Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating an existing mental health crisis to such a degree that many fear it will overwhelm the fragmented mental health delivery system in the United States. Rates of mental health problems—including depression, trauma- and stressor-related disorders, substance abuse, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts—have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Scarce access to mental health services compounds the problem. Nearly 25 million Americans with mental health needs go untreated each year, and half of U.S. counties have no access to mental health care whatsoever. However, the current moment presents an opportunity. Even as the pandemic increased needs for mental health services, so too did pandemic-related shifts reveal the broad utility of and interest in digital solutions such as mobile apps, digital therapeutics, and digital therapy.

In the absence of regulation, however, ineffective and potentially harmful digital mental health products may make their way into consumer hands. Estimates suggest that over 20,000 digital mental health products exist, yet only five have received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance. The FDA temporarily reduced their enforcement and review of these products due to COVID-19. But moving forward, addressing the largely unregulated space of digital mental health products is critical to mitigate harm of unverified digital mental health solutions. As examples of potential harms, companies have used digital products to offer services but from unlicensed providers, withheld client information from providers, or made data available to various third parties without following stated terms of services. Developing an infrastructure to regulate these products while also helping provide and reimburse effective and safe digital mental health solutions is essential to meet the overwhelming need for mental health services and ensure quality and equity in mental health care.

Summary

Immigration reform is a national security imperative. A net inflow of science and technology talent is a defining source of strength and key competitive advantage for the United States. Highly skilled science and technology workers provide our nation with an economic edge and drive innovation. However, intensifying competition for skilled workers abroad and self-imposed barriers to immigration at home are deterring potential talent from coming to the United States, instead routing them to competitor countries.

The Biden-Harris Administration should act to attract and retain foreign science and technology talent through a focused overhaul of U.S. immigration laws and procedures. Specifically, the Administration should draw top talent to the United States by streamlining the visa process and providing greater flexibility for foreign scholars and workers. Steps should be taken to ground visa processes in evidence-based procedures, expand visa limits and classes, redesign security-screening procedures to ease bottlenecks, and reallocate resources to build analytic capabilities. Doing so will enhance our national competitiveness, a top government-wide priority. Imminent action is crucial: the suppressed demand for U.S. visa services due to the COVID-19 pandemic has opened a once-in-a-century window to implement reform.

Summary

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.

Summary

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.

Summary

Self-driving technology is uniquely positioned to benefit people who cannot drive, including people with travel-limiting disabilities and many older adults. However, the lack of federal policy guiding the development of this technology has led to piecemeal recommendations that largely fail to guarantee accessible use in both public and private implementation scenarios. To leverage the full potential of self-driving technology, the Department of Transportation (DOT) should adopt accessibility standards to support autonomous transportation for people with disabilities and older adults. The Biden-Harris Administration has an important opportunity to reimagine accessible transit, capitalize on ongoing federal research programs such as the Inclusive Design Challenge, and extend the benefits of self-driving technology to those who need it most. If enacted, these recommendations will lead to increased independence, workforce participation, and mobility in the future of transportation.

Summary

The rapid adoption of Digital Surveillance Technology (DST) by state and local agencies is taking place in an under-regulated environment that is causing tangible harm to the communities and individuals these same agencies are tasked to protect. DST itself is plagued by fundamental flaws and vulnerabilities, issues compounded by a lack of safeguards in the environments where DST is deployed. The four biggest problems with government use of DST today are:

1. Governments falling prey to predatory or negligently marketed DST that fails to consistently achieve stated functionalities or meet reasonable standards.
2. Governments deploying DST in a way that does or could falsely implicate innocent individuals in criminal matters.
3. A lack of systematic oversight that fails to ensure accountability, equity, transparency, or cybersecurity.
4. Governments utilizing DST in a manner inconsistent with existing laws, ordinances, and regulations.

While these issues affect everyone, they disproportionately affect those who are falsely implicated in criminal matters as a result of DST, as well as the working poor (who have been historically over-surveilled). In addition to such human costs, overuse or misuse of DST exposes cash-strapped jurisdictions to multimillion-dollar lawsuits for violation of privacy and civil rights.

This proposal offers a set of actions that the Biden-Harris Administration could take to limit the harms of DST. Specifically, we recommend that the administration:

• Issue an Executive Order to create two mandatory filings for vendors and government agencies involved in active federal contracts for DST.
• Empower and fund the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with $10 million over two years to study and produce rules regarding DST marketing and sales.
• Allocate $50 million for a Privacy Pilot Program that would allow municipalities to utilize a tailored hybrid model of government and civilian oversight for DST.
• Condition federal dollars spent on DST for law enforcement on compliance with a set of assessments.
• Instruct the Department of Justice to create a DST Task Force to study the benefits and tradeoffs of different types of DST.

These actions would together begin to rein in the unchecked power of the surveillance complex that has attached itself to our nation’s law-enforcement systems. Doing so would advance racial and community equity across the United States while also helping restore public trust in law-enforcement institutions.

Summary

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.

Summary

The information contained in the methods section of the overwhelming majority of research publications is insufficient to definitively evaluate research practices, let alone reproduce the work. Publication—and subsequent reuse—of detailed scientific methodologies can save researchers time and money, and can accelerate the pace of research overall. However, there is no existing mechanism for collective action to improve reporting of scientific methods. The Biden-Harris Administration should direct research-funding agencies to support development of new standards for reporting scientific methods. These standards would (1) address ongoing challenges in scientific reproducibility, and (2) benefit our nation’s scientific enterprise by improving research quality, reliability, and efficiency.

