Creating an AI Testbed for Government

Summary

The United States should establish a testbed for government-procured artificial intelligence (AI) models used to provide services to U.S. citizens. At present, the United States lacks a uniform method or infrastructure to ensure that AI systems are secure and robust. Creating a standardized testing and evaluation scheme for every type of model and all its use cases is an extremely challenging goal. Consequently, unanticipated ill effects of AI models deployed in real-world applications have proliferated, from radicalization on social media platforms to discrimination in the criminal justice system. Increased interest in integrating emerging technologies into U.S. government processes raises additional concerns about the robustness and security of AI systems.

Establishing a designated federal AI testbed is an important part of alleviating these concerns. Such a testbed will help AI researchers and developers better understand how to construct testing methods and ultimately build safer, more reliable AI models. Without this capacity, U.S. agencies risk perpetuating existing structural inequities as well as creating new government systems based on insecure AI systems — both outcomes that could harm millions of Americans while undermining the missions that federal agencies are entrusted to pursue.

Improving Graduate-Student Mentorship by Investing in Traineeship Grants

Summary

Graduate students are more likely to persist in their academic decisions if engaged in positive mentoring experiences. Graduate students also cite positive mentoring experiences as the most important factor in completing a Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, or Medicine (STEMM) degree. In the United States, though, these benefits are often undermined by a research ecosystem that ties mentorship and training of graduate students by Principal Investigators (PIs) to funding in the form of research assistantships. Such arrangements often lead to unreasonable work expectations, toxic work environments, and poor mentor-mentee relationships.

To improve research productivity, empower predoctoral researchers to achieve their career goals, and increase the intellectual freedom that young scientists need to pursue productively disruptive scholarship, we recommend that federal science funding agencies:

1. Establish traineeship grant programs at all federal science funding agencies.

2. Require every PI receiving a federal research grant to implement an Individual Development Plan (IDP) for each student funded by that grant.

3. Require every university receiving federal training grants to create a plan for how it will provide mentorship training to faculty, and to actively consider student mentorship as part of faculty promotion, reappointment, and tenure processes.

4. Direct and fund federal science agencies to build professional development networks and create other training opportunities to help more PIs learn best practices for mentorship.

Creating a Public System of National Laboratory Schools

Summary

The computational revolution enables and requires an ambitious reimagining of public high-school and community-college designs, curricula, and educator-training programs. In light of a much-changed — and much-changing — society, we as a nation must revisit basic assumptions about what constitutes a “good” education. That means re-considering whether traditional school schedules still make sense, updating outdated curricula to emphasize in-demand skills (like computer programming), bringing current perspectives to old subjects (like computational biology); and piloting new pedagogies (like project-based approaches) better aligned to modern workplaces. To do this, the Federal Government should establish a system of National Laboratory Schools in parallel to its existing system of Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (FFRDCs).

The National Science Foundation (NSF) should lead this work, partnering with the Department of Education (ED) to create a Division for School Invention (DSI) within its Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate. The DSI would act as a platform analogous to the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, catalyzing Laboratory Schools by providing funding and technical guidance to federal, state, and local entities pursuing educational or cluster-based workforce-development initiatives.

The new Laboratory Schools would take inspiration from successful, vertically-integrated research and design institutes like Xerox PARC and the Mayo Clinic in how they organized research, as well as from educational systems like Governor’s Schools and Early College High Schools in how they organized their governance. Each Laboratory School would work with a small, demographically and academically representative cohort financially sustainable on local per-capita education budgets.
Collectively, National Laboratory Schools would offer much-needed “public sandboxes” to develop and demonstrate novel school designs, curricula, and educator-training programs rethinking both what and how people learn in a computational future.

Challenge and Opportunity

Education is fundamental to individual liberty and national competitiveness. But the United States’ investment in advancing the state of the art is falling behind. 

Innovation in educational practice has been incremental. Neither the standards-based nor charter-school movements departed significantly from traditional models. Accountability and outcomes-based incentives like No Child Left Behind suffer from the same issue.

The situation in research is not much better: NSF and ED’s combined spending on education research is barely twice the research and development budget of Nintendo. And most of that research focuses on refining traditional school models (e.g. presuming 50-minute classes and traditional course sequences).

Despite all these efforts, we are still seeing unprecedented declines in students’ math and reading scores.

Meanwhile, the computational revolution is widening the gap between what school teaches and the skills needed in a world where work is increasingly creative, collaborative, and computational. Computation’s role in culture, commerce, and national security is rapidly expanding; computational approaches are transforming disciplines from math and physics to history and art. School can’t keep up.

For years, research has told us individualized, competency- and project-based approaches can reverse academic declines while aligning with the demands of industry and academia for critical thinking, collaboration, and creative problem-solving skills. But schools lack the capacity to follow suit.

Clearly, we need a different approach to research and development in education: We need prototypes, not publications. While studies evaluating and improving existing schools and approaches have their place, there is a real need now for “living laboratories” that develop and demonstrate wholly transformative educational approaches.

Schools cannot do this on their own. Constitutionally and financially, education is federated to states and districts. No single public actor has the incentives, expertise, and resources to tackle ambitious research and design — much less to translate into research to practice on a meaningful scale. Private actors like curriculum developers or educational technologists sell to public actors, meaning private sector innovation is constrained by public school models. Graduate schools of education won’t take the brand risk of running their own schools, and researchers won’t pursue unfunded or unpublishable questions. We commend the Biden-Harris administration’s Multi-Agency Research and Development Priorities for centering inclusive innovation and science, technology, education, and math (STEM) education in the nation’s policy agenda. But reinventing school requires a new kind of research institution, one which actually operates a school, developing educators and new approaches firsthand.Luckily, the United States largely invented the modern research institution. It is time we do so again. Much as our nation’s leadership in science and technology was propelled by the establishment ofland-grant universities in the late 19th century, we can trigger a new era of U.S. leadership in education by establishing a system of National Laboratory Schools. The Laboratory Schools will serve as vertically integrated “sandboxes” built atop fully functioning high schools and community colleges, reinventing how students learn and how we develop in a computational future.

Plan of Action

To catalyze a system of National Laboratory Schools, the NSF should establish a Division for School Invention (DSI) within its Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) directorate. With an annually escalating investment over five years (starting at $25 million in FY22 and increasing to $400 million by FY26), the DSI could support development of 100 Laboratory Schools nationwide.

The DSI would support federal, state, and local entities — and their partners — in pursuing education or cluster-based workforce-development initiatives that (i) center computational capacities, (ii) emphasize economic inclusion or racial diversity, and (iii) could benefit from a high-school or community-college component.

DSI support would entail:

  1. Competitive matching grants modeled on SBIR grants. These grants would go towards launching Laboratory Schools and sustaining those that demonstrate success.
  2. Technical guidance to help Laboratory Schools (i) innovate while maintaining regulatory compliance, and (ii) develop financial models workable on local education budgets.
  3. Accreditation support, working with partner executives (e.g., Chairs of Boards of Higher Education) where appropriate, to help Laboratory Schools establish relationships with accreditors, explain their educational models, and document teacher and student work for evaluation purposes.
  4. Responsible-research support, including providing Laboratory Schools assistance with obtainingFederalwide Assurance (FWA) and access to partners’ Institutional Review Boards (IRBs).
  5. Convening and storytelling, raising awareness of and interest in Laboratory Schools’ mission and operations.

Launching at least ten National Laboratory Schools by FY23 would involve three primary steps. First, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) should convene an expert group comprised of (i) funders with a track record of attempting radical change in education and (ii) computational domain experts to design an evaluation process for the DSI’s competitive grants, secure industry and academic partners to help generate interest in the National Laboratory School System, and recruit the DSI’s first Director.

In parallel, Congress should issue one appropriations report asking NSF to establish a $25 million per year pilot Laboratory School program aligned with the NSF Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP)’s Regional Innovation Accelerators (RIA)’s Areas of Investment. Congress should issue a second appropriations report asking the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) to release a Dear Colleague letter encouraging states that have spent less than 75% of their Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) or American Recovery Plan funding to propose a Laboratory School.

Finally, the White House should work closely with the DSI’s first Director to convene the Department of Defense Education Activity (DDoEA) and National Governors Association (NGA) to recruit partners for the National Laboratory Schools program. These partners would later be responsible for operational details like:

Focus will be key for this initiative. The DSI should exclusively support efforts that center:

  1. New public schools, not programs within (or reinventions of) existing schools.
  2. Radically different designs, not incremental evolutions.
  3. Computationally rich models that integrate computation and other modern skills into all subjects.
  4. Inclusive innovation focused on transforming outcomes for the poor and historically marginalized.

Conclusion

Imagine the pencil has just been invented, and we treated it the way we’ve treated computers in education. “Pencil class” and “pencil labs” would prepare people for a written future. We would debate the cost and benefit of one pencil per child. We would study how oral test performance changed when introducing one pencil per classroom, or after an after-school creative-writing program.

This all sounds stupid because the pencil and writing are integrated throughout our educational systems rather than being considered individually. The pencil transforms both what and how we learn, but only when embraced as a foundational piece of the educational experience.

Yet this siloed approach is precisely the approach our educational system takes to computers and the computational revolution. In some ways, this is no great surprise. The federated U.S. school system isn’t designed to support invention, and research incentives favor studying and suggesting incremental improvements to existing school systems rather than reimagining education from the ground up. If we as a nation want to lead on education in the same way that we lead on science and technology, we must create laboratories to support school experimentation in the same way that we establish laboratories to support experimentation across STEM fields. Certainly, the federal government shouldn’t run our schools. But just as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) support cutting-edge research that informs evolving healthcare practices, so too should the federal government support cutting-edge research that informs evolving educational practices. By establishing a National Laboratory School system, the federal government will take the risk and make the investments our communities can’t on their own to realize a vision of an equitable, computationally rich future for our schools and students.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who

1. Why is the federal government the right entity to lead on a National Laboratory School system?

Transformative education research is slow (human development takes a long time, as does assessing how a given intervention changes outcomes), laborious (securing permissions to test an intervention in a real-world setting is often difficult), and resource-intensive (many ambitious ideas require running a redesigned school to explore properly). When other fields confront such obstacles, the public and philanthropic sectors step in to subsidize research (e.g., by funding large research facilities). But tangible education-research infrastructure does not exist in the United States.

