Summary

To bolster competition, entrepreneurship, and innovation, the next administration should facilitate business-to-business (B2B) data sharing between startups and data-rich, established companies. Asymmetry in the digital economy is an existing market failure that, if left unchecked will continue to intensify to the detriment of consumer choice and our collective security.

Leveling the playing field requires policy to remove barriers to entry created by data advantages and to promote market competition through increased access to big data. Specifically, we propose that the Small Business Administration’s Office of Investment and Innovation establish a data-sharing program that gives entrepreneurs access to the data they need to improve algorithms underpinning their products and services. This would support a thriving and diverse ecosystem of startups that could in time yield valuable new markets and products.

Summary

Tens of billions of taxpayer dollars are lost every year due to improper payments to the federal government. These improper payments arise from agency and claimant errors as well as outright fraud. Data analytics can help identify errors and fraud, but often only identify improper payments after they have already been issued.

Artificial intelligence (AI) in general—and machine learning (ML) in particular (AI/ML)—could substantially improve the accuracy of federal payment systems. The next administration should launch an initiative to integrate AI/ML into federal agencies’ payment processes. As part of this initiative, the federal government should work extensively with non-federal entities—including commercial firms, nonprofits, and academic institutions—to address major enablers and barriers pertaining to applications of AI/ML in federal payment systems. These include the incidence of false positives and negatives, perceived and actual fairness and bias issues, privacy and security concerns, and the use of ML for predicting the likelihood of future errors and fraud.

Summary

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is a critical component of medical care that ensures the safety of both the patient and the provider, as well as the general public. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a global shortage of PPE left many providers insufficiently protected, resulting in infection, increased spread, and even the deaths of providers. To assist, the World Health Organization urged for a 40% increase in production. Treatment of those infected was further hampered by critical shortages of necessary medical supplies such as ventilator parts. The fragility of the supply chain also left civilians without immediate access to PPE, and later widespread use of disposable masks has created a significant environmental hazard. Innovation in PPE has remained stagnant and reliant on single use options which are vulnerable to manufacturing shortcomings and harmful to the environment. This need for improvement also applies directly to other medical equipment, where focus has largely been on single use parts. A collaborative panel and acting body is needed to drive changes forward for the current pandemic, next pandemic, the next critical part shortage, the next wildfire, or even for our agricultural workers who use protective gear every day but still face harmful exposures while ensuring our collective safety.

To drive innovation in PPE and medical parts, there is a need to align regulatory bodies and bridge the gap between regulation and research and development. Collaboration between federal, private, and academic entities is essential. Recently the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and America Makes formed a COVID-19 response public-private partnership which addresses some – but not all – of these issues. In particular, reusable equipment is excluded, despite its numerous benefits such as allowing hospitals to ensure availability of equipment on demand and protecting the broader population.

The next administration should target the shortcomings of PPE and single use medical parts more broadly by creating a cross-agency collaboration center for PPE and medical device innovation that focuses on improving efficacy of PPE; stimulating new designs including reusable options; fostering collaborations for the design, research, and manufacture of improved medical parts; and identifying ways to ramp up manufacturing during times of crises while maintaining optimal safety of such equipment.

Summary

Today’s unprecedented health and economic challenges demand a transformative approach to workforce training. Already, technology that immerses a person in a digital space (virtual reality) or that enhances reality with digital features (augmented reality) is making it possible to prepare workers faster and better for high-quality, high-demand jobs. Government investment in augmented and virtual reality (together known as “XR” technology) will supercharge workforce training, helping Americans across the country get into jobs that benefit them and our society.

The Federal Government should partner with industry to identify and implement “shovel-ready” applications of XR technology. Initial efforts should focus on demonstrating proof of concept by deploying XR technology towards two goals; namely:

• Work through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to train 50,000 nurses over the next four years.
• Work through the Department of Labor (DOL) and Department of Energy (DOE) to train 50,000 solar-energy installers over the next four years.

These goals are readily achievable thanks to existing programmatic infrastructure at agencies with explicit workforce-development missions. Follow-on work could expand applications of XR technology to workforce training in other domains and/or through other agencies.

