Science, Technology, and Public Policy

On June 12-13, 2018, digital HKS welcomed public sector digital services teams from around the world to share stories of success, talk about lessons learned, and discuss the challenges they face in transforming government. The teams convened all agreed on North Star goals of building platform services and putting users at the center; what remains much more difficult is identifying how teams in very different political and technology contexts should think about how to reach that end-state. In this report, digital HKS shares best practices we gleaned from this group, to start a broader conversation for digital services groups around the world about what comes next.

Technological innovation and the politics of global justice are two fields that interact quite extensively in international diplomatic discourse and public debate. Controversial issues, such as accessing essential medicines, reducing greenhouse gases, conserving biological diversity, providing clean energy, and expanding the adoption of green technologies, require answers at the intersection of technological innovation, international diplomacy, and global justice. Our approach is to start off with the broader understanding that justice is rights-based and then proceed to analyze it using a goal-based framework. This brings into sharp focus the relationships between innovation and human rights.

The power of Pan-Africanism as a guiding vision for the continent’s development is widely studied, mostly as an aspirational phenomenon. At worst, Pan-Africanism has often been seen as a poor imitation of American federalism or European integration. Both of these perceptions do not reflect the profound nature of the role that the ideology of Pan-Africanism played in shaping the continent’s economic transformation. 

The Belfer Center began researching energy technology issues in the late 1990s. Its mission was “to determine and promote the adoption of effective strategies for developing and deploying cleaner and more efficient energy technologies that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce dependence on fossil fuels and stress on water resources, and improve economic development.”

In this issue, we look at the history and influence of the Center’s energy innovation efforts in the past two decades by focusing primarily on ETIP’s work in the U.S. and China.

As assistant to the president for science and technology, director of the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy, and co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), Holdren has worked closely with Obama to reinvigorate America’s scientific capabilities on a range of policy fronts, from climate change and renewable energy to health care and nanotechnology.

"Africa's higher education crisis is partly rooted in the colonial separation between research and teaching....Under this common scenario, much of the knowledge that is transmitted to society through university graduates is outdated. And up-to-date knowledge created in research institutes is bottled up because of the lack of connection with young people."