Oakland County Twitter Health Metrics Proposal 4/13/18

Twitter Health Metrics Proposal Submission

https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/twitter-health-metrics-proposal-

submission.html

April 13, 2018

1. Email address *

a. bertolinip@oakgov.com

2. Name of Point of Contact *

a. Phil Bertolini

3. Name of Organization *

a. Oakland County, Michigan Government

4. Propose and define a health metric that Twitter could use to measure itself. * (280

Character Limit)

a. Location Authenticity of where an event is versus where content is sent from and

any intent of users to misrepresent this. Confirming content location authenticity

can minimize the spread of false information-specifically around location specific

breaking news/emergencies.

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5. How would Twitter capture, measure & evaluate this health metric? * (560 Character

Limit)

a. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used as a preliminary screen to

quickly identify location authenticity of content during events/emergencies.

Tweets are plotted on a heat/story map based on their sent location. Their distance

from the actual event would indicate whether they would likely be or not be a

first-hand account or news coverage from the incident. Tweets from further away

can be automatically flagged and evaluated for authenticity or reported/removed

before waiting for investigation/confirmation from verified sources.

6. Propose and define a health metric that Twitter could use to measure itself. (metric #2)

(280 Character Limit)

a. Response time in conversations can be measured to determine the presence of

critical thinking. Critical thinking takes time to formulate a response. A lack of

time could indicate responses that are negative, troll-like, combative, or even bots

that deter healthy conversations.

7. How would Twitter capture, measure & evaluate this health metric? (metric #2) (560

Character Limit)

a. This can be measured and captured by adding on time measurements to the

already existing impression and engagement analytics through AI tools that look

for @replies/mentions and how quickly they are sent compared to when the user

saw the content (impression). The time it takes them to formulate and send a

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response (engagement) would indicate the presence or lack of critical thinking

and detect automatic bots. AI could evolve based on conversation topics, user

demographics, etc. to more accurately identify and predict the presence of critical

thinking.

8. Propose and define a health metric that Twitter could use to measure itself. (metric #3)

(280 Character Limit)

a. The presence of civility indicators in a conversation can measure its health.

Healthy conversations are civil, open, and receptive to other viewpoints. For there

to be healthy conversations around societal issues, people must feel they are in a

safe space for civil discourse.

9. How would Twitter capture, measure & evaluate this health metric? (metric #3) (560

Character Limit)

a. AI can use deep listening for civility indicators, keywords, tone, frequency, and

connections. Then map conversations to identify different audiences in the public

sphere and where they connect or disconnect on different topics. AI can analyze

emotions and communication style to predict whether users are sad, happy, upset,

or if there are indicators of unsafe or threatening behavior. By identifying a lack

of civility in conversations, we can find ways to open the lines of communications

and build communities that find common ground between users.

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10. Propose and define a health metric that Twitter could use to measure itself. (metric #4)

(280 Character Limit)

a. Healthy conversations are intrinsically safe. Safety can be measured by the

amount, veracity, and location of unsafe content. Safe content does not threaten

perceived or physical safety, demean or bully, and does not promote unsafe or

illegal behavior, activities, or self-harm.

11. How would Twitter capture, measure & evaluate this health metric? (metric #4) (560

Character Limit)

a. Unsafe content and conversations can be identified by the contents and tone of the

conversation. AI tools can be programmed to identify and analyze this content

through initial high precision key terms and hashtags that are clearly related to

unsafe content, then learn to expand possible terms, misspellings, and acronyms.

Twitter’s existing safety reporting tool would also integrate into the AI so that it

can learn and grow its listening tool to include the results from user reports. GIS

can be used to identify physical locations of unsafe content.

12. What funding would the proposal require ($USD)? * (Must be numerical)

a. $500,000.00

13. What would be the output of the proposal and timeline? * (No Character Limit)

a. We estimate that it will take one year to fulfill our output completely by

delivering one health metric per quarter.

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The output of Health Metric #1, Location Authenticity, would be a dashboard

map application flagging high-velocity trending topics to display tweets by topic

(such as emergency or breaking news) and plot them according to the location of

where they were physically sent from. The application would identify and

highlight any anomalies as a first line of defense for tweets spreading

misinformation.