Summary

Most federal transportation funds are distributed to state and regional transportation entities by a legislatively set formula for different types of transportation. An exception to this rule is the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) Transportation Discretionary Grants program (formerly known as the TIGER program). The BUILD program is extremely flexible, with funding available for any kind of surface-transportation project and any government agency, and it the only transportation program that provides direct capital support to local transportation projects. This flexibility has made the BUILD program incredibly popular, receiving 10 times more applications than can be funded. However, the application process is extensive and can require outside assistance to produce, making the application itself too expensive for some areas to take on, especially considering the high level of competition. USDOT should create a simpler application that most public agencies can manage with internal staff to make the program more universally available to communities of all sizes and levels of capacity.

Summary

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to make decisions about human welfare. Automated decision systems (ADS) administer U.S. social benefits programs—such as unemployment and disability benefits—across local, state, and Federal governments. While ADS have the potential to enable large gains in efficiency, they also run a high risk of reinforcing the class- and race-based inequities of the status quo. Additionally, the use of these systems is not transparent, often leaving individuals with no meaningful recourse after a decision has been made. Individuals may not even know that ADS played a role in the decision-making process.

The Federal Government should take immediate action to promote the transparency and accountability of automated decision systems. Agencies must build internal technical capacity as well as data cultures centered around transparency, accountability, and fairness. The White House should require that agencies using ADS undertake a notice-and-comment process to disclose information about these systems to the public. Finally, in the long-term, Congress must pass comprehensive legislation to implement a single, national standard regulating the use of ADS across sectors and use cases.

COVID-19 is estimated to cost the global economy between $8 to 15 trillion USD¹, but it is not the first such outbreak, nor will it be the last. Since the 1970’s, 70% of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) have been at the human-wildlife boundary², with new infectious diseases emerging at a faster rate than ever before. Further, a common, defining feature of emerging infectious diseases is that they are triggered by anthropogenic changes to the environment. As natural environments degrade (specifically, due to climate change, loss of biodiversity and fragmentation of habitats, or invasive species), they are more likely to harbor infectious diseases and their vectors (animals or plants that transmit a pathogen)².

This memo proposes a series of actions to shift the focus of our existing EID strategies from merely reacting to disease outbreaks – which is economically devastating – to detecting, addressing, and mitigating the major upstream factors that contribute to the emergence of such diseases prior to an outbreak, and would come at orders of magnitude lower cost. Recent analysis of the exponentially rising economic damages from increasing rates of zoonotic disease emergence suggests that strategies to mitigate pandemics would provide a 250:1 to 700:1 return on investment. Even small reductions in the estimated costs of a future pandemic would be substantial. This approach would have greater success at a much lower cost in reducing the impacts of EIDs.

The next administration should

1. launch a strategy aimed at strengthening biosurveillance systems at home and abroad through a global viral weather system for spillover, including harnessing technology and data science to create predictive risk systems;
2. eliminate existing barriers in international development and foreign policy between food security, global health, and environmental sustainability by establishing a coordinator for planetary health;
3. address and alter the incentive structures that facilitate spillover, and create new incentives for investments to reduce the risk for spillover through institutions like the Development Finance Corporation; and
4. through creating the world’s first climate & biodiversity neutral development agency, to ensure that our development investments aren’t facilitating spillover risks.

Challenge and Opportunity

COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic represents the greatest global public health crisis of this generation and, potentially, since the pandemic influenza outbreak of 1918. But it is not the only new pathogen to have threatened humanity in that time, nor will it be the last. Scores of infectious diseases threaten humankind: both familiar ones like malaria, tuberculosis, and neglected tropical diseases, and emerging viruses, fungal, and bacterial infections like Ebola, H5N1 avian flu, Zika, severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. Increasingly, emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) are zoonotic: 60% are shared between wildlife and humans³. Today, the frequency of epidemics is increasing, driven by surging populations, our degradation debt owed to the planet and climate, wildlife trafficking, and globalized trade and travel.

As we have seen with COVID-19, in a thoroughly interconnected world, those of us in developed economies cannot afford to ignore the developing world if we are concerned about disease outbreaks. The failure to address Covid-19 everywhere affects our ability to address it anywhere. Not enough is known about the trajectory of the transmission of COVID-19 in the Global South. Many developing countries, especially in rural communities, are limited in their ability to test and isolate patients due to under-funded healthcare systems that lack medical staff, training, laboratories, reagents, equipment, and trained personnel. They lack the resources and bio-surveillance capacity to identify spillover events, and outbreaks even with large mortality may go undiagnosed when their symptoms mimic other diseases.¹ Moreover, EIDs can exacerbate chaos in failed and failing states, and failed states make ready homes for pandemics.⁴ COVID-19 in fact may have moved between 88-115 million people back into extreme poverty, and potentially 150 million by 2021, setting back efforts to end extreme poverty by 3 years.⁵ This is why the response to COVID-19, and the next pandemics, are not just health problems, but need be framed within a larger development and conservation context that requires investments in restructuring how we address the wicked problems facing our country and our planet.

