Here's your weekly dose of TA. Enjoy.
- Data journalist Mona Chalabi's TED Talk 3 ways to spot a bad statistic is a must-watch for data geeks, policy makers, advocates, and regular people. Chalabi helps people make sense of data and helps those using data to better portray it.
Take the image to the right. Chalabi wrote this on Instagram about it:
I've been sick in bed all week and wondered whether October is the worst month for it. It's not. This wasn't comforting. Source: 35 years' worth of flu data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016 #datasketch
Want more from Chalabi? Follow her on Instagram, mona_chalabi, and Twitter, @MonaChalabi. - Policymakers, looking for a new way to get feedback from residents about government programs, proposals, or operations in general? PlaceSpeak is a new civic tech platform. The primary feature? It keeps trolls and bots at bay.
According to the GOV TECH article New Resident-Facing Platform Seeks Public Input, Minus the Trolls:
What PlaceSpeak provides is a platform where residents can sign up, enter where they live, and use various methods to authenticate their locations and identities, toggling their own privacy and participation levels as they see fit. Users can then select the government agencies that they want to hear from, while government agencies can then ask users their opinions about everything from upcoming transit projects to their favorite places in town to go for a hike. The more layers of authentication a user chooses to add, the more heavily weighted his or her feedback is. Authentication methods include linking to social media profiles, verifying IP addresses, and confirming identities over the phone.
PlaceSpeak also gives users a dashboard that contains a map of their area, green dots indicating other users and pushpins showing topics that government agencies want to discuss. The idea is that a resident might sign up to weigh in on the creation of a new dog park, for example, and then continue to voice opinions on other topics for other agencies.
How well a platform like this will work on the Northern Neck is anyone's guess. But for those governments interested in using an online engagement platform, this is worth a look. - The free Nonprofit Vote webinar ElectionTools.org and Helping Elections Officials Do More with Less takes place Tuesday, July 11 at 2:00 pm EDT. The session will be helpful to government election officials, residents, and nonprofits alike. From the registration page:
Kurt Sampsel of the Center for Technology and Civic Life will join us to discuss ElectionTools.org and the work they are doing to help elections officials by providing low-cost tools to promote civic engagement and make voting easier. Kurt will give an overview of the tools available and then dive into their Voter Registration Drive Kit.
- The Johns Hopkins University MA in Communication Program's Information Distortion: Fake News, Social Media, And The Backlash! With Jack Speer And Alan Rosenblatt, Ph.D. will be livestreamed Tuesday, July 11 at 5:30 pm. Register to receive the link.
- TED's got a new, free bi-weekly newsletter: Science worth knowing. Subscribe to receive stories, videos, and links.
- If health policy is your thing, take a look at Urban Institute's State-by-State Coverage and Government Spending Implications of the Better Care Reconciliation Act. You will find a bevy of useful information including tables with state-by-state data by adults, children, race, and ethnicity and tables with state-by-state data by age, family work status, and income.
