O que pensa Matheus?

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Making the difference with Open and Big data: Examples from Developing World

Normally what is explicit about open data is the transparency. Evangelists on the area claim for transparency of everything, including governments and companies. The same happens with Big Data. People must collect every data they can and try to cross it to find something. Both of them, alone, can improve something, however, together, they can solve problems of the world.

This post highlight the potential of opened data used under the theories and practice of Big Data Analytics. For people that do not know one subject or both, here we go. Open Data is an area that considers a must have data in open format. What does it mean? For example, Do You use PDF? Stop it. Use Word and save it on docx? Never do that again. I said NEVER! Why? Because my computer cannot understand or copy/paste, as simple as we can do that on .doc or any other open format, such as CSV and XLS. This is an important part of science and work processes currently. The evolution of the humankind depends on this velocity of change.

Fernando Pessoa

For Big Data, these patterns are really important, but focusing on databases and its interoperability of systems. Big Data Analytics can cross a (really) big quantity of data to find solution for what was, at first sight, unsolvable. For example, we know that heavy rains can do flood, but with some other databases the Big Data analytics can predict where, how much and what to do to avoid it. And can also improve the selling of certain cupcakes because the rain is coming. Oh, Lord, heavy rain in Brazil. Please, a boat and a chocolate cupcake!

Machado de Assis

From this perspective, a leading artist appears; the data scientist. Mixing some from computer science, data visualization, geography, engineer, business and other specific areas, is almost an artist. Can cross, in real time, a huge quantity of data to find any not obvious relation between a disease and a culture. For example, the case of Ebola in Africa highlighted the attention to burials; Why do they touch people that can spread one of the most lethal disease on the last 10 years? Because it is cultural. And it must need to stop.

For it, this artist, the data scientist, must be a leading actor in our businesses, our governments and mainly, in anything we will do from this point. Be the artist that world needs. Be a scientist to solve our problems.

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Governance, Open Government Data (OGD) and the Public Policy and Management in Brazil

There are several concepts of governance being used lately on each area of government. The recent publications point out that are four main dimensions (or umbrellas) that authors have been aligned: 

Governance as good governance (or corporate governance);

Governance as new public management (or market governance);

Governance as multilevel governance (or inter-governmental relations), and;

Governance as network governance (non/self-steering).

This view was previously discussed on the article of Erik-Hans Klijn on Public Management Review (PMR) in 2008.

My opinion is that in Brazil, Open Government Data is changing the "governance model" that we have been promoting between government, civil society and enterprises. Since the introduction of the Transparency Portal, in 2004, by the Federal government, the government started to be more "open" in a wide sense.

Indeed, every state and some municipalities put on the internet a lot of data about the expenditures and the income. However, all the data was merely a dump of numbers, spreadsheets and reports. With this, some journalists, researchers and civil society organized could control better the government and demanding/advocating public policies in accordance with the financial situation of governments and the problems faced by the society.

The OGD, which began in Brazil in 2010, with the OGD Portal of Federal Government, goes further the idea of spreadsheets and reports on static pages. the idea is produce a repository with data and information on open formats, which can be easily worked by machines. For example, the format CSV (Comma-Separated Values) can save a lot of time for researchers, enterprises and civil society that are looking for some information.

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Open Government Data and Media

Several newspaper, of course on the internet, have been improving the way that use data and show them to people around the world. The guardian and the New York Times have blogs about open data and are creating datasets on the internet.

Jut that would be great, but they are going further. The idea is create a way that people also use the data to improve the city, the journalism or whatever they want. For example, the Guardian in United Kingdom is scrapping data, organizing them in an open format (CSV for example) and providing this data to be download.

The New York Times, in a partnership with Google and the New York City being promoting a long list of competition for the best apps for the NYC. The last prize was about the payphones that New York have. How to use them to improve the accessibility, income for the municipality, information for tourists, etc.

The idea is brilliant and is toward what the young people are used to. They are becoming more and more connected and dynamics. The newspapers content should be in this century the most attractive to those readers as fast they can. And why not have the new readers as allies for social control and local improvements?

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Me and Kirstin playing Deep Purple. 

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Attending or not attending classes? That's the question.

Attending classes is a subject really polemic. If some educators, schools and universities defend the notion that students have the right to choose if the class is important or not, others think that it is not a right, but a duty that student must respect. It is also about the culture of the country or even the region where the educational system is located. talking about the Western Culture, the Latin countries and latin-american countries are more oriented to impose the attendance on the classroom. In Cuba, it is a law and if the children is out of the school, the parents are supposed to be arrested. On the other hands, the Anglo-German culture are more oriented to the right and freedom of people. Of course they are motivated to be at classroom, but if student is on the classroom, is because he wanted and it is attractive to him.