Accordingly, as we respond to this outbreak, it is even more important to think about how we prevent the next one. The U.S. has invested significant resources to prepare for, monitor, and respond to outbreaks of existing infectious diseases. Although this investment has been insufficient as we have seen in COVID-19, there is a bigger issue: How do we avoid the next 10 pandemics? These “downstream” responses fail to address the origination of novel emerging infectious diseases, i.e. how such diseases initially arise, or the factors that accelerate their spread. We need to focus on factors that greatly contribute to disease emergence: our food systems & supply chains, environmental degradation, climate change, and the movement and trade of wildlife and wildlife products.

Much of the world’s population lives in close proximity to animals and natural environments; such proximity translates into greater disease risks. More than half of the 1,407 recognized infectious diseases are shared between humans and wildlife (“zoonotic”); such zoonotic pathogens are twice as likely to be emerging or reemerging, than are nonzoonotic pathogens. Since the 1970’s, 75% of EIDs have been at the human-wildlife boundary, with new infectious diseases emerging at a faster rate than ever before.⁶ Further, a common, defining feature of emerging infectious diseases is that they are triggered by anthropogenic changes to the environment. As natural environments degrade (specifically, due to climate change, loss of biodiversity and fragmentation of habitats, or invasive species), they are more likely to harbor infectious diseases and their vectors (animals or plants that transmit a pathogen). Understanding and addressing how such environmental changes may affect the spread of disease allows us to mitigate or even prevent outbreaks in the future.

It would be substantially more cost effective, efficient, and safer to prevent these diseases from initial emergence and spread. According to Dobson et al, the estimated cost difference of prevention would be $22.0 to $31.2 billion, compared to the expected costs of COVID-19 of $8.1 to $15.8 trillion, ranging from a 250:1 to 700:1 difference of costs. There are additional ancillary benefits to these upstream approaches, which include ecosystem services and reduced CO2 emissions.

COVID-19 presents us with an unprecedented opportunity to create a world where we anticipate, plan for, and mitigate pandemics before they happen, and even prevent them from emergence. We can address the challenge of EIDs by building the capacity and infrastructure needed to prevent future outbreaks and through addressing the root causes of EIDs. This requires us eliminate the barriers that separate global health programming from investments that address the root causes of environmental degradation, food insecurity, public health, and economic insecurity. It is also an extraordinary opportunity to take a problem-oriented approach to solving conservation & development problems, rather than a disciplinary one, and think about how we create new pathways for industrialization that meet the exigencies of climate change and sustainability.

Climate Change

Climate change expands the range and impact of pathogens, facilitating the spread of EIDs. Warmer temperatures enable pathogens and their vectors to survive and sometimes thrive in habitats previously outside of their tolerance range. It also serves to change weather patterns (like storms or rainfall) that lead to more standing water, and increase the population of mosquitos or other vectors. Climate change may also alter the range and fitness of host predators or competitors that would have limited spread of vectors under previous conditions. Vectors may also be active for longer periods of time during the day (e.g., mosquitos may have more opportunities to transmit a disease because they have more times to bite). Tropical diseases such as malaria, cholera, yellow fever, now reach previously unexposed human populations in South America, Central Africa, and Asia due to the spread of their vectors to new regions. Dengue is expected to reach New York and Washington DC by 2080.

Environmental Degradation and Disease Risk

The destruction and degradation of natural habitats and the stress and defaunation of species communities within them, facilitates the emergence of infectious diseases by increasing the opportunities for disease spread and spillover. 

First, reduced species diversity increases the relative commonness of those species that incubate, carry, and help spread a pathogen (“reservoirs”), increasing disease prevalence. Further, predators are the first to disappear after habitat degradation; the lack of a “regulatory” agent leads to an increase in reservoirs, increasing opportunities for transmission as with Lyme disease in the Eastern U.S. Lower resources could mean less competitors, another regulatory agent. Environmental degradation may also increase shedding rates by stressing animals, encouraging the spread of the disease. Deforestation and degradation of habitats may also facilitate the spread of infectious disease by increasing habitat that favors disease vectors, such as mosquitos (rice paddies around forest edges), or edge habitat that favors invasions by invasive species.

