Event Details:

Join us for an engaging conversation with Jennifer Pahlka (Code for America), Ingrid Pappel (Tallinn University of Technology), and Andrew Grotto (Stanford University) on

Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

Just when we most need our government to work – to decarbonize our infrastructure and economy, to help the vulnerable through a pandemic, to defend ourselves against global threats – it is faltering. Government at all levels has limped into the digital age, offering online services that can feel even more cumbersome than the paperwork that preceded them and widening the gap between the policy outcomes we intend and what we get.

But it’s not more money or more tech we need. Government is hamstrung by a rigid, industrial-era culture, in which elites dictate policy from on high, disconnected from and too often disdainful of the details of implementation. Lofty goals morph unrecognizably as they cascade through a complex hierarchy. But there is an approach taking hold that keeps pace with today’s world and reclaims government for the people it is supposed to serve. Jennifer Pahlka shows why we must stop trying to move the government we have today onto new technology and instead consider what it would mean to truly recode American government.

SPEAKER: Jennifer Pahlka is the author of Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better. She founded Code for America in 2010 and led the organization for ten years. In 2013, she took a leave of absence to serve as U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer under President Obama and helped found the United States Digital Service. She served on the Defense Innovation Board under Presidents Obama and Trump. At the start of the pandemic, she also co-founded United States Digital Response, which helps government meet the needs of the public with volunteer tech support. She received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and was named by Wired as one of the 25 people who has most shaped the past 25 years. Jennifer is a graduate of Yale University.

DISCUSSANT: Ingrid Pappel is the 2023 Global Digital Governance Fellow at Stanford University, Associate Professor at the Department of Software Science and Vice-Dean for Master's studies at the School of IT, Tallinn University of Technology. She has more than 20 years of experience in different development projects related to e-governance solutions in Estonia and abroad. She is the head of the Digi-State Technologies and Architecture research group, which addresses the complexity related to how governments can satisfy the demands of their citizens in times of need. Her research focuses on digital government ecosystems by investigating technologies that support digital transformation. Her research topics are related to the development activities in launching paperless management by creating interoperability with state registries and external and internal systems.

MODERATOR: Andrew J. Grotto is a William J. Perry International Security Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University. He is also Director of the Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance (FSI). Grotto’s research interests center on the national security and international economic dimensions of America’s global leadership in information technology innovation, and its growing reliance on this innovation for its economic and social life. 

The event is free and open to the public. RSVP is requested.

This event is part of Global Conversations, a series of talks, lectures, and seminars hosted by Stanford University Libraries and Vabamu with the goal of educating scholars, students, leaders, and the public on the benefits of but also challenges related to sustaining freedom.

Sponsored by

• CREEES Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies
• Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC)
• Stanford University Libraries

Albert Park: China’s Economy and Asia’s Rise

Date & Time: Wednesday, November 15, 2023     |    4:30 - 6:00 PM PT
Location: John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building, 366 Galvez Street, Stanford, CA

Join us on Wednesday, November 15, as SIEPR, SCCEI, and the King Center co-host a discussion with Dr. Albert Park. Dr. Park will assess the cyclical and structural factors affecting China’s growth prospects and how China is impacting economic dynamism in the region. Topics include the implications of China’s recent property sector downturn, how geopolitical fragmentation is affecting China’s trade and investment relationships and growth prospects in the region, and the potential for China to contribute positively to the development of other countries through its Belt and Road Initiative and by leading on climate change action.

Park’s presentation begins at 5:00 pm on Wednesday, November 15th, followed by a Q&A moderated by SIEPR Director Mark Duggan. You’re invited to a welcome reception at 4:30 pm.

Watch the Recored Event

About the Speaker
 

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Albert F. Park is Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Director General of its Economic Research and Development Impact Department. He is chief spokesperson on economic and development trends and leads the production of ADB’s flagship knowledge products and support for regional cooperation fora. Mr. Park has more than 2 decades of experience as a development economist. A well-known expert on the economy of the People’s Republic of China, he has directed a number of large-scale research projects in the country. He has also served as an international consultant for the World Bank and a member of the steering committee for the Asia -Pacific Research Universities’ Population Ageing Hub. Mr. Park has worked on a broad range of development issues including poverty and inequality, intergenerational mobility, microfinance, migration and labor markets, the future of work, and foreign investment. Mr. Park is Chair Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Economic Policy at HKUST (on leave). Previously, he served as a founding director of HKUST’s Institute for Emerging Market Studies, professor at the University of Oxford, and associate professor at the University of Michigan. He has also held editorial positions at a number of leading economic journals. A national of the United States, he received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University and his doctorate in applied economics from Stanford University.

This is an invitation-only event. 

Questions? Contact aleen@stanford.edu

2023 Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture
Date & Time: Thursday, September 28, 2023     |    4:30 - 6:30 PM PT 
Location: Green Library, Bing Wing, 5th floor, Bender Room

Lessons of History: The Rise and Fall of Technology in Chinese History 

Stanford Libraries and the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions are pleased to present the 2023 Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture featuring Professor Yasheng Huang who will be speaking on Lessons of History: The Rise and Fall of Technology in Chinese History.

China was once the most technologically advanced civilization in the world. Ancient Chinese achievements in technology are simply staggering. China led Europe in metallurgy, ship construction, navigation techniques, and many other fields, often by several centuries. The Chinese also invented gunpowder, paper, the water clock, the moveable printing press, and other consequential technologies way ahead of the West. For example, the Chinese invented the seismograph 1,700 years before the French.

But China’s technological development stalled, stagnated, and eventually collapsed and its early technological leadership did not set the country on a modernization path. This lecture examines the factors behind the rise and the fall of Chinese historical technology and draws lessons for today’s China.
 

