These problems have come from the Department of State. Learn how to apply “lean startup” principles to foreign policy challenges. Pick a problem that looks interesting, form a team, sign up on this Google Doc, and attend the upcoming info sessions and webinars.
Problems updated 9/22/2016. Check back frequently as additional organizations and problems will be posted
Problems updated 9/22/2016. Check back frequently as additional organizations and problems will be posted
Selected Challenges
Other Proposed Challenges
Steer Clear: Avoiding Space Collisions by Tracking Objects in Orbit
Sponsor: Office of Space and Advanced Technology, Bureau of Oceans, Environment, and Science (Updated 8/17/2016) Background: Have you seen the movie “Gravity”? The premise is true. With many countries and companies launching satellites, space is becoming increasingly congested. Currently, there are over 23,000 tracked man-made objects in outer space, and new launches include many smaller and less maneuverable satellites. A collision of space objects would generate massive debris and would be catastrophic for the future use of space. What’s at stake? Those satellites are the backbone of many technology breakthroughs that have benefited billions of people. Imagine no weather forecasting, no smart phones, no mobile banking, no precision agriculture. And right now, we are flying blind. There are growing networks of space sensors for satellite-tracking. However, they are being overtaken by the satellite volume. The challenge is to develop an open, integrated data platform that can track where objects are, might go, and where new objects will be and might go. Policy Priority: Preserve the outer space environment for the responsible use of current and future space-faring nations and companies. Execution Obstacles: The technologies and actors are rapidly changing. The growing number of companies launching smaller satellites has overtaken the capabilities of existing network of sensors and information platforms. Potential Tech Solution: The team should a) identify potential existing information databases, b) develop new means to track satellites, especially small ones (perhaps direct observation through increased telescopic viewing), c) project orbits where satellites may end up over time and d) develop an integrated platform pilot for use by all space operators. Assessing the Effectiveness of Peacekeeping Units
Sponsor: Bureau of Political-Military Affairs/Office of Plans & Initiatives (Updated 8/19/2016) Background: In September 2015, President Obama released the first policy memorandum on U.S. support for United Nations peace operations in over 20 years, highlighting the strategic importance of peacekeeping as one of our primary tools to address conflict-related crises. Noting that the success or failure of a peacekeeping mission can hinge on capable troops and police, the Policy Memorandum called on Departments to promote heightened accountability for peacekeeping troop and police performance, promote high performance standards, and prioritize capacity building assistance for effective units. To date, processes and mechanisms for assessing troop and police performance have been ad hoc and rely heavily on anecdotal information. Implementing the President’s policy guidance requires a more comprehensive approach to data collection, compilation, and analysis in order to better assess the effectiveness of peacekeeping forces. Policy Priority: This challenge helps address the Department’s, and broader Administration’s, goal of strengthening the effectiveness of multilateral peace operations. Execution Obstacles: A key challenge preventing the effective development and implementation of better interdepartmental and interagency data compilation and analysis efforts has been staffing resources and bandwidth. There are no dedicated staffing resources for such an effort, and any database or technology solution needs to minimize workload on Department staff. Potential Tech Solution: The Department is considering the use of the All Partners Access Network (APAN) as a technology platform for creating an interagency portal for sharing assessment information and analysis from U.S. government and open sources. However, the Department seeks inputs on possible solutions for compiling, managing, and assessing diverse types of information on the APAN platform. Design an Informal Leader Dataset
Sponsor: Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO) (Posted 8/2/2016) Background: Being able to access/utilize high resolution, current, specific datasets is one of the foremost challenges in successful conflict analytics. In addition, most conflict/political science data sets involve events or macro-level economic/political changes. We have very few datasets which tell us about individuals. We are proposing the design of a method for structuring a dataset of important informal (non-state) leaders in society (focusing on ethnic and religious communities comprising a certain proportion of the population). This would involve the design of the codebook, structure, method of data collection, analysis, and updating; and provide one year of complete data for one region or sub-region (for example, for West Africa, or for Sub-Saharan Africa). Policy Priority: Understanding communities and community leaders, which are key components of both Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) and Atrocity Prevention (AP) strategies. Execution Obstacles: The criteria for identifying informal leaders will be challenging and finding the data which will inform the coding will be even more difficult. Potential Tech Solution: Machine reading of news stories or a method for locally-based interviewers to collect information on influential religious/ethnic actors. Hacking Violent Extremism Online
