Summary

The next administration can achieve significant reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions by helping transition the commercial truck and bus industries to cleaner fuels like electric power and hydrogen. A key role for the Federal Government is to support the build-out of a nationwide network of zero-emission (i.e., alternative) fueling stations, including electric charging and hydrogen fueling stations. Achieving this goal will require federal leadership and significant collaboration with Congress, states, electric utilities, the private sector, and others. The amount of effort and time necessary for this effort means that it must be a day one priority to achieve meaningful progress within four years. A robust network of zero-emission fueling stations for trucks and buses will facilitate a significant and permanent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions, improve air quality for communities nationwide, result in safer highways, and help create of hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

Summary

In the last two decades, the digital marketplace has transformed the majority of the economy and the daily lives of billions of people worldwide. This transformation has delivered great gains to consumers and unlocked whole new technological opportunities for society to thrive. However, amidst these gains, palpable consumer harms and anti-competitive behaviors have also become clearer, and the bottom-up innovative dynamism that ushered forth the digital marketplace is increasingly under threat.

The next administration should establish a White House Taskforce focused on promoting digital market competition. This executive memo supports its establishment on day one of the next Presidential term.

Summary

The Biden-Harris Administration should create a plan for a public, online platform to connect teachers with college students and recent graduates to serve as tutors for K-12 students. One-on-one tutoring is a proven intervention that improves children’s educational competencies and increases students’ self-confidence. Along with supporting students, this platform could provide needed employment for young adults and enable teachers and students together to produce improved educational outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the closure of more than 124,000 schools with the majority of students now learning online. Meanwhile, millions of college students have lost part-time work or are graduating into a historically difficult job market that does not have positions for them to fill. Just as the New Deal created work programs that both created employment and improved our national landscape, our country requires creative solutions that can meet the urgent needs of our time, can be quickly scaled up using modern technology and can adjust to the changing needs dictated by the cycles of the coronavirus.

Summary

The history of the United States is replete with examples of how foundational new technologies can transform the economy and create jobs. From the automobile to the transistor to recombinant DNA, foundational technologies have enabled an expanding middle class and prosperity for millions of Americans. The federal government played a vital role in providing and enabling early market development and applications for these technologies. The United States must rededicate itself to promoting new technologies beyond the research and development phase, if it is to maintain a position of global economic leadership and successful transition to the 21st century economy. 

The U.S. government should create a Foundational Technology Development and Deployment Office within the Department of Commerce that retains flexible financing authority to support market-pull programs for early-stage commercialization of innovative firms. An annual $50 billion authorization, for five years, would spark nascent strategic industries (e.g., new energy production and distribution, advanced manufacturing, synthetic biology, materials, robotics, mobility, space exploration, and next-generation semiconductors), and would be critical to transitioning the U.S. workforce for the 21st century economy. With the success of such an office, the U.S. will cement itself as the global locus of frontier technology industries. The country could also ensure that the economic spillovers from innovation are distributed more equally across socio-economic groups, through the creation of more domestic, advanced manufacturing that creates middle-skill jobs.

Summary

The United States government needs to radically change our national approach to the commercial growth of frontier tech technology companies (e.g., new energy production and distribution, advanced manufacturing, synthetic biology, materials, robotics, mobility, space exploration, and next-generation semiconductors). Frontier tech startups can advance our nation’s future global competitive advantage, providing an opportunity to create high-tech and low-tech jobs and reshore other jobs. Coupling investment in the frontier tech innovation ecosystem with workforce training will allow the U.S. to reinvent and revitalize aspects of our declining or offshored industrial sectors and rebuild the country’s manufacturing capabilities.

The U.S. government should create a $500M fund and an administration authority that allows relevant government agencies to create public-private partnerships. This requires collaboration with private capital providers that utilizes public funding to incentivize private investment in early stage frontier tech companies. The goal is not to subsidize private investment capital in areas where the current free market system is working, but rather to identify those critical national industrial base areas where private capital is insufficiently investing and use matching grants to spur early stage private investment. This early partnership will allow increased access and collaboration between historically siloed government and venture capital innovation ecosystems. For frontier tech companies, whose growth requires both public and private capital, the U.S. must utilize our resources more efficiently to create a globally competitive future economic base.

