Summary

The Biden-Harris Administration is confronting multiple challenges that require a coordinated, innovative, and flexible response by the federal government. The recently released FY22 President’s budget sets a solid foundation for leveraging the capacity of the federal workforce, along with necessary science, technology and innovation expertise from the private sector, to meet the challenges ahead.

However, hollowed out agencies and technical skills gaps mean agencies lack the capacity to implement needed programs. Agencies have to rapidly scale up personnel, ensure they have the necessary skills, and implement underutilized hiring mechanisms to fill out talent gaps.

While the goals laid out in the budget will allow agencies to address climate, continue to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, rebuild the economy, and increase equity across government programs and services, it requires a sustained focus on building and hiring diverse expertise to accelerate progress on these initiatives – which increasingly rely on modernized IT infrastructure and equitable delivery of services.

This is an historic opportunity, driven by critical need, to focus on driving systemic change across government to equip all federal agencies with the capacity required to build back better while bolstering and reinvigorating the federal talent pipeline.

The following proposals are offered as ways to tackle hiring challenges, build a diverse technical talent pipeline, and continue to rebuild the public trust in government and interest in serving. The Day One Project and its partners stand ready to assist in fleshing out and supporting the proposals below.

Summary

Existing technology could automate nearly half of all work activities today. As society continues to embrace artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and automation, companies will need fewer workers or workers with new skills, leading to displacement. The government must assist the American workforce with acquiring skills demanded by the modern workplace and support workers in transitioning to the new economy. To do so, the Biden-Harris administration should push Congress to evolve the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program into the Trade and Technology Adjustment Assistance program (TTAA) to help workers displaced not just by trade but also by advancements in emerging technologies, such as AI and robotics.

The expanded TAA program should include (1) a centralized administrative infrastructure, (2) a cutting-edge and comprehensive upskilling platform, and (3) “rainy day” funds for temporary worker assistance. The comprehensive upskilling platform, in particular, sets the proposal outlined in this memo apart from other proposals to update TAA, such as the TAA for Automation Act of 2019. The TAA for Automation Act aims to include workers displaced by automation as a group eligible for TAA services. TTAA proposed herein goes further, seeking to rethink TAA’s upskilling and training component from the ground up.

Summary

The Department of Labor (DOL) should update CareerOneStop’s “mySkills myFuture” website and other web properties to provide prospective career changers with comparative information on job-related pollution and safety metrics.

As the United States transitions towards a clean energy economy, a majority of workers in traditional fossil fuel industries will need to find new employment. In its January 27, 2021 Executive Order “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad”, the Biden-Harris Administration called for revitalizing “energy communities” — that is, communities whose economies have traditionally been based on the energy industry. Revitalization includes creating good and sustainable opportunities for labor. DOL is a member of the Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization authorized by the January 27th Executive Order, which has been tasked with providing federal leadership to support coal, oil and gas communities during the energy transition. DOL’s “mySkills myFuture” interactive web portal guides experienced job seekers to discover new careers that match their existing skill sets. However, information presented on the portal lacks key quantitative factors that support worker well-being. To enable transitioning workers in declining fields to make more informed choices about future jobs, the DOL should update its career guidance tools to include data on health and safety risks associated with different job options.

Summary

To address the critical challenges of lifelong learning, evolving skills gaps, and continuous labor market transformation and automation, all Americans need to have access to agile and effective jobs training. Artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) capabilities can deliver training tailored to the unique backgrounds, preferences, and needs of every individual. In this memo, we propose a two-stage approach that the Biden-Harris administration can adopt to help prepare Americans for the jobs of the future through responsible use of AI and VR/AR.

Stage 1 would launch a one to three pilot programs that leverage AI and VR/AR technologies to provide targeted training to specific communities.

Stage 2 would establish a national prize competition soliciting proposals to build and deliver a federal lifelong learning platform for the nation.

The H-1B visa for “specialty occupation” workers has become a significant element of the U.S. employment-based immigration system. Less well-known is that employers of H-1B workers annually pay hundreds of millions of dollars for domestic education and training programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), administered by the Department of Labor (DOL) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). This fee-based funding stream was created in the late 1990s and has not been meaningfully updated by Congress in the succeeding decades. It is mandatory funding, tied to a continuous flow of H-1B filing fees rather than the annual congressional appropriations process. Both the Obama and Trump administrations seized on this unique pot of money for advancing education and training priorities for Americans without new legislation or appropriations.

The Biden administration can take even greater advantage of this funding to launch innovative programs that advance U.S. economic competitiveness and diversify the STEM talent pipeline—two mutually reinforcing goals. Specifically, in this paper we recommend:

• Reestablishing the TechHire Initiative to rapidly train U.S. workers for in-demand technology jobs
• Establishing a new Advanced Research Projects Agency—Labor (ARPA-L) to conduct high-impact R&D programs that create breakthroughs to meet America’s workforce challenges
• Significantly increasing the number of graduate research fellowships dedicated to students in STEM fields who completed their undergraduate education at non-R1 universities
• Significantly increasing the number of faculty training grants in STEM fields where a dearth of professors has created a bottleneck for graduate education (e.g. artificial intelligence)

In addition, Congress should increase the fees paid by H-1B employers to reflect (a) the increase in inflation over the past two decades, as well as (b) the ability of major corporations, which are often the most prolific sponsors of H-1B workers, to pay more than small businesses.

Background 

A Brief History of the ACWIA Fee Account for STEM training 

In the 1990s, the technology sector was growing rapidly and the demand for high-skill workers was quickly  outpacing supply. The H-1B visa, first enacted at the beginning of the decade, was becoming a popular  option to bring in such skilled workers. In 1997, the number of applications for H-1Bs exceeded the established cap of 65,000 visas for the first time. The next year, demand was so high that the cap was reached within days of the opening date for new filings—and this has been the case nearly every year since. 

Congress considered legislation to increase the H-1B cap, but faced strong bipartisan opposition, as well  as pushback from labor unions and professional associations. As a compromise, along with raising the  caps for three years, Congress established a special fee for sponsors (“petitioners”) of H-1B workers which  would be deposited into a new fund called the “H-1B Nonimmigrant Petitioner Account.” Because these  provisions were included in the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998,  immigration practitioners often refer to “ACWIA fees” and the “ACWIA fund.”  

Originally, the ACWIA fee amounted to $500 per qualifying petition. The fee was increased twice since its  creation: once in 2000 (to $1,000) and once in 2004 (to its current level of $1,500). The 2004 adjustment also specified for the first time that employers with 25 employees or fewer would pay a lower rate of $750  per qualifying petition. Congress mandated that the funds be distributed primarily to DOL and NSF to  support domestic STEM education and technical skills training programs. The current distribution of funds  is as follows (see the Appendix for full statutory details): 

• 50 percent to the Secretary of Labor for job training programs; 
• 30 percent to the Director of NSF for scholarships for low-income students enrolled in STEM  programs; 
• 10 percent to the Director of NSF for a direct matching grant program that funds public-private  partnerships in K-12 education; 
• 5 percent to the Secretary of Homeland Security to improve processing employment-based  temporary visa and green card petitions; and 
• 5 percent to the Secretary of Labor to decrease the processing time for labor certification  applications. 

With this money, DOL has relatively wide latitude to make competitive grants to businesses, business related nonprofit organizations, education and training providers (such as community colleges), “entities  involved in administering the workforce development system,” and economic development agencies.  These grants are intended to support job training programs that help both unemployed and employed  workers learn new skills to obtain a job or promotion, especially in industries experiencing significant  growth. To determine these in-demand industries, the Secretary of Labor must consult with state  workforce investment boards and take into account sectors that are “projected to add substantial  numbers of new jobs”; “are being transformed by technology and innovation requiring new skill sets for  workers”; “are new and emerging businesses that are projected to grow”; or “have a significant impact  on the economy overall or on the growth of other industries and economic sectors.”

NSF, on the other hand, has more statutory restrictions on how it can use its allocated ACWIA fees.  Scholarships for low-income individuals pursuing associate, undergraduate, or graduate STEM degrees  cannot exceed $10,000 per year for up to four years, although up to 50% of this funding stream (15% of  the total ACWIA fund) may be used for “undergraduate programs for curriculum development,  professional and workforce development, and to advance technological education.” 

NSF’s K-12 STEM education grants (10% of the total H-1B fund) must be awarded to public-private  partnerships that serve one or more of the following purposes specified by Congress: 

• Support the development and implementation of standards-based instructional materials,  models, and related student assessments that enable K–12 students to acquire an understanding  of STEM, and to develop critical thinking skills;  
• Provide systemic improvement in training K–12 teachers and education for students in STEM; 
• Support the professional development of K–12 STEM teachers in the use of technology in the  classroom;  
• Stimulate system-wide K–12 reform of STEM in rural, economically disadvantaged regions;
• Provide externships and other opportunities for students to increase their appreciation and  understanding of STEM, including summer institutes sponsored by an institution of higher  education for students in grades 7–12;  
• Foster partnerships of industry, educational institutions, and community organizations to address  the educational needs of disadvantaged communities;  
• Provide college preparatory support to expose and prepare students for careers in STEM; and 
• Provide for carrying out certain NSF systemic reform activities. 

Programs currently funded by ACWIA fees 

Both NSF and DOL provide publicly-available data on the ACWIA fees that are spent on the agencies’  programs. Table 1 includes the total amount of funding received by NSF and DOL from fiscal years (FY)  2010 to 2021 as noted in the agencies’ annual budget requests.