Both have positive and negative aspects. Being a must to be at the classroom, the presence can improve the grades, the teacher's moral, the better use of public finances and some others enhancements inside the school, for example, in Latin American Countries the poorest people are the young and if they are not on the school, are likely to be on the streets doing bad and wrong things such as traffic drugs, robbery, steal and etc. However, the negatives aspects are mainly about the freedom of the students and theirs parents to choose what is the best for them. Further, the presence is also an index about quality of school or even if the methods are helping them to achieve better citizenship, better quality of labor and etc. Of school cannot provide that, they can do a better thing with theirs lives, as a right to be free.

Nevertheless, we have the other side of the question. Some positive and negative aspects about the right to not attend the school are supposed, for example, if the students want to do another thing with theirs lives, they can have this right preserved. The negative question is about what they could do outside the gates of the school better than what they could do inside the educational system.

So, the attendance on the classroom is polemic and there are several good reasons to be a must or give the freedom to people. It will depend in which culture the educational system is inserted and what the society thinks being the best for the future of the country; the children.

[ricardomatheus-blog]

Menos é Mais.

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The Nuclear Power Had Failed?

After one year of Fukushima disaster in Japan, I read about everything in magazines, news and internet. Everything what is good and bad things that Fukushima Nuclear Plant is. However, the big challenges that this kind of power will face is financial and, mainly, about safety. And more, how safety these plants are when the financial system is almost in collapse? The majority of the problems happened because several cuts were done, specifically in system's security. Meanwhile, the mother nature, proven when plans are wrongly done, disasters can happen and collapses the Plant, the country, the world. Although, in a opposite way of the rest of the planet, China has the opportunity to be the solution, but has been the problem of the question. The main China's problem is about how to feed the giant and cheap country? If China still growing 10% per year, how much power they will need to cover the industrial and residential consumption? But, the China being a solution is around what some of the democracies are going toward during the last decades plans and decisions: they went green. Recycling, reducing and re-educating the citizen's consumption of everything, including energy, water and etc. have been the new way of majority of western developed countries. Currently, less is more and tomorrow, for our luck, Enough can be the new Good.

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Controle Social e Governança Pública

É nota rápida. Uma nota mental a qual tive inspiração de um grupo de estudiosos da London School of Economics. Se por um lado, há 10, 20 anos atrás governos já eram controlados de uma certa maneira pela sociedade civil, especialmente a organizada (Organizações Não-Governamentais -ONG's-, Associações de Bairro, Moradores, Sindicatos e etc), por outro lado, o avanço do uso e massificação das Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC's), permitiu que boa parcela de uma sociedade, ainda que desorganizada sob o ponto de vista legal, não constituindo uma ONG, por exemplo, participasse do controle social por meio de uso de informações de portais de transparência e dos dados abertos governamentais, postando as informações em blogues, redes sociais e até mesmo produzindo o jornalismo colaborativo, com matérias de cunho investigativo do governo.

Se antigamente a idéia era de controlar o Estado na formulação das políticas públicas, como base da Constituição Federal e os impactos de seus direitos nos dois governos próximos, atualmente a idéia é acompanhar o ciclo das políticas públicas: Formulação, Implementação e, especialmente, a AVALIAÇÃO. E governos aprenderam rápido que transparência, participação e efetividade nas políticas públicas eram peças chaves para que esses novos controladores ficassem satisfeitos.

O que falta agora é a efetiva entrada no cenário político a discussão de metas e resultados de governos. A política brasileira ainda vive da discussão de pautas sem a menor ideologia, visto da problemática de base, onde partidos políticos não necessariamente refletem a ideologia de seu conteúdo, os partidários, mas os caciques eleitorais pautando absolutamente tudo. E assim a esquizofrenia brasileira acontece, esquecendo o principal: Democracia competitiva mensura resultados, não discussão amorfas de planos e mais planos, sem foco ou gestão de implementação e sua posterior avaliação.

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Consumo de maconha cai no Mundo

Segundo dados da UNDOC/ONU, consumo de maconha diminui e opiáceos aumenta vertiginosamente, especialmente na Europa. As informações foram recentemente divulgadas pelo grupo de pesquisa de combate a droga da ONU, em Viena.

Para ter acesso ao material completo, acesse: http://migre.me/SZ8C.