Managing SIRENEN:Maintaining both a technological system and public trust

In April 2023, the Danish Emergency Management Agency (BRS) launched Denmark’s new mobile-based public warning system, SIRENEN. The new system uses cell-broadcast technology, supplementing the existing 1078 emergency sirens in the country, and replacing the voluntary ‘Mobilvarsling’ app. The new system will be managed by a consortium of government authorities led by BRS. This case ethnographically follows these actors as well as other stakeholder groups through the launch of the new system, its first nationwide test in May 2023, and the following months of establishing daily operational routines. Rather than treating this new system as a routine technological modernization of a central social infrastructure, this case centers the practical and political work of the various people engaged in making the system both technically operational, as well as publicly acceptable. In other words, it explores how this process involves not just technical, but also political change, and ultimately changes in the relations between citizens and the state. Drawing on existing research on the digital state in a Scandinavian context, the paper illustrates how managing a digital public warning system is not just a technological challenge, but also a careful process of maintaining public trust

Better Differentially Private Approximate Histograms and Heavy Hitters using the Misra-Gries Sketch

We consider the problem of computing differentially private approximate histograms and heavy hitters in a stream of elements. In the non-private setting, this is often done using the sketch of Misra and Gries [Science of Computer Programming, 1982]. Chan, Li, Shi, and Xu [PETS 2012] describe a differentially private version of the Misra-Gries sketch, but the amount of noise it adds can be large and scales linearly with the size of the sketch: the more accurate the sketch is, the more noise this approach has to add. We present a better mechanism for releasing a Misra-Gries sketch under (ε,δ)-differential privacy. It adds noise with magnitude independent of the size of the sketch size, in fact, the maximum error coming from the noise is the same as the best known in the private non-streaming setting, up to a constant factor. Our mechanism is simple and likely to be practical. We also give a simple post-processing step of the Misra-Gries sketch that does not increase the worst-case error guarantee. It is sufficient to add noise to this new sketch with less than twice the magnitude of the non-streaming setting. This improves on the previous result for ε-differential privacy where the noise scales linearly to the size of the sketch

Calculating Compilers for Concurrency

Choice trees have recently been introduced as a general structure for defining the semantics of programming languages with a wide variety of features and effects. In this article we focus on concurrent languages, and show how a codensity version of choice trees allows the semantics for such languages to be systematically transformed into compilers using equational reasoning techniques. The codensity construction is the key ingredient that enables a high-level, algebraic approach. As a case study, we calculate a compiler for a concurrent lambda calculus with channel-based communication

Explaining Sociotechnical Change: An Unstable Equilibrium Perspective

Within the domain of Information Systems, assumptions around sociotechnical change cohesively build on establishing a stable and balanced relationship between the social and technical structures. When these structures become too rigid, revolutionary moments that punctuate the status quo are required for the structures to accommodate to a new situation. Approaching sociotechnical change with “punctuation of equilibrium” is becoming increasingly ineffective. In line with rising instability and rapid digital development, we argue that new sociotechnical change approaches are needed. In this paper we investigate how individual knowledge workers respond to the increasingly complex challenges they face when orchestrating social and technical structures to support efficient and creative knowledge work. We suggest a new perspective that covers an unstable equilibrium emerging from the interplay between individuals and their usage of “the collection of rigid and flexible workplace technologies”. Our study is based on data from interviews made with 40 knowledge professionals over a period of three years, inquiring into individual experiences with sociotechnical change. Our study reveals contradictory patterns of both technological-individualisation and -socialisation. A universal generative mechanism emerges when these patterns complement each other and generates continuous change that seems to diminish inertia from rigid structures while also intensifying agile responses

ESG in Fintech: An Overview

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance evaluation criteria have become increasinglyimportant for Fintech as tools to assess a company’s ability to generate environmental and societalvalue.On the one hand, Fintech is well-positioned to take advantage of ESG in their business models. Theapplication of digital technology to financial services generates a significant amount of financial datathat can be both shared with and analysed by governments and investors to inform the development ofESG guidelines. On the other hand, Fintech businesses are also under compliance pressure to integrateESG in their own financial reporting and operations, as well as to adapt to new performance assessmentcriteria. ESG becomes even more important as customers and investors in Fintech businesses payincreasing attention to ESG performance, and talent and founders focus more and more on beingsustainability-conscious and impact-driven.This report provides an overview of the current ESG reporting status of Fintech businesses in Denmarkand the European Union (EU). We focus on startups as they tend to be disproportionately burdenedby compliance and investment pressure due to their limited resources. Our goal is to take a firststep towards developing a collective ESG reporting model for Fintech startups that enhances theircompetitive advantage despite a volatile economic and regulatory environment.This report presents the current state of ESG reporting in the Danish Fintech sector as informed bywider international discussions within the sector. In it, we map out the five forces that shape the FintechESG landscape: 1) policy and regulatory authorities; 2) capital providers; 3) clients and customers; 4)talent; and 5) knowledge communities. We focus on ESG reporting needs, practices, and challengesfrom different stakeholders’ perspectives. Building on these insights, we suggest a collective approachto ESG reporting in Fintech that is adaptive to the dynamic nature of developments in both ESG andFintech.The findings and insights are based on a series of interviews with various practitioners in the FintechESG sector conducted from February to August 2022 alongside an analysis of relevant documents.The document analysis includes both existing ESG regulations and venture specific ESG frameworks