Table 1. Total ACWIA fee receipts received by NSF and DOL, FY 2010-2021

Fiscal Year	Department of Labor Receipts	National Science Foundation Receipts	Total Funding
2010	$114,026,000	$91,220,000	$205,246,000
2011	$130,975,000	$106,110,000	$237,085,000
2012	$161,232,000	$128,990,000	$290,222,000
2013	$143,466,000	$120,940,000	$264,406,000
2014	$161,401,000	$132,490,000	$293,891,000
2015	$175,029,000	$143,000,000	$318,029,000
2016	$139,644,000	$138,800,000	$278,444,000
2017	$160,200,000	$141,070,000	$301,270,000
2018	$150,000,000	$155,990,000	$305,990,000
2019	$195,899,000	$156,720,000	$352,619,000
2020, estimated	$194,000,000	$157,000,000	$351,000,000
2021, request	$194,000,000	$157,000,000	$351,000,000

NSF currently uses its money from ACWIA fees to fund two programs: Scholarships in Science, Technology,  Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) and Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST). By the end of FY 2018, the agency had received almost $2 billion in cumulative ACWIA fees to support scholarships, as well as K-12 students and teachers. 

NSF must allocate three-quarters of its ACWIA receipts (30 percent of the total account) to scholarships  for lower-income students pursuing associate’s, bachelor’s, and advanced STEM degrees. Through the S STEM program, NSF makes grants to higher education institutions (about 90 in FY 2019) which then award  scholarships of $10,000 per year for up to 4 years. Between FY 1999 and 2018, the S-STEM program resulted in 87,890 scholarships for U.S. students (including both citizens and permanent residents).

Table 2. Funding of NSF’s S-STEM and ITEST programs, FY 2010-2019

Year	S-STEM funding	ITEST funding
2010	$75,960,000	$20,850,000
2011	$77,670,000	$18,620,000
2012	$72,570,000	$21,590,000
2013	$83,980,000	$31,510,000
2014	$92,180,000	$37,230,000
2015	$109,340,000	$29,830,000
2016	$140,540,000	$44,350,000
2017	$84,380,000	$35,110,000
2018	$156,400,000	$35,860,000
2019	$114,760,000	$34,240,000

Although the nature and amount of these scholarships are fixed in statute, Congress does provide the NSF  Director wide discretion to spend up to 50 percent of the current S-STEM funds “for undergraduate  programs for curriculum development, professional and workforce development, and to advance  technological education,” all of which “may be used for purposes other than scholarships.” This means  that an annual amount of around $50 million is available for such supporting programs. 

Department of Labor 

Over the past decade, DOL has used its ACWIA fee receipts to fund a series of job training initiatives,  usually tied to a presidential priority. DOL has cumulatively received about $2.5 billion in ACWIA fees to  train professionals in the United States. The Secretary of Labor has wide discretion to designate “high  growth industries and economic sectors” as targets for this funding, based on the following factors: 

• The sectors are projected to add substantial numbers of new jobs to the economy;
• The sectors are being transformed by technology and innovation requiring new skill sets for  workers; 
• The sectors include new and emerging businesses that are projected to grow; or
• The sectors in question have a significant impact on the economy overall or on the growth of  other industries and economic sectors. 

Using ACWIA fees, the Obama administration issued funding opportunity announcements for programs  to support job training for the long-term unemployed (“Ready to Work”), coding bootcamps (“TechHire”),  and apprenticeship programs, among other priorities. The Trump administration also used these funds to support its efforts to expand apprenticeship programs (“Closing the Skills Gap”). 

The Ready to Work program (RTW) was launched in 2014 as a response to those who lost their jobs during  the Great Recession and remained under- or unemployed as the economy recovered. DOL is in the middle  of evaluating the success of this program and is expected to complete its study by May 2022. In 2017, the agency released an interim report that examined the first year of grantees’ operations in Maryland,  California, New York, and Washington. The programs provided specialized, one-on-one counseling to the  participants and coordinated with local occupational training programs and employers in relevant sectors. 

TechHire was established in 2015 and has aimed to build talent pipelines in technology sectors throughout  the country. Initial funding for the program amounted to $100 million in grants to support partnerships  that train young adults and other disadvantaged groups, such as people with disabilities, individuals with  limited proficiency in English, and those with criminal records. A full evaluation on the benefits of the  program is expected from DOL in September 2021. 

Closing the Skills Gap awarded grants to 28 public-private partnerships in early 2020 that amounted to  almost $100 million. The program aims to achieve “large-scale expansions of apprenticeships in industries  including advanced manufacturing, healthcare, and information technology.” Likely because the Closing the Skills Gap program is still so new, there are no studies announced to evaluate its impact yet.

Table 3. Funding levels of ACWIA programs at DOL, 2011-2020

Year	Program	Purpose	Amount
2011	H-1B Technical Skills Training Grants	“To provide education, training, and job placement assistance in the occupations and industries for which employers are using H-1B visas to hire foreign workers, and the related activities necessary to support such training”	$240,000,000
2011	Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge	“To support the development of approximately 20 high-growth industry clusters” and help them achieve “outcomes such as commercialization, business formation, expansion of existing businesses, job creation, and exports”	$20,000,000
2012	N/A	N/A	N/A
2013	Make it in America Challenge	“To support the development and implementation of a regionally driven economic development strategy that accelerates job creation by encouraging re-shoring of productive activity by U.S. firms, fostering increased Foreign Direct Investment, encouraging U.S. companies to keep or expand their businesses and jobs – in the United States, and training local workers to meet the needs of those businesses”	$20,000,000
2013	Youth CareerConnect Program	“To provide high school students with education and training that combines rigorous academic and technical curricula focused on specific in-demand occupations and industries for which employers are using H-1B visas to hire foreign workers as well as the related activities necessary to support such training to increase participants’ employability in H-1B in-demand industries and occupations”	$100,000,000
2014	H-1B Ready to Work Partnership Grants	“To provide long-term unemployed workers with individualized counseling, training and supportive and specialized services leading to rapid employment in occupations and industries for which employers use H-1B visas to hire foreign workers”	$150,000,000
2015	American Apprenticeship Initiative	“To provide a catalyst in supporting a uniquely American Apprenticeship system that meets our country’s particular economic, industry and workforce needs”	$100,000,000
2016	America’s Promise Job Driven Grant Program	“To develop and expand regional partnerships and training opportunities particularly for middle- to high-skilled H-1B industries and occupations, ensuring that communities fully maximize their Federal, state and local funds to build a competitive workforce”	$100,000,000
2016	Strengthening Working Families Initiative	“To support evidence-based strategies or innovations based on these models that remove a range of barriers to training, including child care and other needs that working families face, by investing in education and skills training in combination with customized participant supportive services”	$25,000,000
2016	TechHire Partnership Grants	“To equip individuals with the skills they need through innovative approaches that can rapidly train workers for and connect them to well-paying, middle- and high-skilled, and high-growth jobs across a diversity of H-1B industries such as Information Technology (IT), healthcare, advanced manufacturing, financial services, and broadband”	$100,000,000
2017	N/A	N/A	N/A
2018	Scaling Apprenticeship Through Sector Based Strategies	“To accelerate the expansion of apprenticeships to new industry sectors reliant on H-1B visas, to promote the large-scale expansion of apprenticeships across the nation, and to increase apprenticeship opportunities for all Americans”	$150,000,000
2019	Apprenticeships: Closing the Skills Gap	“To promote apprenticeships as a significant workforce solution in filling current middle- and high-skilled job vacancies and closing the skills gap between employer workforce needs and the skills of the current workforce”	$100,000,000
2020	H-1B One Workforce Grant Program	To fill critical shortages in economic regions by encouraging “states and economic regions to work with industry stakeholders to develop dynamic workforce strategies that train workers and jobseekers for middle- to high skilled H-1B occupations in key industry sectors,” such as “Information Technology (IT), advanced manufacturing, and transportation that are being transformed by technological advancements and automation,” as well as “other industries of the future that include artificial intelligence (AI), quantum information sciences (QIS), 5G/advanced communications, and biotechnology”	$150,000,000
2020	H-1B Rural Healthcare Grant Program	“To alleviate healthcare workforce shortages by creating sustainable employment and training programs in healthcare occupations (including behavioral and mental healthcare) serving rural populations”	$40,000,000

Plan of Action 

Recommendations for High-impact STEM Education and Training Programs 

As currently authorized by Congress, the ACWIA fees yield an approximately $350 million annual fund for  STEM education and training that is essentially on autopilot, funded by employers rather than taxpayers.  The Biden administration has an opportunity to focus DOL and NSF on using these funds to advance its  top priorities of economic recovery and racial equity. 

Specifically, DOL can ramp up the TechHire initiative for in-demand technology jobs and establish a new  Advanced Research Projects Agency—Labor (ARPA-L) to conduct high-impact R&D programs that create  breakthroughs to meet America’s workforce challenges. NSF can significantly increase both the number  of graduate STEM research fellowships dedicated to underserved students as well as the number of faculty  training grants in fields where a dearth of professors has created a bottleneck for graduate education  (e.g., artificial intelligence). 

Reestablish the TechHire Initiative 

The TechHire initiative, described in more detail above, has already demonstrated the value of involving  technology companies in rapid STEM training programs. One of the first TechHire grants was awarded to  LaGuardia Community College and helped them form a partnership with state and federal agencies, along  with software development and training companies. The goal was to provide intensive training in tech  skills to low-income young adults and as of 2019, over 80 percent of students in the bootcamp graduated.  Retention was over 90 percent. This is just one of the 39 partnerships established by the program, which  serves communities in 25 states.  

No further DOL funds have been awarded to the TechHire initiative since its inception in 2015, however.  Especially as our country embraces an increasingly tech-focused work environment, further tech skills  training will be essential. We recommend allocating $50 million per year to the TechHire initiative to  sustain it and establish new public-private partnerships across the country. To encourage high-impact  outcomes, the revitalized TechHire initiative could make grants above a certain award amount (e.g., $2  million) contingent on demonstration of wage gains following training, and could allow non-profits (not  only workforce boards) to serve as the lead applicant. 

