Summary

Wildfires, damages, and deaths are increasing because of unnatural accumulations of wood from outdated forest policies and intensifying heat from human-caused climate change. Preventing catastrophic wildfires requires improved, science-based policies that will shift the government from after-the-fact firefighting to proactive controlled burning. This would improve the lives of Americans and the health of our ecosystems by reducing deaths and damage due to wildfire, restoring damaged forests that naturally require fire, and decreasing the carbon emissions that cause climate change.

This memorandum outlines a policy approach to achieve these outcomes. Executive action will establish a national strategy for proactive fire management. Legislation will ensure revenue neutral implementation by reallocating funds currently used for firefighting to less expensive and more effective fire prevention. Finally, fire managers will increase prescribed burning and use of natural fires, relying on scientific analyses to target areas at greatest risk under climate change.

Summary

The majority of scientific research data in the United States is not shared, meaning that our nation has vast untapped potential to fuel scientific advances. The Biden-Harris Administration can dramatically accelerate scientific progress by (i) requiring scientists who receive federal funding to share their research data and (ii) directing federal research agencies to coordinate to build an International Research Data Commons that allows research data to be easily discovered and shared.

Summary

The next administration should institute a national White House Youth Innovation Showcase similar to the discontinued White House Science Fair to promote and provide new opportunities for increased K–12 participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). As a national platform to amplify and inspire scientific accomplishments by students of all backgrounds, the Showcase will help the next administration strengthen the U.S. STEM talent pipeline and pave the way for future growth in American science and technology industries. The Showcase will also provide an opportunity for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to facilitate public-private collaborations that provide resources for participating students and support regional initiatives to increase diversity in STEM fields. The next administration can use the announcement of the Showcase to reveal its STEM agenda, outlining its policies to support STEM education and a diverse STEM workforce while articulating how its STEM goals will support emerging technology industries and overall economic development.

Summary

With about $130 billion USD, the United States leads the world in federal research and development spending. Most of this spending is distributed by science and technology (S&T) agencies that use internal reviews to identify the best proposals submitted in response to competitive funding opportunities. As stewards of quality scientific research, part of each funding agency’s mission is to ensure fairness, transparency, and integrity in the proposal-review process. Manual proposal review is time-consuming and expensive, costing an estimated $300 million annually at the National Science Foundation alone. Yet at current proposal-success rates (between 5% and 20% for most funding opportunities), a substantial fraction of proposals reviewed are simply not competitive.

The next administration should initiate and execute a plan to advance machine learning to triage scientific proposals. This proposal presents a set of actions and a vision to diffuse machine-learning across science and technology agencies to ultimately become a standard component of proposal review, while improving the efficiency of the funding process without compromising the quality of funded research.

Summary

By bringing wireless communications technology to cars and trucks, we could prevent hundreds of thousands of car crashes every year, saving many lives. We could also reduce commute times, fuel consumption, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and the cost of mobile Internet access. In the longer term, deployment of connected vehicle technology can lay groundwork for better autonomous (self-driving) vehicles. In 2021, the Federal Government should establish a task force to develop a coherent vision through open and inclusive processes, and provide leadership to achieve that vision.

Note: As a working paper, this draft is still under development. The author invites your feedback and comments, which can be sent to info@dayoneproject.org.

Summary

Breastfeeding can provide important health and financial benefits for new families. But insufficient healthcare coverage, underlying medical conditions, and economic obstacles can make breastfeeding difficult or impossible for many parents. In this memo, a three-pronged approach is proposed—facilitated by an interagency collaboration through the National Advisory Council on Maternal, Infant, and Fetal Nutrition—to transform infant nutrition. First, to increase breastfeeding rates in the United States, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) should alter reimbursement policy by reimbursing tele-lactation and nutrition support for all babies covered under Medicaid. Second, the government should partner with the private sector to launch a “Synthesizing Human Milk Grand Innovation Challenge” to catalyze new extramural R&D and innovation efforts to accelerate commercialization of breast-milk alternatives for those that cannot breastfeed. And finally, the government should enact paid parental leave policies to give parents financial flexibility and dedicated time after birth to breastfeed.

