Complexity and Social Networks Blog

« March 2007 | Main | May 2007 »

30 April 2007

eGooglement - How google is trying to improve the accesibility of government websites

Today Google announced partnerships with the states of Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia to make it easier to search for hard-to-find public information on state government websites. With millions of data bases scattered throughout the government landscape, Google is of course interested in tapping into that market. It is already offering a special search engine for US government information. Google also provided Ireland with its search technology. Governments on the other hand realized that many citizens already prefer finding government information by using private sector search engines (due to better search results) instead of the ones developed for government portals. Google's government collaborations are probably more about using their technology like "Coop" or "Search Appliance" rather than the data but the press release did not elaborate further on that issue. Google retains personally identifiable information which is a big issue for privacy advocates. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google once said that, "We are moving to a Google that knows more about you". Google, therefore, refused sharing this data with governments in the past. If Google just supplies the technology and data is stored on government servers Google should be safe from conflicts of interest. However, in other arrangements (i.e. outsourcing) it might be more difficult to draw the line in terms of data ownership and access.

In any case here is an overview on how to find government information.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 11:15 AM | Comments (2)

26 April 2007

Finding talent for government and public administration - The strength of weak ties and Social Software

Governments worldwide are facing three issues of importance. Many experienced administrators will retire which also results in a drain of knowledge. Furthermore, governments have to do more with less and be innovative by i.e. exploiting the benefits of ICT while at the same time cutting budgets. I recently read an article about new government recuriting methods which nicely illustrates Granovetter's theory of weak ties for job finding and possible utilization of SNS in government.

"All over the country, municipalities are widely reporting that it’s hard to recruit city managers, technology directors, engineers and people with expertise in the fields of accounting and finance. States seem to be having a little easier time of it right now, especially if they are in the heady throes of gubernatorial transition. In Massachusetts and New York, private-sector experts in areas ranging from public health to homeland security have been enticed to lend a hand to ambitious new governors, even though it has meant putting another career on hold and taking a huge hit in salary [...] When Antonio Villaraigosa became mayor of Los Angeles in 2005, his headhunters required all potential high-level aspirants to apply online, says his transition chief and now chief of staff, Robin Kramer. In the end, Villaraigosa ended up filling most of his top jobs the tried-and-true way: He approached people who were known to him or his top staff or who were referred by some other trusted source. "

In order to find the right people governments are increasingly tapping into headhunters, web based job platforms and certainly social networking sites like LinkedIn to widen their choice of possible candidates.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 12:51 AM | Comments (1)

23 April 2007

Bavelas revisited: hub-spoke vs all-channel networks

I ran a version of the “Bavelas experiments” in my “Building organizational social capital” class last week. The Bavelas experiments were conducted by Alex Bavelas and Harold Leavitt and collaborators in the Small Group Network Laboratory at MIT in the 1950s. The basic experiment is where members of a small group (size N) of subjects are each given a different symbol drawn from a set size N + 1. The task is for the entire group to figure out what symbol is missing. How the group can communicate is dictated by the experimenter, where certain channels are acceptable, and others not. In each round, each subject is allowed to pass a message to one other person. One of the provocative findings from this vein of research was that centralized networks—e.g., where there is a hub that communicates with everyone else but no one else can communicate with each other—tends to perform faster on this task than decentralized networks (in the extreme, where everyone can communicate with everyone else). The basic logic is that in decentralized networks information floats around inefficiently.

Follow up on this vein of research suggests that as the task gets more complex, that decentralized networks actually do better than centralized. An interesting and relevant critique of this research, by Guetzkow and Simon (1955), was that all-channel networks can and do sometimes perform better than hub-spoke networks. That is, the performance of all channel networks was contingent on how they were used. The original Bavelas findings were based on the fact that they were usually used badly.

When I conducted this experiment last year, it pretty much went as expected, except for in one case, where the hub misunderstood the experiment, which resulted (unsurprisingly) in very poor performance by that hub-spoke group. (This highlights that hub-spoke networks are highly dependent on the hub; again unsurprising.)

This year, it went quite differently, where the all-channel network did far better than the hub-spoke network. Both 6 person networks (we did this with two of each and had identical results) performed at their theoretical optimum, which, for the all-channel network was 4 rounds, and the hub-spoke network, 6 rounds. Why the contrast between the years? Because the hub-spoke groups kibitzed about how to communicate before we began the experiment. This only happened because (1) I did not initially explain that no communication (even if it was not about the symbols) was allowed; and (2) the room is so jammed that I could not tell exactly what was going on with the hub-spoke groups, who were in the back (and thus I could not stop them from kibitzing). The all-channel network groups decided, through their kibitzing, that they should all send their information to one person, who would then send the answer back to the group, which would then diffuse efficiently through the all-channel network. That is, per Guetzkow and Simon, they figured out the best way to use their communication capacity.

The interesting lesson to draw here is that all-channel networks (putting the overhead of having more ties aside for a moment) provide a reconfigurable capacity for task-relevant communication. If people are provided (or produce) “programs” about what the task type is, the resulting communication patterns will potentially be more efficient than if the network is hard wired.

It also raises an interesting question, a la Schelling, whether if one allowed some information about the participants in the experiments, and some information about the structure of the network, whether the all-channel network would perform better than it did in the Bavelas experiments. In the Bavelas experiments (as I recall), subjects did not know anything about each other and did not know the configuration of the network. Now imagine, for a moment, that you know what the configuration of the network is, and something about the other subjects; might focal point nodes emerge, to whom most information would be sent, resulting in increased information?

Bavelas, A. Communication patterns in task-oriented groups. J. Acoustical Soc. America 22 (1950), 725-730.