Sponsor: Counterterrorism & Countering Violent Extremism (CT) (Updated 8/22/2016) Policy Priority: Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), particularly countering the use of the Internet to radicalize, recruit and inspire others to commit acts of violence, is a top priority. Execution Obstacles: In order to effectively counter violent extremism online, we need a coordinated effort to leverage the voices of those who speak out against it. Potential Tech Solution: An aggregated online platform to crowdsource a response to violent extremist recruiting would allow for a vested community of interest that could voluntarily monitor and respond to violent extremist messaging in real-time. Although challenging, algorithms can be created to identify violent extremist messaging and support based on companies’ terms of service, along with mechanisms to facilitate dedicated responses to this messaging and support. Fatal Journeys: Improving Data on Missing or Perished Refugees
Sponsor: Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, Office of Assistance to Europe, Central Asia, & the Americas (Posted 8/2/2016) Background: Over the last 20 years, over 60,000 persons have died or gone missing, never to have been identified or returned. In 2015 alone, over 5400 persons perished at sea -- many of these dead remain nameless -- and families grieve not knowing. Information about them is a huge gap. In migration crises, where the imperative to save lives, rescue and care for the living is primary -- addressing the deceased is secondary. Technologies exist, but have not been adapted to enable, capture, document, identify and preserve information about the deceased (on a not-to-interfere basis) in the midst of crisis response, especially in the maritime domain. Family links of deceased persons to their living relatives too often remain unresolved. Rescue teams pass bodies in the water because they often don’t have time to pick them up. Policy Priority: Key policy priorities are strengthening humanitarian advocacy among allies, coast guards, first responders, international organizations and NGOs, safety at sea, saving lives, bonds of family and community, and respect for the dignity of life. Execution Obstacles: Marginalized populations who migrate can’t pay -- a profit motive is lacking for industry to develop technologies to enable first responders to gather information about deceased. Organizational priority is lacking because budgets focus on care for the living. IOM has recently documented this challenge in its paper on “Fatal Journeys,” urging that more be done to develop capabilities to address information gaps that can help communities and families deal with missing and deceased loved ones across international boundaries. Potential Tech Solution: Technologies: mast mounted still video, closed circuit TV, UAVs, streaming video, penetrating radar/sonar, remote sampling (clothing, hair, DNA, blood samples), data mapping, smart apps, tagging, interactive discovery, cross-domain cuing – each can expand information available for a dignified next of kin resolution. Fruits of Labor: Bringing Sunlight to the "Labor Recruitment" Market
Sponsor: Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (Updated 9/8/2016) Background: Human trafficking is often an unseen crime, hidden by its perpetrators’ ability to exploit vulnerability, governmental ambivalence, legal ambiguity, and gray or black markets that profit from the work of victims who usually do not come forward to report the crimes committed against them. Forced labor, a form of human trafficking, can flourish in labor markets in which vulnerable populations do not have the information or bargaining power to represent their interests or advocate for their rights. While the globalized market encourages labor mobility, governments have largely failed in protecting the rights of low-skilled laborers, especially those who migrate for economic opportunity. Labor recruitment companies play an important role in facilitating labor mobility and in connecting workers to employers, but the industry is largely unregulated and labor recruiters skillfully navigate the patchwork of national laws and jurisdictions to minimize risk and liability for themselves and provide cheap labor for their clients. Many recruitment agencies engage in fraudulent practices such as charging workers recruitment fees, confiscating identity or immigration documents, and contract switching, which can place workers at risk of forced labor. In addition, the private sector has yet to find a successful method of tracing their labor supply chains so that they can fully understand where their labor is coming from. This gap makes it extremely difficult for them to push policies of responsible business down the chain. Policy Priority: It aims to assist the private sector in better understanding their labor supply chains, not only for the final stages of production but all the way down to the level of raw material (e.g. an apparel company may know who is working in the factories where a pair of jeans is finally sewn together, but have no idea where laborers came from in the factory where the zippers were made, or the fields where the cotton was grown). Businesses have a responsibility to ensure that their suppliers are upholding anti-trafficking policies and at this point are unable to do so as they are unable to fully track labor throughout the supply chain. Current Execution Obstacles: Companies with responsible business practices are at an immediate disadvantage as they abide by standards and practices that take additional time and resources, while companies that disregard business responsibility reap competitive advantage by providing cheaper labor. Without accessible information, governments and market forces cannot work to maintain fair practices. In addition, global supply chains cross borders in a complex web of interactions and labor is moved quickly to keep up with demand. Following a labor supply chain would have to be done almost in real-time. Potential Tech Solution: A technology that would help businesses to trace their labor supply chains (as opposed to their product supply chains) so that they better know how their workers in their Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers are being recruited. It would be valuable to include supply chain logistics and procurement experts to understand the gaps and challenges in mapping labor in a supply chain. One, more specific, idea would be a technology that would allow workers to plug themselves into the supply chain from the bottom up, as businesses are attempting to map their labor from the top down. Platform for a Coordinated Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis
Sponsor: Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, Office of Assistance to the Near East (Posted 8/2/2016) Background: It is difficult to capture the full breadth of the humanitarian response to the Syrian refugee crisis, given the multi-sectoral and geographically diverse nature of the response. There is currently no central forum for organizations to share reports, statistics, projects, and engagement opportunities among each other and with the public. Creating a central platform to aggregate demographic and humanitarian assistance information would help identify potential gaps where services are needed and facilitate improved collaboration and complementarity among NGO, international organization, government, and private sector stakeholders. Better information sharing would improve the impact of humanitarian assistance on the ground, and facilitate the entry of new individual and organizational actors to contribute by elucidating specific assistance needs. Policy Priority: Successful implementation of this project would improve humanitarian assistance delivery and engage non-traditional actors in humanitarian response. Execution Obstaces: The situation on the ground is constantly evolving, and traditional means of disseminating information (email, NGOs posting to their own proprietary websites, etc.) are not optimally effective for coordinating such a large number of stakeholders across multiple sectors. Potential Tech Solution: The creation of a dynamic, web-based platform for information sharing, where NGOs, international organizations, and the private sector could share, in a concise geographically-trackable way, information about projects and assessed needs could create connections and promote collaboration toward a community response to the global refugee crisis. Integrating existing reports and programs into this platform would also increase traffic to existing community initiatives such as Humanitarian Open Street Map projects. Tracking Killers: Anticipating Mosquito Vector Threats
Sponsor: Office of International Health and Biodefense, Bureau of Oceans, Environment, and Science (Updated 8/16/2016) Background: The Aedes genus of mosquitoes is the key vector for headline-grabbing diseases such as Zika, Dengue, and Yellow Fever. Dengue alone causes 100 million illnesses annually, mostly in developing countries. Because Aedes mosquitoes are sensitive to environmental factors -- including temperature, humidity, rainfall, elevation, and urban extent -- it is possible to anticipate when and where they will be abundant and active, and to issue advisories to the public and/or health emergency practitioners (as is currently done for heat waves, floods, etc.). The key is that advisories need to be a) accurate and dependable; b) user-friendly, c) locale-specific (e.g., within a 100 km radius), d) calibrated to useful time scales for action (e.g. less than 12 months). Such capability could be integrated into global efforts to combat mosquito-borne disease. Policy Priority: Preventing disease addresses foreign policy priorities: promoting political stability, protecting human welfare and economic growth, and encouraging scientific innovation. Execution Obstacles: This field is nascent: existing forecasts vary widely in accuracy, timeliness, and geographic precision -- all of which limit their simplicity and uniformity (and thus their user uptake). Potential Tech Solutions: The team should a) identify data inputs needed for a scalable analytic tool and advisory system; b) identify which organizations possess relevant data sets; c) work with data custodians and end users to pilot an advisory system for the general public and/or health practitioners. The skills needed to execute these steps are highly relevant to a wide variety of employers interested in science and technology graduates. All Source Global Violence Database
Sponsor: Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (Posted 8/2/2016) Background: Global conflict databases such as ACLED and IHS Janes provide conflict analysts with a baseline of information on fatalities and injuries due to political violence. Each database leverages media reports, though most are based on those that report in English. What other sources of reporting (e.g. crowdsourcing) or sensor (e.g. satellite) data can be integrated into violence databases? What computer processing/database mechanisms would need to be required to routinely compare these different sources? How many people would be required to maintain such a system? Policy Priority: “We will… improve our use of tools for analyzing, tracking, and forecasting fragility and conflict, leveraging improvements in analytical capabilities… provide more timely and accurate assessments to chiefs of mission and senior decision-makers… (and) increase use of early warning data and conflict and fragility assessments in our strategic planning and programming.” -- Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review p.27 Execution Obstacles: This objective is hindered by a lack of technical know-how to integrate multiple streams of complex data. Potential Tech Solution: While the database is single-source, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED) is considered to be the most up-to- date and freely available database of violence. Expansion of the dataset to cover the globe would be useful to those proposing this challenge. Crowdsourcing Radiation Detection with New or Improved Methods