Watch the Recorded Lecture

About the Speaker 
 

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Professor Yasheng Huang is the International Program Professor in Chinese Economy and Business and a professor of global economics and management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Huang founded and runs China Lab and India Lab, which aim to help entrepreneurs in these countries improve their management skills. He is an expert source on international business, political economy, and international management. In collaboration with other scholars, Dr. Huang is conducting research on human capital formation in China and India, entrepreneurship, and ethnic and labor-intensive foreign direct investment (FDI). Prior to MIT Sloan, he held faculty positions at the University of Michigan and at Harvard Business School. Huang also served as a consultant to the World Bank.

The family of Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh donated his personal archive to the Stanford Libraries' Special Collections and endowed the Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture series to honor his legacy and to inspire future generations. Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh (1919-2004) was former Governor of the Central Bank in Taiwan. During his tenure, he was responsible for the world's largest foreign exchange reserves, and was widely recognized for achieving stability and economic growth. In his long and distinguished career as economist and development specialist, he held key positions in multilateral institutions including the Asian Development Bank, where as founding Director, he was instrumental in advancing the green revolution and in the transformation of rural Asia. Read more about Dr. Hsieh.

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Please join us on Wednesday, May 31, for a talk by Indian politician Rahul Gandhi.

Mr. Gandhi will offer his unique perspective on the changing world order and India's crucial role within it. Following his talk, Mr. Gandhi will engage in a conversation with CDDRL Affiliated Scholar Dinsha Mistree.

Registration is required. Please note that large bags will not be permitted into the venue, and all bags are subject to search.

Rahul Gandhi was a Member of Parliament from 2004 until earlier this year. In March 2023, he was disqualified from Parliament pursuant to a court verdict that is currently under challenge in a higher court. He last represented the constituency of Wayanad in Kerala in the Lok Sabha and, prior to that, served three terms as MP from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh. In 2007, he was named General Secretary of the Indian National Congress in charge of the youth and student organizations of the Party. In January 2013, he assumed office as Vice President of the Indian National Congress. He was the President of the Indian National Congress from December 2017 to July 2019.

Rahul was born on June 19, 1970, to Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi. He has attended St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, Harvard College, and Rollins College, Florida, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. He went on to receive an M. Phil. in Development Studies from Trinity College, Cambridge University. Thereafter, he joined the Monitor Group, a strategy consulting group in London, where he worked for three years.

In the past, Rahul was a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committees on Home Affairs, Human Resource Development, External Affairs, Finance and Defence and the Consultative Committees for the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the Ministry of Rural Development, the Ministry of Finance & Corporate Affairs and the Ministry of External Affairs.

Rahul has championed the development of a self-help group movement and a non-profit eye care provider in North India.  He also serves as a trustee of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.

Dinsha Mistree is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he manages the Program on Strengthening US-Indian Relations. He is also a research fellow in the Rule of Law Program at Stanford Law School and an affiliated scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Dr. Mistree studies the relationship between governance and economic growth in developing countries. His scholarship concentrates on the political economy of legal systems, public administration, and education policy, with a regional focus on India. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Politics from Princeton University, with an S.M. and an S.B. from MIT. He previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at CDDRL and was a visiting scholar at IIM-Ahmedabad.

Since 2009 the European Union (EU) has seen a sequence of crises which have rocked its very institutional structure. It is noteworthy that 2009 was also the year that the Lisbon Treaty, the last of the treaties approved, came into force. The idea with that Treaty was to close the long and troubled period of the EU’s institutional consolidation exemplified by the major enlargement in 2004-2007. So, while the Lisbon Treaty thought it had completed the consolidation stage, the crises reopened it. In August 1954 Jean Monnet said something which became an unchallengeable truth in pro-European thinking, i.e., “Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for these crises.” The EU has certainly responded to the crises, proving itself reactive and resilient. However, its responses have also highlighted the weakness of its system of governance, in terms of effectiveness and legitimacy. The representational deficit in the EU has long been discussed, in reality the crises have shown that the EU has a governability deficit.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Sergio Fabbrini is Professor of Political Science and International Relations, Intesa Sanpaolo Chair on European Governance and Head of the Political Science Department at the Luiss Guido Carli in Rome. He was the Pierre Keller Visiting Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government 2019-2020 and Recurrent Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley. He was Jemolo Fellow at the Nuffield College, Oxford University and Jean Monnet Chair Professor at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, European University Institute in Florence. He lectured in several international universities and won several prizes. He published twenty books, two co-authored books and twenty edited or co-edited books or journals’ special issues, and several hundred scientific articles and essays in seven languages in the most important peer-reviewed international journals. His recent publications in English include: Europe’s Future: Decoupling and Reforming, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019; Which European Union? Europe After the Euro Crisis, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015; Compound Democracies: Why the United States and Europe Are Becoming Similar, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010 (second and revised edition); America and Its Critics: Vices and Virtues of the Democratic Hyperpower, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2008.He is considered one of the most authoritative scholars on European and comparative politics and institutions.

Questions? Please contact vlathia@stanford.edu.

This event is co-sponsored by the Bill Lane Center for the American West and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

Via the SDGs and COP, the world is committed to tackling the big global crises of poverty and climate change. But the policies for fostering net zero emissions, universal access to energy, and full employment are confused when it comes to Africa, a region that will soon be home to one in four people. Todd Moss will lay out the shortcomings to the dominant approaches and outline more effective ways to support both a greener planet and prosperity for everyone. 
 
Todd Moss is Executive Director of the Energy for Growth Hub, a think tank in Washington DC. He is also a nonresident fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute, the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines, the Institute for Progress, and the Center for Global Development. He previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa (under Condoleezza Rice) and has worked at the World Bank, Georgetown, and the London School of Economics.