Creating Strategy and Policy for the Second Era of the Digital Age - New Directions for Government #1

Last month, in collaboration with the Chamber of Digital Commerce, the Blockchain Research Institute published its recommendations to the Biden-Harris administration for leading the United States in the next era of digital technology. Our larger goal was to assist governments everywhere in using these technologies in their own operations and economies, with their allies and global partners. This is the first in a series of seven articles, where I’ll review the priorities and opportunities of that report. Enjoy!

The Biden-Harris administration arrives at a unique time for government market-making. The pandemic has exposed and exacerbated problems at all levels of the public sector and society, creating a demand pull for transformation. The convergence of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and blockchain technologies—with data at the core—is creating a supply push of innovation. Under these conditions, as Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella observed, we were able to compress two years of digital transformation into the first two months of lockdown.

But it has not been without pain, suffering, and outrage over the systemic inequities. It’s as if the titanic age of industry hit a coronavirus iceberg. Those who could access a lifeboat from the upper decks did so. Those on the lower decks are still fighting their way out. And so the pandemic has turned the inexorable march of the digital age into a mad dash for survival, as people adapt to working, learning, shopping, socializing, and visiting their doctors online. To compound the catastrophe, the former administration delayed the battle against climate change by four years and left in its wake crises of legitimacy in government, scientific expertise, the free press, elections, and democracy itself.

We’re entering a second era where new technologies—machine learning, drones, robots, and autonomous vehicles, sensors, and even biological implants—are infusing into everything, and every business process. Foundational to these innovations are the blockchain technologies underlying cryptocurrencies. These new, distributed platforms can help to reshape business and bend the old order of human affairs toward justice and equality, if we use them with those goals in mind. This second era will disrupt financial services and transform entire industries, animate the physical world, and reshape the nature of government.

It also brings a dark side. Digital media have enabled a fragmentation of public discourse in the groups of Facebook and the halls of Congress. Industrial age jobs could vanish, from truck drivers and cashiers, to telephone operators and date entry keyers. As machines smarten up, they pose new threats. Trillions of networked devices may open new holes in our cybersecurity and autonomy, when our identities and personal data are already at risk. The federal government has made some success addressing the opportunities and challenges of this new digital age over the past few years. But to those in the know, progress seems glacial.

Now’s the time for government leaders to acknowledge our new digital realities and develop a comprehensive framework for achieving prosperity, fairness, sustainability, social cohesion, and good government. To do this, federal leaders must become knowledgeable about these technologies and to make a turn to realize the upside and mitigate the downside.

The current wave of digital innovation presents an historic opportunity for the United States federal government to rethink and redesign how it operates, how and what it provides, and how it interacts and engages with citizens and its partners in state, local, and foreign governments, the private sector, the media (i.e., Fourth Estate), and civil society.

It’s time for a turn in how it addresses technological innovation in the economy and the country as a whole. In our next post, we’ll look at the need to embrace the digital dollar and other cryptocurrencies, in the context of President Biden’s picks for key posts in the administration.

Best regards,

Don

Photo Credits: Baltimore Convention Center Testing Site: Walk-Up Testing Site at the Baltimore Convention Center. Photo by Maryland GovPics/Patrick Siebert, 2020, used under CC BY 2.0[ED1] ; and Naval Medical Center San Diego Conducts Surgical Tele-Mentoring Study. Photo by Navy Medicine/Luke Cunningham, 2021, used under public domain 1.0.