School of Public Policy (SPP) Associate Professor Gina Neff is a founding member of the Board of Advisors of Data & Society Research Institute, an international policy center that will explore some of the ways that new types of data are transforming our world. Neff explains, “There are enormous implications, which we don’t fully understand, due to the quantity and types of data that are being collected all the time. There is an urgent need for a place like Data & Society, which sits at the intersection of government policy, industry, NGOs, and academic research.”
Data & Society is only one of the initiatives that Neff is involved in as part of her wide-ranging interest in emerging technologies. Later this month, she will be attending the 2014 ARNIC Conference on Money as Communication: Technology, Culture, and Economic Practice at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Neff has authored many publications, including “Why Big Data Won’t Cure Us,” Big Data, September 2013. She is also a dedicated teacher. One of the courses that Neff is teaching at SPP this fall is a technology policy lab. “I am running the lab as a ’newsroom’ with everyone tackling different parts of the research and data analysis. The focus this term is ‘Ruling the Crowd’—policy responses and challenges for crowd work, crowd funding, and crowd sourcing.” Luis Cano (MPA ’15) is one of the students who is eager to tackle this topic. "I joined the Policy Lab aiming to learn more about the influence of new technologies on diverse aspects of our lives. I am interested in exploring how to regulate these new areas to make sure that they are used to benefit, and not abuse, society."
First-year student Nuruddin Ahmed (MPA ’16) has a longstanding interest in issues related to high tech and privacy, ideas that he shared in a recent blog post. Nuruddin says that he was especially eager to take this course. “We are doing an original group research project about the policies and regulations that exist in different countries for open data initiatives…. I am really glad to have the opportunity to work on a project like this, which is so close to my heart. Before coming to SPP I was wondering how I would be able to use my technical skills for the public good. I think this lab is all about that.” Second-year student Marja Stojanovska Rupcic (MPA ’15) also appreciates the opportunity to combine different skills and knowledge to design and conduct research that will produce concrete results. “This is a bigger motivation for me than a grade,” she says.
Photo credit: Sebastiaan ter Burg