5 August 2022

Chart hit

Forget the Tory leadership contest. Forget Boris Johnson’s last days in Number 10 (/at Chequers/on whichever holiday he happens to be on this week). Forget Labour’s picket line problems.

This is the political inside read you’ve all been waiting for: the story of the Institute for Government ministerial resignation chart. With hopefully a few pointers about how to do data and dataviz in your organisation (see also my older piece for Smart Thinking).

Yes, it’s that chart again: the IfG step chart of ministerial resignations

Other bits and pieces:

• I’d have missed this if not for Civil Service World — a mini-reshuffle of shadow junior ministers has given us a new shadow minister for media, data, and digital infrastructure, Steph Peacock.
• Interesting piece on attitudes towards immigration in the New Statesman, with some noteworthy charts. I like the subtle colouring between the bars on the third chart, which helps reinforce the change between the two. I’m not quite so sure about the second chart, which may look nice but risks suggesting there are more data points than there are (see this open chart surgery for more).
• Just reupping this, apropos of nothing.
• My contribution to a recent ODI roundtable on data experimentalism, which also has details of how you can get involved.
• On the mySociety front, we’re looking for Action Lab members to help us decide what work to commission on behavioural change and climate action, and we have our final Civic Tech Surgery — on civic tech in hostile environments — coming up on 8 September.
• And there’s a great looking role going at Global Canopy, which targets the market forces destroying nature through transparency and accountability. If you want to be their new data scientist, you have until 15 August.

Have a good weekend
Gavin

Enjoying Warning: Graphic Content?

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Today’s links:

Graphic content

Climate of fear

• Mapping the Coolest Spots Inside the World’s Sweltering Cities* (Bloomberg)
• Climate graphic of the week: US heat and drought coincide with historic climate bill* (FT)
• Charted the celebrity private jet drama (FT)
• The End of Snow Threatens to Upend 76 Million American Lives* (Bloomberg)
• SAVING THE SEQUOIAS (Reuters)
• How the New Climate Bill Would Reduce Emissions* (New York Times)
• These hurricane flood maps reveal the climate future for Miami, NYC and D.C. (NPR)
• Can we save the Amazon rainforest?* (New Statesman)
• How close are we to truly zero carbon renewable energy?* (New Statesman)

Viral content

• Covid deaths in Australia (The Guardian)
• Covid-19 has damaged the reputation of Cuban health care* (The Economist)
• The mystery of London’s missing money* (FT)

Ukraine

• Traffic resumes from Ukrainian ports (Reuters)
• Four maps explain how Sweden and Finland could alter NATO’s security* (Washington Post)
• By how much will the war in Ukraine reduce global growth?* (The Economist)

UK

• By obsessing over immigration, the Conservatives are chasing phantom voters* (New Statesman)
• Who are the Conservative Party members deciding our next PM?* (The Times)
• Pressure grows on candidates for No 10 to commit to ‘levelling up’* (FT)
• The power of the British passport has plummeted — and it’s causing chaos* (Telegraph)
• How UK house prices are soaring above wage growth* (New Statesman)
• How the gap between public and private sector pay has grown* (New Statesman)
• How the great British sandwich trade was derailed by Brexit, Covid and inflation* (FT)
• Community Calling: People want more influence (New Local)
• Staff turnover in the civil service (IfG)
• How UK energy bills are set to surge again* (New Statesman)

Capital idea

• Social Capital Atlas (Opportunity Insights)
• Vast New Study Shows a Key to Reducing Poverty: More Friendships Between Rich and Poor* (The Upshot)
• A new study shows how much social capital matters* (The Economist)

Roe back

• Why Abortion May Be A Winning Issue For Democrats (FiveThirtyEight)
• 4 charts that show just how big abortion won in Kansas (Vox)
• Where Trump Counties in Kansas Chose to Preserve Abortion Rights* (New York Times)

People and place

• Plotting population distributions in barcode format (Alasdair Rae)
• How far can you go by train in 5h? (Benjamin Td)

#dataviz

• How Florence Nightingale Changed Data Visualization Forever (Scientific American)
• “Our infographic content is 1155% more likely to become evergreen”: How the South China Morning Post leverages infographics (What’s New in Publishing)

