Jennifer Eberhardt, author of “Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do,” sits down with Adam Grant, host of the WorkLife podcast to go over the science behind bias. This angst is largely misplaced. I have never demonized fathers or spoken ill of them. He should know. Featured speakers will share how their creative works and research are challenging implicit and explicit prejudice to free Americans from fear of others. They generally did not examine whether factors that typically go along with race in the U.S., such as access to primary care or socioeconomic status or discrimination, might be the true drivers of the correlation. Instead it has been a feature of the social, economic and political systems in which we all exist. This way the people can hold government service providers accountable for the use of public resources.”. We seek open government of the people, by the people, for the people — not open government by some people for some other people. The story failed to note that the Aspen Institute is the number one sponsor of privately funded travel for members of Congress, having spent $3.4 million on Congress from 2000-2005. The Biases in Open Government that Blind Us. “Cataloguing these algorithms is an important first step. I saw her struggle and sacrifice her success to ensure mine, and I often wonder how our lives would be if she had access to more opportunities throughout her life. John P. Dugan, Five Challenges for Philadephia High Schoolers, Dean Kamen on DEKA Research and Development Corporation. All Rights Reserved, October 4, 2019 Let’s not forget about the mundane in our drive toward the divine. Aspen Ideas Now, May 30, 2020 A higher score means less likelihood of that. Its users, for example, have surfaced unmet data needs that are relevant to them — datasets on immigration and foreclosure. Giving birth: Recognizing that cesarean deliveries are more dangerous for both mothers and babies, obstetricians recommend that women who had a previous surgical birth not be automatically scheduled for another cesarean, as was once common practice. Racial equity holds society to a higher standard. “We are trying to establish digital, networked bureaucracies, but the regulations and policies they must follow were written before we actually knew the potential of open data,” said founder Greg Elin at FOCAS. 2013 study by the Centers for Disease and Prevention, Aspen Institute Fatherhood Learning and Action Community. It was created by the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change, a group that worked with leading innovators to produce strong and reliable frameworks for successful and sustainable community change and development. The winners of the recent Knight News Challenge on Open Gov are indicative of the kind of innovations we need: Those that look beyond technology and those that focus on the “plumbing” of open government. Moreover, these services show the different iterations of families that should be considered in the programs the government creates. Incremental innovation demands a more grounded look at a system as it currently exists and an understanding of where concrete wins can occur within that system. . When Stephan asked for supports from the state, he was told government agencies could not assist him because he was a single father. The new findings cut across more medical specialties than any previous study of race and algorithm-driven patient care. The Solution: Refocus Our Thinking on Incremental Innovation. I have never demonized fathers or spoken ill of them. According to Karl Ulrich, Wharton’s innovation guru: “A lot of companies suffer from intense organizational angst that they are not pursuing radical innovations, the seeds of future growth. aspencs@aspeninstitute.org, Sign-Up For E-Mail Updates The Issue: Biases Lead to Short-sighted Solutions. When looking at national values through a structural racism lens, however, we can see that there are certain values that have allowed structural racism to exist in ways that are hard to detect. Colorado, Utah, and Washington are also working with families through advisory councils and family voice councils to ensure they catch their blind spots before they affect service delivery and programming. Five government agencies – the Connecticut Department of Social Services; the Maryland Department of Human Services; First 5 Alameda County; and Olmsted County Health, Housing, and Human Services – are working with six nonprofit and research partners and three fathers to identify and document policy barriers and opportunities for father engagement and support. “Well-meaning individuals acting without racist intent can still produce work with racist consequences,” he said, “such as redirecting medical resources from one group to another.”. But white Americans spend more on health care than Black Americans even when their health situations are identical, making spending a poor and racially biased proxy for health. A technocentric view means that as long as a government embraces new technologies, releases some datasets, and makes high-profile commitments to the international community, it is a card-carrying member of the open government community. Institute Staff. Individual racism can include face-to-face or covert actions toward a person that intentionally express prejudice, hate or bias based on race. Racial equity refers to what a genuinely non-racist society would look like. Aspen Ideas to Go. In a … See all Left-Center sources. At FOCAS, Taryn Roch of OpenGov4Us explained her team’s motivation to found the program: “We were frustrated by the open government’s movement on technologists, and asked ‘Can citizens be at the center of this?’ OpenGov4Us is about citizen engagement. Frequently Asked Questions They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. Stephan’s story stayed with me because mothers were always the focal point of my work. Edit. ©2020 The Aspen Institute. Being Black automatically adds three points to the score. It was also made clear to him that if he had been a single mother, he would have qualified for several programs that could have put him and his family on a path to self-sufficiency. Innovation is, very simply, “a new method, idea or product.” Approaches to innovation should differ based on when, where, and how that innovation is expected to have an impact. But this problem also points to a straightforward solution – policymakers and practitioners must engage the families they work with in the programs that are created for them. Cultural representations refer to popular stereotypes, images, frames and narratives that are socialized and reinforced by media, language and other forms of mass communication and “common sense.” Cultural representations can be positive or negative, but from the perspective of the dismantling structural racism analysis, too often cultural representations depict people of color in ways that are dehumanizing, perpetuate inaccurate stereotypes, and have the overall effect of allowing unfair treatment within the society as a whole to seem fair, or ‘natural.’. This can dramatically lower the IT operational costs of open government projects while also making them more robust in terms of security and compliance. “Many of the algorithms are widely used and have a substantial impact on patient care,” said Brian Powers, a physician and researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the study. In a racially equitable society, the distribution of society’s benefits and burdens would not be skewed by race. That possibility is not merely theoretical: At one Boston hospital, Black and Latinx patients arriving in the emergency room with cardiac symptoms were less likely than white patients with the same symptoms and medical history to be admitted to the cardiology unit, a 2019 study found. Privacy Policy How can we focus on energies towards seizing those opportunities?”, Ideas in Practice: OpenGov4Us and GitMachines. “Unfortunately, we don’t have these answers for many of the algorithms.”, Even before the new analysis, some hospitals and specialty groups were questioning the algorithms. Among them: Heart Failure Risk Score: Developed by the American Heart Association to determine which hospitalized patients are at risk of dying from heart disease, the algorithm assigns three points to any “nonblack” patient; more points mean higher risk of death. They are not ends in themselves.”. But at least two other Boston hospitals, whose officials were given a presentation about the creatinine algorithm, declined to stop using it several weeks ago. But the goal of these convenings is to have an impact beyond the conference room. Suite 700 The structural racism perspective can be distinguished from a diversity perspective in that structural racism takes direct account of the striking disparities in well-being and opportunity areas that come along with being a member of a particular group and works to identify ways in which these disparities can be eliminated. In a nutshell: let’s stop trying to build the open government house of the future and refocus our efforts toward fixing the plumbing in the house that we have. “But many governments are reluctant. Kidney specialists at hospitals in Boston and San Francisco have stopped using race to make a Black patient’s kidney function score better. This is in contrast to the current state of affairs in which a person of color is more likely to live in poverty, be imprisoned, drop out of high school, be unemployed and experience poor health outcomes like diabetes, heart disease, depression and other potentially fatal diseases. Most investment in innovation can and should be made in incremental innovation — delivering solutions to customers that are better, faster, and cheaper.”. As the CIO of the US Federal Communications Commission, Elin saw these challenges firsthand. Typically, developers based their algorithms on studies showing a correlation between race and some medical outcome, assuming race explained or was even the cause of, say, a poorer outcome (from a vaginal birth after a cesarean, say). Connecticut is not the only state taking on this work. Ethnicity is revealed by the traditions one follows, a person’s native language, and so on. John P. Dugan, June 2, 2020 • Douglas Wood, Nonprofit Mergers: The Missing Ingredient, 'My Life Is Worth My Effort- and So Is Yours', Project CRAFT-Avon Park (Avon Park, Fla.). The practical result of those with power, privilege, and access tinkering for solutions while large citizen segments remain uninvolved is that open government initiatives are clouded by our own biases and tunnel vision. Fairness, equal treatment, individual responsibility, and meritocracy are examples of some key national values in the United States. Hype-mongers and innovation-hawkers don’t help. All 13 of the algorithms Jones and his colleagues examined offered rationales for including race in a way that, presumably unintentionally, made Black and, in some cases, Latinx patients less likely to receive appropriate care.