Establish a new Advanced Research Projects Agency—Labor (ARPA-L) 

With the nature of work changing rapidly, one federal initiative that could significantly boost the United  States’ long-term competitiveness in high-impact industries would be the development of an Advanced  Research Projects Agency for the Department of Labor (ARPA-L). According to a Day One proposal  developed by former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Director Arati Prabhakar and Coursera executive Jeff Kaplan, ARPA-L would drive innovation in workforce training and labor market  outcomes, where major research efforts are currently lacking. By weaving research advances together with lessons from the real world, ARPA-L aims to catalyze high-impact R&D focused on creating powerful, scalable approaches to pressing workforce issues including unemployment and market disruption. With the support of Congress and the White House, this new organization should be housed within the Department of Labor in order to best deliver bold advances that ultimately change what’s possible for America’s workers. 

The ARPA model is known for its success in creating radically better approaches to hard problems by  conducting solutions-oriented R&D. DOD’s DARPA, now in its seventh decade, conducted the pivotal R&D  for new military capabilities such as stealth and precision strike and, more broadly, for new information  technologies from the internet to artificial intelligence. DARPA’s track record inspired the establishment  of the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s IARPA. Both of these ARPAs are well underway, with robust portfolios of R&D programs and encouraging results. They  demonstrate that it is possible to adapt the DARPA model for different public purposes.  

Though this ARPA model has been highly successful for national security and energy research, it has not  yet been implemented for the improvement of workforce training and education programs. ARPA-L would  be an innovative addition to DOL, particularly because the agency’s current budget does not include any funding for workforce training research and development. Some potential research and development  areas to close the skills gap include: 

• Develop and validate diagnostic systems to improve skills assessment and enable workers to  better understand how their skill set matches the needs of employers. 
• Demonstrate accelerated skill development that uses information about an individual (e.g., age,  initial skill level, and prior experience) to devise an individualized training regimen for interest and  expertise.  
• Explore and evaluate new ways to personalize and accelerate the training process by building on  advances in learning science and neuroscience. 
• Advance and test the effectiveness of emerging innovations like human-computer interaction and  mixed reality for training for complex tasks. 
• Experiment with and assess alternative certifications and micro-credentialing programs to train  and upskill youth and displaced adult workers around the country while connecting participants  directly to employers. 

In addition, ARPA-L would support timely labor market data collection and analysis to evaluate the  research and training programs. Conducting labor market analysis with ARPA-L would help with the  development of innovative training programs, as well as allowing employers, employees, and the federal  government to respond to economic changes. Some examples of useful analyses include: 

• Experimenting with and testing data tools for each worker, combining information on local job  postings, wages, and training requirements with information about credentialing and training  services to offer workers the most meaningful and actionable information for their career goals  in real time. 
• Assembling data from public and private sources on regional labor trends and testing their  effectiveness in enabling employers to make more impactful, targeted, and timely investments in  local workforce development opportunities.
• Collecting and analyzing diverse datasets to identify targeted, effective leverage points for innovative labor policy interventions.

Allocating $100 million per year from the ACWIA fund to kickstart ARPA-L would put the United States on a much better path to supporting U.S. workers and sustained wage growth in our changing national and global economy. This can be accomplished administratively in the immediate term, with Congress  authorizing and appropriating a larger program after a strong track record has been established.

Optimize STEM graduate fellowships for students from emerging research universities 

Higher education R&D funding is scarce, and is not distributed equitably. The American Physical Society  found that in 2018, out of more than 600 colleges and universities that received federal science funding,  22 percent received over 90 percent of the funds. These institutions serve only 43 percent of all students  and only 34 percent of underrepresented minority students in the United States. This distribution of funds  means that two thirds of underrepresented minority students and almost 70 percent of students who  receive Pell grant funding have significantly fewer opportunities to engage in cutting-edge scientific  research. 

Without undergraduate research experiences afforded by federal R&D funding, students at emerging  research universities are then less competitive for future NSF-funded opportunities at any university, such  as graduate fellowships. “Emerging research institution” (i.e., non-R1) is a category that includes  geographically diverse state schools and nearly all minority-serving institutions. 

NSF already uses the ACWIA fund to address this problem in part, through the S-STEM program described  above. Colleges and universities apply for competitive grants to “increase the number of low-income  students who graduate and contribute to the American innovation economy with their STEM knowledge,” for example through innovative curricula. While these institution-level awards have merit, they create a  patchwork of programs for which the lion’s share of low-income STEM students are ineligible at any given  point in time. 

In contrast, consider the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program, where individual  students directly apply for three years of financial support, with an annual stipend of $34,000 plus $12,000  to the university where they pursue their graduate-level STEM education. Based on an increase in  appropriations, Congress doubled the total number of such fellowships over the past decade (from around  1,000 to 2,000).  

To lower barriers to graduate STEM education for outstanding students of all backgrounds, NSF should  consider allocating $50 million of its ACWIA funds to an individual-level scholarship program—like the NSF Graduate Research Fellowships—open to students who obtained their undergraduate degree from an  emerging research institution. To be clear, these fellows could pursue their graduate degree at any  research university, whether R1 or emerging. 

For its part, Congress should lift the statutory cap of $10,000 for such scholarships, which gets smaller in  real terms with each passing year.

Increase the number of faculty training grants in critical STEM fields 

The demand for faculty in cutting-edge fields, such as AI, is rising rapidly. According to a report by the  Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), the number of bachelor’s degrees in computer  science and engineering almost tripled between 2009 and 2017. In addition, the enrollment for  introductory courses in AI in 2017 was three to five times higher than in 2012. The flow of faculty moving  from institutions of higher education to industry has also increased dramatically, so it has become quite  difficult to properly support the rising number of U.S. students interested in an education in AI. 

This dearth of qualified professors represents a major long-term constraint on AI education in the United  States, and will no doubt constrain U.S. competitiveness in other advanced fields as they develop in  unexpected directions in the future. 

Therefore, NSF should consider allocating another $25 million from its ACWIA funding stream to  incentivize universities to create new faculty positions in STEM fields where there is a teaching bottleneck. To that end, NSF could expand and adapt its Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program, which provides awards of up to $400,000 over five years to promising faculty members.  

Recommendations for Congress: Growing the Pie 

As described above, the ACWIA fund can significantly advance STEM education and training priorities in  the United States, without any further action by Congress, through optimal use of the existing $350 million annual funding flow. 

But the size of that flow is somewhat arbitrary, and ought to grow. This is especially important now that  experts are warning that China has the resources to surpass the United States in AI and other STEM fields  over the next few years. Congress should therefore increase the size of the pie by raising H-1B fees in an  equitable way. 

Currently, the ACWIA fee structure has two tiers based on the size of the employer filing the petition.  Congress set the fees at $750 for employers with at most 25 U.S. employees and $1,500 for employers  with more than 25 U.S. employees. However, this fee structure has not changed since 2004—during which time inflation has increased by over 30 percent—and it also does not take into account the financial resources of major corporations that hire the great majority of H-1B workers. 

Congress should update the fee structure so that (a) the two current fee tiers are increased 30% to account  for past inflation; (b) a new fee tier is added for companies larger than the Small Business Administration’s  500-employee threshold for a “small business”; and c) all fees are automatically indexed to inflation in the  future.

Table 4. Recommendations for modernized ACWIA fee structure

Employer size	Current fee	Proposed fee
Up to 25 employees	$750	$1,000
Between 26 and 500 employees	$1,500	$2,000
Above 500 employees	$1,500	$5,000

Higher fees for large companies were recommended by Microsoft in 2012, when it published a proposal for Congress to allocate additional 20,000 H-1B visas for professionals in STEM fields and to require large  companies to pay a fee of $10,000 for each petition. Microsoft also proposed recapturing unused green  cards and allocating 20,000 of them annually for STEM professionals. Sponsors for these green cards  would pay $15,000. These new funds, which would amount to about $500 million per year, would then  be dedicated to domestic STEM education programs. 

It is important to note that H-1B petitions in certain circumstances are exempt from ACWIA fees. These  exemptions include petitions from: 

• Institutions of higher education; 
• Nonprofit entities related to or affiliated with institutions of higher education;
• Nonprofit research organizations or governmental research organizations; 
• Primary or secondary educational institutions; or 
• Nonprofit entities that engage in “an established curriculum-related clinical training program for  students.” 

Fees are also not required for most H-1B extensions under any kind of employer. 

With these details in mind, we calculated the estimated revenue that would be generated by the  modernized fee structure proposed above. We referred to USCIS data on current H-1B employers, annual  rates of the submission of petitions, as well as USCIS’s analysis of petitions from small entities (at most  500 employees) and “non-small” entities (above 500 employees).  

We estimate that a modernized ACWIA fee structure could bring in around $1 billion per year, or about  triple the current revenue level. The data and our estimates can be found in Table 5 and Table 6 below.

Table 5. Calculation of current ACWIA fee revenue and estimated increases from recommended policy changes (FY 2020 data)

Petitions filed	Estimated number of petitions submitted	Average fee paid	Total fees
Petitions without fee exemptions (63.5%)	271,141	$1,475.25	~$400,000,000
Petitions with a fee exemption (36.5%)	156,104
Total number of petitions files	427,245

Table 6. Estimated increases in ACWIA fee revenue from recommended policy changes

Petitions by employer size	Estimated number of petitions submitted	Proposed fee	Estimated total revenue
25 or fewer employees	19,912	$1,000	$19,912,041
26-500 employees	85,948	$2,000	$171,895,782
More than 500 employees	161,681	$5,000	$808,406,892
Total	267,541	N/A	$1,000,214,715

Conclusion

As China and other countries ramp up spending to boost their own domestic research and development  capabilities, the United States must act to maintain its global scientific and technological leadership.

Since its creation two decades ago, the ACWIA fund has been a valuable and reliable resource to support  STEM workforce training and education programs at DOL and NSF. Congress should grow this annual  funding stream to $1 billion—at no cost to taxpayers—by modernizing the ACWIA fee structure to keep  up with inflation and reflect the size of the large corporations petitioning for most H-1B professionals. 

