Data + Digital

The Data + Digital portfolio brings together digital service professionals and data experts from government, civil society, industry, academia, and all communities to inform our research, collaborate on solutions, and generally build a broader sense of community in the industry.

Our Vision

Building capacity, credibility and community — and getting work done.

Projects in the Data + Digital portfolio aim to build capacity for the individuals and teams working on data and government service delivery, support the relationships and responsiveness between governments and the people they serve, and scale efforts across governments.

The Digital Service Collaborative is building a body of research around government digital services, creating tangible resources for practitioners, cultivating the community of digital service leaders in governments to share and scale efforts, and exploring policy considerations including ethics and privacy. We are also supporting efforts in the public and private sectors to responsibly share and use data to address some of society’s most challenging issues and to support civic engagement with public institutions.

Our Impact

Technology alone is never the answer.

We’ve heard that individuals leveraging data and technology want to be better connected with one another and have more communications and transparency around what works and what doesn’t. We’ve heard that concrete tools like checklists and playbooks are essential for building capacity, credibility and community — and to getting work done. The data + digital team is leveraging all of these insights in ongoing efforts to help policy-makers and civil servants use data and technology to increase their impact, maximize their efficiency, and strengthen ties to the communities they serve.

The Data + Digital portfolio builds on the Beeck Center’s previous experience providing support and guidance to policy-makers and civil servants across a variety of formats. This includes flagship reports such as Modernizing Congress: Bringing Democracy into the 21st Century, identifying data standards and systemwide digital infrastructure changes needed on Capitol Hill, Setting the Stage for Transformation: Frontline Reflections on Technology in American Government and the Chief Data Officer in Government Playbook, offering a roadmap to strengthen the use of data for social good across government institutions.

Our Approach

Bringing all voices into the conversation.

We bring together digital service professionals and data experts from government, civil society, industry, academia, and all communities to inform our research, collaborate on solutions, and generally build a broader sense of community around this work.

Through large-scale convenings, smaller working groups, on-campus seminars, themed salons and partnerships with other organizations working on data + digital, we aim to bring all voices into the conversations around this work.

Georgetown University has a rich community working on issues facing tech and society and through the Beeck Center’s Data + Digital work, we partner with other campus programs and institutes to bring the practitioner’s voice to policy conversations and contribute applied experience to theoretical conversations.

Associated Projects

Scale

Responsible Data Practices

many government agencies are also experiencing the pains of governing how that data is shared, resulting in practices that are unsustainable, ineffective, and not forward-thinking. There is a fundamental need to evolve these practices into a governance approach that balances the need to protect people’s data with the need to uncover opportunities to better serve communities through data.

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Incubation

State Chief Data Officers Network

Data is a strategic asset and states have great potential to unlock it for public good. While several states have established Chief Data Officers (CDOs) to advance the use and management of data, many still lack the senior technical leadership to leverage the data they already have to better target services, and use ongoing data collection to test different strategies and scale what works. The State Chief Data Officer Network will provide expert support for state efforts to utilize data to deliver better outcomes.

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Scale

Digital Census Project

The Census provides our nation’s foundational dataset, the basis upon which so much other data is based. It is used in research, algorithms, journalism, business, and infrastructure planning among other things. In many ways it creates the reality upon which our institutions, our lives, and our futures are built. It is the people’s data: a shared public asset that is becoming increasingly important in a data-driven world.

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Incubation

Delivering Better Outcomes through User-Centered Policy Making

The future of improved service delivery requires a strategy that includes user-centered policy making and creates space for experimentation and piloting.

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Exploratory

Improving Foster Care

This project has the ability to markedly improve the states’ processes, reducing the time it takes for foster families to be vetted and matched with children, and impacting the lives of thousands of foster children and serve as a national model.

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Exploratory

New Digital Service Teams

Government teams are pioneering new approaches and learning from their experiences and we have much to learn from those implementing innovative methods.

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Exploratory

Upskilling the Government Tech Workforce

In recent years, governments have increasingly begun approaching service delivery through approaches with modern technology, software development, and service design principles. This has led to creation of digital service teams in government such as the U.S. Digital Service, Digital Services Georgia, and the San Francisco Digital Service, and the need to designate specialized technologists to fulfill the work of these teams, such as developers, human-centered designers, user-experience researchers, data scientists, and more.

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Exploratory

Social Safety Net Benefits Research

The need for assistance for core financial, housing, nutrition, healthcare, family care, and transportation support can lead to significant challenges for millions of American workers seeking to find and sustain employment that will offer upward mobility and economic security.

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Exploratory

State Software Collaborative

Government hasn’t kept pace with advances in technology. Only 13% of major government software projects succeed, and the successful and failed ones alike cost 5–10 times more than they should. When these projects fail, so too do the public policy initiatives that depend on them — unemployment insurance, DMVs, healthcare exchanges, paid family & medical leave, etc. — leaving behind the millions of Americans who rely on those programs. We’ve seen in the response to the COVID-19 crisis that even if lawmakers move quickly to pass legislation to get money to laid-off workers, small businesses, and hospitals, those policies can’t be implemented effectively when the technology tools used to apply for, distribute, and track funds can’t be easily modified or don’t work.

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Incubation

Data + Justice Project

Conducting innovative qualitative and quantitative research into prosecutorial decision-making with a goal of reducing incarceration and racial disparities and improving effectiveness and fairness of justice in their jurisdictions.

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Incubation

Digital Service Collaborative

The Beeck Center is working in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation to provide expert support to government digital transformation efforts. As governments increasingly focus on delivery of public services, the Digital Service Collaborative will provide tangible resources to scale successful practices and will cultivate the community of digital service leaders.

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Exploratory

Modernizing Congress

Here at the Beeck Center, we envision a 21st century where Americans leverage technology and data to renew democracy. To that end, the Beeck Center has been conducting research on the potential for crowdsourcing expertise from communities to inform what happens in Congress.

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Exploratory

The Blockchain Ethical Design Framework for Social Impact

In June 2018, we launched the Blockchain Ethical Design Framework, a project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to ensure that privacy and ethics are incorporated into blockchain applications. The Framework provides an actionable tool for decision makers and practitioners to drive positive social impact and ethical intentionality into the design and implementation of blockchain technologies.

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