The output of Health Metric #2, Critical Thinking, would be a dashboard that

displays time-based data, about two key measurements: the amount of time

between a users’ impression of a tweet and when they engage with it; and the

amount of time between when a tweet is published and replies are sent. This

would also include keyword and tone evaluation tools to be able to draw analysis

between response rate and topics to identify trends.

The output of Health Metric #3, Civility, would be a dashboard that displays

tweets containing identified civility markers surrounding historically contentious

issues. This could also be scaled for use whenever new topics start trending. The

results would be plotted to show which audiences are talking about these topics

and where in the public sphere of conversations they connect or disconnect on

different issues. Geolocation integration would be included to plot the location of

these conversations.

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The output of Health Metric #4, Safety, would be a dashboard that displays tweets

identified as containing unsafe content on a map. The dashboard would also

display overall tone, sentiment, and emotional state trends. There would also be

an integration point to display results of the Twitter Reporting feature about

unsafe content.

14. Link to relevant papers you've published (link #1) * (No Character Limit)

a. State Tech, 6/23/14, Crowdsourcing Taps the Power of Many Minds

https://statetechmagazine.com/article/2012/07/crowdsourcing-taps-power-many-

minds

15. Link to relevant publications (link #2) (No Character Limit)

a. Government Technology, 5/9/2013, The Smartest Thing CIO Phil Bertolini Ever

Did http://www.govtech.com/The-Smartest-Thing-Phil-Bertolini-Ever-Did.html

16. Link to relevant publications (link #3) (No Character Limit)

a. The President Barak Obama White House Archives, 9/27/2012, Driving

Innovation and Change in Government Technology

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2012/09/27/driving-innovation-and-

change-government-technology

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17. Additional Comments: (No Character Limit)

The Center for Digital Government consistently ranks Oakland County among the most

digitally-advanced counties in America. The National Association of Counties also

bestows numerous achievement awards on Oakland County’s Department of Information

Technology annually for innovation in IT.

Oakland County’s digital prowess in the public sector can be effectively leveraged and

provide a unique perspective to the Twitter Health Metrics project. As dedicated public

servants, we PROVIDE, SERVE, and HELP people. We PROVIDE quality services by

the hands of our talented teams across county government. We SERVE at the behest of

the 1.2 million citizens of Oakland County who need and rely on our services. We HELP

people by impacting their lives in many different ways. By participating in Twitter’s

effort to measure and improve the health of online conversations, we can improve public

health and quality of life for our residents and the collective online community.

Oakland County is committed to using technology to better serve our residents, and has

garnered national and global recognition for these efforts. Notable to Twitter’s effort to

measure the health of public conversation are the county’s innovative use of: social

media, GIS technology, open data, cloud services, and shared government technologies.

Oakland County is a national thought leader in the government social media space. The

county was part of the inaugural board of the Government Social Media Organization,

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playing a leadership role for the direction of the nation-wide organization and planning

for their annual conference, which we have been asked to present at every year since its

inception in 2015. The county has received several awards specific to our social media

strategy and policy as well as our innovative use of social media to engage citizens on

specific campaigns.

Oakland County is a global leader in GIS Technology. Oakland County’s enterprise GIS

program supports every "location-based" data set and business function through data and

technology sharing. The county was featured on a global stage as a Plenary Session at the

2017 ESRI User Conference: https://youtu.be/t3m2iNUhFRs

Oakland County launched the Access Oakland Open Data Portal

http://accessoakland.oakgov.com/ in 2016 to enhance the way we serve residents and

businesses and improve transparency in government. Our mission is to provide a

progressive, location-based solution that promotes informed decision making, improves

citizen services, and encourages collaboration across all levels of government. Making

these data sets widely available benefits both the private and public sector by reducing

costs, reducing the time involved in obtaining the data, and providing agencies with the

most accurate, up to date information for use in their business processes and decision

making.

Oakland County has a history of innovation and collaboration. Our mantra is to build it

once, pay for it once, and everybody benefits. Oakland County is an innovative leader in

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shared government technology through the G2G Marketplace

https://www.g2gmarket.com/ as well as providing cloud services to other government

agencies through G2G Cloud Solutions https://www.g2gcloud.com/.

Oakland County’s digital expertise in the public sector can provide a unique perspective

and be effectively leveraged to meet the needs of the Twitter Health Metrics project. As

dedicated public servants, Oakland County is committed to using technology to better

serve our residents and welcomes the chance to participate on a global scale through the

Twitter Health Metrics proposal.