Even before Congress takes these overdue actions, the administration should allocate the existing annual  flow of ACWIA funds to expand the TechHire initiative, institutionalize a new ARPA–L, support a new  generation of underserved STEM graduate students, and eliminate faculty bottlenecks in critical STEM  fields. 

The time is ripe to seize this opportunity to harness America’s home-grown STEM talent to accelerate  innovation and power the nation’s inclusive economic growth.

The authors would like to thank Amy Nice, Ryan Burke, Remco Zwetsloot, Diana Gehlhaus, and Mark Elsesser for their insightful recommendations during the drafting of this report.

In 2014, then-Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Jeh Johnson issued a memo (The 2014 memo) recommending “policies supporting U.S. high-skilled businesses and workers.” DHS offered a range of policies for updating the employment-based immigration system to encourage economic development. We propose that DHS issue a follow-up memo now focused specifically on international entrepreneurs to help the U.S. economy recover from the pandemic.

Read the full report at Brookings

The Biden-Harris Administration should establish a national initiative to develop a workforce pipeline for the new and emerging quantum ecosystem – call it the “Quorkforce.” Due to the rapid growth in the fields of quantum computing and technology along with fears of losing competitiveness, both the public and private sectors are struggling to find skilled employees. Quantum skills are derived from a mixture of many disciplines such as physics, computer science, applied mathematics and engineering, and there is no unique path to enter the quantum sphere. Through partnerships between the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, and the private quantum industry, the Biden-Harris Administration should establish an educational plan to train the next quantum generation across K-12, undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate levels. The Administration should initiate an open call to create ten national quantum education centers with a baseline funding of $300M over a period of 10-12 years. The short-term goal would be to train the existing workforce with adequate quantum skills, while the long-term goal would be to provide a steady flow of quantum-literate graduates capable of advancing the field and fulfilling the needs of this growing industry.

Challenge and Opportunity

In December 2018, the U.S. Congress passed the National Quantum Initiative (NQI) Act to establish goals and priorities for a ten-year plan to accelerate the development of quantum information science and technology applications. Quantum information science is defined as the use of the laws of quantum physics for the storage, transmission, manipulation, or measurement of information. Title III of the NQI states that the National Science Foundation shall carry out a basic research and education program on quantum information science and engineering, and award grants for the establishment of Multidisciplinary Centers for Quantum Research and Education. This proposal aims at extending these efforts with a special focus on preparing a steady stream of quantum-ready workers.

The acceleration in the advancement of quantum technologies has created an urgent need to develop a workforce pipeline by expanding the number of researchers, educators, and students with training in quantum information science and technology. Human capital in this field is necessary both for national security purposes and in order to remain dominant in the present and the future. Already, both the Federal Government and the private sector are facing a significant talent problem in quantum technologies due to the shortage in quantum-trained college graduates. In the related field of computer science, only 400,000 graduates from U.S. universities were available to fill the 1.4 million computing jobs open in 2020 (~29%). This gap between labor force demand and supply is only expected to grow as the applications of quantum information science become more germane to innovation and global technology competition. A steady flow of quantum-literate workers on all levels will make the US stand out among its allies as well as surpass its adversaries.

Quantum education and research fall under the big STEM umbrella (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Broadly speaking, the demand for STEM workers is projected to continuously increase for the foreseeable future. The Education Commission of the States estimates that in the next decade, STEM-related jobs will increase by 13%, while non-STEM-related jobs will only grow by 9%. Currently, there are around 18 million STEM employees in the U.S. out of a total of 160 million total jobs, which accounts to roughly 11.25% of the American labor force.

The main challenge for the fast-growing quantum industry is that the quantum-ready workforce supply is not keeping up with demand. This has the potential to hinder long-run scientific advancement and impact U.S. dominance in the quantum field of research on the global level. China in particular has aggressively invested in quantum research and development at a rate that may soon surpass U.S. research and development funding levels. In 2019 for example, China’s patent office received more than twice as many applications as its U.S. counterpart, indicating the increase in the Chinese scientific workforce. To address this pressing issue, a longitudinal educational path needs to be established with the aim of closing the workforce gap in the next 10-15 years. Three main pillars will be essential for the success of this endeavor: middle/high school outreach, undergraduate/graduate education, and current employee training. To ensure the success and the longevity of such a mission, central hubs must be created for coordination purposes. At a time when U.S. officials worry that the country is losing ground to other nations, it is important to realize that the American people are the real asset, and that quantum education is the key to fortifying the country’s status as a global leader in quantum discovery and innovation.

The National Science Foundation has been the leader of science innovation and education for over 70 years. This institution is the best fit to lead the effort of creating and managing the quantum centers. Such an endeavor could be accomplished either through existing research directorates (Computer and Information Science and Engineering, Engineering, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Education and Human Resources), or via the establishment of a new directorate for quantum research and education.

Plan of Action

The Biden-Harris Administration should work through the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to oversee and strengthen federal support for quantum education in the United States. In order to ensure the widest spread of a successful initiative, the National Science Foundation should, as a first step, dedicate seed funds for the establishment of ten quantum hubs across the United States Northeast, South, Midwest, and West. Once the top candidate for each of the centers is announced, a follow-up grant of $15 million per center should be provided for founding and launching these centers over a period of 2-3 years. A similar amount of funding for the following 5 years will give sufficient time for these centers to take root and succeed. The underlying mission of the quantum educational centers will be three-fold: 

1. Facilitating the wider accessibility of undergraduate/graduate degrees to develop a larger and more diverse quantum-ready workforce. 
2. Training current employees to ensure the quantum workforce remains relevant and up to date in the field. 
3. Planning outreach activities for middle and high school students to encourage the future generation to pursue this exciting new career path.

This ten-year plan will gradually fill the current workforce gap in the quantum industry as well as furnish a steady flow of workers skilled in quantum science and technology to keep up with the growing demands of the field.

1. Tertiary Education

Because quantum skills stem from a mixture of academic departments such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science and engineering, they cannot be acquired via an existing, simple, old-fashion major or degree. The quantum centers should form a consortium of universities within their geographical bounds that offer courses and classes in the disciplines that together form quantum science and technology. It is crucial to understand that quantum education is not only relevant for PhD programs at elite universities but should be considered from the earliest years of science and engineering education. The ultimate outcome will be the creation of well-defined paths for students to pursue degrees at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels. Having a commonwealth of colleges in a common geographical region guarantees the long-term continuation of a quantum education program: a single institution might not realize sufficient demand from students and sponsors to make a quantum program financially sustainable.

Building quantum laboratories within the centers will be their most pressing task. Experimental skills related to quantum technologies are equally, or even more, important for entering the workforce than courses in complex quantum theory, which is still ahead of industrial quantum systems. As quantum concepts are being transformed into commercial products, there is an urgent need for a workforce which possess hands-on experience with quantum systems.

Building a successful quantum education program will require that each center gather subject matter experts, develop strong relationships with industry, ensure institutional commitment, acquire resources for laboratories, hire faculty clusters, and set up dissemination mechanisms. Most current educational systems stress separate academic subjects rather than a multidisciplinary approach to quantum education, a trend that has led to the graduation of physics majors with very little experience in building quantum devices and engineering majors with little to no exposure to quantum mechanics. The role of the centers in this context will be to install cohesive benchmarks and standards across the multiple disciplines involved rather than create a unified curriculum for all degrees and specializations.

Partners from the private sector will play a major role in this paradigm. They are the main drivers of workforce demand in the quantum industry in their respective areas of operations (sensors, networks, communications, computing, etc.). The skills the private sector requires range from hardware knowledge to quantum programming, and even pure quantum information theory. Due to its very early stage of development, it remains challenging to quantify the number and size of companies within the quantum industry, let alone the distribution of jobs. There must be a continuous dialogue between higher education institutions and quantum employers to ensure that the former are preparing graduates to fulfill the needs of the latter. Mutual contributions will enable smooth supply and demand dynamics and avoid the potential for misuse of resources. A town hall every 3-6 months with the main players on each side would allow for exchanging ideas, sharing successful milestones, and anticipating potential challenges.

2. Current Workforce Training

In 5-10 years, the centers will be providing a steady flow of college graduates ready to be employed in the quantum industry. However, there is a dire need to fill the intermediate gap in the quantum workforce across a range of applications from devices to software and everything in between (e.g., fabrication of novel quantum materials, software compilers for quantum computers, etc.).

In the past couple of years, quantum technology has been transitioning into commercial products with the potential to solve real-world problems. As a result, many companies have begun to hire more engineers and technicians to ensure the new systems are reliable. Due to the shortage of such skilled employees, many physicists and engineers are facing the challenge of learning a whole new set of skills to prepare themselves to participate in the quantum revolution.

Hence, another overarching goal for the quantum centers will be to provide substantial training for current employees in the quantum industry. Week-long workshops, monthly seminars, summer training, etc., will each focus on a specific topic or a specific technology (optical-metrology, cryogenics, microwave electronics, etc.). On the experimental level, the centers’ labs will be responsible for designing hands-on training at their facilities to give physicists, engineers, and chemists the practical skills they need for proficiency in the latest quantum technologies. This endeavor could be sponsored by private quantum companies, which will be the main beneficiaries from the re-training of their employees.

3. K-12 Outreach

To ensure the long-term success of these efforts, special attention should be devoted to the K12 sector. The quantum centers should each have a division for outreach to public and private middle/high schools within their geographical boundaries. This is an essential step to introduce the younger generation to quantum science and technology, which is generally not already included in their current curricula.