Without R&D demonstrating new models (and solving the myriad problems of actual implementation), other public- and private-sector actors will continue to invest solely in supporting existing school models. No private sector actor will create a product for schools that don’t exist, no district has the bandwidth and resources to do it themselves, no state is incentivized to tackle the problem, and no philanthropic actor will fund an effort with a long, unclear path to adoption and prominence.

National Laboratory Schools are intended primarily as research, development, and demonstration efforts, meaning that they will be staffed largely by researchers and will pursue research agendas that go beyond the traditional responsibilities and expertise of local school districts. State and local actors are the right entities to design and operate these schools so that they reflect the particular priorities and strengths of local communities, and so that each school is well positioned to influence local practice. But funding and overseeing the National Laboratory School system as a whole is an appropriate role for the federal government.

2. Why is NSF the right agency to lead this work?

For many years, NSF has developed substantial expertise funding innovation through the SBIR/STTR programs, which award staged grants to support innovation and technology transfer. NSF also has experience researching education through its Directorate for Education and Human Resources (HER). Finally, NSF’s new Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) has a mandate to “[create] education pathways for every American to pursue new, high-wage, good-quality jobs, supporting a diverse workforce of researchers, practitioners, and entrepreneurs.” NSF is the right agency to lead the National Laboratory Schools program because of its unique combination of experience, in-house expertise, mission relevance, and relationships with agencies, industry, and academia.

3. What role will OSTP play in establishing the National Laboratory School program? Why should they help lead the program instead of ED?

ED focuses on the concerns and priorities of existing schools. Ensuring that National Laboratory Schools emphasize invention and reimagining of educational models requires fresh strategic thinking and partnerships grounded in computational domain expertise.

OSTP has access to bodies like the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). Working with these bodies, OSTP can easily convene high-profile leaders in computation from industry and academia to publicize and support the National Laboratory Schools program. OSTP can also enlist domain experts who can act as advisors evaluating and critiquing the depth of computational work developed in the Laboratory Schools. And annually, in the spirit of the White House Science Fair, OSTP could host a festival showcasing the design, practices, and outputs of various Laboratory Schools.

Though OSTP and NSF will have primary leadership responsibilities for the National Laboratory Schools program, we expect that ED will still be involved as a key partner on topics aligned with ED’s core competencies (e.g., regulatory compliance, traditional best practices, responsible research practices, etc.).

4. What makes the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) an especially good partner for this work?

The DoDEA is an especially good partner because it is the only federal agency that already operates schools; reaches a student base that is large (more than 70,000 students, of whom more than 12,000 are high-school aged) as well as academically, socioeconomically, and demographically diverse; more nimble than a traditional district; in a position to appreciate and understand the full ramifications of the computational revolution; and very motivated to improve school quality and reduce turnover

5. Why should the Division for School Invention (DSI) be situated within NSF’s TIP Directorate rather than EHR Directorate?

EHR has historically focused on the important work of researching (and to some extent, improving) existing schools. The DSI’s focus on invention, secondary/postsecondary education, and opportunities for alignment between cluster-based workforce-development strategies and Laboratory Schools’ computational emphasis make the DSI a much better fit for the TIP, which is not only focused on innovation and invention overall, but is also explicitly tasked with “[creating] education pathways for every American to pursue new, high-wage, good-quality jobs, supporting a diverse workforce of researchers, practitioners, and entrepreneurs.” Situating the DSI within TIP will not preclude DSI from drawing on EHR’s considerable expertise when needed, especially for evaluating, contextualizing, and supporting the research agendas of Laboratory Schools.

6. Why shouldn’t existing public schools be eligible to serve as Laboratory Schools?

Most attempts at organizational change fail. Invention requires starting fresh. Allowing existing public schools or districts to launch Laboratory Schools will distract from the ongoing educational missions of those schools and is unlikely to lead to effective invention. 

7. Who are some appropriate partners for the National Laboratory School program?

Possible partners include:

8. What should the profile of a team or organization starting a Laboratory School look like? Where and how will partners find these people?

At a minimum, the team should have experience working with youth, possess domain expertise in computation, be comfortable supporting both technical and expressive applications of computation, and have a clear vision for the practical operation of their proposed educational model across both the humanities and technical fields.

Ideally, the team should also have piloted versions of their proposed educational model approach in some form, such as through after-school programs or at a summer camp. Piloting novel educational models can be hard, so the DSI and/or its partners may want to consider providing tiered grants to support this kind of prototyping and develop a pipeline of candidates for running a Laboratory School.

To identify candidates to launch and operate a Laboratory School, the DSI and/or its partners can:

What

1. What is computational thinking, and how is it different from programming or computer science?

A good way to answer this question is to consider writing as an analogy. Writing is a tool for thought that can be used to think critically, persuade, illustrate, and so on. Becoming a skilled writer starts with learning the alphabet and basic grammar, and can include craft elements like penmanship. But the practice of writing is distinct from the thinking one does with those skills. Similarly, programming is analogous to mechanical writing skills, while computer science is analogous to the broader field of linguistics. These are valuable skills, but are a very particular slice of what the computational revolution entails.

Both programming and computer science are distinct from computational thinking. Computational thinking refers to thinking with computers, rather than thinking about how to communicate problems and questions and models to computers. Examples in other fields include:

These transitions each involve programming, but are no more “about” computer science than a philosophy class is “about” writing. Programming is the tool, not the topic.

2. What are some examples of the research questions that National Laboratory Schools would investigate?

There are countless research agendas that could be pursued through this new infrastructure. Select examples include:

  1. Seymour Papert’s work on LOGO (captured in books like Mindstorms) presented a radically different vision for the potential and role for technology in learning. In Mindstorms, Papert sketches out that vision vis a vis geometry as an existence proof. Papert’s work demonstrates that research into making things more learnable differs from researching how to teach more effectively. Abelson and diSessa’s Turtle Geometry takes Papert’s work further, conceiving of ways that computational tools can be used to introduce differential geometry and topology to middle- and high-schoolers. The National Laboratory Schools could investigate how we might design integrated curricula combining geometry, physics, and mathematics by leveraging the fact that the vast majority of mathematical ideas tackled in secondary contexts appear in computational treatments of shape and motion.
  2. The Picturing to Learn program demonstrated remarkable results in helping staff to identify and students to articulate conceptions and misconceptions. The National Laboratory Schools could investigate how to take advantage of the explosion of interactive and dynamic media now available for visually thinking and animating mental models across disciplines.
  3. Bond graphs as a representation of physical dynamic systems were developed in the 1960s. These graphs enabled identification of “effort” and “flow” variables as new ways of defining power. This in turn allowed us to formalize analogies across electricity and magnetism, mechanics, fluid dynamics, and so on. Decades later, category theory has brought additional mathematical tools to bear on further formalizing these analogies. Given the role of analogy in learning, how could we reconceive people’s introduction to natural sciences in cross-disciplinary language emphasizing these formal parallels.
  4. Understanding what it means for one thing to cause (or not cause) another, and how we attempt to establish whether this is empirically true is an urgent and omnipresent need. Computational approaches have transformed economics and the social sciences: Whether COVID vaccine reliability, claims of election fraud, or the replication crisis in medicine and social science, our world is full of increasingly opaque systems and phenomena which our media environment is decreasingly equipped to tackle for and with us. An important tool in this work is the ability to reason about and evaluate empirical research effectively, which in turn depends on fundamental ideas about causality and how to evaluate the strength and likelihood of various claims. Graphical methods in statistics offer a new tool complementing traditional, easily misused ideas like p-values which dominate current introductions to statistics without leaving youth in a better position to meaningfully evaluate and understand statistical inference.

The specifics of these are less important than the fact that there are many, many such agendas that go largely unexplored because we lack the tangible infrastructure to set ambitious, computationally sophisticated educational research agendas.

3. How will the National Laboratory Schools differ from magnet schools for those interested in computer science?

The premise of the National Laboratory Schools is that computation, like writing, can transform many subjects. These schools won’t place disproportionate emphasis on the field of computer science, but rather will emphasize integration of computational thinking into all disciplines—and educational practice as a whole. Moreover, magnet schools often use selective enrollment in their admissions. National Laboratory Schools are public schools interested in the core issues of the median public school, and therefore it is important they tackle the full range of challenges and opportunities that public schools face. This involves enrolling a socioeconomically, demographically, and academically diverse group of youth.

4. How will the National Laboratory Schools differ from the Institute for Education Science’s Regional Education Laboratories?

The Institute for Education’s (IES’s) Regional Education Laboratories (RELs) do not operate schools. Instead, they convene and partner with local policymakers to lead applied research and development, often focused on actionable best practices for today’s schools (as exemplified by the What Works Clearinghouse). This is a valuable service for educators and policymakers. However, this service is by definition limited to existing school models and assumptions about education. It does not attempt to pioneer new school models or curricula.

5. How will the National Laboratory Schools program differ from tech-focused workforce-development initiatives, coding bootcamps, and similar programs?

These types of programs focus on the training and placement of software engineers, data scientists, user-experience designers, and similar tech professionals. But just as computational thinking is broader than just programming, the National Laboratory Schools program is broader than vocational training (important as that may be). The National Laboratory Schools program is about rethinking school in light of the computational revolution’s effect on all subjects, as well as its effects on how school could or should operate. An increased sensitivity to vocational opportunities in software is only a small piece of that.

