[OpenSpending-discuss] Hackday Apps4Italy - Everybody is Welcome!

[Velichka Dimitrova]

Hi all,

On Saturday 28th January we’re getting together for an Open Economics
Hackday — a one-day gathering to build and research ‘cool stuff’
related to a economics (usually of a digital variety) in under 24
hours.

Meeting up in London and online, we’ll be wrangling data and building
apps all day. Whether you’re a social scientist, student, coder or
just someone with an interest there will be something for you to do —
just be prepared to dive in and help build something.

When: Saturday 28th January, 11am GMT (12pm CET/6am EST) to ~7pm GMT
(8pm CET/3pm EST)
Some people will also be around on Friday 27th (same times)
Where: London (Centre for Creative Collaboration tbc) and Online (so
you can join from anywhere in the world)
Who: Anyone! Coder, data wrangler, economists, illustrator or writer …
Etherpad: http://econ.okfnpad.org/hackathon-jan-2011
Contact us: http://openeconomics.net/contact/
As with all hackdays, exactly what gets work on gets decided on the
day (you can add suggestions to the etherpad). However, one particular
idea, which we could become a submission to Apps4Italy, is set out
below.

One Idea for What We’ll Work On: ProgressVote

One of the most fundamental questions in economic research is: how do
we measure social progress? Policy makers have come up with
alternative measures accounting for environmental impacts, inequality,
happiness and other indicators of human development.

However, the multiplicity of factors has caused another problem – how
do we decide on the importance of each individual factor in a
composite index? They could be either equally important (such as in
the HDI) or they could be given different weights.

In our last project YourTopia – which was one of the winners of last
year’s World Bank Apps4Development Prize – we offered one possible
solution by letting you decide on which dimensions and aspects of
economic development to prioritize.

However there are limitations to such an approach: faced with a myriad
of technical indicators people are often overwhelmed by the
complexity: Does life expectancy at birth matter more than the
inflation rate or the M2 money supply? And what does M2 money supply
even mean?

In ProgressVote, we’d like to improve on YourTopia in a variety of ways:

First, by combining proxy voting with the crowd-based Yourtopia
approach: Instead of voting for indicators, people vote for expert
statements that interpret the dashboard of variables. By doing so, it
is hoped to strike a balance between expert judgements and the
interpretation of the general public: Experts may be more able to
interpret technical data, but in the end it is the citizens who decide
which expert statement to endorse.

Second, we’d like to add support time series — so you can see how
progress (or lack of it) has evolved over time — as well as better geo
support — for example, so it is possible to look at regions as well as
countries have performed (consider Italy for instance).

Interested? Then come join us on Saturday 28th January!