Summary

Section 230 has been the subject of bipartisan criticism in Washington, with both President Trump and former Vice President Biden arguing that the controversial law should be revoked. As the election has approached, a flurry of legislative proposals have taken aim at the law.

This paper argues that the Biden-Harris administration should take a more targeted approach, focusing on changes that will deter some of the most harmful forms of speech while also preserving the features of tech platforms that are essential to online expression. Specifically, the next administration should modernize federal criminal law for the digital age to prohibit problematic online speech like voter suppression and incitement to riot, require platforms to comply with court orders to remove illegal content, define what it means for a platform to “develop” content, work with platforms on reporting options that will facilitate individual accountability, and incentivize platforms to share data that will inform future product design and policymaking.

Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed systematic vulnerabilities in the way that wildlife movement and emerging infectious diseases are managed at national and international scales. The next administration should take three key steps to address these vulnerabilities in the United States. First, the White House should create a “Task Force on the Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases”. This Task Force would convene agencies with oversight over animal imports, identify necessary policy actions, determine priority research areas, and coordinate a national response strategy. Second, the next president should work with Congress to pass a bill strengthening live- animal import regulations. Third, U.S. agencies should coordinate with international organizations to address global movement of infectious diseases of animals. Together, these actions would reduce the risk of emerging infectious diseases entering the United States, offer greater protection to citizens from zoonotic diseases, and protect American biodiversity from losses due to wildlife diseases.

Summary

The United States lacks the basic information and digital infrastructure required to effectively respond to the emerging climate crisis. While the science and technology needed for sensible climate policy exists, efforts to leverage these technical resources are fragmented and undirected. Actors in the most important sectors of the U.S. economy are making long-term investment decisions based on inaccurate or outdated data as a result. In the past 10 years, for example, homes worth over $11.2 billion have been built in areas that are at risk from sea-level rise. Insurance companies have paid over $25 billion in claims resulting from the 2017 wildfires in California. Better information on environmental impacts of climate change will make it possible to mitigate losses from wildfires, droughts, floods, and extreme weather events. Therefore, the next Administration should invest in Earth observation to directly measure environmental change and greenhouse gas emissions.

The next Administration should also invest in modern data and information technology infrastructure to effectively and efficiently respond to climate change. Such digital infrastructure will make it easier to integrate climate science into decision making. These investments will not only strengthen the domestic economy, but will also reposition the United States as a global leader on one of the most pressing “moonshots” of our time—basic measurements of humanity’s impact on our home planet.

Summary

Addressing inequality, closing achievement gaps, and tackling opportunity gaps in schools requires a highly effective educator in every classroom, a diversified teacher workforce, and an implementation of culturally responsive policies and practices. The 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires State Education Agencies (SEA) to identify and close gaps in equitable access to effective teachers but does not offer specific definitions about what constitutes teacher effectiveness. There is an opportunity to build on state equity plans and collaboratively work with districts, schools, educator preparation programs, and other stakeholders to close the gap in access to effective educators, diversify the workforce, and ensure that the training of educators includes a focus on culturally proficient practices.

The homework gap—which refers to the divide between students who have home access to the technology tools necessary for education versus those without—has existed for decades.

The next administration should maximize the use of all available policy tools to close the homework gap and keep it closed. First, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should update the existing E-rate program to allow schools to ensure home access to broadband for every student and teacher (Pre-K to Grade 12). Second, the FCC, in coordination with the Department of Education, should launch a one-to-one device program for students and teachers (Pre-K to Grade 12). Third, the FCC should incentivize the deployment of “future-proof” networks that are capable of at least 100/100 mbps to meet the needs of distance learning. Fourth and finally, the FCC should provide schools and states clear guidance on the key data needed to assess their homework gap and include this data in a public facing dashboard for broader stakeholder analysis.