6. Can computation really change classes other than math and science?

Yes. The easiest way to prove this is to consider how professional practice of non-STEM fields has been transformed by computation. In economics, the role of data has become increasingly prominent in both research and decision making. Data-driven approaches have similarly transformed social science, while also expanding the field’s remit to include specifically online, computational phenomena (like social networks). Politics is increasingly dominated by technological questions, such as hacking and election interference. 3D modeling, animation, computational art, and electronic music are just a few examples of the computational revolution in the arts. In English and language arts, multimedia forms of narrative and commentary (e.g., podcasts, audiobooks, YouTube channels, social media, etc.) are augmenting traditional books, essays, and poems. 

7. Why and how should National Laboratory Schools commit to financial and legal parity with public schools?

The challenges facing public schools are not purely pedagogical. Public schools face challenges in serving diverse populations in resource-constrained and highly regulated environments. Solutions and innovation in education need to be prototyped in realistic model systems. Hence the National Laboratory Schools must commit to financial and legal parity with public schools. At a minimum, this should include a commitment to (i) a per-capita student cost that is no more than twice the average of the relevant catchment area for a given National Laboratory School (the 2x buffer is provided to accommodate the inevitably higher cost of prototyping educational practices at a small scale), and (ii) enrollment that is demographically and academically representative (including special-education and English Language Learner participation) of a similarly aged population within thirty minutes’ commute, and that is enrolled through a weighted lottery or similarly non-selective admissions process.

8. Why are Xerox PARC and the Mayo Clinic good models for this initiative?

Both Xerox PARC and the Mayo Clinic are prototypical examples of hyper-creative, highly-functioning research and development laboratories. Key to their success inventing the future was living it themselves.

PARC researchers insisted on not only building but using their creations as their main computing systems. In doing so, they were able to invent everything from ethernet and the laser printer to the whole paradigm of personal computing (including peripherals like the modern mouse and features like windowed applications that we take for granted today).

The Mayo Clinic runs an actual hospital. This allows the clinic to innovate freely in everything from management to medicine. As a result, the clinic created the first multi-specialty group practice and integrated medical record system, invented the oxygen mask and G-suit, discovered cortisone, and performed the first hip replacement.

One characteristic these two institutions share is that they are focused on applied design research rather than basic science. PARC combined basic innovations in microelectronics and user interface to realize a vision of personal computing. Mayo rethinks how to organize and capitalize on medical expertise to invent new workflows, devices, and more.

These kinds of living laboratories are informed by what happens outside their walls but are focused on inventing new things within. National Laboratory Schools should similarly strive to demonstrate the future in real-world operation.

Why?

1. Don’t laboratory schools already exist? Like at the University of Chicago?

Yes. But there are very few of them, and almost all of those that do exist suffer from one or more issues relative to the vision proposed herein for National Laboratory Schools. First, most existing laboratory schools are not public. In fact, most university-affiliated laboratory schools have, over time, evolved to mainly serve faculty’s children. This means that their enrollment is not socioeconomically, demographically, or academically representative. It also means that families’ risk aversion may constrain those schools’ capacity to truly innovate. Most laboratory schools not affiliated with a university use their “laboratory” status as a brand differentiator in the progressive independent-school sector.

Second, the research functions of many laboratory schools have been hollowed out given the absence of robust funding. These schools may engage in shallow renditions of participatory action research by faculty in lieu of meaningful, ambitious research efforts. 

Third, most educational-design questions investigated by laboratory schools are investigated at the classroom or curriculum (rather than school design) level. This creates tension between those seeking to test innovative practices (e.g., a lesson plan that involves an extended project) and the constraints of traditional classrooms.

Finally, insofar as bona fide research does happen, it is constrained by what is funded, publishable, and tenurable within traditional graduate schools of education. Hence most research reflects the concerns of existing schools instead of seeking to reimagine school design and educational practice.

2. Why will National Laboratory Schools succeed where past efforts at educational reform (e.g., charter schools) have failed?

Most past educational-reform initiatives have focused on either supporting and improving existing schools (e.g., through improved curricula for standard classes), or on subsidizing and supporting new schools (e.g., charter schools) that represent only minor departures from traditional models.

The National Laboratory Schools program will provide a new research, design, and development infrastructure for inventing new school models, curricula, and educator training. These schools will have resources, in-house expertise, and research priorities that traditional public schools—whether district or charter or pilot—do not and should not. If the National Laboratory Schools are successful, their output will help inform educational practice across the U.S. school ecosystem. 

3. Don’t charter schools and pilot schools already support experimentation? Wasn’t that the original idea for charter and pilot schools—that they’d be a laboratory to funnel innovation back into public schools?

Yes, but this transfer hasn’t happened for at least two reasons. First, the vast majority of charter and pilot schools are not pursuing fundamentally new models because doing so is too costly and risky. Charter schools can often perform more effectively than traditional public schools, but this is just as often because of problematic selection bias in enrollment as it is because the autonomy they’re given allows for more effective leadership and organizational management. Second, the politics around charter and pilots has become increasingly toxic in many places, which prevents new ideas from being considered by public schools or advocated for effectively by public leaders.

4. Why do we need invention at the school rather than at the classroom level? Wouldn’t it be better to figure out how to improve schools that exist rather than end up with some unworkable model that most districts can’t adopt?

The solutions we need might not exist at the classroom level. We invest a great deal of time, money, and effort into improving existing schools. But we underinvest in inventing fundamentally different schools. There are many design choices which we need to explore which cannot be adequately developed through marginal improvements to existing models. One example is project-based learning, wherein students undertake significant, often multidisciplinary projects to develop their skills. Project-based learning at any serious level requires significant blocks of time that don’t fit in traditional school schedules and calendars. A second example is the role of computational thinking, as centered in this proposal. Meaningfully incorporating computational approaches into a school design requires new pedagogies, developing novel tools and curricula, and re-training staff. Vanishingly few organizations do this kind of work as a result.

If and when National Laboratory Schools develop substantially innovative models that demonstrate significant value, there will surely need to be a translation process to enable districts to adopt these innovations, much as translational medicine brings biomedical innovations from the lab to the hospital. That process will likely need to involve helping districts start and grow new schools gradually, rather then district-wide overhauls.

5. What kinds of “traditional assumptions” need to be revisited at the school level?

The basic model of school assumes subject-based classes with traditionally licensed teachers lecturing in each class for 40–90 minutes a day. Students do homework, take quizzes and tests, and occasionally do labs or projects. The courses taught are largely fixed, with some flexibility around the edges (e.g., through electives and during students’ junior and senior high-school years).

Traditional school represents a compromise among curriculum developers, standardized-testing outfits, teacher-licensure programs, regulations, local stakeholder politics, and teachers’ unions. Attempts to change traditional schools almost always fail because of pressures from one or more of these groups. The only way to achieve meaningful educational reform is to demonstrate success in a school environment rethought from the ground up. Consider a typical course sequence of Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, and Calculus. There are both pedagogical and vocational reasons to rethink this sequence and instead center types of mathematics that are more useful in computational contexts (like discrete mathematics and linear algebra). But a typical school will not be able to simultaneously develop the new tools, materials, and teachers needed to do so.

6. Has anything like the National Laboratory School program been tried before?

No. There have been various attempts to promote research in education without starting new schools. There have been interesting attempts by states to start new schools (like Governor’s Schools),there have been some ambitious charter schools, and there have been attempts to create STEM-focused and computationally focused magnet schools. But there has never been a concerted attempt in the United States to establish a new kind of research infrastructure built atop the foundation of functioning schools as educational “sandboxes”.

How?

1. How will we pay for all this? What existing funding streams will support this work? Where will the rest of the money for this program come from?

For budgeting purposes, assume that each Laboratory School enrolls a small group of forty high school or community college students full-time at an average per capita rate of $40,000 per person per year. Half of that budget will support the functioning of schools themselves. The remaining half will support a small research and development team responsible for curating and developing the computational tools, materials, and curricula needed to support the School’s educators. This would put the direct service budget of the school solidly at the 80th percentile of current per capita spending on K–12 education in the United States.With these assumptions, running 100 National Laboratory Schools would cost ~$160 million. Investing $25 million per year would be sufficient to establish an initial 15 sites. This initial federal funding should be awarded through a 1:1 matching competitive-grant program funded by (i) the 10% of American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act (ACWIA) Fees associated with H1-B visas (which the NSF is statutorily required to devote to public-private partnerships advancing STEM education), and (ii) the NSF TIP Directorate’s budget, alongside budgets from partner agency programs (for instance, the Department of Education’s Education Innovation and Research and Investing in Innovation programs). For many states, these funds should also be layered atop their existing Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) and American Rescue Plan (ARP) awards.

2. Why is vertical integration important? Do we really need to run schools to figure things out?

Vertical integration (of research, design, and operation of a school) is essential because schools and teacher education programs cannot be redesigned incrementally. Even when compelling curricular alternatives have been developed under the auspices of an organization like the NSF, practical challenges in bringing those innovations to practice have proven insurmountable. In healthcare, the entire field of translational medicine exists to help translate research into practice. Education has no equivalent.

The vertically integrated National Laboratory School system will address this gap by allowing experimenters to control all relevant aspects of the learning environment, curricula, staffing, schedules, evaluation mechanisms, and so on. This means the Laboratory Schools can demonstrate a fundamentally different approach, learning from great research labs like Xerox PARC and the Mayo Clinic, much of whose success depended on tightly-knit, cross-disciplinary teams working closely together in an integrated environment.

3. What would the responsibilities of a participating agency look like in a typical National Laboratory School partnership?

