An Open-Source Community
We’re creating an **open-source (and open-thought) community** of civil servants, private-sector technologists, and academics to encourage government to embrace data-driven decisions and accelerate the adoption of data analytics in governance.
Anyone can see the massive acceleration being brought on by recent advancements in AI/ML. We can also see the ethical risks these innovations pose, along with the ever-threatening spectre of massive government IT/data projects that fail on launch or even before they see the light of day.
Why are we doing this?
Digital transformation of the US government has made incredible progress over the last 10 years. Tremendous work remains in delivering digital public services and addressing systemic structural problems that hinder government practitioners. We must prepare for the next phase.
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The pivot to data will fuel the next transformative phase. There will be less focus on delivering digital services and more on the data they generate. This shift will bring technology practitioners closer to decision makers, allowing more time to discuss data utilization instead of access.
UIs will be easy to create and customize. Natural-language interfaces for querying and analyzing data will become standard.
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How can we avoid the pitfalls of the past and new challenges these technologies create? If even Google’s AI suggests putting glue on pizza, how can smaller teams with fewer resources avoid similar mistakes, especially when lives are at stake?
Practitioners will drown in data, if they aren’t already. AI accelerationists predict the price of intelligence will be too cheap to meter within the decade. We believe the price of information will continue to decrease.
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What remains scarce is insight.
Insight requires careful thought and asking the right questions. Our goal is to leverage AI/ML for productivity gains without blindly trusting it.
Join Us
We’re taking volunteers! Right now we’re focused on core contributors. Participation for core contributors will likely amount to a 2 hours per week on average. Even if you won’t be available for that time commitment initially, please still sign up! There will be many opportunities to participate.
Our only membership criterion is that you’re an active practitioner in this space. Think of this as creating a virtual think-tank, run like an open-source software project. We’ll be free of the need to apply to grants or fundraise and the restraints that come with them. Ideologically, we’ll only be beholden to our core problems and opportunities which will be sourced from the community itself.
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