Path Independent: Building the community of Public-Interest Research Engineers & Data Scientists
Funding Area: Capacity building / Construcción de capacidad
Problem Statement: Engineers based in public interest institutions regularly orchestrate data and computation for social purposes across a wide range of scales, from small NGOs with intake forms to massive online data collection systems for academic research and public advocacy. At the heart of all of these efforts are folks who are deep in their disciplines trying to change the world through structured design of knowledge infrastructure. Whether one works for a human rights organization, a research lab, or on socially oriented, complex technology, being an engineer can be a lonely job. Getting into such work — from building a career, to finding the right place to use one’s skills, to identifying opportunities to establish ethics and professional standards in community with others — is non-trivial. Addressing these issues is central to our mission. At RightsCon 2022, a group of engineers, data scientists, artists, and researchers gathered to discuss how the people who create and maintain public-interest research systems might better connect and support each other. We founded a new community of practice for public-interest research engineers and data scientists. Since then, our mailing list has grown to 60+ people, and this community has met bi-monthly, expanded its membership, defined its needs, and channeled its energy into peer learning and mutual aid.
Proposed Activities: Our community seeks to: Strengthen relationships and mentoring among people working on the “nuts and bolts” of systems for public interest research on technology and society; share questions, challenges, and best practices; provide a clearinghouse for peer support on thorny questions; coordinate technical perspectives on key conversations about ethics and privacy; and envision opportunities for shared, open source infrastructure development. Over the course of the next 18 months, we would like to take forward the needs defined by our community of public-interest research engineers and data scientists. In addition to continuing programming for our 60+ members, we are seeking $10,000 to do the following: 1. Establish a distinctive presence on the Coalition for Independent Technology’s website at https://independenttechresearch.org/ to coordinate and document the work of the community. As part of this effort, we will draft and publish 1-2 think pieces summarizing work to date and pathways forward. 2. Develop our community by working with a part-time community manager to match engineers with mentors. 3. Work with university students to develop a peer-review system for social technology code, thereby breaking the cycle of costly repetitive reinvention while establishing practical standards and reuse of technology. This system could either function independently, or become an extension of existing journals, such as the Journal of Open Source Software (https://joss.theoj.org/about). As part of their development efforts, students will consider and ideate on various existing models for sharing, like Peer Data Review (https://opennews.org/what/community/datareview/). 3. Produce 2-3 blog posts to act as guideposts to navigating careers in social justice engineering. To accomplish these tasks, we require the following expertise: 1. Community management. We are seeking $6,000 for a part time consultant to pilot the hosting and expansion of our community and manage our mentoring connections. 2. Writing expertise: $1,000 for a writer to document the efforts of the community and establish the concept of open community standards in the public sphere. Furthermore, we request funds for the following resources: 1. Website design and maintenance. 2. Design and development of a relevant instance of a peer review discussion forum (an initial prototype only).
Openness: Our ultimate goal is to build a forum for engineers that encourages an open exchange of technical knowledge, shared concerns, and ideas. We believe that establishing a culture of openness is the only way to address the challenges facing engineers in public interest institutions. This commitment to openness is central to the ongoings of the community. For example, one way that we encourage exchange is by asking community members to consider sharing a “puzzle” during our bi-monthly meetings. These puzzles can take one of three forms: A skill share — a technical concept that speaks to both technical and non-technical practitioners. A case study — a project that is (or nearly is) complete and what role tech/engineering played/could have played. A true puzzle — an idea, dataset, or existing ask for which the engineering needs are either nascent or totally undetermined. To date, this structure has enabled community members to learn from one another (e.g., on how generative AI works and might be used) as well as react and brainstorm responses to emerging concerns (e.g., the shutting down of previously open APIs). As outlined above, future efforts, such as blog posts, documentation, and a platform for peer review, will focus on ways to share engineering insights outside of the community of practice.
Challenges: Visibility and maintaining momentum are the biggest challenges that we face. Visibility refers to the fact that the community and associated efforts can only succeed if engineers and the broader public know of their existence. Without visibility, our community of practice may never reach far beyond its core members. Like many nascent movements, our community must maintain its initial momentum to have an impact. To do so, we must continue to meet regularly and begin to grow (both in numbers and effort).
Neglectedness: We believe that there are several sources for funding communities that include engineers. However, because of the way these groups are resourced, our community reports that they do not serve the same needs as what we are proposing. Instead, they tend to coalesce around one or two issue areas. To the best of our knowledge, there are not many sources of funding that are specific to the community structure of peer review, career building, and in-depth skillshare that we are hoping to serve. We have not previously applied for funding because this initiative is relatively new.. Following seed funding, we expect that the community can be housed more securely in the core funding of one or more institutions. We know of topic-specific communities, such as The Responsible Data Forum and efforts like the NYC Tech Salons that model different opportunities for this work to grow.
Success: We will measure success for the proposed work in the following ways: An increased number of participants in the community’s programming. Engagement with our website and blog posts. Completion of a peer-review prototype.
Total Budget: $10,000
Budget File: pdf
Affiliations: This proposal is affiliated with the Coalition for Independent Technology Research.
LMIE Carveout: no
Team Skills: These efforts are led by Dr. Akshay Mehra, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington and data scientist with the human rights research group SITU Research; Elizabeth Eagen, deputy director of the Citizens and Technology Lab at Cornell University and a human rights professional; and Dr. J. Nathan Matias, founder of CAT Lab and assistant professor at Cornell University. Our collective experience includes work with community-led research in digital communities, development of open research and knowledge management tools, building of cross-disciplinary community structures for decision making and learning, philanthropy, and complex engineering for remediation of human rights violations with visual evidence.
How Did You Hear About This Call: Word of mouth (e.g. conversations and emails from IOI staff, friends, colleagues, etc.) / Boca a boca (por ejemplo, conversaciones y correos electrónicos del personal del IOI, amigos, colegas, etc.)
Submission Number: 135
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