A participating agency will have some sort of educational or workforce-development initiative that would benefit from the addition of a National Laboratory School as a component. This agency would minimally be responsible for:

4. How should success for individual Laboratory Schools be defined?

Working with the Institute of Education Sciences (IES)’ National Center for Education Research(NCER), the DSI should develop frameworks for collecting necessary qualitative and quantitative data to document, understand, and evaluate the design of any given Laboratory School. Evaluation would include evaluation of compliance with financial and legal parity requirements as well as evaluation of student growth and work products.

Evaluation processes should include:

Success should be judged by a panel of experts that includes domain experts, youthworkers and/or school leaders, and DSI leadership. Dimensions of performance these panels should address should minimally include depth and quality of students’ work, degree of traditional academic coverage, ambition and coherence of the research agenda (and progress on that research agenda), retention of an equitably composed student cohort, and growth (not absolute performance) on the diagnostic/formative assessments.In designing evaluation mechanisms, it will be essential to learn from failed accountability systems in public schools. Specifically:, it will be essential to avoid pushing National Laboratory Schools to optimize for the particular metrics and measurements used in the evaluation process. This means that the evaluation process should be largely based on holistic evaluations made by expert panels rather than fixed rubrics or similar inflexible mechanisms. Evaluation timescales should also be selected appropriately: e.g., performance on diagnostic/formative assessments should be measured by examining trends over several years rather than year-to-year changes.

5. What makes the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program a good model for the National Laboratory School program?

The SBIR program is a competitive grant competition wherein small businesses submit proposals to a multiphase grant program. SBIR awards smaller grants (~$150,000) to businesses at early stages of development, and makes larger grants (~$1 million) available to awardees who achieve certain progress milestones. SBIR and similar federal tiered-grant programs (e.g., the Small Business Technology Transfer, or STTR, program) have proven remarkably productive and cost-effective, with many studies highlighting that they are as or more efficient on a per-dollar basis when compared to the private sector via common measures of innovation like number of patents, papers, and so on.

The SBIR program is a good model for the National Laboratory School program; it is an example of the federal government promoting innovation by patching a hole in the funding landscape. Traditional financing options for businesses are often limited to debt or equity, and most providers of debt (like retail banks) for small businesses are rarely able or incentivized to subsidize research and development. Venture capitalists typically only subsidize research and development for businesses and technologies with reasonable expectations of delivering 10x or greater returns. SBIR provides funding for the innumerable businesses that need research and development support in order to become viable, but aren’t likely to deliver venture-scale returns.

In education, the funding landscape for research and development is even worse. There are virtually no sources of capital that support people to start schools, in part because the political climate around new schools can be so fraught. The funding that does exist for this purpose tends to demand school launch within 12–18 months: a timescale upon which it is not feasible to design, evaluate, refine an entirely new school model. Education is a slow, expensive public good: one that the federal government shouldn’t provision, but should certainly subsidize. That includes subsidizing the research and development needed to make education better.

States and local school districts lack the resources and incentives to fund such deep educational research. That is why the federal government should step in. By running a tiered educational research-grant program, the federal government will establish a clear pathway for prototyping and launching ambitious and innovative schools.

6. What protections will be in place for students enrolled in Laboratory Schools?

The state organizations established or selected to oversee Laboratory Schools will be responsible for approving proposed educational practices. That said, unlike in STEM fields, there is no “lab bench” for educational research: the only way we can advance the field as a whole is by carefully prototyping informed innovations with real students in real classrooms.

7. Considering the challenges and relatively low uptake of educational practices documented in the What Works Clearinghouse, how do we know that practices proven in National Laboratory Schools will become widely adopted?

National Laboratory Schools will yield at least three kinds of outputs, each of which is associated with different opportunities and challenges with respect to widespread adoption.

The first output is people. Faculty trained at National Laboratory Schools (and at possible educator-development programs run within the Schools) will be well positioned to take the practices and perspectives of National Laboratory Schools elsewhere (e.g., as school founders or department heads). The DSI should consider establishing programs to incentivize and support alumni personnel of National Laboratory Schools in disseminating their knowledge broadly, especially by founding schools.

The second output is tools and materials. New educational models that are responsive to the computational revolution will inevitably require new tools and materials—including subject-specific curricula, cross-disciplinary software tools for analysis and visualization, and organizational and administrative tools—to implement in practice. Many of these tools and materials will likely be adaptations and extensions of existing tools and materials to the needs of education.

The final output is new educational practices and models. This will be the hardest, but probably most important, output to disseminate broadly. The history of education reform is littered with failed attempts to scale or replicate new educational models. An educational model is best understood as the operating habits of a highly functioning school. Institutionalizing those habits is largely about developing the skills and culture of a school’s staff (especially its leadership). This is best tackled not as a problem of organizational transformation (e.g., attempting to retrofit existing schools), but rather one of organizational creation—that is, it is better to use models as inspirations to emulate as new schools (and new programs within schools) are planned. Over time, such new and inspired schools and programs will supplant older models.

8. How could the National Laboratory School program fail?

Examples of potential pitfalls that the DSI must strive to avoid include:

Improving Outcomes for Incarcerated People by Reducing Unjust Communication Costs

Summary

Providing incarcerated people opportunities to communicate with support networks on the outside improves reentry outcomes. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to limit in-person interaction and use of electronic communication grows, it is critical that services such as video calling and email be available to people in prisons. Yet incarcerated people — and their support networks on the outside — pay egregious prices for electronic-communication services that are provided free to the general public. Video chatting with a person in prison regularly costs more than $1 a minute, and email costs are between $0.20 and $0.60 per message. A major reason rates are so high is that facilities are paid site commissions as a percentage of the amount spent on calls (ranging from 20% to 88%).

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has explicit authority to regulate interstate prison phone calls (called Inmate Calling Services, or ICS). However, the DC Circuit Court ruled in 2015 that video calls and emails are not covered under the definition of ICS and hence that the FCC does not have authority under the 1996 Telecommunications Act (47 U.S. Code) to regulate video calls or emails. They separately ruled that the FCC does not have authority under §276 of the Telecommunications Act to regulate site commissions. The DC Circuit Court ruling creates an imperative for Congressional action. Congress should revise the Telecommunications Act to clearly cover email and video calls in prisons and jails, capping costs of these communications at “just and reasonable” levels. In the interim, the FCC should try again to eliminate site commissions for telephone calls by relying on §201 of the Telecommunications Act.

Bringing Opportunities to Incarcerated Persons and Prison-Tech Startups

Summary

The Biden-Harris Administration should create a program that incentivizes unique prison-tech innovations by providing resources to help startups working in this space, specifically those that create solutions for individuals during and after their period of incarceration and beyond. The program would be structured as a partnership among several key government agencies, federal and state prison systems, and the private sector. For participating startups, the program would foster technical innovation, provide de-risking measures, connect viable product-market solutions, and establish equity-free funding opportunities. For individuals serving state and federal sentences, the program would improve rehabilitative efforts while in the corrections system, create potential job opportunities, and reduce recidivism rates. For the broader social good, the program would spur economic growth, create stronger communities, and contribute to more equitable outcomes.

Challenge and Opportunity

The United States has the highest number of incarcerated individuals worldwide: the U.S. prison population numbers nearly 1.9 million. Recidivism rates are equally astonishing. Of the over 600,000 individuals released from state and federal prisons each year, more than two-thirds are rearrested within three years of release. Half of those rearrested are subsequently reincarcerated.

The cost of recidivism is extraordinarily high. Recidivism costs taxpayers at least $366 million per year, with a single recidivism incident estimated to impose as much as $150,000 in taxpayer burden. Recidivism also has massive social costs. Continuous reincarceration harms communities, breaks families, and contributes to generational systemic poverty. To break this cycle, we as a nation need to rethink how we approach incarceration and assign more importance to reintegration efforts.

A major contributor to the recidivism cycle is prioritization of punitive measures over rehabilitative ones in U.S. prison systems. Such punitive measures can isolate inmates from friends, family, and even children for years or decades. Moreover, instead of providing access to educational tools that could set them up for meaningful work once released, prisons often shunt incarcerated individuals into low-level menial tasks that pay mere pennies per day. Incarcerated individuals often lack the skills needed to navigate life on the outside as a result. They are left without financial means or dependable job prospects. They are saddled with broken relationships and a lack of coping mechanisms. Coupled with the stigma of being labeled ex-offenders, they are often forced into unproductive behaviors and familiar but societally unacceptable actions. And inevitably, many fall into the same patterns and reoffend.

It is also worth considering the economic benefits our nation is failing to capture from formerly incarcerated individuals. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an estimated $78–87 billion in GDP annually is lost due to exclusion of formerly incarcerated job seekers from the workforce simply because of their ex-offender status, exclusion based on these individuals being “unskilled and unemployed” as a result of poor training and job opportunities while in prison. 

We can do better. Research shows that when incarcerated individuals are given access to tools that allow them to connect to people and resources who can help them, those individuals are better equipped to reenter society. Such tools include regular video and voice calls plus texts and emails with friends and loved ones. They include the ability to participate in physical, mental, and spiritual programs and community-led activities, including programs and activities offered through digital services. And importantly, they include access to online educational programs and learning platforms administered through hardware designed to make learning easier, more robust, and aligned with modern approaches to digital upskilling.

Indeed, there is a growing market for hardware, software, and other digital innovations designed to work within U.S. carceral systems. Startups focused on the prison-tech space have the knowledge and will to replace archaic, ineffective approaches to rehabilitation with more meaningful products and services. Unfortunately, prison-tech startups also face challenges not encountered by startups in other tech subsectors. 

First, many prison-tech startups are creating products and solutions that are extremely targeted towards smaller markets. For these players, finding customers means aligning with state and federal prison systems — something that is unfamiliar to a budding tech company.

