Tech Policy Initiative

What is the Tech Policy Initiative?

The unprecedented pace of technological change is transforming our social, political, and economic institutions. How do we harness the benefits of these disruptive changes, strengthen and restore public trust in institutions, and ensure thoughtful decisions are being made about the development, implementation, and governance of emerging technologies?

In Fall 2022, the Goldman School of Public Policy and the CITRIS Policy Lab partnered to launch a transformative Tech Policy Initiative, which aims to strengthen multidisciplinary scholarly collaborations, foster tech policy education, and innovation, and inform effective tech-related policy strategies across the public and private sectors.

The Tech Policy Initiative is founded on three central pillars: Education, Collaborative Research, and Changemaker Engagement.

The Tech Policy Initiative grounds its work in four broad areas of inquiry and action:

1. Implementation - How can technology be used to solve public problems and how can we support responsible, appropriate, and effective applications of technology?
2. Disruption - How do we understand and prepare for transformative changes resulting from emerging technologies, particularly issues of unequal access and disparate impact? What role can and should government play?
3. Development - How do we ensure that emerging technologies produce maximum benefit and minimum harm? How can the public and private sectors work together to safeguard our shared digital future?
4. Justice, Dignity, and Diversity - How do we foreground and center fairness, opportunity, inclusion, access, the fullness of the human experience, and the voices of those most vulnerable to technological change? How do we develop a diverse pipeline of future leaders to be effective stewards of our shared digital future?

We embrace a holistic, multidisciplinary approach that brings our collective scholarly expertise to bear in: 

• Training the next generation of forward-thinking, tech-savvy, skillful and effective critical thinkers and policy leaders to help us navigate current and future technological changes
• Producing rigorous and impactful research to inform and shape the full technology development-implementation life cycle, including considerations of equity, privacy, and security
• Working with government agencies to help them make sense of emerging technologies, develop and implement appropriate policies, take advantage of innovations, and safeguard against harms
• Acting as a bridge and convener, fostering collaboration, understanding, and best practices across disciplines and stakeholder groups within the public and private sectors
• Providing effective tools, trainings, and collateral to promote an engaged and informed citizenry

Education

The Tech Policy Initiative provides students with the diverse skills necessary to understand and address complex tech policy challenges. 

Goals

• Providing all students with strong analytical skills; interdisciplinary knowledge; a firm grounding in core issues concerning the development, implementation, and impacts of technology; as well as effective communication, negotiation, and collaboration skills
• Creating a diverse pipeline of tech-savvy policy leaders and policy-savvy technologists with a strong commitment to public good
• Giving students real-world experiences and valuable employment skills related to tech policy
• Fostering deep critical engagement about the transformative impacts of technological change and how best to address them

Collaborative Research

The Tech Policy Initiative supports collaboration between researchers in public policy with complementary disciplines, such as computer science and engineering, data science, social science, and law. 

Goals

• Identifying effective policy interventions to address complex tech policy challenges (e.g., disinformation, cybersecurity, data privacy, eroding public trust, economic impacts)
• Investigating the role of public policy in supporting the transformative potential of technology to solve significant human problems (e.g., climate change, global poverty, health, homelessness)

Changemaker Engagement

The Tech Policy Initiative strives to empower stakeholders to become changemakers, by sharing best practices and co-designing innovative, research-driven approaches to responsible tech development, implementation, and governance. 

Goals

• Working with public and private sector stakeholders to help build bridges, foster collaboration across silos, scale and share best practices, and build public support and trust for responsible tech development, implementation, and governance
• Supporting tech policy leadership by helping to inform decision makers, enable better policies, and support responsible tech development and deployment while ensuring that public voices, public interest, and justice are foregrounded at every stage

Leadership

Brandie Nonnecke
Director, Tech Policy Initiative
Associate Research Professor, GSPP
Director, CITRIS Policy Lab

David C. Wilson
Dean, Goldman School of Public Policy

Andrew Reddie
Associate Research Professor, GSPP
Director, Berkeley Risk and Security Lab

Jean Cheng
Director of Strategy and Innovation, GSPP

Advisors

Camille Crittenden
Executive Director, CITRIS and the Banatao Institute
Co-Founder, CITRIS Policy Lab

Ziyang Fan
Digital policy expert with experience in the private and public sectors in the U.S., China, and Southeast Asia; former legal counsel, Airbnb; tech start-up board advisor.

Hany Farid
Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and the School of Information, UC Berkeley 

John Gage
Co-Founder, Sun Microsystems

Melvin Greer
Chief Data Scientist, Intel

Solomon Hsiang
Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy and Director, Global Policy Lab

Kiran Jain
Technology start-up lawyer and climate investor, former Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Oakland, and former board advisor for Kiva

Janet Napolitano
Former Arizona Governor and Secretary of Homeland Security, Director of the Center for Security in Politics, UC Berkeley

Costas Spanos
Director, CITRIS and the Banatao Institute

Yiaway Yeh
Former Mayor for the City of Palo Alto and Co-Chief Innovation Officer for the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County

JOIN US!

Interested in collaborating with the Tech Policy Initiative to support education, research, or engagement? Please reach out to Brandie Nonnecke.