Finally, changes in landscape geometry and makeup, coupled with changes in density in domesticated and wild species, may draw together formerly isolated populations, increasing spillover risks to humans and domesticated animals from wildlife populations, and vice versa. Tropical forest edges create spillover opportunities for novel human viruses, as humans and their livestock are more likely to come into contact with wildlife when more than 25% of the original forest cover is lost.⁷ Environmental degradation, driven by forestry, mining, and agriculture, increases opportunities for hunting wildlife, and the potential for spillover.

Invasive Species, Wildlife Trade, Pet Trade, and Food Systems

The invasion of foreign species (pathogens, vectors, and reservoirs) into novel habitats also spreads infectious disease. Such introductions may happen due to increasing globalization of industry, trade, and tourism; through the pet trade (as what happened with the U.S. outbreak of Monkeypox), through legal or illegal trade in wildlife and wildlife products; or through habitat changes that facilitate invasions by alien plants or animals. Invasive alien species may carry disease into populations previously unexposed to those pathogens. Invasive species may also destroy native species or their food supplies, creating an unbalanced ecosystem more vulnerable to disease. As SARS-COV-2 has shown us, wildlife trade is especially prone to spillover, as the capture, handling, slaughter, and ingestion of wildlife can lead to the transfer of a pathogen from wildlife to humans. Ebola is thought to have arisen due to bushmeat hunting of bats and nonhuman primates; HIV is thought to have arisen due to bushmeat hunting of chimpanzees; MERS is thought to have arisen due to animal husbandry (camels).

Plan of Action

Currently, U.S. policies to combat and address EIDs are focused on costly responses to individual outbreaks, rather than reducing the chance for an outbreak to occur. Artificial barriers between public health responses, food security, animal health, biodiversity conservation, and national security also exacerbate the problem. On the international level, there is a total failure to standardize disease data, link it with environmental change, and assess risks despite scientific evidence linking disease emergence and environmental change. Confronting EIDs more effectively and efficiently requires a multifaceted and multidisciplinary approach. To better understand and address the threat posed by EIDs and develop more effective responses to this threat, this memo recommends the following steps:

Establish a biosurveillance system in the most biodiverse places

A first line of defense against emerging zoonotic viruses is dependent on countries having adequate capacities for monitoring and reducing spillover of viruses from wildlife to people (either directly or through intermediate animals such as livestock). Existing biosurveillance efforts are typically not sufficiently robust, as evidenced most-recently by the spillover of SARS-CoV-2 from animals to people in Wuhan, China.

Through massively better biosurveillance of targeted pathogens through new technologies, including low cost molecular testing to be able to understand opportunities for spillover in the United States, as well as in the Amazon Basin, Wallacea, and the Congo Basin, we can establish a global, integrated monitoring network that forms the basis of an actionable biosurveillance system. Key will be increasing world class lab capacity in the places where spillover is more likely to happen and development of new low cost technologies that can help identify new pathogens, and their reservoirs in situ. With this networked of networked devices, patterns of emergence and spread can also be monitored in near real-time, producing transformative data on the epidemiological and ecological progression of novel pathogens. However, this will require setting up a modern surveillance network in partnership with other health organizations with a large foot print on the ground. These include the CDC, FHI360, WCS, Veterinarians without Borders, and the World Health Organization. It will also require the US to create a Field ParaVets Program, a rapid training program for rapid response and paraveterinarian specialists that would be focused on one-health surveillance and outbreak detection.

Utilizing big data, machine learning, and models from epidemiology, ecology, and evolution, we can begin to develop the integrated frameworks and analytical capacity that will enable a global forecasting system for future pandemics and EIDs. Much like the Global Weather Services enterprise, we can create a system that provides information and services to front-line actors, governments, health agencies, civil society, and front-line communities that enables them to anticipate and respond to the emergence of new diseases. Furthermore, because of the integrated nature of such a Global Biosurveillance System, capitalizing on the ecological and evolutionary understanding described above, we can create actionable insights that will allow conservationists, public health officials, food system agents, and others to move upstream from the emergence of these novel pathogens to turn off the underlying drivers.