Second, prison-tech startups, like all startups, often struggle to find funding. But while other startups can woo private funders with promises of equity, board seats, and concrete financial returns, success for these startups often includes bettering lives and fostering meaningful experiences, measures that cannot be quantified through revenue alone. Many investment firms have little interest in funding such “tech for social good” enterprises.
Third, prison-tech startups invest substantial time and money into including equality, accessibility and safety in their offerings. As such, access to this type of beneficial technology should not be limited to only carceral institutions with larger budgets to purchase them. At the same time, too many existing goods and services purport to serve incarcerated individuals equally and justly but are actually designed to maximize revenue generation. For example, systems like TRULINCS and JPay are pay-per-use services (for communication, money transfer, and other purposes) provided at extraordinarily high costs to incarcerated individuals and their networks on the outside — often at costs so high that the critical opportunities for connection they provide are simply unaffordable for those who need them most. Prison-tech products and services must be designed and used in ways that do not exploit, harm, or otherwise jeopardize the health and safety of incarcerated individuals and their families nor unduly burden individuals and their families with exorbitant costs per use.

Plan of Action

The Biden-Harris Administration should launch a cross-agency initiative to support prison-tech startups. The initiative would offer federal grants to fund private companies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) providing beneficial prison-tech goods and services: e.g., carceral learning platforms and tools that can prepare incarcerated individuals to reenter society. The initiative should also provide incentives for prison-tech startups to hire formerly incarcerated individuals. Such incentives will create self-sustaining ecosystems that provide meaningful, long-term employment to former inmates, drive bottom-line success for prison-tech startups, and better communities in which startups are based.

Relevant agencies

Key agencies to include in initiative design, management, and administration include the following:

Program structure

As explained above, the proposed initiative comprises two pillars. The first pillar focuses on federal grant funding to help prison-tech startups launch. The second pillar focuses on later-stage financial incentives and market support that help prison-tech startups scale and achieve long-term financial sustainability, and that encourage prison-tech startups to provide good jobs to previously incarcerated individuals. 

Pillar 1: Federal grant funding

Making federal grant funding (i.e., non-equity funding) available will encourage innovative startups to explore needed prison-tech solutions while minimizing risk associated with investing in such a specific market segment. The best option for funding the grant portion of the initiative is a combined approach that makes use of multiple existing federal funding vehicles.

The primary vehicle would be the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Under SBIR, companies are generally awarded up to $150,000 for a Phase I (P1) grant that runs for up to six months. Companies who successfully complete P1 and show favorable outcomes and market opportunities can become eligible for Phase II (P2) funding, which has a cap of $1 million for a two-year period of performance. This staggered approach requires companies to measure and demonstrate positive outcomes in order to be eligible for follow-on investments. We propose creating a specific prison-tech topic code for SBIR, which would allow NSF and ED to use this program to allocate prison-tech startup grants. Though SBIR funding generally does not go beyond P2, the federal government could consider adding Phase III (P3) funding opportunities for particularly promising prison-tech startups. In P3, companies would be eligible for awards of $5–10 million to scale up products and services to meet the needs of prisons nationwide. A summary of proposed SBIR award numbers and funding levels for this initiative is proposed below.

Award numbers
PhasePeriod of PerformanceMax. awards disbursed per cycle
16 months — 1 year10
22 years5
3Est. 3 years2
Based on per annum investment at 100% for PI, 50% for PII and 33% for PIII, with an average of 7.5M award per PIII recipient)
Estimated funding levels (first five years)
YearFunding per phaseTotal funding
1P1: $1,500,000$1,500,000
2P1: $1,500,000
P2: $2,500,000		$4,000,000
3P1: $1,500,000
P2: $2,500,000		$4,000,000
4P1: $1,500,000
P2: $2,500,000
P3: $5,000,000		$9,000,000
5P1: $1,500,000
P2: $2,500,000
P3: $5,000,000		$9,000,000

Additionally, the Digital Equity Act — part of the recently passed bipartisan infrastructure bill—includes a total of $2.75 billion over five years to provide digital training and skill-development opportunities to low-income and disadvantaged populations, which includes those formerly incarcerated. Through this act (and specifically through its “Spurring Targeted Action through Competitive Grants” arm) the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will create an annual $125 million competitive grant program to support digital-inclusion projects undertaken by individual groups, coalitions, and/or communities of interest. The Biden-Harris administration should explore options for including the NTIA grants in the prison-tech startup initiative. 

Pillar 2: Later-stage financial incentives and market support

The goal of this pillar is to support prison-tech startups through the crucial period in between business launch and long-term fiscal sustainability — the period when many startups fail. Providing funding, markets and overall business support during this crucial time period ensures continuity of offering for the institution as well as ensuring small business thrives. 

The SBA and DOL should partner to provide continued financial incentives — e.g., extended tax credits and bonding programs — for prison-tech startups, particularly startups that hire previously incarcerated individuals. As part of this pillar, the DOL’s WOTC should be doubled to $19,600 per individual per year for employees making at least $65,000 per year.1 DOL’s Federal Bonding program should also be extended to cover the first 12 months or more of employment. Finally, the Biden-Harris administration should explore opportunities for retention bonuses or additional tax credits that encourage prison-tech startups to retain formerly incarcerated individuals beyond the first 12 months of employment.

The SBA and DOL should also help craft a business-to-prison product-matching service. This service will (1) allow prison-tech startups to focus on building the right solutions without worrying about customer acquisition, and (2) give prison management confidence that the prison-tech products and services they are purchasing are credible and tested. As part of this service, the SBA and DOL should assist businesses with understanding institutional needs and with understanding how to navigate federal and state contracting processes. The SBA and DOL could also try to help prison-tech startups identify supplementary customer bases among institutions such as city and county jails, juvenile-detention facilities, and state-sponsored healthcare facilities and hospitals in an effort to provide additional market opportunities for participating startups beyond the prison system. This ensures continued financial support for business and expanded product support through larger customer bases, something all startups need.

Maintaining Military Medical Readiness Today Saves Lives Tomorrow

Summary

Advances in military medicine are hard won during war but easily lost during peace. Though mortality rates of U.S. troops on the battlefield have improved significantly since World War II, the battlefield mortality rate at the beginning of a war often exceeds the battlefield mortality rate at the end of the previous war. Researchers attribute this phenomenon to erosion, during interwar years, of military readiness to provide combat healthcare. The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania estimates that better maintaining military medical readiness could have prevented more than 100,000 combat deaths over the past 80 years.1

Loss of life following survivable injury is not unique to the military. Tens of thousands of U.S. civilians succumb to potentially preventable trauma-related deaths every year.2 Since military medical advances are frequently adopted by the civilian healthcare sector,345the White House,working with key federal agencies, should expand military-civilian partnerships (MCPs) in trauma care to achieve a national goal of eliminating preventable deaths. Such an initiative will save lives on the battlefield and the home front — with the ultimate goal of reaching zero preventable deaths.6

Challenge and Opportunity

An unprecedented percentage of service members wounded on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 20 years made it home to their loved ones. This success is due to the professionalism of our uniformed healthcare providers and their innovations in responding to combat trauma — innovations that include moving blood products closer to the battlefield to lessen the effects of immediate and severe blood loss, deploying resuscitative surgical-system teams close to troops in enemy contact, splitting operations of forward surgical teams in two to increase coverage, and distributing tourniquets to every deployed service member.7

During times of peace, though, our military medical community loses its readiness to save life and limb on the battlefield. Statistics from the “War on Terror” illustrate the tragic consequences that arise when military medical readiness erodes during interwar years. Between October 2001 and June 2011, 4,016 U.S. combat troops died before they reached a military hospital. Of those, 976 (almost 25%) died from what are assessed to be battlefield-survivable injuries.8 A survey of general surgeons who provided deployed casualty care between 2002 and 2012 found that the majority of respondents felt underprepared to meet the demands of battlefield injuries.9

A key reason for interwar deterioration of military medical readiness is that during times of peace, Department of Defense (DoD) priorities shift from treating combat trauma to ensuring the general wellness of active-duty service members, their families, and other beneficiaries at Military Treatment Facilities (MTF) administered by the Defense Health Agency. While beneficiary care is an essential personnel benefit that should not and must not be diminished, it is also essential to recognize that the MHS does not provide sufficient training opportunities to maintain the proficiency of military medical personnel in treating battlefield trauma.10 An independent study conducted by the Institute for Defense Analysis found alarming misalignment between the top ten diagnoses on the battlefield in Iraq and the top 10 diagnoses in MTFs: while the former encompassed a variety of combat-related traumas, the latter were generally less serious (consistent with what one would expect for a predominantly young and healthy patient population). This divergence suggests that the primary missions of uniformed healthcare providers — (1) treating complex combat-related traumas, and (2) serving the needs of a family health practice — are not mutually supportive.11

Recognizing that the MTFs were not providing the necessary trauma-related training to maintain battlefield medical readiness, Congress has directed DoD to establish partnerships with civilian medical academic institutions and major metropolitan hospitals that host level I trauma centers. These partnerships are intended to ensure that the military’s wartime medical specialists12 are continually exposed to the volume and types of complex trauma necessary to ensure they are trained and prepared to rapidly deploy to an area of armed conflict.

These MCPs currently include the U.S. Army Trauma Training Center at Miami Dade Ryder Trauma Center in Florida, California’s U.S. Navy Trauma Training Center at USC/LA County, and the three U.S. Air Force Centers for Sustainment of Trauma and Readiness Skills located at the University of Maryland, the University of Cincinnati, and St. Louis University.13 While individually admirable, these MCPs constitute a patchwork that does not substitute for a coordinated national approach to curbing loss of military and civilian life from potentially survivable injuries. Because of this concern in Congress, section 757 of the FY 2021 NDAA directs DoD to conduct a systematic review of its MCPs to enhance the readiness of the military medical force to provide combat casualty care. The White House, working with the Departments of Defense (DoD), Health and Human Services (HHS), Homeland Security (DHS), and Veterans Affairs (VA), should build on results of the review and move quickly to expand military-civilian partnerships (MCPs) in the context of a national goal of eliminating preventable deaths.

Plan of Action

In 2016, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine published a report14 explaining the need to establish a coordinated military/civilian national trauma-care system and presenting an action plan for achieving this goal. Below, we outline an updated, four-part version of the National Academies action plan. These actions will collectively shore up our nation’s military medical readiness, with benefits for American troops and American civilians alike.

Part 1

The White House should reaffirm its commitment to maintaining the quality of healthcare received by DoD beneficiaries, while also establishing national goals of (1) achieving zero preventable deaths from trauma-related injury and (2) minimizing trauma-related disability. It should be clear that these goals align both with the DoD’s mission of ensuring that uniformed medical personnel are prepared to provide battlefield healthcare and with HHS’ objective of strengthening the civilian healthcareworkforce to meet American needs. The White House should encourage partnerships between military and civilian trauma-care units to help achieve this goal.

Part 2

Within six months, the White House should establish a “Zero Preventable Deaths” task force overseen by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and cochaired by the HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Surgeon. The task force should be responsible for:

Part 3

The combatant commanders establish the medical requirements for their battle plans and the secretaries of the military departments are responsible for training and equipping their branch’s healthcare professionals to meet these demands. It’s the role of the Secretary of Defense to hold them accountable. The defense secretary does this by:

Part 4

The Secretary of Health and Human Services should position the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response of HHS to lead civilian efforts of the task force. This role includes:

Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why is now the time to establish a national goal of zero deaths to survivable injuries?

We have just ended our country’s longest period of war and our military doctors are at their best. If we do not act now, much of what they have learned will be lost and some number of troops will die needlessly on future battlefields.

2. Would expanding MCPs improve the quality of healthcare provided to civilians?

Yes. During every armed conflict, the uniformed medical community makes incredible advances in preventing the deaths of our troops on the battlefield. MCPs ensure that civilian healthcare providers benefit from those advances.

3. Does expanding MCPs break faith with servicemembers and other DoD beneficiaries by weakening the quality of their healthcare?

No. The only priority more important than providing DoD beneficiaries access to the highest-quality healthcare available while the force is in garrison is saving the lives of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and guardians while the force is on the battlefield. And as discussed above, improving the readiness of military healthcare providers improves quality of care for all Americans.

4. Do DoD beneficiaries have access to quality healthcare at the MTFs?

Yes. But we should ask ourselves if the quality of some of the care delivered in the MTFs could be better. The medical community recognizes that high caseload volumes increase provider experience, which equals better outcomes for patients. But with a few exceptions (usually associated with newborn care, pregnancy, and maternal health), high volumes of work are not characteristic of the MTFs. For example, the consulting group CNA found that the best outcomes for knee replacements are observed in facilities that do 200 or more procedures a year. Only 13% of all knee replacements conducted in MTFs were conducted at MTFs that did 200 or more a year.

Reforming Nuclear Research Practices in the Marshall Islands

Summary

In the mid-20th century, the United States test-detonated dozens of nuclear weapons in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). Using the RMI as a test site for nuclear- weapons research allowed the U.S. to better understand the effects of such weapons and their destructive capacities — but at significant cost. Conducting nuclear tests in the vulnerable RMI harmed human health, fomented distrust in research sponsored by the U.S. government, and fueled tensions with the Marshallese. Fallout from the tests undermined U.S. influence in the Pacific, cooperation over ecological restoration, and the reputation of the U.S. research enterprise. Building back relations with the RMI (and other allies that have long supported the United States) is crucial for enabling the Biden Administration to undo the adverse effects of Trump-era policies on international relations and the environment, especially amid rising threats from China and Russia.

To that end, the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Interior (DOI) should adopt provisions for conducting nuclear research with and in the Marshall Islands that will: (i) increase transparency and trust in American research concerning the Marshall Islands, and (ii) elevate Marshallese voices in the fight for preservation of their lands. These provisions are as follows:

  1. All collected data should be translated into Marshallese and shared with RMI officials and relevant stakeholders.
  2. When appropriate (e.g., when security and privacy considerations permit), collected data should be published in an easy-to-access online format for public consumption.
  3. All research should be clearly laid out and submitted to the RMI National Nuclear Commission (NNC) in accordance with the NNC’s Nuclear Research Protocol.
  4. The United States should coordinate with the NNC, the College of the Marshall Islands (CMI) Nuclear Institute, regional agencies, and other relevant nongovernmental organizations and local stakeholders to ensure that local knowledge is considered in the design of nuclear-related research and data projects.
  5. All possible steps should be taken to include the participation of Marshallese residents in research ventures and operations.

Pathways to Net-zero Soil Loss by 2050

The current administration should announce its intention to achieve net-zero soil loss by 2050. This target aligns with President Biden’s plan to “mount a historic, whole-of-Government-approach to combating climate change,” would help fulfill the administration’s commitment to achieving a net-zero-emissions economy by 2050, and is key to protecting our nation’s agricultural productivity.

Healthy soil is essential to food production. Less well recognized is the vital role that soil plays in climate modulation. Soil is the largest terrestrial carbon repository on the planet, containing three times the amount of carbon in Earth’s atmosphere. Soil represents a potential sink for 133 billion tons of carbon (equal to 25 years of U.S. fossil-fuel emissions). Using soil to offset emissions generates significant co-benefits. Carbon sequestration in soil nourishes soil ecosystems by improving soil architecture and increasing water-holding capacity. Deeper and more fertile soil also supports biodiversity and enriches natural habitats adjacent to agricultural land.

Over two-thirds of the United States is grassland, forestland, and cropland. Land practices that increase the amount of carbon stored underground present a relatively low-cost means for President Biden’s administration to pursue its goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But lost soil can no longer serve as a carbon repository. And once lost, soil takes centuries to rebuild. Increasingly extreme climate events and soil-degrading industrial farming practices are combining to rapidly deplete our nation’s strategic soil resources. The United States is losing 10.8 tons of fertile soil per hectare per year: a rate that is at least ten times greater than the rate of soil production. At this rate, many parts of the United States will run out of soil in the next 50 years; some regions already have. For example, in the Piedmont region of the eastern United States, farming practices that were inappropriate for the topography caused topsoil erosion and led to the abandonment of agriculture. The northwestern Palouse region has lost 40–50% of its topsoil, and one-third of the Midwest corn belt has lost all of its topsoil.

Soil loss reduces crop yields, destroys species’ habitats that are critical to food production, and causes high financial losses. Once roughly half of the soil is lost from a field, crop yields and nutrient density suffer. Maintaining a desired level of agricultural output then requires synthetic fertilizers that further compromise soil health, unleashing a feedback loop with widespread impacts on air, land, and water quality — impacts that are often disproportionately concentrated in underserved populations.

Climate change and soil erosion create a dual-threat to food production. As climate change progresses, more extreme weather events like intense flooding in the northeastern United States and prolonged drought in the Southwest make farmland less hospitable to production. Concurrently, soil erosion and degradation release soil carbon as greenhouse gases and make crops more vulnerable to extreme weather by weakening the capabilities of plants to fix carbon and deposit it in the soil. Halting soil erosion could reduce emissions, and building stable stores of soil carbon will reduce atmospheric carbon.

Prioritizing soil health and carbon sequestration as a domestic response to the climate and food-security crises is backed by centuries of pre-industrial agricultural practices. Before European occupation of tribal lands and the introduction of “modern agricultural practices,” Indigenous peoples across North America used soil protective practices to produce food while enhancing the health of larger ecosystems. Some U.S. farmers adhere to principles that guide all good soil stewardship — prevent soil movement and improve soil structure. Practices like no-till farming, cover cropping, application of organic soil amendments, and intercropping with deep-rooted prairie plants are proven to anchor soil and can increase its carbon content. In livestock production, regenerative grazing involves moving animals frequently to naturally fertilize the soil while allowing plants to recover and regrow. If all farms implemented these practices, most soil erosion would halt. The challenge is to equip farmers with the knowledge, financial incentives, and flexibility to use soil-protective techniques.

This document recommends a set of actions that the federal government — working with state and local governments, corporations, research institutions, landowners, and farmers — can take towards achieving net-zero soil loss by 2050. These recommendations are supported by policy priorities outlined in President Biden’s Discretionary Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2022 and the bipartisan infrastructure deal currently under negotiation in Congress. Throughout, we emphasize the importance of (1) prioritizing storage of stable carbon (i.e., carbon that remains in soils for the long term) and (2) addressing environmental injustices associated with soil erosion by engaging a broad group of stakeholders.

Firm commitments to restore degraded land will establish the United States as an international leader in soil health, help avoid the worst impacts of climate change, strengthen food security, advance environmental justice, and inspire other countries to set similar net-zero targets. The health of our planet and its people depend on soil preservation. Our nation can, and should, lead the way.

Plan of Action

Action 1. Become a signatory of “4 per mille,” the international initiative encouraging countries to collectively increase global soil carbon by 0.4 percent per year.

The United States should officially join the international effort, “4 per mille” (4p1000), and commit to increasing stable soil carbon by at least 0.4 percent per year. By signing onto this effort, President Biden would send a powerful message of appreciation for U.S. conservation farmers and signal to the rest of the world that soil and forest management are important strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate change.

Detractors of 4p1000 have raised concerns about its feasibility, measurement, and accountability. These arguments obscure the target’s intent: to motivate a global effort to sequester carbon in soil and avert the worst of anthropogenic climate change. The target gives countries a tangible and common goal to work towards as they identify and implement the soil-carbon sequestration strategies that will work best in their respective domestic environments.

Before COP26, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in partnership with the Secretary of Agriculture and the Biden administration’s climate change leaders (John Kerry and Gina McCarthy), should develop a strategy to accompany the United States’ endorsement of 4p1000 and garner endorsements of the agreement from other nations. A central pillar of this strategy should focus on developing and deploying inexpensive methods to estimate soil carbon. These new tools would help farmers track their net carbon increases and ensure that carbon emissions from soil are not negating their efforts.

This action could be supported by funds allocated to the Department of State for multilateral climate initiatives, Department of Interior funding for ecosystem resilience among all land-management agencies, and USDA’s renewed investment to engage landowners to combat climate change and increase participation in voluntary conservation.

Action 2. Invest in a data repository for agriculture and soil carbon. 

Advances in soil health of agricultural systems, like advances in human health, will depend on the sector’s capacity to aggregate and refine big data. This capacity is needed to develop comprehensive decision-support tools underpinned by hyperlocal data in a publicly accessible and well-maintained database

USDA’s Agricultural Research Service currently supports a data repository through its National Agricultural Library (NAL). The NAL repository houses datasets generated by USDA researchers and other USDA-funded research. Unfortunately, the NAL repository is poorly equipped to handle data originating from additional sources. Nor does the NAL repository support the industry-wide annotation system needed to make data searchable and comparable.

A new repository is needed. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) offers an excellent model in GenBank. By helping researchers compare genes, this open-access bioinformatics tool deepens our understanding of health and accelerates development of medical treatments. GenBank connects to similar databases worldwide, and researchers contribute to and search the databases with associated software. The National Weather Service (NWS) similarly compiles a massive set of weather data that supports research and generates income from business services. Both GenBank and the National Weather Service’s databases have supported an explosion of resources, products, and services, from diagnostic medical tests, precision medicine, and genetic testing to weather apps for phones. These databases also feature budgets an order of magnitude larger than the budget for USDA’s NAL.

A right-sized investment in a broad agricultural research database at the NAL, including data generated with proprietary smart-farm technologies and other public-private collaborations, is the future of modern agriculture and agriculture research. Nationally available, high-quality, and curated agricultural data would seed a wealth of new services and companies in the sector. The database would also support the implementation of reliable, locally tailored, and situationally relevant soil-management practices and decision tools that provide precision health practices for soil.

Specifically, we recommend that USDA take the following steps to establish a broad agricultural data repository:

These steps could be carried out using discretionary funding at USDA earmarked for investments in research and development capacity of farmers. These steps collectively align with the administration’s goal to “support a multi-agency initiative aimed at integrating science-based tools into conservation planning and verifying stable carbon sequestration, greenhouse-gas reduction, wildlife stewardship, and other environmental services at the farm level and on federal lands.”

Action 3. Invest in targeted research to reduce soil erosion and increase carbon sequestration.

General factors contributing to soil loss and mitigation principles are universal. Still, the most effective combination of specific practices for reducing soil erosion and increasing carbon sequestration depends on local soil type, slope, soil condition, land use, and weather. In many farming settings, regenerative practices can increase soil carbon and eliminate soil erosion in as little as one or two growing seasons. But matching best practices to a given location can be complex.

For example, intensive tillage is the most soil-erosive practice in agriculture. Reducing the use of this practice has been an important goal for soil-preservation efforts over the last four decades. Organic farms frequently use intensive tillage because organic certification prohibits the use of genetically engineered plants or herbicides—even though herbicide treatment provides excellent weed control and genetic engineering has made it possible to suppress weeds using herbicides without damage to the engineered crop plant. Reducing soil erosion on organic farms hence requires research into new methods of weed control.

The USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) should jointly fund competitive grants for research into practices that reduce soil erosion, increase the nutrient density of food, and sequester carbon stably. Priority projects of these grants might include:

As with Action 2, these steps could be carried out using discretionary funding at USDA earmarked for investments in farmers’ research and development capacity. These steps collectively align with the administration’s goal to support a multi-agency initiative to integrate science-based tools into conservation planning and verify stable carbon sequestration, greenhouse-gas reduction, wildlife stewardship, and other environmental services at the farm level on federal lands.

Action 4. Develop financial and educational programs that help farmers transition to soil-protective practices.

Soil-protective practices have agronomic and economic benefits. Farmers using continuous no-till methods save several thousand dollars each year due to reduced fuel and labor investments. But economic returns on soil-saving practices can take several years to accrue. Growers are rightly concerned about their financial solvency in the short term should they implement such practices, as well as about yield reductions associated with no-till agriculture in some cases. USDA should (i) provide financial assistance to help producers transition to soil-saving practices and (ii) offer training to help producers realize maximal benefits of soil-protective practices at each phase of the transition.

For instance, USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) could offer loans based on cost-saving projections from reduced need for synthetic inputs and increased potential yield once the transition to soil-protective practices is complete. For example, loans could cover the cost of the first five years of projected lost income per acre. At the end of this term, USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) could offer discounted crop insurance rates because the now-healthier soil would engender a more resilient system less likely to experience catastrophic losses during floods and droughts. Farmers could use savings on insurance costs to repay loans and keep premiums constant once repayment begins.

Participation in the loan program could be contingent on farmers’ capacity to maintain soil-protective practices for at least ten years. During the initial five-year loan period, soil-health specialists affiliated with USDA could provide farmers with training on measuring progress, collecting data, and uploading that data to a centralized database. Outcomes across participating farms could be tracked and iteratively inform best practices during the transition period. After the initial five-year period, farmers could qualify for a five-year loan-forbearance period if they demonstrate continued participation in the program.

USDA could also offer direct payments to farmers participating in soil revitalization. Another Day One Project policy proposal recommends that the USDA offer incentive payments for climate-smart practices that produce ecosystem services if the producer cannot find a buyer through an ecosystem-services market. 

Specifically, we recommend that USDA take the following steps to develop financial and educational programs that help farmers transition to soil-protective practices:

These steps could be supported by discretionary funding at the Department of Treasury earmarked for investments in American communities and small businesses and USDA funds dedicated to growing rural economies. These steps align with President Biden’s commitment to expanding the role of Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), which offer loans to start-ups and small businesses in rural communities and create new markets for reaching a net-zero carbon economy by 2050.

Action 5. Develop circular economy practices for young entrepreneurs supporting soil conservation.

Small businesses have a significant role in post-pandemic recovery by providing jobs and combating the climate crisis through innovation. The path to a net-zero carbon economy by 2050 must include circular economy principles that design waste out of economic cycles, keep products and materials in use, and regenerate natural systems. Additionally, closing education gaps and creating new paths to secure jobs for young people who did not complete high school has transformational effects on economic opportunities, health, and life expectancy.

USDA, the Small Business Administration (SBA), and the Minority Business Development Administration (MBDA) should jointly develop a “Ground Up” program that (i) engages the agriculture industry in identifying circular-economy business opportunities and (ii) engages young people without a high-school education in starting small businesses that conserve, restore, and protect soil and other natural resources. Ground Up would fill gaps created by the uneven and insufficient USDA Extension workforce in underserved and under-resourced communities. Ground Up would also provide more extensive business and entrepreneurship training than is typically possible through Extension programs. By leveraging relationships with industry partners, program participants could be connected to byproducts—or “wasted resources”—they need to start a circular business and access to mentoring and markets required to sell their products and services profitably. For example, a Ground Up enterprise might incorporate grounds from commercial or residential coffee-making operations or municipal waste into commercial compost production. The Participants who complete the Ground Up program would be eligible for nointerest federal business loans, with repayment required once the business was profitable. The federal government could partner with Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to share the cost of loans and build connections among young entrepreneurs, Extension professionals, and potential partner businesses.

Specifically, we recommend that USDA and the White House take the following steps to develop circular economy practices for young entrepreneurs supporting soil conservation:

These steps could be implemented using discretionary funds within USDA, SBA, and MBDA earmarked to support innovative multi-agency business opportunities for rural and minority entrepreneurs. These steps align with the SBA’s commitments help small businesses combat climate change and invest in underserved entrepreneurs; the USDA’s mandate to grow rural economies and foster innovation in the agricultural sector, as well as USDA’s dedication to increasing and protecting biodiversity through good farm stewardship; and the MBDA’s economic-development grants aimed at addressing long-standing racial inequity for minority-owned firms.

Action 6. Support diversity in the agricultural workforce pipeline.

People of color, including Black, LatinX, and Indigenous people, are underrepresented in agriculture and agricultural sciences. To begin addressing this underrepresentation, the Biden administration should ensure diversity in its proposed Civilian Climate Corps (CCC). The CCC is envisioned as a modern-day equivalent of the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps work-relief program. The new iteration focuses on enhancing conservation and climate-smart practices across the country. The new CCC represents a terrific way for the Department of the Interior (DOI) to train a diverse workforce in climate- and soil-smart land-management practices with clear pathways to careers in technical assistance, agribusiness, and academic agricultural research, among others.

The administration can boost diversity in agricultural research by directing the USDA’s Office of Civil Rights and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to conduct an in-depth assessment of challenges faced by researchers of color in agricultural science and develop discipline-wide plans to address them. The administration can also increase research funding and funding for research infrastructure targeted at underrepresented populations. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to choose fields with reliable funding. The relative lack of funding for agricultural sciences, as evidenced by outdated educational infrastructure and shrinking training programs, puts agriculture departments at a stark disadvantage compared to the modern facilities (and reliable post-graduate incomes) of other scientific departments (e.g., biomedicine). The National Science Foundation (NSF) should support research and facilities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to demonstrate and communicate programmatic stability and cutting-edge innovation in agriculture.

Specifically, we recommend that the Biden administration take the following steps to support diversity in the agricultural-workforce pipeline: 

These steps could be supported by funding allocated at USDA, NSF, and DOI to increase racial equity, specifically the participation of historically underrepresented people in the Civilian Climate Corps and farming, science, and engineering more broadly.

Action 7. Fund existing and proposed advanced research projects agencies (ARPAs) to invest in soil-saving research.

