July 2016

The National Technical Information Service has just posted a Federal Register Notice inviting proposals from for-profit, non-profit, or research organizations to enter into Joint Venture Partnership agreements with NTIS to develop and deliver innovative, agile data solutions within the Department of Commerce or around the federal government. We’re looking for companies and organizations—selected through a merit-based process—that will partner with NTIS to assist Federal agencies in developing and implementing innovative ways to collect, connect, access, analyze, or use Federal data and data services. To illustrate, the Joint Ventures could help provide:
New technical capability or private sets to help statistical agencies derive economic, demographic and social insights from Federal and private sector data;
Assistance through the integration of public and private data, the “Internet of Things,” cloud computing and predictive analytics, to derive insights for land use planning, and delivering improved public services; and
Aggregation of multiple and disparate data sets from several Federal agencies into an insightful data suite of knowledge to drive business decisions.
The NTIS Joint Ventures also could help address time-to-market innovations and complexity of solutions, and facilitate new partnerships with the private sector focused on delivering value for public service, business outcomes, and economic growth.

Three scholars confirmed what we already knew about social media — or at least had suspected. In a draft paper called “Echo Chambers on Facebook,” social scientists Walter Quattrociocchi, Antonio Scala and Cass Sunstein found quantitative evidence of how users tend to promote their favorite narratives, form polarized groups and resist information that doesn’t conform to their beliefs. The study focused on how Facebook users interacted with two narratives involving conspiracy theories and science. Users belonging to different communities tended not to interact and tended to be connected only with “like-minded” friends, creating closed, non-interacting communities centered around different narratives — what the researchers called “echo chambers.” Confirmation bias accounted for users’ decisions to share certain content, creating informational cascades within their communities. Users tended to seek out information that strengthened their preferred narratives and to reject information that undermined it.

Alarmingly, when deliberately false information was introduced into these echo chambers, it was absorbed and viewed as credible as long as it conformed with the primary narrative. And even when when more truthful information was introduced to correct or “debunk” falsehoods, either it was ignored or it reinforced the users’ false beliefs. While the findings are cause for concern, they don’t come as much of a surprise — confirmation bias is nothing new, and conspiracy theories have become an increasingly visible part of our political discussion. The question is whether there is anything a responsible media can or should do differently to make it easier for facts to penetrate these echo chambers, and whether news organizations are willing to make the necessary changes.

Facebook's employees are still mainly white or Asian males as the world's largest social network made little progress in hiring a more diverse talent pool over the past year. The findings in Facebook's annual diversity report reflects the scant progress made by Silicon Valley heavyweights in employing more women and minorities.

In June, Alphabet's Google released data on diversity, saying it had more black, Latino and female employees than in 2015, but still lagged its goal of mirroring the population. Women represented 33 percent of Facebook's global workforce as of June 30, compared with 32 percent a year earlier, the report said. Women held 27 percent of senior leadership roles, up from 23 percent a year earlier. Facebook said 3 percent of its senior leadership in the United States was black, up from 2 percent a year earlier. Among its US technology workers, Facebook made no progress among two groups. In both 2015 and 2016, Hispanics made up 3 percent of tech employees while blacks made up 1 percent. Facebook's overall US workforce includes 4 percent of Latinos and 2 percent of blacks, unchanged from last year, the report said. Asians represented 38 percent of Facebook's U.S. workforce and 21 percent of its senior leadership. The majority of Facebook's global tech employees, at 83 percent, are men, down marginally from last year's 84 percent.