Implementation

Creating a Global Viral Intelligence Service for Predicting Pathogen Spillovers. We need a global surveillance network for emerging infectious diseases to gather information on the incidence of disease in populations of wildlife, humans, and domesticated animals, and agriculture, at every stage of the trade supply chain beginning with free-ranging populations and extending to wildlife farms, confiscated animals being smuggled, and animals legally being shipped at points of export, and create adaptive “weather” maps of the risks of disease transmission. This service, would be based within the NIH, and work closely with the Centers for Disease Control, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch, and the USGS National Wildlife Health Center 

Improving Monitoring and Prevention Internationally. The US must take a leadership role to strengthen efforts by UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), UNDP, UNEP, and the World Health Organization, to develop a systematic approach for early detection and rapid response to identify and control emerging infectious disease of human, wildlife, and domesticated animals, including delineating risks from wildlife trade, environmental degradation, and climate change. Through USAID, in partnership with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and the Navy Medical Research Centers in Egypt, Lima, and Singapore, the US would develop new funding and technical assistant programs for building disease monitoring lab activity and personnel, building on USAID’s IDENTIFY program, previous programs including PREDICT, PREVENT, IDENTIFY, RESPOND, and DTRA’s Cooperative Biological Engagement Program.

Expansion of Existing Authorities to Defend our Borders. The new administration should expand the mission of APHIS to address not only disease issues that affect agricultural animals but also those associated with zoonotic and wildlife diseases, and increased focus on disease prevention, preparedness, detection, and early response activities. We may give CDC the authority to use pre-import screening, such as a process that assesses disease risk by species and country and determines allowable imports on the basis of that assessment. We may also amend the Lacey Act to strengthen the USFWS’s ability to identify, designate and stop injurious species, including dangerous pathogens from entering the United States, and from moving in interstate commerce if and when they arrive here.

Breaking down barriers between food security, global health, and sustainability

It is clear that how we may address pandemics requires us to break down the barriers – such as the health accounts in USAID – that limit opportunities to take a transdisciplinary approach to how we may address pandemics. Emerging pathogens are not limited to human health or wildlife, but cross over into the disruptive pests and pathogens that address the crops we grow, the food we store, and ecosystems we value. Our solutions to EIDs require us to think more broadly than global health, but think about health systems, food safety and security, wildlife trade, and environmental change.

Implementation

Address the Drivers of Pandemic Emergence. Work with Congress to allow for greater multisectoral programming within USAID to address the underlying drivers of extinction. Proactive efforts that minimize risk of emerging diseases are less costly than the economic and mortality costs of responding to these pathogens once they have emerged. Harnessing intelligence from the Global Viral Intelligence Service, the US should also fund programs to mitigate the underlying factors that facilitate disease emergence, including addressing food systems and global production of feed, food, materials, and their supply chains, and environmental degradation. This includes looking at how we may reduce risk through (1) protecting habitats, conserving biodiversity, reducing deforestation, restoring degraded habitat; (2) prioritizing international transdisciplinary research collaborations under the Ecohealth, OneHealth, and Planetary Health Frameworks; and (3) using ecological interventions to reduce human disease burdens and pandemic risk through experimental management and conservation.

Encourage a whole of government approach through the leadership of the National Security Council. The National Security Council should coordinate both international and domestic approaches to take a multi-disciplinary approach to addressing the upstream factors of pandemics, working in consultation with PCAST, NSTC, CEQ, OSTP, and OMB, and through an interagency process with representation from State, USAID, DFC, DOD, Treasury, HHS, NOAA, NASA, USGS, ODNI, and other relevant federal agencies, through an interagency working group.

Changing the incentives that drive spillover

Regardless of the exact determinants of the origin of COVID-19, this pandemic is primarily due to human behavior. Wildlife wet markets bring together an array of wild animals, in stressful and confined conditions, that would not normally occur. This creates an environment conducive to the spread of disease. Consumption of these wild animals (such as bats, pangolins, and even primates) puts human health at risk by providing an opportunity for the virus to potentially spillover from non-human animals to humans. We need to change the incentives for human behavior, and facilitate that change through modernization of the food system, animal husbandry, and supply chains, and increasing the sustainability of systems to reduce the demand for wildlife products that produce pandemics and decimate wild populations.

