EI Sickness Benefits and COVID

The COVID pandemic first struct early in 2020. By mid-2020, the full impacts were being felt in Canada by mid-year. And then by 2021, it was viewed as a crisis. With time the sense of crisis past. Going into 2025, many people regard it as over, but is it? 

There are many sources of data, and many valid perspectives that could be taken. The spreadsheets tables shown below contain data on usage of Employment Insurance Sickness Benefits. As would be expected the, then numbers rise sharply from 78 thousand per week to 92 thousand per week. 

This may seem like a lot but compared to an economy of 13,000,000 employed, it is not substantial. But on the otherhand, it does not include those who drop out completely, or who receive support for sickness by other means. 

Still it is a useful part of a bigger picture. It also includes an interesting caveat, as the recent yearly numbers appear to show that COVID is making a rebound now that precautions have been relaxed.

Prediction, Credibility, and Program Evaluation

Upon rereading the classic 1976 Lucas macroeconomic article on policy evaluation, it

struck me that program evaluators as of 2018 still had not  caught up. The essential point
of Lucas was that the very existence of a policy may change behaviour quite apart from
any real impacts.  However upon rereading his examples, they seemed to be too exaggerated
to be applicable to the real world. Still that did not matter. The approach to macroeconomic
modelling that he critiqued produced forecasts that were wrong and he was seen as been right.

The ability to predict has a huge impact on credibility. The proponents of big data appear to
be rewriting the rules of the game with their focus on prediction. In their world, model selection
is primarily driven by how well the model can predict the values of observations randomly
left out of the sample. R-square and T-test only play a very minor role. After all, if your
predictions are making money, nothing else matters.

So what does this mean for program evaluators?  Perhaps if program evaluators were able
to use their corpus of knowledge to predict impacts resulting to changes in programs, we
could rewrite the rules of our game.  I know that if inflation returns to a world where huge
budget deficits are occurring at the same time as very low unemployment rates, there will be
some macroeconomic modelers saying I told you so.  Do evaluators know enough to go out
on a limb and start making predictions? If we do, then our role in policy formation could move
to the next level.

Two crystal balls provide two different views of the future

COVID and Haircuts

It is 2023, and there is no end in sight to the COVID pandemic.  Informal estimates published on social media suggest that over half of the population have had COVID at least once.  Unfortunately, many individuals have had COVID even more than once, and now there are reports of significant portions of the population experiencing the debilitating effects of Long COVID.  History is also being made as the estimated expected life spans are actually going down across the world.  There are many reasons for this but in the end, they all point to COVID.

What does this have to do with haircuts?  I really need one right now.  When I was young I was a Hippy when it was cool.  Now I look like an old slob.  The challenge is where does one go for a haircut?  It is difficult to think of an activity that is more dangerous from a COVID perspective than a haircut.  Remember, you are expected to maintain a conversation with someone who is a relative stranger with an uncertain health status who is only a few feet away.  To make things worse, this person has likely being exposed to COVID at least once in the last week, but who is sick of wearing masks. 

Fortunately, if you look on the Internet there are some groups where COVID precautions are discussed.  If COVID aware individuals support these groups, the hair salons will have an incentive to offer services with proper precautions in place.  In this sense,  we may not control our future but we can at least influence it.  So here goes, hopefully I will venture out and find a safe place for a haircut.

For Government Clients: I am on SAP Ariba

Retirement is many things to many people.  I enjoy the freedom from day to day pressures but I still miss the intellectual stimulation of the work.  If you that my services may be of use to you feel to contact me by the normal means.  I would also like to add that I am on SAP Ariba, which may or may not be useful to you depending on how contracts are managed in your directorate. 

Nothing is Free on the Internet

Economists always like to say that nothing is truly free.  'Caveat Emptor' or buyer beware is another favorite expression.  Still the best of us will drop our guards from time to time.  And if you see this article as just me venting, you are right because it has just happened to me.

If you are going to work on the Internet with other people, you need to share data.  You could certainly email files back and forth to each other.  However, in this day and age maintaining files on the cloud is certainly attractive.  This allows analysts separated by physical distances to work together as if they were working on the same local network.  This is particularly attractive during 2020 with Covid 19.  And the best part about this is that the cloud memory is free.  Right?

The companies that are providing these cloud memory services are not charities.  Still they have found that the best way to market their subscriptions is to get people to sign up for a free service, then find a way to get them to 'upgrade' to commercial version of the product.  This becomes a game as the users of the services always prefer services to free and will try to keep their usage at the non-paying levels.

Providing free samples is a perfectly reasonable way to market.  When does this become a problem?  If they have your credit card number, they can start charging your card when the period is over.  If you had tried the service out and it was not for you, the story does not end there.  You may have actually agreed to an automatic renewal somewhere in the fine print that you clicked.  Then after a year, you may find that you are paying for a service that you have forgotten about.  What can you do in this circumstance?  It appears that there is no real court and your only resort is to throw yourself to the mercy of the service.  In my case, it was a happy ending as Dropbox refunded my fee.  However, there was no legal reason it had to work that way.

