In One Word, What Nurtures Creativity in Policymaking?
By Megan Smith
When tackling our most complex policy challenges, traditional approaches simply aren’t enough. That’s why the U.S. government has been integrating people with high TQ—like IQ, but for technology— into expert teams, including at the National Security Council and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The result? Better outcomes. For example, after the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, techies from the Obama administration helped the organization deploy a simple online tool to crowdsource innovations. In two weeks, more than 800 people from 100 countries responded, sharing their solutions in progress for eradicating poverty, achieving gender equality, ensuring clean-water access, and more. The ability to rapidly surface what’s working and accelerate progress against society’s most entrenched problems: That’s the power of integrating TQ.
Megan Smith is U.S. Chief Technology Officer. A version of this article originally appeared in the November/December 2016 issue ofFPmagazine.
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