Openness in Practice Understanding Attitudes to Open Government Data

This book looks at open data practices historically and from the perspective of those currently involved in advocating for making government data freely available. Based on interviews with practitioners, users and evangelists across three Australian-based case studies illustrating contemporary open data practices, this book discusses how open data has evolved, why certain barriers to openness exist and what the future of open data might look like. It highlights both the challenges and approaches to ‘best practice’ in government departments and agencies as they adapt to changing data ecosystems and public expectations around access, transparency, risk and responsible stewardship

Darkness, Datafication, and Provenance as an Illuminating Methodology

Provenance refers to the place of origin or earliest known history of a thing. It refers to the custodial history of objects. It is a term that is commonly used in the art-world but also has come into the language of other disciplines such as computer science. It has also been applied in reference to the transactional nature of objects in supply chains and circular economies. In an interview with Scotland’s Institute for Public Policy Research, Adam Greenfield suggests that provenance has a role to play in the “establishment of reliability” given that a “transaction or artifact has a specified provenance, then that assertion can be tested and verified to the satisfaction of all parities” (Lawrence). Recent debates on the unrecognised effects of digital media have convincingly argued that data is fully embroiled within capitalism, but it is necessary to remember that data is more than just a transactable commodity. One challenge in bringing processes of datafication into critical light is how we understand what happens to data from its point of acquisition to the point where it becomes instrumental in the production of outcomes that are of ethical concern. All data gather their meaning through relationality; whether acting as a representation of an exterior world or representing relations between other data points. Data objectifies relations, and despite any higher-order complexities, at its core, data is involved in factualising a relation into a binary. Assumptions like these about data shape reasoning, decision-making and evidence-based practice in private, personal and economic contexts. If processes of datafication are to be better understood, then we need to seek out conceptual frameworks that are adequate to the way that data is used and understood by its users. Deborah Lupton suggests that often we give data “other vital capacities because they are about human life itself, have implications for human life opportunities and livelihoods, [and] can have recursive effects on human lives (shaping action and concepts of embodiment ... selfhood [and subjectivity]) and generate economic value”. But when data are afforded such capacities, the analysis of its politics also calls for us to “consider context” and “making the labour [of datafication] visible” (D’Ignazio and Klein). For Jenny L. Davis, getting beyond simply thinking about what data affords involves bringing to light how continually and dynamically to requests, demands, encourages, discourages, and refuses certain operations and interpretations. It is in this re-orientation of the question from what to how where “practical analytical tool[s]” (Davis) can be found. Davis writes: requests and demands are bids placed by technological objects, on user-subjects. Encourage, discourage and refuse are the ways technologies respond to bids user-subjects place upon them. Allow pertains equally to bids from technological objects and the object’s response to user-subjects. (Davis) Building on Lupton, Davis, and D’Ignazio and Klein, we see three principles that we consider crucial for work on data, darkness and light: data is not simply a technological object that exists within sociotechnical systems without having undergone any priming or processing, so as a consequence the data collecting entity imposes standards and way of imagining data before it comes into contact with user-subjects; data is not neutral and does not possess qualities that make it equivalent to the things that it comes to represent; data is partial, situated, and contingent on technical processes, but the outcomes of its use afford it properties beyond those that are purely informational. This article builds from these principles and traces a framework for investigating the complications arising when data moves from one context to another. We draw from the “data provenance” as it is applied in the computing and informational sciences where it is used to query the location and accuracy of data in databases. In developing “data provenance”, we adapt provenance from an approach that solely focuses on technical infrastructures and material processes that move data from one place to another and turn to sociotechnical, institutional, and discursive forces that bring about data acquisition, sharing, interpretation, and re-use. As data passes through open, opaque, and darkened spaces within sociotechnical systems, we argue that provenance can shed light on gaps and overlaps in technical, legal, ethical, and ideological forms of data governance. Whether data becomes exclusive by moving from light to dark (as has happened with the removal of many pages and links from Facebook around the Australian news revenue-sharing bill), or is publicised by shifting from dark to light (such as the Australian government releasing investigative journalist Andie Fox’s welfare history to the press), or even recontextualised from one dark space to another (as with genetic data shifting from medical to legal contexts, or the theft of personal financial data), there is still a process of transmission here that we can assess and critique through provenance. These different modalities, which guide data acquisition, sharing, interpretation, and re-use, cascade and influence different elements and apparatuses within data-driven sociotechnical systems to different extents depending on context. Attempts to illuminate and make sense of these complex forces, we argue, exposes data-driven practices as inherently political in terms of whose interests they serve

Morphometric study of distance between posterior inferior iliac spine and ischial spine of the human hip bone for sex determination