Sponsor: Department of State/AVC (Updated 8/12/2016) Policy Priority: President Obama outlined his nuclear security strategy in Prague, indicating that the Administration would work to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), requiring improved capabilities to detect and characterize activities associated with the nuclear fuel cycle and covert nuclear weapons development. Execution Obstacles: Detecting radioactive material usually requires close proximity to a target source, presenting a problem when attempting to detect nuclear weapons materials over a large area. There are very few materials that are sensitive enough to provide adequate sensitivity to detect these materials, and manufacturers may not be willing to include these materials in their products due to cost, size, and other factors. Potential Tech Solution: Including cheap and widely available radiation-sensitive materials in the creation of these ubiquitous devices or their processing components could make detection widespread. Combining detection information with a device’s precision location information could eliminate the need for each sensor or device to pinpoint location by “crowdsourcing” the location. Orchestrating Message Campaigns to Counter Violent Extremism
Sponsor: Global Engagement Center (GEC) (Updated 8/25/2016) Policy Priority: Priority to Counter Violent Extremism (CVE), especially messages aimed to radicalize, recruit, and inspire acts of violence. Execution Obstacles: Agile collaboration amongst GEC teams, U.S. departments / agencies, foreign governments, non-governmental organizations, and private industry is a difficult dynamic to coordinate. Traditional communication channels often restrict the ability to quickly share novel ideas for campaign content, discover trending narrative themes, transform data-driven analysis into action, solicit feedback from partners, and immediately identify new CVE opportunities. The overall challenge is complicated by government legal constraints, a strong commitment to civil right protections, and longstanding geo-political conflicts around the world. Potential Tech Solution: A collaborative platform to empower GEC partners to share ideas and facilitate discussion would improve counter-messaging operations. The creation of a tailored CVE messaging space to debate approaches, guide data analysis, craft compelling campaign narratives, or natively share links to trending content/voices would become a powerful new tool. The platform’s goal should center on improving efficiency and organization across initiatives: from strategic playbooks to campaign execution, concept storyboards to worldwide distribution, raw social-media data to actionable analytical feedback, or general ideation to mature execution. Mapping, Analyzing, and Preventing Security Force Abuses
Sponsor: Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Office of Security and Human Rights (Updated 8/30/2016) This is an arduous and data-intensive task. We have approached implementation by creating a “vetting” system of all units where U.S. security assistance is being proposed, based on a mix of primarily open source information as well as classified data, organized through a customized case management database. A key deficit in our Leahy Law implementation process is the ability to analyze trends in human rights violations and vetting decisions – including country trends over time, across units, across types of human rights violation, and other relevant factors. This means that we cannot sufficiently answer policy-relevant questions asked by our leadership about where, when, and how key partner units are committing human rights abuses or improving their human rights conduct, and what steps might be necessary for prevention, mitigation, and accountability. This type of analysis is critical as we address our most pressing policy priority: improving our civilian security and human rights interventions with partner military and police units in a strategic, evidence-based approach that reflects specific gaps in capabilities or political will. We therefore need a better way of aggregating and analyzing information about human rights abuses in the security sector. Policy Priority: This priority is among the very few State Department policy priorities enshrined in U.S. law and authorized repeatedly by Congress in a bipartisan way. In 2015, Congress expanded the Leahy Law to cover the new Department of Defense security sector assistance authorities. In short, this priority derives from a Congressional mandate and has recently become increasingly high profile. Journalists and Members of Congress frequently ask us questions about how we implement the Leahy Law. There are diplomatic implications as well, given that a number of important U.S. allies ask the State Department about Leahy Law implementation. The eligibility of units can become an empirical debate on the credibility of various open sources, with divergent views across U.S. bureaus and agencies. On a broader scale, this also addresses the key State Department priorities of improving the human rights conduct of our partners, keeping our security assistance accountable, promoting freedom and democracy and protecting human rights around the world. Execution Obstacles: We have had problems designing technological solutions that are affordable, user friendly, and interoperable with our current case management platform. Potential Tech Solution: A database and analysis system that would allow for the collection and storage of this information as well as analysis through aggregation, mapping, and key word searches, ideally connected to the internet. The system would also ideally work with structured and unstructured data. Leveraging Blockchain for Anti-Corruption: Policy and Practical Implications