It is impossible to change middle and high school science curricula overnight. The centers should work with existing STEM educational material and make strategic additions to it. The goal is to give American teenagers a glimpse into the area of quantum research and ignite their curiosity and motivation to pursue a future career in the field. Moreover, the centers should organize summer boot camps for advanced students at their facilities to give them hands-on experience with quantum lab demos, invite them to meet-the-scientists events, and introduce them to toy models and experiments. Such activities could range between 7-10 weeks in the summer and introduce students to quantum algorithms, quantum computer prototypes (D-wave, Microsoft, Google, IBM, etc.), post-quantum cryptography (PQC), and other topics in the field. Many similar efforts have been initiated by private companies to do outreach to and site visits with students; the task of the centers would be to strengthen this kind of collaboration and make it more established for the long run. The overarching goal would be to motivate these students to pursue further explorations in and around the quantum area of research and applications. All the above efforts should be coordinated with several relevant associations such as the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE), the American Association of Chemistry Teachers (AACT), and the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA). Most importantly, centers around the country should organize workshops in the form of “train the trainer” events in order to equip high school teachers with the right tools and set them up for success.

Inclusion and Diversity

As the National Science Foundation continues to expand its investments in the quantum space, it is important to improve the diversity of the quantum workforce. The foundational work in both quantum research and education should be diverse and inclusive across multiple attributes: geography, demographics, and technology. Broadening participation in STEM fields is a challenge that has not yet been overcome. However, to ensure that the quantum community will meet the workforce needs of the present and the future, it is imperative to utilize the broadest possible range of human capital. If research and education in the quantum field progresses without addressing barriers to diversity and inclusion, these problems will be solidified in the next generation. Therefore, each center should prioritize efforts to ensure that the quantum community is representative of the country’s diversity in race, gender, ethnicity, social class, etc.

To date, the field of quantum research has been developed primarily by disciplines with some of the lowest representation of women and minority populations. For example, women make up 21% of Computer Science (CS) bachelor’s degree graduates and 20.3% of CS doctoral graduates, and domestic underrepresented minorities make up 14.7% of CS bachelor’s degree graduates and only 3.1% of doctoral CS graduates. The most significant barrier to fostering students’ passion for STEM education at all age levels is the persistent and still-widening gap in opportunity in underserved communities. Educating parents in these communities about the opportunities that STEM education in general — and quantum education in particular — can offer their children should start with showing them hard data on the continued growth of these jobs.

Many initiatives in the past decade have shown their effectiveness in reaching previously marginalized communities. The great successes achieved by movements like CS for all, AI for all, Black in AI, etc. should be a strong motivation to launch the next organization: Quantum for all or Q4ALL. Such a movement would promote wider inclusion in the quantum fields of research and education. Primary channels which these models have established to accomplish this include scholarships, fellowships, national meetings, summer camps, workgroups, and other activities geared towards a diverse student corps around the country. Previous successes have been accomplished by setting a collective agenda with the cooperation of content providers, education associations, researchers, and supporters to help schools and districts provide all students with rigorous K-12 STEM education. The national quantum centers could support a Quantum for all movement by serving as a platform for connecting diverse stakeholders, providing support to new and developing initiatives, tracking and sharing progress, and communicating about the work to local and national audiences.

The national quantum centers, separately and in collaboration, must make the issue of inclusion and diversity a priority. Some relevant organizations and events are already emerging, such as the Women in Quantum Development Symposium, the American Physical Society Bridge Program, the Inclusive Graduate Education Network, etc. They are shaping how PhD programs approach admissions, retention, and professional development with the aim of increasing participation of underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups. The quantum centers should coordinate these efforts, while engaging both public and the private industry to reduce factors that hinder participation in the future quantum workforce such as pay disparities. discrimination in hiring, affordable childcare provision, inappropriate expectations for working hours.

National Collaboration and Monitoring 

Critical to this plan’s success will be the collaboration with two partners: government labs and the private sector. Government labs like Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) play an important role in developing quantum systems through their facilities. The private sector, meanwhile, will be the main beneficiary of the development of a quantum workforce, and their participation in the efforts led by the centers will be vital to the appropriate allocation of resources and focus areas. To monitor the plan’s success, the NSF should audit the progress of the centers and engage them in annual general meetings to share, evaluate, and coordinate their respective efforts and accomplishments. Finally, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics should start taking into account purely quantum jobs in their census, as this will be the main metric for measuring the saturation of the quantum job market and hence the successful outcomes of this plan.

Conclusion

As the quantum industry is growing rapidly, there is an urgent need for a workforce skilled in quantum science and technology. By creating a group of national centers under the guidance of the National Science Foundation, education in quantum information science can be provided on all levels from middle school to post-doctoral, while simultaneously training the current non-quantum workforce for this new and exciting field. Over the next decade, this plan would achieve job market saturation in the quantum industry and furnish a steady flow of quantum-ready workers.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and/or the National Economic Council and Department of Labor should convene a Transparent Tech Training Alliance, a coalition of public and private sector leaders called to expand access to early tech careers by codifying and communicating industry hiring standards. To meet the economy’s urgent and growing demand for tech workers, innovative educators have developed tens of thousands of short courses and bootcamps to rapidly upskill workers. But this landscape is complicated to navigate, especially for low-wage workers and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who are training and hiring in tech at increasing numbers. Without intervention, this nascent system will exacerbate the divide between the “haves and have nots” of our economy, further endangering the health of our workforce, communities, and businesses.

In response, the Alliance should:

1. make a highly publicized commitment to unprecedented transparency in hiring practices and the annual publication of hiring data;
2. generate a clear, industry-driven guide of certified credentials, career pathways, and funding sources;
3. utilize this guide and more for a prize competition that modernizes CareerOneStop; and
4. reconvene annually to publicize their progress and update resources.

Challenge and Opportunity

America’s pool of tech talent will grow too slowly and homogeneously to meet the economy’s needs. An estimated 400,000 STEM college students graduate every year, but by 2030 there will still be a shortage of 6 million tech workers in the United States. The accelerated demand for tech workers has driven educators to create innovative training methods, like short-courses and bootcamps. Now, the tech-training space has become crowded and governed by an opaque universe of unwritten rules: Which bootcamps and credentials are reputable? What projects make a compelling portfolio? What types of questions will be asked in an interview?

Those with personal or professional networks in the technology industry have access to information that helps them navigate to the “right” programs and credentials for upskilling. However, those without access to this information risk investing time and financial resources into low-quality training programs with limited guarantees of joining the new economy.

This unnecessarily blocks a new pipeline of workers ready to fill high-demand vacancies, while also cementing the industry’s homogeneous hiring practices and exacerbating racial and gender inequality. Considering their total workforce participation, women and Black and Latinx workers are severely underrepresented along the career spectrum. Given the anticipated rapid expansion of jobs in technology, and the compression of jobs in other fields, there is an urgent need to address these gaps and provide access to upskilling for all workers, especially in the technology industry.

The “alphabet soup” of tech training programs and failures of existing federal tools to guide workers bear large responsibility for the system’s failure.

Alphabet Soup

The tech credential and training space is often referred to as “alphabet soup” to denote the myriad of available options: workers must decide between more than 12,000 cybersecurity, 4,000 IT Helpdesk and 17,000 web programming credential options, and there are many more categories of tech professions.

On one hand, the saturation of credentialing services indicates educators are innovatively upskilling and reskilling workers to fill in-demand jobs. On the other, it creates a significant challenge of reliability for workers looking for a program or credential that will enable their gainful employment. It also creates a barrier for SMEs, who are rapidly hiring tech talent but may not have the technical expertise to assess highly qualified workers among the universe of credential options. Without clear metrics for quality, both candidates and businesses waste precious time and financial resources navigating this nontransparent process.

Black and Latinx individuals are disproportionately in a position of reliance on short-term tech training such as bootcamps to enter the industry due to lack of equitable access to traditional four-year degree programs. Compared to their representation in the tech industry, Black and Latinx workers are 29% and 38% more likely to use bootcamps, respectively. Therefore, these already vulnerable workers incur the disproportionate risk created by such a vast, unregulated landscape, exasperating the existing disparities in access to tech careers.

Failures in Existing Federal Tools

The existing federal tool, CareerOneStop, is ill-equipped to support the needs of the growing tech workforce. Outdated and difficult to use, CareerOneStop provides an incomplete picture of the breadth of career and program options available. CareerOneStop also does not provide comparative tools for workers deciding between different careers or educational pathways. For example, it includes over 70 certifications in cybersecurity without information on cost, results, or anticipated wages after their completion. Information on training, jobs and local support are not integrated by industry verticals, making it tedious to compare one’s options. Lastly, the site is entirely literacy intensive, failing to incorporate video footage or other media to reach workers at lower reading levels or different means of accessibility.

These features disadvantage both workers and counselors, who rely on CareerOneStop to make high-stakes financial investments in reskilling.

A Call for Transparency to Increase Access and Accountability

To maintain its global competitiveness and support the growing tech needs in businesses across all industries, the United States must rapidly upskill workers into programming, cybersecurity and IT jobs. Clear pathways, quality benchmarks, and program options will not only make these careers more accessible, but also less risky to marginalized populations. There is a crucial opportunity to bring transparency to careers in the new economy while the industry is still nascent and developing.

Plan of Action

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and/or the National Economic Council, in close partnership with the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA), should assemble a Transparent Tech Training Alliance, a cross-sector coalition of leaders with a mandate to increase transparency and therefore access and accountability in tech hiring. They should meet in a highly publicized convening in order to make two public commitments: 

1. Unprecedented transparency in hiring standards: sharing the “unwritten rules” via accessible documentation that codifies standards and norms in tech recruiting to guide Americans into these careers.
2. Accountability through public data: committing to a method and timeline for publishing their hiring demographics (e.g. race, gender, educational background and training), no more than one year from the convening.

Spearheaded by the ETA, but including representatives from the broader Departments of Labor and Education, a coalition of federal leaders can accomplish these outcomes through the following three steps:

Step I. Preparation

Assemble a Roster

First, the ETA should propose a cross-sector Alliance, including representatives from major tech companies, large national or regional employers across multiple industries, academia, local government, tech investment and nonprofit organizations that are committed to increasing diversity and inclusion in tech hiring. This will require the ETA to gather research regarding the relevant stakeholders and experts who would have the greatest impact on the group with their attendance whose hiring footprint is either large and growing or most representative of the country’s employers.

