Connie Eaves, mother in life and science
A trailblazer who eschewed politics, identity and recognition in favour of a tenacious pursuit of life’s secrets Like many women of her age, Dr. Connie Eaves’s career in science was…
David Eaves
Covid-19: Lessons from and for Government Digital Service Groups
This article was written by David Eaves, lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, Tom Loosemore, Partner at Public Digital, with Tommaso Cariati and Blanka Soulava, students at the Harvard Kennedy…
Lecturing and Teaching Remotely — My Setup and Approach
I just ran a workshop/facilitate this morning for a number of the Chief Digital Officers from several European capital cities to help them share best practices and shared challenges in…
“They’ll Just Make It Illegal”
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…
The End of the Beginning of Digital Service Units
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…
Teaching Policy People to Code at the Harvard Kennedy School
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…
Teaching Digital at the Kennedy School of Government: Part 6: Bringing it Together
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…
Teaching Digital at the Kennedy School of Government: Part 5: Foundational Topics
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…
Teaching Digital at the Kennedy School of Government: Part 4: The Trap — Teaching Tech and Concepts
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…
Teaching Digital at the Kennedy School of Government: Part 3 – Our Users and What They Need
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…
Teaching Digital at the Kennedy School of Government: Part 2 – Defining Digital
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…
Teaching Digital at the Kennedy School of Government: A Road Map (part 1)
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…
Government, Digital Services & IT Procurement Reform
Next semester I’ll be teaching a course on why healthcare.gov initially turned into a disaster. Why? Because sadly, the failure of healthcare.gov was not special. Conservative estimates suggest over half…
The Future of USDS: Trump, civic tech and the lesson of GDS
Across Washington, the country, and the world, the assumptions people have about various programs, policies and roles have been radically altered in the last 12 hours with the victory of…
Improvising a Digital Curriculum at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Since arriving as a Lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to integrate digital into the curriculum. I have a course…
The Empire Strikes Back: How the death of GDS puts all government innovators at risk
The UK Government Digital Service(GDS) is dead. I’m sure it will continue to exist in some form, but from what I’ve read it appears to have been gutted of its…
Canada’s Draft Open Government Plan — The Promise and Problems Reviewed
Backdrop On Friday the Canadian Government released its draft national action plan. Although not mentioned overtly in the document, these plans are mandated by the Open Government Partnership (OGP), in…
How the Media Should have Responded to Peter Thiel
Much ink has been spilled about Peter Thiel’s funding of various cases against Gawker. However, the discussion of whether he should or shouldn’t mostly miss the point. Nor do the…
On Journalism, Government and the cost of Digital Illiteracy
Earlier today the CBC published a piece by Alison Crawford about Canadian public servants editing wikipedia. It draws from a clever twitter bot — @gccaedits— that tracks edits to wikipedia from government…
The End of the American World: Without Vision there can be no Leadership
America is leaving the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. This is, by scientific consensus, a terrible outcome for the planet. But it is also a disaster for American foreign policy…