Summary

With 1,255 VA medical facilities serving over 9 million veterans each year, the VA — through its Veterans Health Administration — maintains the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States. The VA is a national leader in delivering quality health services and driving innovation in high-priority healthcare issues such as telehealth, precision medicine, suicide prevention, and opioid safety. Yet the VA remains an under-appreciated and underutilized health policy stakeholder, involved in minimal interactions with other federal health agencies and exerting limited influence on the private healthcare system. This is a mistake. The VA is a robust healthcare provider with innovative clinical and operational practices that should be firmly entrenched in the national health policy conversation.

As a remedy, we propose strategically coordinating and consolidating the healthcare innovation, demonstration, and implementation capacities of the VA and HHS in order to ensure care of the highest possible quality across urgent issues. Elevating the VA as a major healthcare policy stakeholder will demonstrate the value of government-run healthcare, promote best practices for building an effective and forward-thinking healthcare system, and advance the VA’s “fourth mission” of supporting national preparedness.

Summary

Pending bipartisan “Cures 2.0” legislation is intended to safely and efficiently modernize healthcare delivery in the wake of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Such modernization is contingent on access to high-quality data to power innovation and guided decision-making. Yet over 80% of Americans feel that the potential risks of companies collecting their data outweigh the benefits. To ensure the success of Cures 2.0, provisions must be added that bolster public trust in how health data are used.

Addressing the largely unregulated activities of data brokers — businesses that collect, sell, and/or license brokered personal information — offers a budget-neutral solution to the public’s crisis of faith in privacy. Building a well-governed health-data ecosystem that the public can trust is essential to improving healthcare in the United States.

Summary

Fragmented federal program structures and laws create enormous barriers to effective coordination across government agencies and levels of government. The next administration can advance the nation’s health and economic well-being and improve the effectiveness of taxpayer investments by creating the enabling conditions for federal, state, and local decision-makers and managers to adopt modern data analytics tools and practices.

Note: As a working paper, this draft is still under development. The author invites your feedback and comments, which can be sent to info@dayoneproject.org.

Summary

Manufacturing is a critical sector for American economic wellbeing. The value chains in the American economy that rely on manufactured goods account for 25% of employment, over 40% of gross domestic product, and almost 80% of research and development spending in the United States. Yet U.S. leadership in manufacturing is eroding, leaving a large part of our working class behind an ever-advancing, upper-middle class. To restore U.S. leadership in manufacturing and rebuild manufacturing as a route to quality jobs for Americans, the federal government should double down on advanced manufacturing nationwide. This proposal outlines a series of steps to leverage existing infrastructure and efforts with the Advanced Manufacturing Institutes to reboot U.S. manufacturing.

Summary

The Biden-Harris Administration should aim to make the United States a world leader in privacy-preserving machine learning (PPML), a collection of new artificial intelligence (AI) techniques capable of providing the benefits of machine learning while minimizing data-privacy concerns. By some estimates, improvements to the speed, accuracy, and scale of AI could augment global GDP by 14%, or $15.7 trillion, by 2030. Yet Americans fear that expansion of AI will have moderate to severe negative consequences. They are particularly concerned about the privacy implications of how companies and agencies use personal data to generate new developments. To assuage these concerns, this proposal recommends targeted initiatives for the Biden-Harris Administration to bring PPML techniques to maturity, including

1. Investing in PPML research and development.
2. Identifying compelling opportunities to apply PPML techniques at the federal level.
3. Creating frameworks and technical standards to facilitate wider deployment of PPML techniques.

Summary

In the 20th century, the costly nature of surveillance made it easier to maintain constitutional guarantees protecting U.S. persons from mass surveillance. In the 21st century, digitization of our everyday lives and communications has sharply reduced surveillance costs—and indeed, changed the nature of surveillance itself.  The core responsibility of any President is to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” but recently unsealed federal court rulings show that intelligence agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) are routinely accessing the digital communications of U.S. persons and otherwise using digital surveillance in ways that violate Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” To fulfill their oath of office, the next president should take concrete steps to reform federal operations with respect to digital surveillance. This is important not only for protecting basic American rights, but also for diplomatic relations with key foreign allies.  Instituting meaningful protections against government surveillance in the United States would have the significant diplomatic benefit of helping reestablish the credibility of American calls for other countries to adhere to high human-rights standards.