Calling All Recent Civil Servants: Design Thinking and Networking Workshop

Imagine a future: The US is dedicated to protecting consumers and has decided to create a ‘New Digital Platform Regulator’ or ‘FDA for AI’. As imagined, such an agency would ensure fair competition among the largest online platforms, implement and craft new data protection rules, mandate transparency and researcher access into AI systems, set standards and evaluation metrics that digital services have to meet to ensure product safety, or oversee independent auditors.

 

Such an agency will need to be adaptable, interdisciplinary (able to operate interagency) and consider human rights in evaluation metrics. Scholars and advocates are calling for these features, but people who have worked in government have tacit knowledge on how to make these processes work (or not work) in practice.

Haven’t thought much about technology policy or the prospect of a new agency? No worries, this event is less focused on the agency mandates and more focused on designing effective processes. This event offered participants an opportunity to imagine a future in which the US is building new agencies. 

The workshops took place under Chatham House rules, the learnings from the workshops were compiled into a two page summary report that can be found here.