Outreach should be conducted by a highly visible member of the Department of Labor such as Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh or Chief Innovation Officer Chike Aguh in order to elevate the importance and urgency of the Alliance.

Publicize a Call to Action for the Alliance

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and/or the National Economic Council must make a Call for Action to the Alliance, drawing an explicit connection between transparency, economic mobility, and equity. This will empower consumers to hold industry accountable for their role in rebuilding the economy justly. In other words, not participating should be equivalent to denouncing equity initiatives in tech. Federal government leaders should apply pressure to companies not only to participate, but to follow through on their commitment to transparent data sharing.

Step II. Convene the Alliance

Host a Formal and Public Initial Convening

A representative from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and/or the National Economic Council or the Department of Labor should open the event with a call to action – clearly connecting access to good jobs with our economic recovery, equity, and global competitiveness. Then, the Alliance members would make the two aforementioned commitments: unprecedented transparency in hiring standards and accountability through public data. These should be documented and signed in a highly public fashion, including a social media campaign and press reporting on the event. Awards should be given to the firms that have made the most progress in hiring diversity and inclusivity in the last decade through data and storytelling spotlights. The convening is also an opportunity to announce the prize competition to modernize CareerOneStop (i.e. Step III). 

Appoint Representatives to a Task Force

The Alliance must recommend representatives for a Task Force to accomplish the following goals:

• Create a list of high-demand tech jobs and the pathways to obtain them at various educational levels.
• Identify gaps in the current training systems and invite short-term courses such as bootcamps to fill them.
• Certify reliable credentials that industry uses for hiring.
• Determine to norms for publishing hiring data that increases transparency across the industry and expanding access to jobs in tech through long-term action.
• Convene bi-monthly to re-evaluate the above goals to ensure their current relevance to the industry.

Reconvene the Alliance Annually to Review Data and Recommit to Transparency

The Alliance should meet annually to:

• Formally and publicly share key data points from their hiring systems, such as race, gender, educational background and tech training, and their long-term plans for expanding access to tech jobs for underrepresented groups.
• Recommit to transparency in hiring practices.
• Draw attention to updates in the hiring practices they previously published.
• Create a formal opportunity for industry to communicate their needs to the educational community, ensuring our training systems are driven by demand and informed by actual industry trends.
• Celebrate up and coming educational programs that show promise, and further expand the list of certified credentials.

Step III. Use a Prize Competition to Update Federal Resources

Driven by the ETA, the Department of Labor should launch a prize competition to modernize CareerOneStop, the existing federal career exploration platform. The new platform should spotlight the Alliance Task Force’s information on transparency on high-demand tech jobs, and the educational levels needed to attain them. It should also clarify pathways between skills, credentials, and jobs on a platform that is user friendly for workers, counselors and small- and medium- business leaders who are hiring in fields like programming, IT and cybersecurity. The best platforms will include resources for integrating the content into other sites such as LinkedIn, a corresponding smart phone application, and multi-language access.

The Prize Competition will also bring attention to the broader initiative, driving both employer and worker traffic to the site upon publication. There should be a monetary prize of approximately $100,000 for the winner and runners up, and a multi-year contract for the winner to manage the platform. It should be publicized in the coder community, via tech investors, and publicly on federal sites such as www.challenge.gov.

Conclusion 

The potential of the Transparent Tech Training Alliance lies in government leaders’ “power of the podium” to motivate industry leaders to increase transparency about their hiring practices and data. Equipped with relevant knowledge about the credentials and training experiences industry most values, delivered via a modernized, user-friendly tool, workers can invest their time and financial resources in upskilling and reskilling in tech. By making “insider information” about industry preferences public, the White House and ETA will create opportunities for all Americans to access gainful employment in the technology industry.

Every American deserves to engage with the world on their own terms. But for the 61 million adults in the United States living with a disability, challenges—including social isolation, the need for advanced assistive technologies, access to care, and economic security—abound. These challenges require a coordinated National Strategy on Disabilities.

To empower people with disabilities to engage with the world on their own terms, President Biden should establish a White House Council on Disabilities tasked with the mission of providing a federally coordinated approach to aligning federal policy, medical reimbursement, and research funding to address issues critical to people those living with disabilities. The goal of this Council would be to provide much-needed leadership and coordination among federal agencies and with external stakeholders, that enable the development of (and access to) the new knowledge and technologies necessary to better support Americans with disabilities of all types and further enrich connections to one another and our economy.

Challenge and Opportunity

July 26, 2020 marked the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This landmark piece of legislation aimed to “provide equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency” for people with disabilities. The ADA also drove positive change in Americans’ attitudes about disabilities by asserting that people with disabilities “should participate fully in all aspects of our communities and have opportunities to take risks, to succeed, and—yes—to fail.” While the ADA has addressed many of the major civil-rights challenges faced by those living with disabilities, more must be done to modernize the government’s approach to meeting the needs of people living with disabilities.

Over a quarter (61 million) of adult Americans live with a disability. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that out of this group:

• 13.7% have a mobility disability, experiencing serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs.
• 10.8% have a cognition disability, experiencing serious difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions.
• 6.8% have an independent-living disability, experiencing difficulty doing errands alone.
• 5.9% are Deaf or have serious difficulty hearing.
• 4.6% have a vision disability, experiencing blindness or serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses.
• 3.6 percent have a self-care disability, experiencing difficulty dressing or bathing.

We the authors write from the perspective of people living with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), which creates physical and cognitive limitations for thousands of Americans each year and serves as a powerful example of many obstacles Americans with disabilities often face. ALS is just one of the countless conditions that make it challenging for Americans to engage with the world in the way that they want. Many of these challenges could be addressed through coordinated federal activities, investment, and programs for people with disabilities.

For example, those living with conditions such as muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and spina bifida, need new and improved technologies that provide better mobility, independence, and self-care—technologies such as lighter, nimbler wheelchairs. Today’s power wheelchairs are heavy, bulky, and hard to transport on buses and planes. In fact, one airline recently proposed a policy that would preclude people who use heavy wheelchairs from flying on small regional jets. While the policy was reversed after activist involvement, the fact that it was proposed in the first place demonstrates some of the limitations of existing equipment and policy. Public and private investment in innovation that would make power wheelchairs lighter and more mobile would make it easier for people with certain mobility limitations to leave their homes and more fully engage with the world.

Directly related to the need for innovation is the need for modern payment and reimbursement policies that create affordable access to such technologies for people living with disabilities. New medical technologies are useless if people aren’t able to access them. For example, Medicare only covers equipment primarily intended for in-home use. That means that Medicare will not reimburse for essential exterior home modifications such as wheelchair ramps. People with disabilities have the right to be outside. It is time for a commonsense approach to coverage for services and technology that empower Americans with disabilities to experience life on their terms. Another example is that Medicare will only cover equipment for a direct medical reason. This constraint precludes coverage for multi-use devices that can ease access challenges for people with disabilities, including tablet computers that can convert eye gaze to speech and other assistive technology devices.

It is time for a commonsense, open-minded approach to coverage for services and technologies that empower Americans with disabilities. Today’s medical-reimbursement policies are outdated and problematically narrow in scope. These policies must be updated to recognize the broad potential of consumer technology and value of connectedness to wellness. Removing constraints on innovation and function in reimbursement policies will also encourage development of new and creative solutions to the diverse challenges facing those with disabilities.

Modern and coordinated research, development, and reimbursement policies are critical for tapping the enormous value that society would gain from enabling people with disabilities to engage the world more fluidly and consistently—including through employment. Just 36% of adults living with disabilities are employed. Addressing the challenges faced by people living with disabilities would help more of those people join the workforce, boosting the economy and productivity while enabling those with disabilities to live lives that are fuller and more financially secure.

Finally, there is a need to develop a data-centric approach to the evolution of policy over time to ensure that guidances, rules, and regulations are regularly updated to meet the needs of people living with disabilities based on data and the best information available. Are our policies having the impacts we need to help people with engage the world on their terms?

Plan of Action

Establishing the White House Council on Disabilities

The Biden campaign’s Plan for Full Participation and Equality for People with Disabilities provides solid groundwork for ensuring that people with disabilities are included in policy and decision-making. Realizing the promise of this plan requires a coordinating executive body to ensure that government agencies are implementing synergistic policies and avoiding bureaucratic silos. The Biden-Harris Administration should establish a White House Council on Disabilities (WHCD), run through the Domestic Policy Council, as an action-oriented entity that complements—rather than replicates—the largely advisory work of the National Council on Disability. The WHCD’s responsibilities would include:

1. Coordinating federal activities and programs for people with disabilities.
2. Examining everyday challenges facing those living with disabilities, identify opportunities for addressing those challenges, and set goals and timelines designed to increase engagement and stimulate innovation around disabilities.
3. Revisiting the ADA to see where improvements and updates need to be made.

The WHCD should be tasked with developing a National Strategy on Disabilities that lays out specific actions and forward-leaning public policies related to each of these workstreams that should be implemented over the next four years in order to improve quality of life for all people living with disabilities in the United States. As part of developing the strategy, the WHCD should aunch a robust public-engagement effort. For instance, the WHCD should organize forums that bring together private and public stakeholders to discuss common issues, and should host listening sessions to hear directly from people living with disabilities and their care partners.

The Biden campaign’s Plan for Full Participation and Equality for People with Disabilities provides solid groundwork for ensuring that people with disabilities are included in policy and decision-making. However, a coordinating executive body is needed to ensure that government agencies are implementing complementary policies and avoiding bureaucratic silos, so that the promise of the President’s campaign plan can be realized. This action-oriented effort would be complementary to the National Council on Disability, which is “an independent federal agency charged with advising the President, Congress, and other federal agencies regarding policies, programs, practices, and procedures that affect people with disabilities”. The Administration should build on this work and existing structures to ensure that the Biden plan can be implemented by appointing a Director of the WHCD to drive and oversee this effort.