Guetzkow, H., and Simon, H.A. The impact of certain communication nets upon organization and performance in task-oriented groups. Mgmt. Sci. 1 (1955), 233-250.

Leavitt, H.J. Some effects of certain communication patterns on group performance. J. Abnormal and Social Psychol. 46 (1951), 38-50.

Also, see nice summary of research by Steve Borgatti.

Posted by David Lazer at 9:17 AM | Comments (4)

20 April 2007

Update from Africa - EPROM.

EPROM’s first academic year has been extremely eventful. We have successfully developed a mobile phone programming curriculum and taught hundreds of Kenyan and Ethiopian computer science students Python, Java, and SMS-based mobile application development. These classes have lead to dozens of projects concerning the development of mobile phone applications specifically for the African market. Several of these projects have gathered international media attention, while others are being formed into start-up ventures based in Nairobi, Addis Ababa, and beyond. Throughout the remainder of this year we will be focusing on supporting these research projects, training faculty to continue teaching the curriculum, and introducing the initiative to other neighboring countries in East Africa – still the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world.

I took this picture two days ago in Addis Ababa during our Java for Mobile Devices class. While I'm currently back in Kenya, next week I've got appointments with the local universities in Uganda about curriculum sharing opportunities. It's nice to see EPROM really starting to take off. Check out the updated research page as well...

Posted by Nathan Eagle at 8:22 AM | Comments (1)

Instructional Videos on TeacherTube

The success of youtube and other video sharing platforms seems to have inspired other technology enthusiasts. I just found out about a new video sharing site for "instructional videos". It is called TeacherTube and proposes that it is "a site to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers. As well, it is a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill".

Posted by Thomas Langenberg at 7:37 AM | Comments (3)

18 April 2007

Network Maps and Visualization

I recently stumpled on the following website which offers a neat collection of various network images/ visulizations and links to the respective projects in the field of social, art, biology, business, computer systems, food, internet, transportation, knowledge, music or pattern recognition. I am sure you can find something for your next powerpoint...

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 12:00 AM | Comments (2)

12 April 2007

Mom and Dad buy me a PS3 - Distributed Computing

The new generation of video game consoles like Xbox360, PS3 or WII go beyond being a platform for games. You may run various software, listen to music or watch movies. Of course all of these consoles can connect to the internet. The industry would like the consoles to be something like the iPod for your home as they have greater control on our behavior and supply side compare to a PC. In addition, the power of todays consoles' processor is so powerful that a network of up to 11-12.000 idle PS3 users support Stanford's Folding@Home project (understand protein folding an related diseases) at any time. Sony is already thinking of other ways in utilizing the network in commercial ways. Any ideas? Please comment.

Finally, here is a list of distributed computing projects. Parents should still be sceptical if kids ask for a video game console to conduct scientific research. :-).

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 12:49 AM | Comments (3)

5 April 2007

Taking Person, Place, and Time Seriously in Infectious Disease

This is an abstract of todays PNG/CCCSN seminar with Devon D. Brewer (University of Washington). We encourage you to discuss his presentation via comments on the blog.

"Social scientists and field epidemiologists have long appreciated the role of social networks in diffusion processes. The cardinal goal of descriptive epidemiology is to examine “person, place, and time” in relation to the occurrence of disease or other health events. In the last 20 years, most infectious disease epidemiologist have moved away from the field epidemiologist’s understanding of transmission as embedded in contact structures and shaped by temporal and locational factors. Instead, infectious disease epidemiologists have employed research designs that are best suited to studying non-infectious chronic diseases but unable to provide meaningful insight on transmission processes. A comprehensive and contextualized infectious disease epidemiology requires assessment of person (contact structure and individual characteristics), place, and time, together with measurement of specific behaviors, physical settings/fomites, and the molecular biology of pathogens, infected persons, and susceptible persons. In this presentation, I highlight examples of research that include multiple elements of this standard. From this overview, I show in particular how the main routes of HIV transmission in poor countries remain unknown as a consequence of inappropriate design in epidemiologic research. In addition, these examples highlight how diffusion research in the social sciences might be improved with greater attention to temporal and locational factors."

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

3 April 2007

Results of quick survey on search strategies

Thanks to those who participated in my quick survey on individual search strategies. Here's an attempt to distill your answers into a few sentences.

As expected, the main questions that arise on your jobs can be classified as knowledge-intensive, and you most likely cannot find one correct answer to them. Some examples: Trying to establish what "the best" system, or practice, is (I suspect that we all have subjective criteria in deciding what's best), what do we know about xyz (rather open-ended, I'd say), finding out about a certain procedure, event, etc.

As for your search heuristics, Google comes in first place, and second, and third, and...Several plug-ins and other tricks render those Google searches more sophisticated (thanks for the pointers, Allan and David!), and most of you tend to find what you're looking for by using search engines. Which means, most of you do not actually need the interaction with other individuals to answer most of your questions. Gosh, I'm trying to remember what life (and work) was like before Google! Obviously, I have a biased (and non-representative) sample of individuals here, but still, what an interesting result.

My final question was whether your search behavior varies according to the questions you have, and the consensus was, yes, it does, but turning to "offline methods" or other people really came off as a last resort. Again, probably - at least in part - due to the still rather geeky nature of the blogosphere, but while I'm typing this I'm thinking of something else: Since I asked people to assess their search behavior, they could have made the implicit assumption that search is mainly done using search engines, therefore a priori excluding the dialogue with other individuals as a possibility to search for answers. Was that the case? Or are our search engines getting so good that they can replace human interaction? I'd be curious to find out. Maybe I should google it.

Posted by Maria Binz-Scharf at 3:35 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack