Grand Challenges: The Election 2020 Project

Protect Electoral Integrity and Enhance Voter Participation

Voting at the federal, state, and local levels is fundamental to American democracy, and citizens must have confidence in electoral systems, processes, and results. Electoral integrity and voter participation are enhanced by (1) ensuring that everyone with a legal right to vote is able to do so; (2) protecting such critical election infrastructure as storage facilities, polling places, and centralized vote tabulation locations; and (3) safeguarding such information and communications technology as voter registration databases, voting machines, and other electoral management systems. The US Constitution stipulates that state governments have the primary role in the conduct of elections.

• Protecting Elections and Enhancing Participation: An Agenda for 2021
  • The One-Page Summary 

Immediate Actions Must Be Taken to Ensure an Accessible, Fair, and Safe Election. In this critical time when threatened by COVID-19, we urge federal, state and local governments to take immediate action to adjust our electoral processes in ways that will allow every eligible citizen to participate in the 2020 elections while ensuring the integrity of the election process and the health of citizens and election workers. 

• Stepping Up to the Challenge

Modernize and Reinvigorate the Public Service

The federal government faces unprecedented workforce challenges that put agency missions – including national and homeland security – at risk. When the public needs government to respond to a crisis, it is essential that government has the ongoing capability and capacity to respond to the crisis. After years of lamenting the problem and doing little to solve it, the next President must act. There truly is no time to wait.

• Modernizing and Reinvigorating the Public Workforce

  • The One-Page Summary

  •  Additional Document: Proposal Executive Order Modernizing and Reinvigorating the Public Workforce and Restoring Honor in Public Service

Develop New Approaches to Public Governance and Engagement

The center of the federal government’s information infrastructure is the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which substantially influences how information is collected, processed, disseminated, and used. Unless action is taken to restructure and reprioritize information policy and use within OMB, the President’s ability to make the bold, significant changes across government that address the nation’s biggest challenges will be severely diminished.

• OMB Information Policy and Use Select Task Force
  • The One-Page Summary

Our country faces a crisis of national confidence in its governance processes.  This crisis has deep roots that have grown silently for several decades.Recent challenges have brought into a clearer focus the roots of our crisis of confidence—including poorly performing institutions and social inequity—that hinder our ability to address challenges in an effective and efficient manner.  

• Engaging  Americans and Increasing Public Trust: An Agenda for 2021 and Beyond
  • The One-Page Summary

The public’s trust in government has been declining for decades.  Restoring Americans’ trust in democratic government will be a long-term effort. This paper, and a companion piece, offer an agenda to help change the way we govern and engage as citizens.  We see this as foundational to longer-term efforts to restore trust in government that has been frayed by performance failures and can, at times, itself become a barrier to effective governance. 

• Enhancing Public Governance: An Agenda for 2021 and Beyond
  • The One-Page Summary

Advance National Interests in a Changing Global Context

Although the United States remains the world’s most powerful nation, the unipolar moment of the early post-Cold War years has been replaced with a much more diffuse international system and a wider array of complex issues. This in turn is unsettled in unparalleled ways by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

• The United States in an Interconnected World: An Agenda for 2021
  • The One-Page Summary

Foster Social Equity

Food insecurity in children is a major challenge in the United States, especially during the current Covid-19 pandemic. Families living in urban centers, rural communities, and tribal areas face insurmountable challenges during our current national health crisis.  Directing resources toward young children is a cost-effective way to improve life chances and is an effective strategy for promoting social equity. 

• Improving Child Well-Being & Reducing Food Insecurity
  • The One-Page Summary

Over the past 60 years, significant progress has been made toward promoting social equity in both the public and the private sectors in the United States. Prominent examples include actions on civil rights, women’s rights, poverty reduction, and gender equality; and this progress has been hard won. But continued progress remains uneven and, in some cases, has regressed. The roller coaster can be partially explained by macro shifts in economic conditions and political priorities. Even in this context, social equity can be advanced by building a strong federal platform that would include increased awareness, rigorous measurement, formal evaluation and consistent application.

• Promoting Social Equity in an Evidence-Based Policy Environment
  • The One-Page Summary

Connect Individuals to Meaningful Work

Today, connecting individuals to meaning work has societal urgency; it is the means by which we can address growing unemployment, disconnection from the current and future economy, and growing income disparities. Not since the Great Depression has the need to facilitate connecting individuals to meaningful work been central to the work of public administration. 

• Providing Meaningful Work for All Americans
  • The One-Page Summary

Build Resilient Communities

The threats to our nation are multiple – climate change and its resulting impacts in serious weather-related natural disasters, our reliance on telecommunications and the Internet that is threatened by cyber criminals and state actors, and the continued threats in future or continued pandemics. The time is now to identify the paths to resilience, which will allow us to withstand these threats.

• Developing and Empowering a National Resilience Agenda in 2021
  • The One-Page Summary

Advance the Nation's Long-Term Health

Recent federal budgeting has been characterized as a series of deals between the Administration and the Congress to raise the spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011 and to lessen the magnitude of the spending controls included in that statute. Adding to the fiscal stress resulting from that additional spending, a package of tax reduction measures was enacted that have had the effect of substantially increasing the size of annual budget deficits.

• Building a Stronger Fiscal Foundation: An Agenda for 2021
  • One-Page Summary

Steward Natural Resources and Address Climate Change

America’s natural resources—including our public lands—are a rich heritage that have made enormous contributions to our economy, health, environment, and society. It is critical that the public, nonprofit, and private sectors effectively steward natural resources and protect the environment for ourselves and future generations. 

• Steward Natural Resources and Address Climate Change: An Agenda for 2021
  • The One-Page Summary

Create Modern Water Systems for Safe and Sustainable Use

Across the nation, America needs collaboration from all levels of government to address the pressing issues of climate change and create new water plans to ensure safe drinking water and efficient distribution of water to industry, agriculture, and the general public. While each aspect of the country’s water systems needs attention, the Administration in 2021 can make an immediate impact on the quality of life of its citizens and foster social equity through improving the public’s access to clean drinking water and sanitation systems. Clean water across every community is essential to improving Americans’ health, for achieving social equity, and for developing the economy.

• Enhancing Water Delivery Systems and Waste Water Systems in the United States: An Agenda for 2021
  • The One-Page Summary

Ensure Data Security and Privacy Rights of Individuals

In the digital age, the American people knowingly and unknowingly produce huge amounts of data on a daily basis, and governments at all levels increasingly rely on digital systems to manage their internal operations and deliver public services. Through widespread e-commerce, ubiquitous GPS maps, and regular social media interactions, the public transmits their sensitive financial, health, and other personal information through online platforms.

• Data Privacy and Security
  • The One-Page Summary

Make Government AI Ready

Artificial Intelligence (AI) allows computerized systems to perform tasks traditionally requiring human intelligence: analytics, decision support, visual perception, and foreign language translation.  AI and Robotics Process Automation (RPA) have the potential to spur economic growth, enhance national security, and improve the quality of life.  In a world of “Big Data” and “Thick Data,” AI tools can process huge amounts of data in seconds, automating tasks that would take days or longer for human beings to perform. The public sector in the United States is at the very beginning of a long-term journey to develop and harness these tools.

• Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda for 2021
  • The One-Page Summary