Author: David Eaves

Cryptocurrencies, Public Goods & the State Late last year, I and a colleague from HKS were meeting with a VC I’d gotten to know in San Francisco. As an opening salvo in the conversation, the VC asked us “aren’t you worried about a cryptocurrency making the US dollar obsolete?” I replied

Balancing Users, Platforms, and Buy-in Strategies for National Digital Teams This week, digital HKS is partnering with Public Digital to convene digital services units from around the world. We will talk about what is and, more importantly, what is not working, with their work. Our intention is to make this an annual gathering where digital

Part 1: hypothesis & goals Context This summer, digital HKS is excited to launch an experimental pilot that will help MPP and MPA students at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (HKS) learn Python. Over the next two to three months, we’ll share more details about this experiment: why we are running it,

Okay, so to recap, here at the Kennedy School of Government I’m interested in the social, economic and policy changes brought about by the way digital technologies expand or threaten how we can solve problems, relate to one another, and reimagine institutions and the world. We have a range of students

One challenge I’ve observed about how digital technologies are taught at most schools of policy or government is it takes a relatively ad hoc approach. It is a mix of courses that emerge due to either student demand or faculty interest. To be fair, this is often better than nothing,

Before talking about the framework for thinking about digital at the Harvard Kennedy School, I want to discuss what we aren’t doing. I do this because I frequently get asked by students and others to respond to needs that I think are poorly articulated. I believe we should listen to

Focusing on the User: Who Policy Schools Teach While students from Schools of Policy and Government go on to do a variety of work, whether in the private, nonprofit or for profit sector, most will take a role in one of three functional areas: Politics, Administration/Operations and Public Policy. Like

Why Digital? For the purposes of our thinking we will use “digital” an umbrella term to describe the set of challenges, opportunities and issues that arise from a combination of information and telecommunications technologies. Why digital? For one, “technology” is too broad a term. At HKS — and I suspect schools of

Part 1: Why Digital Matters Digital technologies matter because our society, our economy, and our organizations have — for better and worse — become digitized. If policy makers and public servants can’t understand what this means, how it alters the production of public goods, or its impact on management, regulation, the economy, and policy, we