Summary

Biology is becoming a defining technology of the modern era: the bioeconomy is expected to contribute nearly 1.1 million jobs to the United States by 2030. Preparing the skilled workforce that our nation will need to fill these jobs requires a fundamental shift in how the field of biology is viewed. Biology is not merely a collection of facts to be memorized in school. Rather, it is a dynamic economic sector that provides opportunities for Americans of all skillsets, and that can generate creatively engineered solutions to persistent global challenges.

The Biden-Harris Administration can position the United States as a world leader in the emerging bioeconomy by funding modernized biology education, establishing world-class entrepreneurial hubs for biotechnology in non-traditional regions of the country, and supporting equitable access to industry-recognized certificates and work-based training. Through this comprehensive Built with Biology Plan, the federal government can prepare and invite more Americans into skilled jobs that support the bioeconomy. The social imperative for investing in the bioeconomy is at least as great as the economic one. We will build a better future for all Americans—including people of color, people with disabilities, and people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds—only by harnessing regional talent and growing robust bioeconomies in all 50 states.

Summary

Information technology (IT) refers to the full range of computing technologies and the people that work with them. IT itself is among the world’s fastest-growing economic sectors, and is an integral part of most other sectors. Rapid growth and demand for IT services have led to critical workforce shortages. Efforts to address these shortages have largely focused on K–12 and college education while ignoring the post-graduate population. This is a critical error. The post-graduate population is a valuable potential source of high-skilled tech talent and diversity. Many individuals with computing-related degrees would benefit from updates to their training, while individuals with expertise in other areas increasingly stand to benefit from adding IT competencies to their existing skills. Expanding post-graduate education and training opportunities would give current employees additional avenues for advancement, while also offering displaced workers ways to reenter the job market with a new set of skills. Such opportunities would also help employers quickly meet workforce needs, enabling the IT sector to become more dynamic, agile, productive, and innovative.

The Biden-Harris Administration should make a substantial investment in post-graduate opportunities that enable college graduates from a range of disciplines to build or upgrade their computational skills. These opportunities could include everything from business-to-business (B2B) short-term classes to update computational skills, to Master of Science (MS) degree programs that don’t require prior computer-science experience, to research and mentoring experiences that prepare students for Ph.D. studies. When implemented at scale, such opportunities will enable our nation to address pressing IT talent shortages while empowering Americans of all backgrounds to participate in—and benefit from—the IT economy.

Note: An initial version of this document was posted as a Widening Participation Quadrennial Paper. Citation: Cuny, J.; Danyluk, A.; Rushmeier, H. (2020). Fostering a Post-Graduate Tech Boom. Computing Research Association.

Summary

A robust STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) ecosystem is imperative to our country’s national security, international leadership, and economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Insights into youths’ daily lives, ambitions, and concerns for the future are paramount to developing effective and diverse policies that strengthen STEM education, career pathways, and public engagement. Unfortunately, youth voice is too often absent from STEM initiatives and policymaking processes in the United States today.

This memo proposes a joint initiative led by the White House and its Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Department of Education, and other federal agencies to amplify youth voices in STEM. The goals of this initiative are to (1) foster active youth participation in STEM policymaking, (2) position youth to provide critical insights into the future of STEM work, (3) champion youth STEM ambassadors in schools across America, and (4) promote youth engagement in STEM more broadly. Leveraging existing programs such as Jason Learning’s Argonaut, Rutgers 4-H STEM Ambassadors, Youth and Educators Succeeding/GenYES, and the Chief Science Officer (CSO) initiatives, this initiative would enable youth to participate in meaningful dialogues with the Biden administration and other federal decisionmakers. The proposed initiative aligns with the National Science and Technology Council’s goals of building strong foundations for STEM literacy; increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM; and preparing the STEM workforce for the future.

Summary

Smoke from wildfire disasters kills many more people than direct exposure to wildfire flames, and impacts many more communities than the communities located directly in wildfire perimeters. Direct exposure to the 2018 California wildfires caused 104 deaths statewide, but smoke from those fires were responsible for over 3,500 more.1 The United States currently lacks a systematic way to track health impacts (and associated costs) of wildfire smoke. This critical knowledge gap inhibits our nation’s ability to effectively recover from, respond to, and prevent future wildfire disasters.

The Biden-Harris Administration should address this gap by establishing a national public record of wildfire-smoke health impacts: a resource that would enable better accounting of wildfire costs and would support evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of efforts to prevent and mitigate catastrophic wildfires. Specifically, the Biden-Harris Administration should take the following actions to improve understanding of wildfire-smoke health impacts, better guide investments into wildfire management, and ultimately reduce the costs of wildfire disasters:

1. Systematically track mortality and morbidity due to smoke from wildfire disasters.
2. Fund research to better understand the scale of wildfire-smoke health impacts, and to develop cost-effective approaches for reducing those impacts.
3. Ensure that approaches to respond to, recover from, and prevent wildfire disasters include goals to equitably reduce the wildfire-smoke health impacts.