The Commoditized Stack Over the past year or so I’ve been developing an argument around confronting concentration and dependency at the cloud level of the technology stack: that at best…
Every year I send around to former students some highlights of this years work. This time I’m posting here! Hoping some of this work is of interest to all of…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…