USDA’s research agencies tend to fund low-risk research that delivers incremental changes in agricultural practices. This essential research provides many strategies for stemming soil loss, but remarkably few farms employ these strategies. The nation needs paradigm-shifting advances that farmers will use. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) model can help realize such advances by investing deeply in bold ideas outside of mainstream thinking. Several existing and proposed ARPA programs are well-positioned to invest in soil-saving research.

ARPA-Energy (ARPA-E) in the Department of Energy (DOE) is already funding high-impact agricultural research that protects soil. ARPA-E has invested in one soil-centered project, ROOTS, to develop “root-focused” plant cultivars that could dramatically reduce atmospheric carbon. The agency is also gearing up for a new project on carbon farming. These projects match ARPA-E’s energy-focused mission, which includes reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, ARPA-E does not have the mandate to invest in specific agricultural projects that build and protect soil. Two additional ARPA-style entities have been proposed that could do so instead: ARPA-I (infrastructure), included as part of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and AgARDA, a USDA-based ARPA-style agency authorized by the 2018 Agriculture Improvement Act (Farm Bill). If funded, ARPA-I, AgARDA, or both could invest in groundbreaking research to drive soil protection.

To leverage the ARPA model for transformative advances in soil-saving research, we recommend that the Biden administration:

These steps could be supported by discretionary funds allocated to the DOE and USDA. Cumulatively, the President’s most recent budget request directs $1.1 billion to DOE to support breakthroughs in climate and clean-energy research and solutions. Specifically, mitigating and adapting to the climate crisis involves more than inventing cleaner energy; new technologies that help farmers protect soil and fix carbon into the land will also be essential for correcting extreme imbalances in the global carbon budget.

Action 8. Develop criteria and funding for “Earth Cities.”

People feel helpless and fatigued about climate change at the local level partly because they lack the agency to make positive steps to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The White House should deepen its relationships with mayors and nonprofit coalition groups of cities—such as C40, U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the National League of Cities— to engage urban communities in combating hazards related to climate change.

Like the Arbor Day Foundation’s “Tree Cities” program that encourages communities to steward their tree resources, a national “Earth Cities” program would recognize cities leading the way on urban soil stewardship and management. Criteria for receiving the “Earth City” designation could include implementation of a centralized municipal composting program, large-scale replanting of public parks and rights-ofway with native grasses and perennials that have soil-health benefits, creative management of excavated soil and rock generated by urban construction, becoming a signatory to the 4p1000 initiative, and observance of World Soil Day on December 5. Taking steps to become an “Earth City” and prioritizing soil management at the municipal level offers communities a way to make a positive difference and experience benefits locally while addressing global climate challenges.

Recent research demonstrates that temperatures can vary as much as 20 degrees across different neighborhoods within the same city. Urban heat islands often overlap with communities of color and low-income households in areas with few trees and large amounts of heat-trapping pavement. In these historically redlined communities, rates of heat-related illness and deaths are also higher than wealthier, whiter, and cooler parts of town. Additionally, meeting green building codes and keeping federally supported housing projects affordable has become increasingly difficult in urban centers. Tending to soil health by reusing excavated soil, planting trees and tall grasses on site, and creating more green spaces can inexpensively mitigate the urban heat-island effect while increasing access to nature in historically under-resourced communities. A partnership between soil experts at USDA, pollution and environmental-hazard experts at EPA, and affordable housing programs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) would support cities with funding and implementation and further strengthen program viability by tying federal support to local soil stewardship practices.

Specifically, we recommend that the Biden administration take the following steps to recognize and support cities striving to preserve soil and enhance soil-carbon sequestration:

These steps could be supported through earmarked funds at EPA for the Accelerating Environmental and Economic Justice Initiative, HUD funds to modernize and rehabilitate public housing, infrastructure, and facilities in historically underfunded and marginalized communities; and USDA funds that encourage conservation and increased biodiversity on private land.

Action 9. Plant deep-rooted perennials on median strips to foster carbon-rich soils for multi-benefit surface transportation.

As a part of President Biden’s plan to invest in multi-benefit transportation infrastructures, a policy to populate median strips with deep-rooted prairie perennials presents a means to restore soil carbon and simultaneously sustain essential pollinators in agricultural and other ecosystems. Highway medians are supposed to be at least 50 feet wide for safety, creating a minimum of 6 acres of median per mile of highway. The 47,000 miles of U.S. Interstate and 160,000 miles of other highways amount to nearly 300,000 and 1 million acres, respectively, of median strips in the United States. Each acre could sequester 1.7 tons of carbon per year until the soil’s carrying capacity is reached.

Deep carbon stores of soil in the Midwest resulted from centuries of growth of perennial plants that store most of their carbon in their roots. The crops that replaced the prairies shunt most of their carbon to the harvested aboveground tissues, leaving little in the soil. Corn roots, for example, represent only 1% of the plant biomass by the end of the growing season, whereas the roots of perennials—which can grow to as deep as 15 feet underground—can account for as much as 70% of the plant’s biomass. Between 2009 and 2015, 53 million acres of U.S. land was converted from native vegetation to cropland, leading to a loss of 2% of the soil carbon stored in that land per year. This loss translates to 3.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere—equivalent to almost one-half of annual U.S. fossil-fuel emissions.

One way to mitigate soil loss is by planting highway median strips with the native, deep-rooted perennials that simultaneously nourish pollinators, enrich soil, and sequester copious amounts of carbon. The Department of Transportation (DOT) could coordinate a large-scale highway-replanting initiative through the effort proposed in the bipartisan infrastructure bill to rebuild the interstate system. In parallel, federal and local “Adopt-a-Highway” programs could enlist citizens, businesses, and municipalities in seeding median strips with native plants.

Specifically, we recommend that:

The administration could pursue these steps using discretionary funds allocated to the Department of Transportation to support competitive-grant programs for infrastructure. The administration could also leverage part of the $110 billion allocated in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act towards infrastructure upgrades, including upgrades focused on climate-change mitigation, resilience, and equity.

Technical Talent Strategies to Build Capacity, Accelerate Priorities, and Drive Change

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.

Improving Environmental Outcomes from Infrastructure by Addressing Permitting Delays

Summary

With the Biden-Harris Administration and Congress together pursuing major infrastructure investments, there is an important question as to how best maximize potential economic and environmental benefits of new infrastructure. Reforming the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is one of the most straightforward and impactful ways to do so. Currently, many major infrastructure projects are delayed due to significant, NEPA-mandated requirements for environmental-impact review. Such delays are frequently exacerbated by vague statutory requirements and exceptional litigation risks. Updated guidance for environmental reviews under NEPA, coupled with strategic judiciary reforms, could expedite infrastructure approval while improving environmental outcomes.

Congress and the Biden-Harris Administration should strive to clarify environmental regulatory requirements and standing for litigation under NEPA. Specific recommended actions include (i) establishing well-defined and transparent processes for public input on governmental environmental-impact statements, (ii) shortening the statute of limitations for litigation under NEPA from two years to 60– 120 days, and (iii) requiring that plaintiffs against governmental records of decision must have previously submitted public input on relevant environmental-impact statements.

A Strategy for Countering Fraudulent Trademark Registrations at the Patent and Trademark Office

Summary

The Biden Administration should enhance the efforts of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to defend against fraudulent trademark registrations. Since 2015, the PTO has struggled to cope with a rising flood of fraudulent trademark applications originating mainly from China. One study indicates that as many as two-thirds of Chinese trademark applications for certain classes of goods include falsified evidence that the applicant is using the mark in commerce in the United States — a requirement for trademark registration under U.S. law. High proportions (up to 40%) of these fraudulent applications survive the PTO’s application-review process and result in fraudulent trademark registrations.

Urgent action is necessary. The PTO reports that the trademark application rate has recently surged to extreme levels, which has doubled the number of applications awaiting examination. Many of these applications likely contain fraudulent claims of use. Identifying and denying fraudulent claims will help ensure that only those businesses that are actually using their trademarks in U.S. commerce benefit from the U.S. trademark system. In addition to creating a fair playing field for companies (both American and foreign) that abide by the rules, countering fraudulent trademark registrations will support American economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic by providing small businesses with robust protection for brand names of new products.

Playbook For Opening Federal Government Data — How Executive & Legislative Leadership Can Help

Summary

Enabling government data to be freely shared and accessed can expedite research and innovation in high-value disciplines, create opportunities for economic development, increase citizen participation in government, and inform decision-making in both public and private sectors. Each day government data remains inaccessible, the public, researchers, and policymakers lose an opportunity to leverage data as a strategic asset to improve social outcomes.

Though federal agencies and policymakers alike support the idea of safely opening their data both to other agencies and to the research community, a substantial fraction of the United States (U.S.) federal government’s safely shareable data is not being shared.

This playbook, compiled based on interviews with current and former government officials, identifies the challenges federal agencies face in 2021 as they work to comply with open data statutes and guidances. More importantly, it offers actionable recommendations for Executive and Congressional leadership to enable federal agencies to prioritize open data.

Paramount among these solutions is the need for the Biden Administration to assign open government data as a 2021 Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) Goal in the President’s Management Agenda (PMA). This goal should revitalize the 2018 CAP Goal: Leveraging Data as a Strategic Asset to improve upon the 2020 U.S. Federal Data Strategy (FDS) and emphasize that open data is a priority for the U.S. Government. The U.S. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) should direct a Deputy CTO to focus solely on fulfilling this 2021 CAP Goal. This Deputy CTO should be a joint appointment with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Absent elevating open data as a top priority in the President’s Agenda, the U.S. risks falling behind internationally. Many nations have surged ahead building smart, prosperous AI-driven societies while the U.S. has failed to unlock its nascent data. If the Biden Administration wants the U.S. to prevail as an international superpower and a global beacon of democracy, it must revitalize its waning open data efforts.