digital HKS Offers Leaders Tools to Understand How Digital Applications Transform Government

digital HKS is an independent project committed to understanding the relationship between digital technology, open data, and digital rights as they relate to the public interest. Newly based at the Belfer Center, digital HKS achieves this by developing research, curriculum, and events as well as serving as a steward for the government digital services and public interest technology practitioner communities—two groups at the forefront of this work.

In June, digital HKS hosted its inaugural digital services event to bring together digital service groups from around the globe to share, learn, and problem-solve. This invitation-only event brought together participants from the U.S., UK, Estonia, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, and Canada to discuss building teams, scaling services, and achieving sustainability. The meeting culminated in an annual Digital Transformation Report available at belfercenter.org/DigitalTransform. 

Digital technologies, data, and agile methodologies offer tremendous opportunity for governments to address difficult social problems. These opportunities include providing core services (e.g. Login.gov) more efficiently and reimagining how governments can be structured around core government platforms (e.g. GOV.uk). It is essential that public leaders possess the knowledge and tools to enable them to make decisions relating to these areas and their constituents.

Lecturer in Public Policy and Faculty Director of digital HKS David Eaves focuses on the groundwork for why digital centric curriculum matters to all public policy schools.  He is building a foundational approach at the Kennedy School in his series, Teaching Digital at HKS: A Roadmap, found at belfercenter.org/digitalHKS.

digital HKS is home to a rich community of students and research fellows along with adjunct lecturers that include Dana Chisnell, Kathy Pham, Nick Sinai, Bruce Schneier, and Jim Waldo. Fellows’ research covers domestic and international topics such as exploring the future of government work, assessing human rights considerations applied to Internet protocols, and analyzing the ethical considerations of identity and indigenous populations in the global south.