The WHCD should also be tasked with establishing a comprehensive research agenda focused on addressing challenges faced by those living with disabilities that goes beyond the development of new technologies, and also improves social engagement and isolation common among people living with disabilities. The agenda should include research on:

1. Meeting technology needs, including those related to assistive technology and durable medical equipment (DME), communications technology and broadband access, transportation, and education.
2. Ensuring affordable access to and reimbursement for care, including by implementing new financing mechanisms, working with existing providers, and funding innovation.
3. Promoting economic security of those living with disabilities, including by expanding employment opportunities, implementing tax reforms, and changing social policies.

Priority areas and opportunities for action

Herein, we expand on three priority areas—and associated opportunities for action—that the WHCD could pursue. Each of these areas demonstrates the clear positive impacts that a WHCD could have on the lives of the millions living with disabilities across the United States.

Priority Area 1. Research and technology: innovation that empowers

People with disabilities use a variety of technologies to improve their lives. For mobility-challenged persons, for instance, key technologies include powered wheelchairs, special beds, and stair-lifts. But these products can be expensive and unwieldy, and no federal agency is specifically charged with driving innovation for the disabled community. In cases where innovation has occurred, such as more compact ventilators or high mobility wheelchairs, Medicare’s focus on in-home use does not adequately consider the benefits of equipment that better supports travel and social engagement. 

As part of the National Strategy on Disabilities, the WHCD should identify ways to improve and expand access to advanced technologies for people living with disabilities, such as:

• Providing federal incentives for development of cost-effective solutions to address the challenges that people with disabilities face.
• Development of a DARPA-like agency for Health (HARPA) to address the market failures that often limit innovation for people with disabilities.
• Providing much-needed coordination among federal agencies on a research and development agenda and an investment plan for diverse technologies to assist those living with disabilities.

The federal government could also establish clear and straightforward reimbursement pathways for advanced technologies. Better reimbursement policies create incentives for innovations and accelerate uptake of new technologies, thereby improving quality of life improvement for people living with disabilities. Durable Medical Equipment (DME) is a class of technologies that would especially benefit from modernized reimbursement policies. DME refers to non-disposable devices used at home to assist someone with a function. Examples of DME include wheelchairs, ventilators, crutches, and CPAP machines. As discussed previously existing reimbursement policies like in home use requirements tend to be rigid in the types of DME they cover, leading to disincentives to innovate in this space. The WHCD could coordinate a strategy for enhancing innovation in DME.

The first step is to ensure that research and development funding, as well as federal insurance coverages for DME, enable innovation that maximize engagement and equipment function. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services could sponsor an Innovation Pilot testing novel DME devices. The WHCD could ensure that federal initiatives such as this are coordinated and complementary. The second step is to encourage DME manufacturers to enhance collaborations with manufacturers of consumer technology (e.g., speech-to-text capabilities and auto-driving assistance) as well as with manufacturers of cutting-edge technology (e.g., brain-computer interfaces and exoskeletons). Innovation to support enhanced mobility, computer control, and other important functions for people with disabilities can in turn cross over to applications in broader consumer markets. The end result of these cycles of improvement will be better DME for people with disabilities as well as new products that benefit even those outside of the disabled community.

Priority Area 2. Communication and social engagement

The WHCD could establish an interagency agenda to develop and deliver science and technology that can reduce the isolation of Americans living with disabilities, and empower those Americans to engage with the world as they wish. Developing and implementing the science for this subset of Americans can not only result in fast improvements, but can also help develop strategies to address isolation and disengagement across America as a whole.

The impacts of social isolation have come into sharp focus during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet people with disabilities face challenges of isolation every single day. Disabilities can make it difficult to communicate online, to speak on the phone, and/or to meet people in person. Investments need to be made to identify and deploy effective mechanisms for all people with disabilities to maintain social engagement and emotional wellness. The Biden campaign’s call for a new Assistive Technology Innovation Fund, administered by the Department of Commerce, to sponsor public-private partnerships focused on increasing the independence of people living with disabilities is a great starting point. As with DME, innovations targeted at the disabled community will ultimately cross over into the broader consumer market to help address isolation and disengagement across America as a whole.

Improving access to broadband is fundamental to ensuring that people with disabilities have the means for social and economic engagement. Broadband also fulfills a medical need, providing better access to healthcare through avenues such as remote monitoring and telehealth. However, according to a Pew Research Center survey, “[d]isabled Americans are about three times as likely as those without a disability to say they never go online.” Adults with disabilities are also less likely to have broadband at home. President Biden’s commitment to invest $20 billion in rural broadband infrastructure, direct the federal government to support cities and towns that want to build municipally owned broadband networks, and increase funding for states to expand broadband will help communities tackle the digital divide. Broadband access alone is not sufficient to create social engagement, but ensuring equitable access is an important first step.

A next step is supporting research into how today’s technologies and tools can be leveraged to better include and engage people living with disabilities. How can we best use broadband and internet-enabled platforms to promote social engagement? How can instrumental enablers of engagement like broadband and social media, accessible transportation, DME, and others be combined with behavioral and educational interventions, volunteer activities, and online communities to reduce social isolation? These are empirical questions that need study and demonstration, coupled with evidence-based policymaking, to drive a new era of inclusiveness for all people with disabilities. And if we as a nation can develop the science to address isolation for Americans with physical and communication challenges, we can use that same science to help reduce isolation for all Americans. This will lead to the more connected and inclusive nation President Biden has been calling for and that we all wish to see.

Finally, reducing social isolation and promoting engagement—as well as simply making it easier to get around one’s community —for those with disabilities demands a concerted effort to address transportation challenges. While investing in better, nimbler DME is a start, new strategies and investments are also needed to improve the transportation infrastructure for the disabled community. Making it easier for people with disabilities to go out in the world makes it easier for them to take advantage of broader opportunities for employment, volunteering, and social engagement, leading to an increase in well-being for individuals and strengthening the overall fabric of our society.

Priority Area 3. Affordable access to care

People with disabilities often have more complex medical needs as well as greater difficulty obtaining quality care. The WHCD should draft forward-leaning access to care policies that agencies can implement, including policies related to telehealth, transportation to medical appointments, and others. Additionally, many forms of disabilities typically require specialized care, including care that sometimes cannot be provided within the person’s home state. Accessing out-of-state care can be challenging, especially for people covered by Medicaid or CHIP. Even after a state Medicaid program or Medicaid Managed Care Organization (MCO) has already authorized out-of-state care, delays in accessing that care may follow. This is an area that the WHCD should examine and propose policy solutions or pilots to address.

People with disabilities often have more complex medical needs as well as greater difficulty obtaining quality care. Additionally, many forms of disabilities typically require specialized care, including care that sometimes cannot be provided within the person’s home state. The WHCD should draft forward-leaning access to care policies that agencies can implement, including policies related to telehealth, transportation to medical appointments, and access to distant specialty services.

Conclusion

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a laudable piece of civil-rights legislation. But this 30-year-old law certainly does not solve the many challenges encountered by Americans with disabilities today. ADA current rules are insufficient – three decades ago it was about getting people into places and securing legal protections, but we’re facing a different set of problems now like access to Broadband, self-driving cars, and telemedicine.

Now is the time to put into motion a coordinated federal effort to empower people with disabilities to engage with the world on their own terms. The problems are complex and require coordination of federal agencies and leadership from and within the White House. The Establishment of the WHCD could ensure that legislative policy fixes and agency implementation go hand in glove.

The Biden campaign’s Plan for Full Participation and Equality for People with Disabilities provides a solid foundation for ensuring that people with disabilities are well served by federal policy and decision-making. A coordinating body can bring the President’s vision to life and ensure that government agencies are implementing complementary policies and avoiding bureaucratic silos. A new White House Council on Disabilities (WHCD) can serve these functions.

Within 6 months of formation, the WHCD should develop and release a detailed National Strategy on Disabilities that covers topics such as innovation in technologies that enable those living with disabilities to engage with the world as they choose, ensuring affordable access to those technologies, and promoting economic security by expanding employment opportunities for those living with disabilities. These actions can and must be informed by the communities they affect. The WHCD should prioritize listening sessions with those living with disabilities and their care partners. It will also be important to bring together other key stakeholders from the disabilities community, including nonprofits, advocates, medical providers, payers, technologists, and others. By working together, we can do much to empower people with disabilities to live independently and to the fullest.

To create fresh and powerful new approaches to the complex challenges that America’s workers face, Congress and the Biden-Harris Administration should invest $100 million per year for 5 years to launch an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Labor (ARPA-L). ARPA-L’s mission will be to conduct high-impact R&D programs that create breakthroughs to meet America’s workforce challenges.

The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply exacerbated longstanding problems for America’s workers. Mismatches between workers’ skills and employers’ needs alongside persistent racial and gender inequities have long undercut opportunity. Moreover, work has continued to change due to technology and automation, globalization, and shifting relationships between workers and employers. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, many millions of Americans were not earning enough to support themselves and their families. These Americans are missing out on gainful work, while our economy and our society are missing out on their full contribution.

With current advances in information technology, data science, applied social sciences, and learning science, this moment calls for an ambitious initiative to tackle the longstanding challenges for America’s workers. The Federal Government should launch an ARPA-L to research, develop, and test breakthrough approaches that boost workers’ skills and harness data to open new opportunities. By drawing from the operating model of prior ARPA organizations and adapting it to these challenges, ARPA-L’s programs can make it possible to ameliorate underemployment and unemployment and transform the future of work.

To initiate ARPA-L, Congress should provide a budget of $100 million per year over a five-year period. The Biden-Harris Administration and the Secretary of Labor should appoint a highly qualified director and provide that individual with the support needed to succeed. By creating this independent agency at the Department of Labor (DOL), Congress, the White House, and DOL can create opportunity for the U.S. workforce for decades to come.

The Challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and deepened labor market problems that had already been compounding over decades.

