Colorado Future Systems Policy Sprint
Colorado is entering a decisive transition period. The 2026 gubernatorial transition and subsequent legislative cycle offer a rare window to define Colorado’s long-term policy architecture. As the state’s new leadership establishes its priorities and agencies refine their implementation strategies, there is a strategic opening for innovative, non-partisan, evidence-based ideas.
Emerging technologies, labor market transformation, and climate-driven resource constraints are reshaping the state, including its economic landscape and the communities within it. Across industries, the skills demanded of workers are shifting faster than training and education systems have historically been designed to accommodate. The rapid change and adoption of new technologies is outpacing existing governance structures, raising questions about workforce displacement, public safety, the distribution of economic benefits, and long-term fiscal stability. At the same time, Colorado faces growing pressures from wildfire risk, water scarcity, and grid vulnerability while needing to maintain economic momentum across both its urban centers and rural communities. These critical and often interconnected challenges require forward-looking, systems-level policy interventions.
In this moment where there is an urgent need to protect and strengthen the S&T ecosystem across the U.S. and find solutions to address the gaps left by shifting federal policy, arming policymakers with implementation-ready ideas is paramount. FAS is pleased to share nine new policy proposals to address Colorado’s pressing workforce, emerging technology, and climate challenges developed by our cohort of local policy entrepreneurs.
Workforce Upskilling and Reskilling
Colorado’s long-term competitiveness and prosperity depend on its ability to attract, train, and retain a workforce equipped for the future. Workforce policy must account for the skilled talent and workforce pipelines that are needed to sustain the diversity of industries and communities across the state. Addressing these issues at scale will require national investments across industries, but we have identified three pathways Colorado can tackle immediately. This includes supporting both urban and rural economies, strengthening career pathways across the full breadth of industries and ensuring all workers have access to upskilling, reskilling, and apprenticeship opportunities. The following three memos offer solutions for upskilling Colorado’s workforce, supporting homegrown talent, and creating new pathways for educational and workforce advancement.
Colorado faces a projected shortage of more than 2,400 physicians by 2030, alongside the growing shortage nationwide, particularly in rural and certain underserved urban communities.
The Colorado Skills Map would define the technical and durable skills employers expect by sector and occupation, then attach a common skill identifier to ensure that credentials, courses, and work-based learning experiences are recognized as equivalent and portable across the state.
Jobseekers, employees at smaller organizations, and local public workers need more than a weekend crash course in AI. They need practice choosing useful tasks, protecting data, testing outputs, and explaining where human judgment remains necessary.
The Colorado Succession Through Apprenticeship Program would turn two problems into one solution: a state-coordinated pipeline that trains graduates to evaluate and operate existing businesses, then connects them to owners ready to show them the ropes and eventually hand over the keys.
Emerging Technology
Emerging technologies, from artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing to data infrastructure, are shaping Colorado’s economy, workforce, and communities at a rapid pace. These technologies create opportunities for economic development and improved public services, yet also raise questions around privacy, fairness, consumer protections, workforce displacement, and resource needs. To address these challenges, our cohort developed three memos that begin to address one of the most salient innovations of this moment: AI and the data centers that power them. The following memos chart a path for Colorado’s future by upskilling the workforce to leverage this new technology, creating new governance structures to build public trust, and developing technical solutions to sustain long-term growth.
Only through independent monitoring, reporting, and investigation on data centers’ environmental impacts, can we promote public trust, inform the allocation of natural resources, and enable responsible governance on future data center development.
Jobseekers, employees at smaller organizations, and local public workers need more than a weekend crash course in AI. They need practice choosing useful tasks, protecting data, testing outputs, and explaining where human judgment remains necessary.
Land, Climate & Energy
Colorado’s geography makes it particularly vulnerable to the accelerating impacts of climate change. Rising temperatures, prolonged drought, more frequent and intense wildfires, and shifting precipitation patterns are straining water supplies, threatening public health and safety, and disrupting agriculture, recreation, tourism, and other key sectors of the economy across the state. Successfully navigating this complex policy landscape (e.g., managing economic growth, technological advancement, and natural resource stewardship) to meet ambitious goals will require innovative policy interventions. As the next three memos propose, Colorado should modernize existing infrastructure, build alternative workforce pathways to meet the state’s water and energy needs, and simplify permitting processes for low-risk projects.
Colorado already has the building blocks in place to modernize its agricultural industry – they just have to put it to use. With state recognition, a San Luis Valley pilot could improve local capacity in just three years.
Colorado ranks second-to-last in housing affordability. Blame Colorado’s notoriously slow permitting system. It’s time for an upgrade.
About 86% of Colorado’s water is used for agriculture, but only about 30-60% of that water actually reaches crops. Conveyance efficiency through canal modernization is a powerful drought resilience and water saving strategy with proven technical feasibility.
About the Colorado Future Systems Policy Sprint
At FAS, we are leading an Engaged Science & Technology Policy (ESP) Initiative aimed to strengthen the science, research, and innovation enterprise through systemic, good faith reforms to deliver broad societal benefit in partnership with Association for Technology Centers (ASTC). In witnessing the shifting federal science and technology (S&T) policy landscape, we strategically turned to state policy development, recognizing that states would need to fill the S&T funding, talent, and policy gaps created by federal actions. Focusing on major research ecosystems with the greatest opportunity for impact, we selected Colorado. Our goal? Reach out to Coloradans and ask them to participate in generating new policy ideas that would make a significant impact in the state and potentially inspire other states, too.
Jointly with the Institute for Science & Policy (ISP) and the Association for Technology Centers (ASTC), we initiated a three-month sprint to crowdsource, develop, and publish a series of policy proposals in response to these challenges. In April, we launched an open call for ideas targeting policy professionals, researchers, and practitioners in Colorado with expertise in workforce development, emerging technology, climate and energy policy. In May, we selected our cohort and kicked off a program to support each author in developing an implementation-ready policy memo. Through training, expert feedback, stakeholder input, and editorial support, each author developed their idea into an actionable proposal for Colorado.
Not only was this FAS’s inaugural Day One Project state-specific policy sprint, but we adapted our traditional Day One model to integrate local perspectives, including Colorado’s civic, industry, and community ecosystems, with the support of our partners, ISP and ASTC, throughout the policy development process. We facilitated a forum on workforce upskilling, where we brought together 20 stakeholders from across the workforce and education ecosystem in Colorado to uncover shared values, assess barriers, and develop relationships. We then shared these insights and results with the memo authors to inform the policy development process. We also connected each author with local Colorado and national expert stakeholders to gather feedback on their ideas through discussions and formal review processes. This has yielded policy ideas that are technically rigorous, aligned with policymaker priorities, and responsive to diverse community needs across the state.
When we embarked on this sprint, we set out to produce new, non-partisan policy ideas that would be implementation-ready for the incoming Governor and Colorado’s upcoming State Legislature to implement with optimal benefit across the state. Yet, we’ve found our new model of engagement to accomplish much more. We’ve expedited the development and activation of new policy entrepreneurs in Colorado. We’ve witnessed our authors already engaging stakeholders and policy makers in the community – legislators, gubernatorial candidate staff, agency leaders, and more – to gather feedback on their ideas and discuss paths for implementation, and we have built memo author capacity for policy advancement. Whether you’re a policymaker, implementer, advocate, or funder, we encourage you to engage with these ideas, reach out to the authors, and explore concrete ways to help carry these ideas forward.
If you have additional ideas for how to strengthen the science, research, and innovation enterprise, feel free to submit your proposal to the FAS Day One General Open Call Portal.