Creating new technological systems to better protect the forests tied to direct payments for conservation systems & monitoring (whose value is based on spillover risks & biodiversity value) to change behavior for those at greatest risk of spillover, and who have few other economic choices. Some early attempts exist to change behavior around wildlife trade, such as campaigns in China to reduce the consumption of shark fin soup, that can serve as models for ways to leverage new technologies and behavioral science approaches (gamification, peer networks, positive and negative reinforcement, etc.) to reduce demand for wildlife products. This, coupled with market signals that incentivize proper behavior could produce significant benefit.

Implementation

End Implicit and Explicit Subsidies that Drive Spillover at home and abroad. Many threats to planetary health, including emerging infectious diseases, are unwittingly subsidized and facilitated by the government. These subsidies include those in water use, energy, agriculture, transportation, fisheries, land management, and trade. Ending subsidies domestically may not only support planetary health, but free up revenue to the program. Internationally, subsidies violate the underlying principles of global trade through the World Trade Organization and allow for countervailing measures. Further, parties to the WTO may implement trade related measures at protecting the environment. These would serve to benefit the sustainability of US industry and make our domestic and better regulated products more competitive.

Create new Financial Innovations & Encouraging Investment for Preventing Pandemics. Financial innovations are a powerful class of behavioral incentives. We should consider innovations such as Advanced Market Commitments, Direct Payments for Conservation, Social Impact Bonds & Direct Payments, Franchise Models, and Nutrient and Carbon Trading, coupled with mechanisms such as the Development Credit Authority within the new Development Finance Institution which guarantees up to 50% of “first loss” of an investment to encourage the development of new capital to support Planetary Health and addressing emerging infectious diseases. The SEC could also require companies to report measures on their environmental sustainability, and potential risk from environmental degradation, climate change or pollution on their operations.

Creating a climate & biodiversity neutral development agency

Climate change and biodiversity degradation will be a major driver of the spread of EIDs. To mitigate what is an increasing threat to human security, USAID needs to ensure that its entire portfolio of activities, do not on average, worsen climate change or undermine biodiversity loss. This requires us to think beyond just funding sporadic climate and conservation programs, but thinking about the systematic impact of the Agency’s activities on climate change, and ensuring that US development investments are generating a net impact of zero emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, and are not driving species defaunation and extinction. Such an approach supports the SDGs, and will allow for countries to find new pathways to industrialization and development. It will enable the Agency to stop contributing to the very problems it is trying to solve such as weather-related humanitarian crises, livelihood re-engineering due to decreasing water levels, and conflict over arable land.

Climate & biodiversity neutrality does not detract from other development goals, such as economic growth. While the United States should invest heavily in encouraging sustainable economic growth –and it is in the environment’s interest to do so — it is imperative that we act in a way that does not worsen the effects of climate change or the extinction crisis. Future economic growth must work to reduce rather than expand emissions of greenhouse gases. Working towards climate & biodiversity neutrality would benefit the people assisted by USAID, as well as the environment. Certain USAID programs are inherently emissions-intensive, such as responding to disasters or building roads. Achieving climate & biodiversity neutrality across the entire basket of USAID foreign assistance activities allows development activities in one country that reduce emissions (such as forestry, biodiversity conservation, and renewable energy) to balance activities in other countries that increase emissions (humanitarian aid missions, roadbuilding). USAID can become, once again, the most forward-thinking development agency, shining as an innovative example among other donor organizations throughout the world.

Implementation

Create an annual estimate, through the annual budget process, of the approximate carbon impact of USAID programs, and create an office within the Policy Bureau to carry out this analysis. This office will lead a Climate Neutral Task Force (CNTF), with representatives from each Washington Bureau and, initially, those Missions that choose to participate in a comprehensive assessment of both their programs and operations. Bureaus will be represented by environment officers and experts in the key sectors — infrastructure & engineering, energy, agriculture, water, and natural resources, and our own operational management. One year appears a reasonable estimate for how long it would take for the CNTF to accomplish the work described in the proposal. We recommend undertaking the emissions assessment process in several self-selected, pilot Missions, in the first year, and then expand to the whole Agency in the next year.

Summary

Never before have so many children in America used so much educational technology, and never before has it been so important to ensure that these technologies are secure. Currently, however, school administrators are overburdened with complex security considerations that make it challenging for them to keep student data secure. The educational technologies now common in America’s physical and virtual classrooms should meet security standards designed to protect its students. As a civil rights agency, the Department of Education has a responsibility to lead a coordinated approach to ensuring a baseline of security for all students in the American education system.