A mismatch between workers’ education, skills, and training and the shifting needs of employers has led to shortages in high-demand occupations. The demand for digital skills has increased. In addition, local and regional economies across the country are experiencing shortages of workers in emerging and evolving trades vital to economic activity — such as clean energy and manufacturing — that increasingly require new technical capacities. And in some cases, a worker has the skill to succeed in a job but doesn’t have the credentials that the company has tied to that position. Without intervention, the skills gap will continue to grow larger within the labor market. For millions of Americans displaced from traditionally high-employment sectors such as light manufacturing and data processing, the need for reskilling and relocation to emerging sectors requires rethinking traditional models and experimenting with new approaches. To break the cycle of long-term unemployment and underemployment, new approaches to skills training, education, and credentialing are needed.

Although existing policies and practices have made progress in addressing inequity, these problems continue to plague the U.S. workforce, precluding many from gainful, meaningful employment. Today, women still earn less than men on average, while Black and Latina women experience even greater disparities. Men without college degrees, and especially men of color, have been disproportionately impacted by decades of shifts in the labor market compared to men with college degrees. Challenges in traditional education reinforce barriers to obtaining well-paying jobs with upward mobility for young people of color and those from low-income backgrounds. Inequities only persist as workers age, adding pressure when rapid upskilling and retraining is needed and leaving displaced workers even further behind. These communities of workers cannot continue to be left behind.

The term “future of work” encapsulates the anticipated disruption to jobs and the workforce from emerging technologies, global economic change, and the changing relationship between employer and worker. In reality, this disruption is already occurring, and U.S. workers in every sector of economy are feeling its effects. To save on labor costs, employers continue to outsource jobs to overseas workers and automate any task that a machine can handle. As computing technology and artificial intelligence proliferate and mature, this disruption will spread to more and more different types of jobs. Non-traditional workers, such as rideshare and delivery drivers, now form a significant percentage of the workforce, but antiquated labor practices and policies do not address the uncertainty of their work lives. As more and more Americans participate in the gig economy, we must change our approach to solving workforce issues and diversify how we craft solutions to solve them.

The COVID-19 pandemic has both illuminated and exacerbated these challenges. Service sector industries such as retail, tourism, restaurants, and hotels have been decimated by the pandemic, and many of these jobs will be slow to return. Other jobs can be done remotely, but many workers lack the digital skills to thrive while working from home. Furthermore, barriers to the digital economy stand tall: across America, too many workers lack reliable broadband or even a personal computer. Already at a disadvantage, underserved communities are falling further behind in their education and career development, undermining their opportunities in the years to come.

So where has all this left us? A failure to address long-standing labor problems has led to job instability and prolonged underemployment and unemployment that can be seen in the labor market today. Efforts to improve worker outcomes have met with only limited success. To address today’s pressing labor issues, the Federal Government must invest in the capacity to create powerful new solutions that can scale to reach the broad population of workers.

The Opportunity

Today, advances in information technology, data science, and the behavioral and social sciences provide new hope for these kinds of hard problems. Further, numerous regional and pilot projects are showing results from new approaches to training, certification, and matching workers to jobs. These are promising signs, but we are not turning the tide of national-scale labor problems. The purpose of an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Labor (ARPA-L) is to weave research advances together with lessons from the real world to create fresh, potent, broadly scalable new approaches for our workers’ challenges.

ARPA-L would be fully responsible for identifying promising opportunities and then designing and executing its programs. These are some examples of the types of high-impact programs it could undertake.

Next-generation Skills Assessment and Training

An ARPA-L would take a creative, experimental approach to closing the skills gaps. For example, ARPA-L programs could:

• Develop and validate diagnostic systems to improve skills assessment and enable workers to better understand how their skillset matches with the needs of employers.
• Demonstrate accelerated skill development that uses information about an individual— e.g., age, initial skill level, and prior experience—to devise an optimized training regimen that best fits them.
• Explore and evaluate new ways to personalize and accelerate the training process by building on advances in learning science and neuroscience.
• Advance and test the effectiveness of emerging innovations like human-computer interaction and mixed reality for training for complex tasks.
• Experiment with and assess alternative certifications and micro-credentialing programs to train and upskill youth and displaced adult workers around the country and connect participants directly to employers.

Such advancements would not only improve the effectiveness of training and skills assessment. They can also dramatically reduce the time and cost for workers to gain new skills and connect to good jobs, directly addressing major barriers to scale.

Information to Illuminate Better Decision Making

Today, all kinds of data about workers and jobs is everywhere: rigorously collected labor statistics, employee ratings of employers on crowdsourced websites, internal company data about employment, the records of community colleges and other service providers, and administrative data such as tax and census records. We have barely begun to use this data tsunami to address workforce challenges. ARPA-L could transform data into clear information that allows workers, employers, training providers, and policymakers to find new pathways and make better decisions.

For example, ARPA-L programs could:

• Experiment with and test data tools personalized for each worker, combining information on local job postings, wages, and training requirements with information about available credentialing and training services—giving workers the most meaningful and actionable information for their career goals in real time.
• Assemble data from public and private sources on regional labor trends and test its effectiveness in enabling employers to make more impactful, targeted, and timely investments in workforce development opportunities in their area.
• Collect and analyze diverse datasets to identify targeted, effective leverage points for innovative labor policy interventions.
• Develop and validate data analysis tools for policymakers to directly assess the progress of pilot workforce policy initiatives, tailor them to different regional and demographic needs, and then scale the initiatives to meet the needs of workers across the country.

Armed with a data-driven and experimental mindset, an ARPA-L would develop prototypes, conduct demonstrations, and rigorously evaluate their effectiveness, resulting in breakthrough methods targeted at solving workforce problems. The agency will perform this work by contracting with companies, universities, nonprofits, and other government organizations to harness and integrate their different capabilities. ARPA-L will also engage with a broad community of actors so that these solutions are ultimately implemented and scaled by a combination of commercialization by the private sector, policies created by federal state and local actors, and new practices adopted by other stakeholders such as employers and community colleges.

Plan of Action 

The Biden-Harris Administration should work with Congress to establish ARPA-L as an independent agency in the Department of Labor. To institute ARPA-L, Congress should appropriate an initial investment of $100M per year for the first five fiscal years. ARPA-L’s mission will be to conduct high-impact R&D programs that create breakthroughs to meet America’s workforce challenges. To this end, ARPA-L will adopt and adapt the core elements of the ARPA model.

To succeed in its unique mission, ARPA-L should be led by a Senate-confirmed Director who reports to the Secretary of Labor as well as a career civil servant Deputy Director. Within DOL, ARPA-L would need to be an independent organization. ARPA-L would collaborate with other parts of DOL, as well as federal, state, and local agencies. ARPA-L would draw on their expertise and that of other labor market ecosystem actors to understand workforce issues and current practices. These organizations will often be ideal partners to fully implement and scale successful ARPA-L program results.

Conclusion

An ARPA-L at DOL would conduct solutions-oriented R&D to create fresh, powerful approaches to the pressing workforce problems of today and tomorrow, such as market disruption, unemployment, and worker reskilling/upskilling. With the support of Congress, the White House, and the Department of Labor, this new organization can deliver bold advances that ultimately change what’s possible for America’s workers.

Summary

The U.S. government has identified artificial intelligence (AI), quantum information science (QIS), 5G networks, advanced manufacturing, and biotechnology as the five “Industries of the Future (ITF)”: key technological domains projected to have the greatest impact on advancing national competitiveness in the coming years. Sustained investment in the ITF is crucial to preserving national security, improving American healthcare, advancing towards a green economy, and achieving other societal priorities. Continued progress in the ITF is also necessary for the United States to stay ahead of global economic competitors such as China and the European Union.

However, the United States currently lacks the robust science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce needed for maintaining ITF leadership. Systemic inequities in the U.S. STEM talent pipeline hinder development of the deep scientific and technological expertise needed for U.S. workers to realize the full potential of the ITF. To address these inequities, the federal government must leverage and invest in its strongest vehicle of American scientific talent: the National Science Foundation (NSF).

By expanding its Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), the NSF can help build a scientific and technical workforce that fully reflects American diversity and captures the full value that such diversity offers. The result will be a nation in which more students—including the socioeconomically disadvantaged, minorities, women, and those far-removed from academia—have the skills and opportunities to contribute to the Industries of the Future.

Summary

The US innovation ecosystem is falling behind global players like China and India because our current Research and Development (R&D) landscape does not incentivize commercialization in university laboratories. The federal government should establish the Venture Science Doctorate (VSD) initiative to close this gap by training graduates to combine research and entrepreneurship in legacy sectors. The Biden-Harris Administration should support VSD to turn more metropolitan areas into innovation centers. Swifter shifts from theory to products are “crucial to our future prosperity” as a global leader and as the United States of America, creating opportunities to mitigate rising economic inequality. Executing the VSD will require multiple agencies. The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) will coordinate the creation of demand-side policies that remove barriers to innovation in legacy sectors. The National Science Foundation (NSF) will coordinate a strategy of regional development through VSD programs, tracking their impact with state-level economic indicators. A multinational collaboration will widen access to talent and distribute US lessons in innovation policy among international regulators in the pursuit of truly global public goods. A stronger science innovation system will recover ground the US has lost to competitors and create compelling partnership opportunities for allies.

This proposal describes a scalable PhD program that brings sector-shaping technologies to market. By bridging NSF programs for scientist training (e.g. I-Corps) and company funding (e.g. Small Business Innovation Research, Small Business Technology Transfer) VSD will support the entire innovation ecosystem. By producing scientists and influencing undergraduate degree choices, VSD will effect targeted and broad-based workforce expansion. By training graduates to create high-value manufacturing companies, job creation in this workforce and supporting sectors will soar. To do this, VSD will use mission-oriented research, complementing basic scientific research with DARPA-like, combinations of training, R&D and commerce. These are the economic experiments our innovation system needs for growth and sustainability in legacy sectors like clean energy. But to share this prosperity we need to start with the states “left behind.”