The Governance Lab Helps Us Better Define Complex Problems

America’s heartland is being reborn. From North Dakota and Michigan to Alabama and Texas, entrepreneurship, economic growth, and innovation are taking off.In this episode of TechEnabled, John is joined by Angie Cooper, Chief Program Officer of Heartland Forward, a “think and do tank” aiming to reframe the narrative about Middle America and improve economic performance in the center of the US. She joins the podcast to discuss the renaissance occurring in the heartland and how Heartland Forward is supporting the next generation of innovation and entrepreneurship. She also shares recent research on regional economic competitiveness which will help shape community strategies as they prepare to compete for new federal funds. John and Angie also discuss the Connecting the Heartland initiative which is supporting community and state leaders to boost internet availability, internet speeds, and adoption rates.

The COVID-19 pandemic monumentally disrupted the American education system. The pandemic can be a catalyst for something better or it reinforce the status quo.  On this episode of TechEnabled, John is joined by Michael Horn, the co-founder and distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation and author of From Reopen to Reinvent: (Re)Creating School for Every Child. Michael argues that we have an opportunity to rethink the notion that a one-size-fits-all school system is the right answer for developing students and supporting parents. He joins the podcast to discuss how we can leverage the pandemic’s disruptions to foster a better education system. Michael shares some perspectives on change management in moving from responding to threats to seizing opportunities and how the theory of Jobs to Be Done can be used to help build the learning experiences that parents and students demand.  

With students returning to the classroom, the toll the pandemic has taken on our education system has only become more apparent. Students have fallen behind academically and teachers are overstretched. But the pandemic has also upended many long standing assumptions about education and created room to experiment with new approaches. A recent Echelon Insights poll for the National Parents Union found 53 percent of parents believe we should not be returning to normal, but use the moment to rethink how we educate students.  On this episode of "Tech Enabled," John Bailey is joined by Salman Khan, founder and CEO of Khan Academy, and Amy McGrath, COO at Arizona State University (ASU) Prep. They recently announced a partnership to launch the Khan World School at ASU Prep, an online, global high school for students who have demonstrated strong academic potential but want to take their education to the next level. Focusing on mastery, community, and collaboration, the Khan World School is at the forefront of rethinking the traditional education model. On this episode, we discuss how first principles thinking was applied to reinvent school and how they addressed some of the challenges experienced with previous versions of remote learning.

One of the most significant challenges facing Americans is misinformation and the systems by which it spreads and is amplified. Amid the debate around censorship and deplatforming has emerged a new approach - human-curated ratings and detailed "nutrition labels" to help empower people with gauging the trustworthiness of websites and news services.On this episode of “TechEnabled,” John Bailey is joined by  two of America’s most respected journalists and authors Gordon Crovitz and Steven Brill who co-founded NewsGuard, a company which has developed a series of tools and services to help users find credible news and information online, while alerting them to untrustworthy sources they may see in their Facebook or Twitter feeds or in search results .In this episode, they discuss the nature of misinformation, how it spreads, and how more transparency and better information can help counter it.

One of the greatest challenges of modern-day policymaking rests not in the development of new policies, but rather in their implementation.  Some of the boldest policy ambitions of the last decade have been derailed due to the failure to understand how to deliver services through digital channels. This is why it is increasingly important for policymakers to have technology experts at the table when designing and executing new policy programs.  On this episode of “TechEnabled,” John Bailey is joined by Jennifer Anastasoff, founder and executive director of the Tech Talent Project — a nonprofit dedicated to increasing the ability of the US government to bring in experienced technical leaders. With a background in both the public and private sectors, Anastasoff discusses why understanding technology is important in implementing government policies and how the Tech Talent Project is helping bring technology expertise into government service.    

National trends are important. Local trends are more important. An interactive mapping service from PolicyMap helps leaders to quickly visualize and understand the trends within their communities. The data can reveal racial and economic disparities, identify areas lacking essential services, and help with planning where to deploy various resources and supports. What’s staggering about PolicyMap is the amount of available data: 50,000 indicators. Understanding these and other trends is critical to shaping policy, particularly with strengthening local economies and communities.

One of the most significant technology trends over the last decade is the shift of services and computing power to the cloud. COVID-19 accelerated these efforts as companies stood up remote work operations, business operations moved online, and government agencies scrambled to deliver services through digital channels. The underlying technology that supports these shifts and so much of what we experience online every day comes from a VMware. We’re joined this week by the COO Sanjay Poonen where we discuss some of the insights they’ve learned over the last year, including the surge of telemedicine and how VMware helped Moderna with developing a lifesaving COVID vaccine. We also discuss cybersecurity and VMware’s pledge to close the workforce gender gap by 2030.

Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”  The Governance Lab is helping organizations better define complex problems.  We are joined this week by Beth Simone Noveck who directs the Governance Lab and serves as New Jersey's first Chief Innovation Officer to understand better ways of defining and solving the problems facing our communities.

One of the greatest challenges with COVID is forecasting where communities are in the transmission curve.   Most of our models look backwards, not ahead.  It was like knowing where a hurricane had been, but not having a forecast of where it was going.  Carnegie Mellon University researchers are trying to change that.  The Delphi group at CMU is at the forefront of epidemiological forecasting using real-time information on symptoms, doctor visits, medical tests and searches on Google and Facebook. It provides a county-by-county sense of COVID is surging today and where it may be tomorrow.

In this week’s episode of Tech Enabled, we’re joined by Jessica Robinson Co-founder Michigan Mobility Institute, Detroit Mobility Lab, and partner at Assembly Ventures who helps us understand the technologies enabling mobility - how we move people, goods, and services from one place to another. From self-driving taxis to the data from transit apps, government officials are experimenting with new approaches to mobility.