This policy initiative will support America’s students and schools at a time when educational experiences—and student information—are increasingly online and vulnerable to exploitation. The plan of action outlined below includes a new Department of Education educational technology security rule, training support for schools, a voluntary technology self-certification system, an online registry of certified technologies to help grow a secure educational technology market, and processes for industry support and collaboration in this work. Combined, these efforts will create a safer digital learning environment for the nation’s students and a more robust educational technology marketplace.

Summary

To prevent another medical supply chain breakdown like the one experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Government must create an emergency response plan to activate domestic, local medical supply manufacturing. A national network of small-to-mid-size manufacturers and prototyping labs — a U.S. Prototyping and Manufacturing Reserve — should be formalized and incentivized to act as first responders for emergency innovation and medical supply manufacturing needs.

To properly equip the Reserve, the Federal Government should build a comprehensive library of open source medical and emergency supply “blueprints” — a U.S. Digital Stockpile — that consists of manufacturing requirements to enable distributed local emergency production. Combined, these new national security resources will facilitate rapid local response to both regional disasters and international supply chain disruptions.

Summary

The next administration should capitalize on recent interest in cycling spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic by committing to triple the share of commutes made by bicycle from 0.5% in 2019¹ to 1.5% by 2024. This goal is achievable through policies that make cycling safer and more affordable.

Other than walking, cycling is the least pollutive mode of transportation. Led by the Department of Transportation (USDOT), the next administration can encourage a nationwide shift from driving to cycling by adjusting various policies related to cost, road design, and automobile safety. USDOT can further encourage biking by holding states accountable for reductions in automobile vehicle miles traveled (VMT), greenhouse-gas emissions (GHG) from transportation, and traffic fatalities among cyclists and pedestrians.

Challenge and Opportunity

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted many Americans to begin riding bicycles and electric bicycles (e-bikes) in order to exercise, enjoy the outdoors, and maintain physical distancing while traveling. Cities including Los Angeles and Houston have seen significant upticks in cycling in 2020, while bikeshare systems in Las Vegas, Chicago and New York set new ridership records. A sustained move toward cycling could reduce GHG emissions from transportation, the sector that is the largest source of GHG emissions in the United States. Pedal bikes produce less than 1/15 as much GHG/mile as taxis or ridehailing services (e.g., Uber and Lyft), and around 1/10 as much a private electric automobile. Lifecycle emissions from bikes and bikeshare are nearly as low as pedal bikes, and e-bikes in particular could replace short automobile trips in urban areas.

These data indicate that tripling the share of commutes made by bike from 0.5% today to 1.5% could, by displacing driving, reduce GHG emissions by the equivalent of 3.8 billion car trips annually. A mode shift toward biking would also improve health and reduce urban congestion (because a bike requires less street space than an automobile).²

However, there is no guarantee that the current uptick in cycling will endure. Prior “bike booms” in the United States—in the 1890s, the mid-1930s, and the early 1970s—all ultimately faded. 

Part of the challenge is that the federal government has historically done little to encourage biking. In fact, federal policies frequently impede cycling by making the activity more dangerous, especially as automobiles have grown heavier and taller (e.g., guidance that speed limits be set according to the “85th percent rule,” which pushes them higher). From 2009 to 2018, cyclist fatalities grew 38% to 1,100 annually, more than eight times the number of Americans killed from rail collisions, to which USDOT allocated $245 million in FY 2020. 

By implementing policies that make cycling safer and cheaper the federal government can pave the way for sustained growth.

Plan of Action

The next administration should take immediate steps to reduce the risk of injury or death to cyclists while reducing the financial cost of cycling. The next administration should also incentivize transportation projects that reduce VMT and GHG emissions, which will boost proposals that encourage biking. Recommended actions are presented below.

Safety 

Under the next administration, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) should implement the following specific measures to reduce biking deaths and injuries:

• Direct states to share locations of all traffic collisions resulting in death or serious injury, flagging those involving cyclists and pedestrians. NHTSA and FHWA should use the data to create annual High Injury Network maps. 
• Direct states to submit up-to-date maps of all bicycle infrastructure, including protected and unprotected bicycle lanes. USDOT field offices should audit this information, and states should receive annual grades for their efforts to reduce pedestrian and cyclist crashes. 
• NHTSA should update the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) to include metrics such as serious injuries and the presence of protected or unprotected biking infrastructure. 
• NHTSA should publish revisions to the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) that credit automakers for vehicles that minimize risk to vulnerable pedestrians and cyclists, through crash-avoidance technologies as well as through designs reducing likelihood of serious injury or death in the event of a collision. 
• FHWA should issue guidance to states prohibiting them from setting “negative safety goals” that lead to annual increases in pedestrian and cyclist fatalities that are treated as successes. 
• FHWA should eliminate the outdated “85th percentile rule” as a recommendation in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD).
• FHWA should issue guidance encouraging the use of federal funds on temporary “popup” projects designed as pilots for future infrastructure investments. 
• USDOT should require states to demonstrate provision of access and safe accommodation for non-motorized users (i.e., cyclists and pedestrians).

