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...
View ArticleThe 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 and its role as a...
View ArticleTeaching 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...
View ArticleTeaching 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 information and...
View ArticleTeaching Digital at the Kennedy School of Government: Part 3 – Our Users and...
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...
View ArticleTeaching Digital at the Kennedy School of Government: Part 4: The Trap —...
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...
View ArticleTeaching Digital at the Kennedy School of Government: Part 5: Foundational...
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...
View ArticleTeaching Digital at the Kennedy School of Government: Part 6: Bringing 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...
View ArticleTeaching 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 Government (HKS) learn...
View ArticleThe 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...
View Article“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 salvo in the conversation, the VC...
View ArticleLecturing 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 their respond to...
View ArticleCovid-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...
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