The moral of story. and most of you already know the answer it to avoid automatics like the plague.  This blog just serves as a reminder to really think twice about giving out that Credit Card number.

Something so small has so much power

Points for Evaluators to Consider When Destroying Data

Evaluators ability to obtain program and/or client data is based on trust.  Not only are evaluators expected to interpret the data properly, they also are required to manage client privacy responsibly.  Every so often, there are stories in the media about data leaking into the wrong hands.  No evaluator wants to be one of those stories.

One key aspect in  inspiring confidence in the use of the data is to be accountable for what happens to it.  This means at the end of the study, the data should be destroyed.  An initial reaction is that the Evaluator just has to delete the data files.  But is it that simple?

Actually, there are several points to be considered and although not complete, this article gives the general flavour.  First, what actually happens when a file is deleted?  Actually, no more than is what is obvious.  The file no longer appears on the list of files for the directory.  A skillful hacker who can get around the computer's operating system will find the data on the hard disk untouched.  Technically, the data would remain on the disk until another file is written over the data.

The solution to this will depend on the version of the operating system that you have installed.  All mature operating systems will have some variant on the traditional delete function that will overwrite the existing data so that it no longer exists.  Still this is not enough for some.  Although I know of no actual cases in program evaluation, it is considered a real possibility that when the data is being overwritten that old data will be missed and still be present on the disk.  Commercial products exist to perform a very thorough wipe of a disk to eliminate the possibility.

It is just not the operating system that may leave stray copies of the data, the statistical software may create data in intermediate forms that may be in unusual formats.  R is a good example of this as analysts are encouraged to collate the data in refined file formats, which may be more revealing of the personal data than the original.

There is another potential danger that is very real in the world of program evaluation when reproducibility of results is an issue.  This derives from the necessity to be able to demonstrate how results are achieved and that they are valid.  There is no way to achieve this without maintaining the data for certain period as specified in the privacy agreements.  However to be able to achieve this, the organization that the evaluator works in must have an effective form of archive management in place, so that the organization can be assured that the data is deleted, even if the evaluator has left the job.

What is the moral of the story?  Before you request data, make sure you have a plan in place.  Data management is not as simply as it looks.

Hard Drive being physically destroyed  

A Day in the Life of Internet Site Manager

As part of my consulting practice, I have a small Internet site, HenskyConsulting.com.  This is something that is almost normal for a small independent consultant.  In general, once the site is setup there is very little work to maintaining it.  Unfortunately, from time to time, you have to deal with issues, and this blog is about one of those issues.

When the Internet was first conceived, it was built on a naive sense of trust.  There was a naive idea that the people who were smart enough to use the Internet were also ethical enough to use it for higher purposes.  As a result, there was a great explosion of knowledge.  The Internet also became easier to use and there was a great explosion of users of all kinds.

Could this virtual Woodstock last forever?  Not surprisingly, many forms of malicious behaviour have arisen.  As a result, the managers of Internet sites, must attempt to keep their sites safe.  This involves all kinds of activities, some of which you would not want to document on a blog, but some of which are worth sharing in a short blog.  For me, the activity of the day is email spoofing. 

"Email spoofing" is a specific activity by which a nasty individual can send out an email that appears to be in your name.  They do this by creating a virtual email server at emulates the real server to the point where the from fields appear identical to a real email.  If one were to receive such an email on a smartphone, it would be nearly impossible to know that it is a fake.  If the email is viewed on a desktop computer, there are telltale signs that the source is fraudulent.

What does this mean to the site manager who has created the email account?  Basically, you are on your own, if the individual is foreign based.  Your local police authorities are not equipped to deal with this.  You should report it to ICANN but that will not help in the short run. The ISP who hosts your web service is the first point of reference.  Essentially, when you request an email address to be created, you need to understand the various parameters.

Why would creating an email address be complicated?  Basically, when the Internet was created, a lot of flexibility was granted out of that naive sense of trust.  Generally, the default email accounts, allow for a high degree of flexibility as noone wants to lose time when configuring their email setup.  This is only possible if the security is relaxed.

Relaxed security in creating an email account means that it is easy to connect multiple devices to your account such as Smart phones, laptops, as well as your main work computer.  The down side of this is that it become relatively easy for someone to pretend that they are one of your multiple devices.  The prime way to tighten up your security is to go to your ISP, and follow the best practices that they have listed. 

In the case of email spoofing, you can look at the email "source" with your email software.  You will likely see a trail that is very different than what you would have seen if you would have seen with a real email sent with one of your devices.  If you check the ip addresses listed, they will likely not be listed.  The domain server will also likely not be one used by your Internet Provider but a virtual one such as EXIM (ironically created at Cambridge).  If you tighten up the SPF record that governs who uses your email address, this should solve the problem.  If not, you will have to bite the bullet and shut down the email address.

If this sounds frustrating you are right.  I am dealing with this issue right now.  If it is not just bluff, there may well be embarrassing emails going out from my account.  Still it is the price we pay for our freedom on the Internet.  Do not be surprised if this note is updated, as I learn more in the near future.

A portion of the email source trailer.  Note I XXX out my personal information.  The IP address is that of the spoofer.