Tech policy experts — need of the hour
There have always been polarities between important streams in human history — like science vs. religion, science vs. humanities, technologists vs lawmakers etc. It is not uncommon to see that each side of the polarity lives in its own bubble world. And unfortunately, society tends to benefit only when both sides balance and co-exist. When CP Snow wrote about the science vs humanities polarity back in the 1950s it was a good theoretical subject to ponder on. However in today’s world, such divide, especially between technologists and lawmakers is a highly critical problem that can pretty much define the progress or stagnation of growth.
This problem became more evident a few years back when free internet movement was doing the rounds. With Facebook pushing its Free Basics internet service, India was deeply divided on what is our policy on free internet causing for the first time discussions on policy in that topic. Internet has been around well established in India for over 15 years before lawmakers started pondering this problem. Similar are the stories of ecommerce, OTT, social media content, rideshare technology policies. Everytime, the policymakers enter late to the scene and most often their stand is at best confusing and ambiguous if not taking things backward.
These are not easy problems. Technology evolution is much faster, adoptions are way easier and it is almost impossible to keep generating policies that can stay relevant with such a speed. But part of this inability is also due to the fact that lawmakers tend to operate without enough information — and most time is lost in evidence collection .
In my earlier post, I had advocated for an early head start by policymakers on technology and argued that it was important not to play catch up. It is not fair to expect every policymaker to be a tech expert. So, one of the necessary conditions for that to happen is that policymakers will need teams of technologists who can advise them of potentials, risks, benefits etc.
Is this possible?
It might sound far fetched and near impossible to think of this from the current scenario, but that is not entirely correct. Thanks to many technological advances and social impacts caused directly by technology products, many tech companies are investing to build their own public policy organizations. Over time, these public policy analysts are able to appreciate emerging technology trends and how to start formulating policy opinions on them.
One of the better developments of the 21st century is also that there are enough engineers and technologists who want to have a say in how their technology is getting used. An example is that of Google engineers who demanded Google to step down from Army contracts or when Facebook staff staged a walkout protesting against their own leadership on the company’s stand on US President Trump’s posts. In addition, there are many techies who enroll into public policy courses offered by institutions like the Takshashila Institution and are willing to educate themselves on frameworks and models on how to do social impact analysis of technology.
What does not exist today is a systematic way to bring policy to the forefront of technologists and engineers’ thought process. While courses and startup funding structures encourage analytical thinking, solving customer needs, creativity, very often the thought process of social impact of the emerging tech is not something that anyone cares about. There is also no incentive for techies to think through this as most often, lawmakers is a group that lives in a different universe and there are no communication lines to connect these worlds.
For this, career paths will need to be defined for technologists to be able to see the merit and importance of taking that route. It must also be almost mandatory for lawmakers to include seasoned technologists as part of their consulting organization to be able to understand, appreciate and take an early stand on what is upcoming. Right from college curriculum, internships, joint majors (like data science and law, computer science and economics), fellowships will all need to be created. It is also important to realize that to attract the right talent to this space, compensation needs to be attractive — equivalent to what the tech industry pays its engineers.
As a first step, the lawmaking body should enroll a chief technical officer and a CTO organization for the nation, staffed with techies who understand economics and vice versa. This cannot be a government run organization, but has to be a think tank that can operate autonomously to advise policymakers. It needs to be fully funded by the government to prevent any potential conflict of interest and lobbying. One of the goals of this institution would be to create a sustainable setup that can be replicated across industries and can continue to work together to connect the dots upfront.
With multiple emerging technologies clearly in the domination mode — fin tech, transportation tech, Artificial intelligence in several areas, robotics, telecommunications, social media, printing, nuclear, advanced healthcare etc — it is imperative that the policymakers understand the gravity of the situation, the risk of inaction or late actions and start scouting for the sharp minds in tech and harness their thought leadership on technology policies.
Bruce Schenier of the World Economic Forum is spot on when he says “If we’re honest with ourselves, it was never okay for technology to be separate from policy. But today, amid what we’re starting to call the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the separation is much more dangerous. We need policymakers to recognize this danger, and to welcome a new generation of technologists from every persuasion to help solve the socio-technical policy problems of the 21st century.”
*The opinions published here are strictly the personal opinions of the author and are in no way reflective of the organizations that he works or is associated with. The images displayed are publicly available images.
References:
- Bridge the gap between technology and policymaking — Bruce Scheneier, WEF
- The Two Cultures — CP Snow.
- FB Staff stages protest — TechCrunch
- The business of war — NYT
