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Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog

  • More than 1,500 people participate in the White House Innovation for Disaster Response and Recovery Demo Day

    Posted by Meredith Lee, Heather King, Brian Forde on August 4, 2014 at 3:17 PM EDT

    Disaster Demo Day 7_29_14 panorama

    Under Secretary for Science and Technology Dr. Reginald Brothers speaks to technologists, entrepreneurs, and members of the disaster response community at the Innovation for Disaster Response and Recovery Demo Day in South Court Auditorium, July 29, 2014. (Credit: DHS Science and Technology)

    On Tuesday, more than 250 emergency managers, first responders, tech entrepreneurs, and local, state, and Federal officials came to the White House to participate in the Innovation for Disaster Response and Recovery Demo Day. The event was live-streamed to more than 1,250 people interested in leveraging tech and innovation to improve disaster preparedness, response and recovery.

    In the morning, participants attended six workshops to identify challenges where open data, social media, predictive analytics, sharing economy platforms, standards, and user-centered design can be applied to improve disaster preparedness, and disaster response and recovery efforts. Innovation facilitators from the Ideation Community of Practice, the global design firm IDEO, and several federal agencies led the workshop participants in drafting challenge statements — such as, “The Homeland Security Enterprise of over 3.5 Million first responders and emergency managers must make difficult decisions in the field to safeguard our nation, often triaging multiple streams of information.  How might we provide ‘Social Media, Unplugged’' — a means for response organizations to easily and securely extract emerging insights to better inform and coordinate disaster response?” The challenge statements will continue to be refined over the coming weeks with stakeholder input for inclusion in the upcoming disasters.data.gov site focusing on disaster response and recovery.

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  • President Obama Congratulates American Recipients of the Kavli Prizes in Astrophysics and Neuroscience

    Posted by Jo Handelsman on August 1, 2014 at 10:03 AM EDT

    Kavli Oval Greet 2014

    President Barack Obama greets the 2014 Kavli Prize laureates in the Oval Office, July 31, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

    Yesterday, President Obama welcomed four American Kavli Prize laureates into the Oval Office to congratulate them and applaud their contributions to the scientific community.  The Kavli Prize, awarded in Oslo, Norway every two years, recognizes scientists in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience. This year, nine scientists received the award, including four Americans: Alan H. Guth and Andrei D. Linde, who received the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics for their work on the theory of cosmic inflation, and Marcus E. Raichle and John O’Keefe, who were awarded the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience for their discovery of specialized brain networks for memory and cognition.

    The Kavli Prize — a partnership between The Kavli Foundation, The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and The Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research — awards each recipient 1 million U.S. dollars to further their research goals. The late Fred Kavli founded the Kavli Foundation and established The Kavli Prize to advance science with a humanitarian impact and to increase awareness about the importance of scientific research.

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  • How Low-cost Randomized Controlled Trials Can Drive Effective Social Spending

    Posted by Maya Shankar on July 30, 2014 at 2:05 PM EDT

    The Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy convened leaders from the White House, Federal agencies, Congress, philanthropic foundations, and academia this week to explore an important development in the effort to build credible evidence about “what works” in social spending: low-cost randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The goal of the conference was to help advance a broader Administration effort to promote evidence-based policy, described in the evaluation chapter of the 2014 Economic Report of the President, and the Performance and Management section of the President’s budget.

    Large and rigorous RCTs are widely regarded as the most valid method of evaluating program effectiveness, but they are often perceived as too costly and burdensome for practical use in most contexts. The conference showcased a new paradigm: by measuring key outcomes using large administrative data sets already collected for other purposes – whether it be student test scores, hospitalization records, or employment and earnings data – sizeable RCTs can be conducted at low cost and low burden.

    The conference showcased a number of RCTs that were conducted for between $50,000 and $350,000 (a fraction of the usual multimillion dollar cost of such studies), yet produced valid evidence that informed important policy decisions.

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  • Watch the White House Innovation for Disaster Response and Recovery Demo Day

    Posted by Brian Forde on July 29, 2014 at 8:55 AM EDT

    Today we’re excited to host the White House Innovation for Disaster Response and Recovery Demo Day. This event will bring together technologists, entrepreneurs, and members of the disaster response community to showcase tools that will make a tangible impact in the lives of survivors of large-scale emergencies. The White House Innovation for Disaster Response and Recovery Initiative was launched by the Administration in the wake of Hurricane Sandy to find the most effective ways technology can empower survivors; first responders; and local, state, tribal, territorial, and Federal government with critical information and resources. The event will be webcast live today at 1:30PM ET from the White House, go to www.whitehouse.gov/live to tune in.

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  • Crowdsourcing Ideas to Accelerate Economic Growth and Prosperity through a Strategy for American Innovation

    Posted by Jason Miller and Tom Kalil on July 28, 2014 at 5:58 PM EDT

    America’s future economic growth and international competitiveness depend crucially on our capacity to innovate. Creating the jobs and industries of the future will require making the right investments to unleash the unmatched creativity and imagination of the American people.  

    We want to gather bold ideas for how we as a nation can build on and extend into the future our historic strengths in innovation and discovery. Today we are calling on thinkers, doers, and entrepreneurs across the country to submit their proposals for promising new initiatives or pressing needs for renewed investment to be included in next year’s updated Strategy for American Innovation.

    What will the next Strategy for American Innovation accomplish? In part, it’s up to you. Your input will help guide the Administration’s efforts to catalyze the transformative innovation in products, processes, and services that is the hallmark of American ingenuity.

    Today, we released a set of questions for your comment, which you can access here and on Quora; an online platform that allows us to crowdsource ideas from the American people.

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  • Thinking Outside the Box to Prepare Americans for Information Technology Jobs

    Posted by Lynn Overmann, Marc Aidinoff on July 23, 2014 at 12:54 PM EDT

    The Department of Labor projects that there will be 1.4 million new information technology jobs by 2020, and there simply may not be enough adequate training programs to prepare Americans for these jobs.

    Traditional workforce training programs are stepping up—expanding their IT programs and working with industry to develop curricula that better prepare Americans for today’s jobs. As part of his review of America’s training programs, the Vice President has highlighted innovative new examples of those programs in his report to the President.  

    The Administration is particularly committed to supporting a new accelerated model of intensive training, often called “coding bootcamps,” which has emerged in several cities around the country. Coding bootcamps teach participants with minimal to no IT backgrounds how to write computer code on an accelerated time frame (usually between 9 and 12 weeks) and regularly result in high paying jobs (frequently around $70,000).

    Recognizing the opportunity these accelerated learning programs present to quickly upskill workers, the Vice President has called on local leaders, federal agencies, non-profits, and industry to support more of these non-traditional training models.  Today, in response to that call, Kansas City, Missouri; Louisville, Kentucky; and Minneapolis, Minnesota, together with the Wadhwani Foundation, have worked to create new public-private partnerships, collaborating with local IT employers and city leaders to help drive the expansion of coding bootcamps in their communities.

    These efforts build on the Vice President’s announcement yesterday that the Department of Veterans Affairs is taking key steps to support accelerated learning, including allocating $10 million through the VA Center to support coding bootcamps as well as issuing a letter to help existing coding bootcamps and accelerated programs understand how to qualify for funding under the GI Bill. 

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