Everything else

• GLOBAL DATA GOVERNANCE MAP (Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub, via The Markup)
• Fear of Rampant Crime Is Derailing New York City’s Recovery* (Bloomberg)
• To tackle obesity, we must change conditions not people* (FT)
• Shark Attacks in U.S. Total 28 So Far This Year (Wall Street Journal)

Meta data

A farewell to harms

• The OSB’s future is now uncertain — but not for good reasons (Demos)
• Does Nadine Dorries understand her Online Safety Bill?* (The Spectator)
• Fixing the UK’s Online Safety Bill, part 1: we need answers. (Heather Burns)
• Revealed: UK children being ensnared by ‘far-right ecosystem’ online (The Guardian)
• Liz ‘2 internets’ Truss wants to change the online world (Politico)

Data: this time it’s personal

• India withdraws personal data bill that alarmed tech giants (TechCrunch)
• India nixes privacy bill that alarmed big tech companies, works on new law (Reuters)
• Police want travel card data to track suspicious rail passengers* (The Times)
• Justice Department investigating data breach of federal court system (Politico)
• The Government has built a data colossus — is it playing with fire? (Stuff)

AI got ‘rithm

• How rangers are using AI to help protect India’s tigers (BBC News)
• Governing artificial intelligence in the public interest (Stanford Cyber Policy Center, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose)
• Using AI to Accelerate Scientific Discovery (Demis Hassabis for Institute for Ethics in AI, Oxford)
• A model’s journey to Trustworthiness, Quality and Value (Office for Statistics Regulation)
• An engineer who was fired by Google says its AI chatbot is ‘pretty racist’ and that AI ethics at Google are a ‘fig leaf’ (Insider)

Open for the best, expecting the worst

• New register to crack down on dirty money and corrupt elites in UK goes live (BEIS)
• New register of overseas owners of UK properties ‘riddled with flaws’ (The Guardian)
• How flawed freedom of information system keep the public in the dark (Stuff)

A sense of place

• Guidance to support public sector investments in location data (Geospatial Commission)
• Celebrating four years of the Local Digital Declaration (DLUHC Digital)

Tick, tock

• Chinese Government Asked TikTok for Stealth Propaganda Account* (Bloomberg)
• UK parliament axes TikTok account after MP outcry over China links (Politico)

UK government

• Government launches fraud squad (Cabinet Office)
• Stepping up the fight: How a new public body aims to protect taxpayers’ money from fraud (Civil Service World)
• Estonia steps up virtual civil servant project (Global Government Forum)
• User research techniques for content designers (Defra digital, data and technology)
• A Frontier Without Direction? The U.K.’s Latest Position on Responsible Cyber Power (Lawfare)
• Where’s the washing powder? (Civil Service)
• National Data Strategy: Foundational data skills (DCMS)
• Join our team — shape our vision — follow our journey (ARIA)
• How many people died in the UK’s recent heatwave? (ONS)
• Today we have written to Conservative Party Leadership Candidates @trussliz and @RishiSunak (techUK)

Everything else

• Assessing risk when sharing data: a guide (ODI, which I somehow missed at the time)
• ODI data strategy (ODI)
• The energy vampires sucking Britain’s grid dry* (Telegraph)
• Trust, Safety and the Digital Economy: Understanding the value of healthy online communities (Safety Tech Innovation Network)
• Open access for August — Statistical Inference as Severe Testing: How to Get Beyond the Statistics Wars (Deborah G. Mayo)

Opportunities

• Call for Papers: ILPC Annual Conference 2022 (Information Law & Policy Centre)
• JOB: Director of Analysis (MoJ)
• JOB: Lead Data Scientist — Better Outcomes through linked data (BOLD) (MoJ)
• JOB: Financial Specialist (House of Commons)
• JOB: Programme Manager (Tech for Good) (Centre for Public Impact)
• PUBLIC APPOINTMENT: Non-Executive Directors (UK Statistics Authority)

And finally…

• Google Scholar and the limitations of AI (Terence Eden and Dan Brickley)
• Data visualization inspiration thanks to DALL-E (Ethan Mollick)
• Here’s a fun example of a publication that should know better breaking the GDPR by saying exactly which links Michael Gove clicks on in their newsletter (Chris Stokel-Walker)
• Can you guess what this map is showing? (Federica Cocco)