say that there isn't potential.

Focused Social Missions would allow for an iterative, sandbox approach to safe insight-sharing and cross-sector collaboration, leveraging best practises from innovation to improve society. Constraints are the best friend of the lean inventor, and adopting them early would help civil society become more future focused, less reactive, and more proactive in addressing inequality and injustice – while also reducing the danger of getting it wrong and undermining public trust at scale.

Fellowship programmes provided by DataKind and CAST make data scientists and digital specialists available to civil society organisations. HMG should take advantage of this knowledge, incentivizing more enterprises to provide pro bono expert assistance in order to help civil society gain more insight.

4. Exchanging knowledge, talents, and abilities

We advocate that partners from the public, business, and community sectors share insight and knowledge around mission-specific concerns rather than establishing sophisticated data observatories.

Sharing knowledge, skills, and capacities across the public, private, and community sectors will enable swift and courteous collaboration, allowing each sector to play to its strengths while also learning about potential future data-sharing models.

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We advocate that partners from the public, business, and community sectors share insight and knowledge around mission-specific concerns rather than establishing sophisticated data observatories. This information will aid in identifying areas for deeper collaboration as well as avoiding challenging ethical and information governance challenges.