Challenge and Opportunity

The homework gap—which refers to the divide between students who have home access to the technology tools necessary for education versus those without—has existed for decades.

At the start of the pandemic, 55 million students were sent home due to school closures and school districts initiated large-scale distance learning efforts. However, an estimated 16 million students and 400,000 teachers lacked access to an adequate home broadband connection or device needed to effectively engage in distance learning. Recent reports find that the homework gap disproportionately impacts lower-income and minority students. For these students in the homework gap, some schools—striving to continue any form of education—began to offer paper packets. Others opted to close early for the year, understanding that if they proceeded with a distance learning program without addressing the homework gap, they would further exacerbate existing inequities in education. The pandemic has forced our nation to see the consequences of the homework gap in real time. Educational and economic experts connect the disruption in access to education to learning loss, which negatively impacts childrens’ long-term economic well-being and the U.S. economy as a whole. Of course, it is worth underlining the fact that a pandemic is not the only reason schools have been closed in recent years as the effects of climate change, including extreme heat, wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, and tornadoes, have all caused extended disruptions to in-school instruction, and will continue to in the future. It is incumbent on policymakers to support school efforts to nimbly shift to distance learning when needed.

While policymakers have made progress on this issue by focusing on connecting and resourcing anchor institutions, such as schools, libraries and other community-based organizations, efforts to date have largely focused on providing students in the homework gap with an alternative public resource outside of the home. While some of these outside supports have their own benefits (e.g. trained staff, access to printers) they force students in need of access to remain outside of the home after school hours. For a family with limited time and resources, shuttling to and from various public computing centers (e.g. libraries, community-based organizations) cuts into work hours and requires additional funds for transportation. Even when these public resources are known to be available, teachers avoid assigning homework that may require heavy use of the internet because of the lack of home access to broadband for students. With years of institutional connectivity investments in place, anchor institutions are well positioned to help close the homework gap at home for teachers and students alike, once and for all.

In Congress, several bills (See HEROES Act and Emergency Educational Connections Act) have been introduced to fund the homework gap and to be administered through the FCC’s E-rate program, indicating that significant support exists to bolster the FCC’s current commitment to ensure connectivity for schools also extends to students with both funding and necessary updates to relevant statutes.

Prioritizing the resilient delivery of education and supporting equitable access to education by closing the homework gap helps to shelter our nation’s students in times of crisis and helps to ensure that all students have an opportunity to thrive when times are calm.

Plan of Action

E-rate

The FCC should update the existing E-rate program to clarify that the program will support schools to ensure home access to broadband for every student and teacher (Pre-K to Grade 12). The E-rate program is well known to schools, libraries and community-based organizations who are already working to address the homework gap. Since the start of the pandemic, states and schools have quickly built programs to try to cover the homework gap for as many students as possible. Without reliable funding these initiatives are at risk of ending, pushing students back into the homework gap. Ensuring reliable funding depends both on Congress doing its part to legislate and commit necessary funds, as well as the FCC to modernize the E-rate program to better serve the educational needs of students and robustly support home broadband access.

Because the FCC has E-Rate as an existing program that schools already work with on connectivity, expanding E-rate to also coordinate funding for student devices is efficient, schoolfriendly, and common-sense policy. Separating the device component of the homework gap to a new program would slow down delivery of support and require schools to navigate additional and a potentially new administrative process. The FCC should collaborate with Department of Education (ED) and Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) to ensure that both the device and connectivity components of a support program meet the needs of students and educators.

Connectivity

The FCC should

• Allow schools to use E-rate funded networks to support innovative programs to deliver home broadband access to students.
• Allow E-rate funds to pay for home broadband subscriptions for students.
• Allow for consortia and bulk purchasing.
• Extend rules around pricing transparency to funds used for home broadband subscription for students and publish pricing information on the FCC website.