Background: Objective of current study was to study the distance between Posterior Inferior Iliac Spine and Ischial Spine (PIIS-IS) of human hip bone for determination of sex.Methods:The study comprised unpaired 149 adult human hip bones of known sex. The posterior inferior iliac spine and ischial spine were identified in all the hip bones and a vernier calliper was used to measure the distance between the PIIS-IS.Results:It was observed that the mean distance of PIIS-IS in males and females were 49.64 mm and 54.35 mm respectively. The standard deviation in males was 5.75 mm and that of females was 5.15 mm. Maximum no. i.e. 78.66% of males & 62.16% comes under the range of distance between 41-55 mm.Conclusion:It was observed that out of 149 hip bones taken for study 75 were of males and 74 were of females. The Mean distance in females was observed to be greater in comparison to males. Statistically calculated T- test reveals that the parameter taken for study is very highly significant in terms of sex differentiation

Functional recovery in a rare case of an adult patient with leucodystrophy

The adulthood leukodystrophy is an uncommon clinical condition. Physiotherapy treatment provided to this referred patient resulted in a significant functional recovery within a short span of time inspite of gross lesion. A 34-year-old male patient diagnosed as a case of leucodystrophy was referred for Physiotherapy after 2 years of initial diagnosis physiotherapy progress consisted of increasing muscle strength, reducing tightness and improving postural stability; also to improve mobility for 5 months. After taking the pre and post assessment values of MAS, FIST, mFRT and FIM, improvement through the post assessment values showed significant functional recovery within 5 months. Significant functional recovery after 2 years of diagnosis of leucodystrophy provides promising scope of physiotherapy in future cases of leucodystrophy

Skin Prick Test in Naso-Bronchial Allergies: A Cross Sectional Study

Allergy is defined as an overreaction of the immune system in response to the ingestion of certain foreign chemicals. The disease has been found to be more prevalent in males with predilection towards young adults who are less than 40 years of age. Indoor, outdoor or occupational agents are the most common classification for aero-allergens.  “Skin Prick Test (SPT)” is the most definite and reliable methodology for diagnosing various allergic diseases which are mediated by IgE, in a patient with Naso-Bronchial allergies. Material and Methods: Cross sectional study was conducted on 120 patients with Naso-Bronchial allergy. Detailed clinical history, examination was done and SPT was performed using 25 allergens.” Results: It was observed that insects were the most common allergen followed by mites, pollens and food respectively. Animal dander was the least common allergen. Amongst insects, Cockroach was the most common. Conclusion: On the basis of this study, we conclude that skin prick test is one of the most reliable, easily accessible and diagnostic test to detect IgE mediated allergic reactions.

Load Balancing Model in Cloud Computing Environment

As organizations need to focus on maintaining their datacenter in order to store huge amount of data of their clients. So cloud computing is one of the greatest platform which provides storage of data in very lower cost to organizations and available for all time over the internet. But it has some critical issues like load management. Load Balancing approach is based on Cloud partitioning concept. Load balancing is the process of distributing load over the different nodes which provides good resource utilization when nodes are overloaded with job. In this approach, we are using model in which memory size of every partition will be checked linearly and for efficient retrieval of user’s file, we use Bloom filter algorithm. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.15036

Mobile, wearable and ingestible health technologies : towards a critical research agenda

In this article, we review critical research on mobile and wearable health technologies focused on the promotion of ‘healthy lifestyles’. We begin by discussing key governmental and policy interests which indicate a shift towards greater digital integration in health care. Subsequently, we review relevant research literature, which highlights concerns about inclusion, social justice, and ownership of mobile health data, which we argue, provoke a series of key sociological questions that are in need of additional investigation. We examine the expansion of what counts as health data, as a basis for advocating the need for greater research into this area. Finally, we consider how digital devices raise questions about the reconfiguration of relationships, behaviours, and concepts of individuality

The Politics and Possibilities of Self-Tracking Technology

Collecting data about our lives, our bodies and our behaviours has become a part of everyday practice that promises greater self-awareness, healthier living and increased productivity. This book focuses on the dialectical relationship between users and designers of self-tracking technology to examine how logics of datafication redefine the body. It explores what these emerging relations mean for imagining, designing and analysing sociotechnical systems that bring about self-tracking. Jethani provides a genealogy of self-tracking to situate the notions of quantified and quantifiable selves as problematic data regimes within contemporary digital culture. It charts the origins of self-tracking from within the blueprint of the "Californian Ideology" to a global social movement which now reaches beyond self-experimentation to encompass the wider trajectories of using wearable sensor technology in the neoliberal management of health, wellbeing and productivity. The book reframes and theorises the quantified self by re-examining and developing arguments of how bodies "disappear" (Jewson), are made "docile" (Foucault) and get caught up in "rhythms" (Lefebvre) by datafication. The concept of a "quantised" self is introduced as a means of reading into and exposing the inherent political interests being served when self-tracking technology is introduced into clinical, home and workplace settings. Drawing from case studies of self-tracking in practice, the final chapter sketches the outline of a mutual praxis of critique and design that allows us to reimagine the politics embedded in sociotechnical systems of self-tracking and to consider possibilities of intervention