Affordability 

The next administration should take the following actions to make biking more affordable to all Americans: 

• The U.S. Trade Representative should make bicycle and bicycle components exempt from Section 301 tariffs, which would reduce the cost of importing items like children’s bikes and lithium batteries from China. This would reduce the cost to consumers of purchasing and maintaining a bicycle as well as the cost to businesses and cities of operating public bikeshare services. 
• The administration should support passage of H.R. 7330, which would make bicycle and bikeshare expenses eligible for pre-tax commuter benefits. The administration should also support revising IRS 30D, the Plug-In Electric Drive Vehicle Credit, to extend subsidies to e-bikes as well as electric automobiles.

Other actions 

The next administration should take the following additional actions to further encourage a conducive environment for biking at the state level: 

• Re-establish GHG reduction as a performance measure for transportation and issue annual ratings of state performance. 
• Revise the Surface Transportation Block Grant Program to include goals of reducing VMT. 
• Issue USDOT guidance on Section 109 of the US Code pertaining to federal-aid highways that clarifies that maintenance projects must demonstrate access for all transportation modes (e.g., protective infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians). 
• Support the language in H.R. 2 that the FHWA adopt “fix it first” principles favoring road maintenance over new construction.

Conclusion

Locking in the sharp growth in cycling spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic could enable the American transportation network to become safer, cleaner, and more efficient, especially in urban areas. The next administration should capitalize on this opportunity through a suite of complementary actions that make biking less dangerous and more affordable. These actions will encourage those who recently began cycling to continue, while compelling millions of additional Americans to begin using a bicycle in place of an automobile.

In his posthumous op-ed, House Representative John Lewis wrote, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act,” and challenged all Americans to “do [their] part to help build…a nation and world society at peace with itself.” In our generation, where technology is integrated into virtually every aspect of public and private life, preserving the American democracy must involve ensuring that digital tools and platforms are employed in service of our communities, facilitating the productive and equitable exchange of information and opportunity, rather than being hijacked to sow misinformation and discord. In recent months, we have observed ample examples of both cases. Young Americans are using technology to raise awareness of ongoing racial justice issues, which have led to significant policy shifts. However, at the same time, members of the public are sharing falsehoods about the COVID-19 global pandemic, costing lives and extending economic devastation.

To ensure that upcoming generations can positively leverage online spaces and rise above the ever-present call to division, digital citizenship—encompassing the critical competencies to discern fact from fiction, navigate relationships, and use technology to champion change—must be fostered, beginning in our schools where students already engage with technology regularly. The work to develop digital citizens and future leaders is underway in several states and districts, and there exists numerous ways that the federal government can supply further momentum—setting a national vision around digital citizenship, building the capacity of educators, and strategically investing necessary funds.

Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the crucial need for science to inform policy. However, the science-policy interface has a broader history of systemic challenges spanning sectors, from climate, to energy, to water resources, to cybersecurity and beyond. The near-term policy window created by the pandemic offers an ideal time to act while the attention of policymakers and the public is focused on the key role of science in policy. There are five key areas of action to create meaningful progress in carving improved pathways for science advice:

1. Sharpening the focus of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policy Act (P.L. 115-435) to define scientific knowledge as a key subset of “evidence” and develop formal structures for non-federal academic experts to participate in the development of the required agency learning agendas.
2. Widening the role of Federally-Funded Research and Development Centers., especially the Science and Technology Policy Institute.
3. Leveraging the Intergovernmental Personnel Agreement (IPA) to bring more non-federal subject matter experts into key government positions.
4. Reducing administrative barriers to the establishment of Federal Advisory Committees under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
5. Revising the Broader Impacts Requirements for National Science Foundation grantees to include more direct pathways for the outputs of scientific research to reach decision-makers.