Foreword

New America and the Ford Foundation recognized a unique and timely opportunity to create a fellowship exchange initiative between public interest technology practitioners in India and the United States. The 2019 exchange brought Fellows from India to the United States and sent Fellows to India from the United States with the aim of enabling Fellows from both countries to better harness technology to improve the lives of their citizens. The Fellows were technology practitioners from industry, government, and civil society as well as analysts of technology from academia and the media, and governmental regulators.

Too often, technical experts who understand the details of how a technology works lack the expertise or critical distance necessary to effectively evaluate, and thoughtfully shape, the policy impact of their work. Developing a better understanding of technology’s impact is a precondition for formulating effective and just public policy.

Each Fellow we selected possessed unique experience and expertise, which enabled them to devise novel technological solutions to public problems, and to analyze the effects of technology and of technology policy in new ways over the course of their eight-week research program.

Our first batch of applicants were diverse in talent, experience, education, and physical location. 27 percent of our applicants were female, 95 percent had a degree beyond a Bachelor’s or equivalent, and 62 percent of applicants came from India. Most candidates put forward potential projects in technology policy, privacy, blockchain, future of work, and biometrics. Through a robust selection process, our final cohort consisted of 10 Fellows, four women and six men, and seven were from India and three were U.S.-based.

We had a series of goals for this cohort:

1. To increase knowledge and awareness of technology policy challenges and effective technological solutions to social problems in India and the United States
2. To increase knowledge and awareness in India and the United States of both the successes and failures of initiatives to apply data science to public problems
3. To increase awareness within the United States and India of successful local and regional technological tools addressing public policy challenges

Our 2019 cohort's projects, as you’ll see in the following research papers, focused on a wide range of issues: Open data and public transit in India; civic engagement through technology and gamification; blockchain-based solutions used for water management; civilian drones and the role that India and the United States have in shaping new drone applications; privacy in drone systems and evaluating the implications of this technology on personal data; policy and standards relating to the Indian Parliament’s recordkeeping and legislative process; designing effective regulatory frameworks for blockchain; the politics and ethics of machine learning; data sharing between India and the United States for law enforcement purposes and the underlying privacy standards for access to this electronic data; and the Aadhaar program in India.

Our approach to the fellowship was extremely hands-on and tailored to the unique backgrounds of our cohort. We began with one week of programming at the start of the fellowship in New Delhi, which included a full-day at the Ford Foundation with moderated discussions about the Fellows’ work, as well as keynote conversations. A second day was held at a partner organization—the Observer Research Foundation—with high-level industry speakers from organizations such as Facebook, Centre for Policy Research, The World Bank, Dalberg, and Mozilla.

Through a series of activities during the research exchange period, we supported the formation of a cohesive spirit of shared enterprise among the Fellows in the cohort in a way that ensured that the whole was more than the sum of the individual parts. We hosted events where the cohort met as a group with leading policymakers, experts and analysts working on public policy issues, and we organized individual meetings and interviews between Fellows and experts in the United States and India who could help them make progress on their projects.

The second week of full programming for all 10 Fellows took place at the end of the fellowship in Washington, D.C. Events included a full-day program for all Fellows to highlight their research findings on moderated panel discussions at New America with industry experts. In addition to the moderated discussions with Fellows, invited speakers included U.S.-based policy experts for keynote conversations. Fellows also participated in research workshops, and high-level meetings.

Further, there were industry experts across New America, representing programs and initiatives (Blockchain Trust Accelerator, Cybersecurity Initiative, Future of Property Rights, International Security, Open Technology Institute, Ranking Digital Rights, Political Reform, Public Interest Technology, and Resource Security) that were available to meet with the cohort of Fellows throughout the research period, further building their professional network.

In addition to their research papers, Fellows wrote articles, participated on panels, and took advantage of other media opportunities, and had meetings with technologists and policymakers in both countries.

We hope that you will enjoy reading their research papers, and believe that this anthology of work will prove helpful to India and U.S. policymakers and researchers alike.

Peter Bergen, Vice President for Global Studies & Fellows, New America