David Eaves and digital HKS are thrilled to host a Wardley Maps Workshop with Simon Wardley (inventor of Wardley Mapping). The purpose of the workshop is to introduce attendees to the importance of situational awareness in an organization and how to map a competitive environment. The technique has been used in Silicon Valley, VC firms, open source, and government circles successfully for almost 15 years. The workshop is design increase awareness and by the end of the workshop, the attendees should have a rudimentary understanding of mapping. (Lunch and afternoon coffee and tea to be provided)

This workshop is part two of a two-part series on data and the Global South hosted by digital HKS fellow Yasodara Córdova and Berkman Klein affiliate Lorrayne Porciuncula.

The first workshop, Big Data, Meager Returns?, was held in October 2018. The second workshop will look to discuss some of the questions that surfaced during the first workshop, and explore questions of data typologies for developing countries, with a view to understanding how to create data markets and governance frameworks that are more beneficial to the needs of local businesses, societal participation, and overall welfare in developing countries. The discussions and deliberations will focus on exploring the particular positive effects of digital transformation in developing countries and the role of public policy in harnessing it.

(Note: You did not have to attend the first workshop to attend the second.)

How can the power of citizen action make a real impact on public policy, from the local level to the global? Jim Shultz (Mid-Career MPA 1985) has been leading citizen action campaigns across the world for four decades and leads advocacy support projects on five continents. He has worked with indigenous communities in Bolivia, immigrant activists in California, health workers in South Africa and the global leadership of UNICEF.

Using two wildly different case studies – Resistance to Facial Recognition Surveillance Cameras in public schools in Lockport NY and the Water Revolt in Cochabamba, Bolivia – Jim will focus on how local citizen action can have a far wider impact.

Lunch will be served.

Our infrastructural networks, including water, electricity, transportation and telecommunications, underpin our lives, and they are a crucial way that we take care of each other—so much so that they are effectively invisible in their very ubiquity.

But with wildfires across California, contaminated water in Flint, the yearlong blackout in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and gas explosions north of Boston last fall, infrastructure has been headline news. But these failures hide deeper issues: a crisis of underfunding and maintenance in the past and the present, and new concerns for the future.

Not only is our infrastructure particularly susceptible to a changing climate but, as a significant fraction of our energy footprint, it’s also a major source of carbon emissions. How do we create a future where our shared infrastructural systems are resilient, sustainable, and equitable?

AI, robotics, digital platforms, and other technologies are reshaping our economies, societies, and the nature of work. Will new technologies lead to increased unemployment? Does automation make rising inequality economy? How should we regulate competition in a seemingly winner-take-all digital economy? Will different approaches to privacy and data balkanize the internet?  (study group is currently full for spring 2019)

Dr. Miriam E. Sweeney (University of Alabama) and Dr. Melissa Villa-Nicholas (University of Rhode Island) join us for a conversation on virtual assistants; and how virtual agents are increasingly integrated as ‘user-friendly’ interfaces for e-government and commercial services.

This research investigates the case study of the virtual assistant, ‘Emma’, that is integrated into the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website. This research has implications for how citizen-consumers are made informationally ‘legible’ to the state through their engagement with digital technologies for government services.

This presentation introduces the Emma interface in the context of USCIS services, and explores the cultural affordances of Latina identity as a strategic design choice that extends citizenship and nation-building projects for the state, while masking underlying information and data gathering capabilities.

Watch the full video here.

Join digital HKS and the Harvard Kennedy School student-led Disability Justice Caucus for a panel discussion with leading disability rights advocates and autonomous vehicle experts about how autonomous vehicles (AVs) will impact the future of transportation for Americans with disabilities. 

Join digital HKS and the Institute of Politics, in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, for a conversation on the effect of AI on labor policy and the future of work in the U.S. with confirmed panelists Jason Furman, Dean David Weil (Brandeis University), and Mary L. Gray (Microsoft Research), and moderator David Eaves. (event video available here)

Please join David Eaves for a conversation with Sahil Sanghvi and Dan McConnell (Booz Allen Hamilton) on combining social media, mobile, advanced analytics, cloud, blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT) with modern techniques including user-centered design, Agile, and DevSecOps to provide powerful digital solutions across the federal government.