Devices

The FCC, in coordination with ED and BIE, should launch a one-to-one device program to

• Ensure access to developmentally appropriate devices for students and teachers (Pre-K to Grade 12), as well as supplying the kind of equipment necessary for high quality STEM learning opportunities and equitable STEM education broadly.
• Develop a joint taskforce with Department of Commerce, ED, and BIE to address supply chain constraints for devices, ensure that the educational market is prioritized, require transparency in pricing and publish pricing information on the FCC website

Infrastructure Upgrades and Deployment

The FCC should incentivize deployment of “future-proof” networks—capable of at least 100/100 mbps— that can meet the needs of distance learning. Distance learning efforts since March have revealed that even if the cost of a monthly broadband subscription could be addressed, many students still lack access to a broadband service capable of delivering a synchronous distance learning program (at least 200/10 mbps). The FCC should

• Ensure that supported networks are able to deliver synchronous distance learning programs where the FCC provides funding for broadband infrastructure deployment.
• Prioritize infrastructure upgrades and deployment in areas that have broadband service of 25/25 mbps or less. Review rules, regulations and guidance from the FCC to encourage community broadband projects and other forms of public/private partnerships to apply for infrastructure funding.
• Encourage open access of funded infrastructure.

Supporting School-level Assessments

To ensure these programs continue to serve schools and students effectively, the FCC should provide schools and states clear guidance on the key data needed to assess the current state of the “Homework Gap” and include this data in a public facing dashboard for broader stakeholder analysis. Schools across the country have already begun to assess the homework gap in their own districts down to the address level and plan to continue these assessments periodically. The Administration should also encourage these efforts by launching a national homework gap mapping project to assess gaps. The FCC should encourage data collection on

• Broadband service availability
• Broadband service speeds
• Quality of broadband service
• Service providers available
• Needs for IT support (for both students/caregivers and teachers)
• Needs for digital literacy support (for both students/caregivers and teachers)
• Location information (while remaining FERPA compliant)
• Demographic information
• Language(s) primarily spoken

Conclusion

The FCC should modernize and expand its approach to closing the homework gap. Students, parents, and teachers need the federal government to step up and commit to a historic effort to ensure poor Internet access is no longer a systemic barrier in our society. Programs must be expanded or developed to ensure that all students and teachers have continuing support for home access to broadband and devices that meet the current and future demands of distance learning. Federal funds used for the expansion of broadband infrastructure must prioritize communities that lack the ability to adequately support distance learning (25/25 mbps or less) and require that any new deployment not only meet today’s demand for distance learning but also be able to evolve to meet future educational requirements. The FCC has an opportunity to work in partnership with schools, cities, and states to develop a recurring, granular, robust, assessment of the homework gap that would provide current, actionable data to support and encourage efforts to keep the gap closed.

Summary

How can public engagement and transparency at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) be improved? Congress has wrestled with this question repeatedly over the last several years. While Congress should continue to pursue legislative reform, the next FCC Chair can immediately improve transparency and public debate on pending agency actions by adding a second monthly meeting of the FCC Commissioners.

This proposal outlines a series of actions to introduce a second monthly meeting of the FCC Commissioners. During the additional meeting, FCC staff should present on major items that might be brought before the Commission for a vote in the next several months. This forward-looking monthly meeting gives the public information needed to provide meaningful input to the Commission prior to its decision-making. The meeting would also improve the Commissioners’ own ability to respond to policy recommendations.

Summary

The next leadership team of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must prioritize restoring the agency’s authority to protect consumers and competition in the broadband market. Under the next administration, FCC leadership should quickly commence a proceeding proposing to reclassify broadband as a “telecommunications service” under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. This reclassification puts the FCC on the firmest legal ground to

1. Restore or strengthen the 2015 network neutrality rules that prohibit providers of broadband Internet access from blocking, throttling, or otherwise discriminating against certain Internet traffic
2. Fund broadband through the FCC’s four universal service programs
3. Protect consumers from fraud and privacy violations
4. Promote broadband competition, and
5. Protect public safety.

FCC leadership should simultaneously work with Congress to develop legislation to codify this authority as law, thereby protecting against potential future reversals.