Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in public administration?
My parents. My mother was a public school teacher and my father was a Methodist minister whose skills included healing fragmented congregations and capital planning. Both clearly chose their careers to be of service to communities. I look at my own public service career as similar to their focus areas too - specifically being of service where needed in situations where tech, data, and people efforts have gotten disjointed, and there's a need for a coordinated "team of teams" approach to work towards a focused, transformational activity together.
Who has been a key mentor or source of inspiration for you?
Two people - one person early on was (and still is) Dr. William Jeffrey, who was working for the Institute for Defense Analyses at the time. Bill was working on classified small satellites back in the mid-1990s, and I worked with him directly on some efforts tied to them. Bill's perspective on the science of systems is something that greatly informed my own thinking.
The second person was (and is) the Honorable Sue Gordon, who was Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and later we collaborated when she was a Commissioner with the Commission on the Geopolitical Impacts of New Technologies and Data I served as Executive Director for from 2020-2021. Sue is both a tremendous leader as well as a champion for positive change, someone with both deep technical expertise and a savviness of how to work issues across multiple organizations.
What advice would you give those interested in pursuing a career in public administration?
I'd opt for the advice in the poem “If—” by Rudyard Kipling. My father gave me a copy of the poem when I was 20, and it’s been with me ever since, including responding to 9/11, time in Afghanistan in 2009, leading digital transform efforts at the FCC, and later helping to counter disinformation with the People-Centered Internet coalition alongside other ventures. If one updates the original 1895 poem for the 21st century, I believe it provides sound guidance for all of us committed to making a positive contribution to the world.
Below is the version I’d share for the 21st century, with the latter two paragraphs being my own additions:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men [and women] doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can serve multiple parties, including the greater good
Though none may ever notice what you endure,
If you can innovate shared solutions so together we could
Choose to make our world prosperous, free, and secure;
If you can embody what “We the People” stands for:
Choices and compromises — both recognized as central,
Then yours is an internet society’s truly great endeavor
Promoting courage, creativity, and ideas from us all.
What would you currently consider the most critical challenge for public administration and why?
Open societies are at a series of crossroads requiring intentional choices for the decade ahead. These choices are forced by new technologies, improvements in data capabilities, and changes in geopolitics globally. While human nature has not changed, the number of people on Earth has changed: up from 1.6 billion people on the planet in 1900, to 2.5 billion in the 1950s, to 7.8 billion in 2020. The number of networked devices on Earth has changed dramatically, with an estimated 50 billion networked devices on the planet by 2021 — up from 5 billion in 2003 and, more recently, only 25 billion in 2015. The amount of data on the planet has changed too with the amount of data in the world estimated to be 44 billion terabytes in 2020. To put this in perspective, this means the ever-growing number of bytes in the “digital universe” is now 40 times more than the number of stars in the observable universe.
The United States needs a framework focused on data, sensemaking, and trust amid the turbulent changes in technologies, data, and geopolitics. The reason why is embodied by two examples. First, the disinformation spread through networks operated by foreign military and intelligence services to sow confusion in the US during the COVID-19 health emergency. As a result of these disinformation attacks and lack of public understanding as to what they represent, the US is a nation divided with regard to the collective sensemaking of the pandemic. This lack of shared sensemaking further increases the mistrust of government, individual agencies, and public health officials. Such mistrust can become a self-fulfilling prophecy triggered by misinformation. A lack of trust likely hampered efforts to contain the virus and minimize its spread - and likely amplified the economic damage caused by the pandemic. These second- and third-order effects were then further exploited by peer- and near-peer competitors intending to prompt further division, polarizing actions, or inactions among all parts of the United States’ open society.
Second, both elections and election security regulations and processes vary significantly from state to state, from county to county, and among varying election authorities. Election information on the specific processes set in law, the policy and regulations implementing elections, and data on election fraud are not well understood by all members of the public. As with COVID-19, the public’s vantage point lends itself to being polarized and susceptible to manipulation by both domestic and foreign actors. The US intelligence community has indicated election interference attempts were made in 2016, 2018, and in 2020 by foreign actors. This controversy is exacerbated by the fact that information gathered by the intelligence community is not fully available to the public, even while the conclusions have been communicated, particularly when those conclusions are interpreted, given credence, or dismissed by various government officials. Actions tied to such a grand strategy framework must be done with the people of the US and like-minded nations, not behind some darkened curtain. A fruitful, shared future depends on public participation across different communities, especially given the increasing polarization in the US and other open societies such as Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
For those who want to learn more, the Academy has started an 8-part series around "AI and the Public Sector." The first video discussing "AI Services to Citizens" should be available for anyone to watch on demand.
What is your favorite cuisine?
I find my favorites have changed over time - twenty years ago, I would have said a really good steak. Ten years ago, I would have said really good Italian cannelloni. Now I would say great sushi. Though I find I still enjoy a great steak too
What is your favorite hobby or activity that you enjoy doing in your free time?
Both hiking and playing the piano - especially improvisation on the piano. However, as a happy father of a six-year-old, all my free time goes to having fun with him in whatever he wants to do.
What was your dream job as a child?
Being an astronaut. I still like to look at the stars and dream.
