Micah Altman

Argues that digital stewardship is vital for the authenticity of public records, the reliability of scientific evidence, and the enduring accessibility to our cultural heritage. This report identifies the highest-impact opportunities to advance the state of the art; the state of practice; and the state of collaboration within the next 3-5 years.

Shows how three major factors influenced the effectiveness of efforts to increase public input into the political process through crowdsourcing. First, open electoral mapping tools were a practical necessity to enable substantially greater levels increase public participation. Second, the interest and capacity of local grassroots organizations was critical to catalyzing the public to engage using these tools. Finally, the permeability of government authorities to public input was needed for such participation to have a significant effect.

Summarizes challenges and best practices for disseminating government statistics. And recommends that best practices require shifting emphasis from the dissemination of reports to the dissemination of data of replicable, auditable, authentic data through open public API’s.

Argues for increasing transparency in research through formally documenting and publishing all substantial contributions to the research supporting a published finding, and provides a taxonomy of roles that can be used to increase comparability of contributions across research publications.

Demonstrates the widespread sensitivity of the results of statistical analysis in social science to hidden computational choices and to measurement error. We develop methods to test statistical results for robustness to algorithm choice, software implementation, and measurement error.

Uses computer simulation and optimization methods to show how compactness standards can be used to limit gerrymandering, but only if such standards require severe compactness. This article was cited by the Supreme Court in the United States, in both the plurality and dissent, as part of their Vieth v. Jubelier 2014 decision.