Sponsor: Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance Resources (Updated 9/22/2016) Policy Priority: This research would further the Department’s commitment and efforts on anti-corruption as a national security priority. Execution Obstacles: Potential barriers standing in the way of achieving or executing this policy priority or implementing this in practice include a lack of political will among countries most at risk for governmental financial corruption, as well as an unknown economy of scale required to achieve statistically significant anti-corruption outcomes. Potential Tech Solution: Using existing technology to pair mobile phones (GSM/SMS; not smart phones) to send and receive transactions and commands could potentially create a significant reduction in operating costs to roll out such technology for public financial management. There may be additional options not yet identified, such as RFID technology embedded on government procured public goods that can be made traceable through RFID enabled nodes. Immigrant and Refugee Integration (mobile solutions for mobile populations)
Sponsor: Tri-Mission Italy’s Information Resource Management (IRM) Office (Updated 8/8/2016) Policy Priority: Presidential Objectives: White House Launches a Call to Action for Private Sector Engagement on the Global Refugee Crisis. - There are more than 65 million displaced people in the world today, the highest number on record since the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) began collecting statistics. More than 21 million of these people have crossed international borders in search of safety and are registered as refugees. The despair that drives these people to flee their homes is heartbreaking, but their resilience is awe-inspiring. Refugees are a valuable, untapped resource and, if given the opportunity, can thrive and contribute wherever they reside. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/06/30/fact-sheet-white-house-launches-call-action-private-sector-engagement President Obama hosts the Leader’s Summit on Refugees on the margins of the 71st session of the UN General Assembly. “Through the Leaders’ Summit, we will seek: at least a 30 percent increase in financing for global appeals and international humanitarian organizations; to double the global number of resettled refugees and those afforded other legal channels of admission; and to increase the number of refugees worldwide in school by one million, and the number of refugees granted the legal right to work by one million.” Department of State Objective: 2015 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) - Defending human rights and the inclusion of marginalized and vulnerable groups. Department of State Objective: 2015 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) - Make citizen engagement part of the job. Every Foreign Service employee in the Department and USAID will be required to spend time engaging directly with the American people. A key purpose of this engagement is providing young Americans the opportunity to learn about global issues. Wherever possible, we will include domestic outreach in employees’ work requirements as a complement to expectations they conduct outreach at posts. Execution Obstacles: Understanding what mobile platforms exist to assist with immigrant integration and refugee support. There are sporadic online locations popping up but a coordinated effort has yet to be achieved. Developing an all-inclusive online presence that is mobile accessible and mobile friendly where immigrants and refugees can put their skillsets to use will add exponential value to both the host nation and the transient populations. Immigrant and refugee populations have valuable skills that are not recognized, not being used, and not being compensated. Potential Tech Solution: Developing a mobile platform for collecting transient population skillsets and linking them to available job opportunities in their communities for a more collaborative approach to integration. Refugee Aid App (http://refugeeaidapp.com) provides a good visual into a platform that can assist transient populations. Developing something similar to catalog and advertise skill sets to pair with local companies and job opportunities is the idea. In developing a skills inventory app, we would need to ask the right question: What skillsets do immigrants and refugees bring with them? How can we inventory individual’s skillsets on the move? How can skillsets/work history be verified? To complement the skillset collection, we would also need to link them with available job databases for the countries they are in and perform probability analysis of the individuals’ chances for meeting the job requirements. This would also entail asking the right questions: What type of jobs could be easily done regardless of location, gender, religious beliefs, social status, etc.? How do we take inventoried skillsets and provide links to regional job platforms (Thinking an international version to Task Rabbit www.taskrabbit.com or fiverr www.fiverr.com), and finally, how do we encourage companies to designate a certain percentage of their workforce to providing jobs for populations on the move? There is strong potential for your work to live on after this challenge. The White House’s Call to Action for Private Sector Engagement on the Global Refugee Crisis is partnering with private sector companies supporting employment areas we think this challenge will link nicely to. www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/06/30/fact-sheet-white-house-launches-call-action-private-sector-engagement Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported (IUU) Fishing
Sponsor: Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, The Office of Marine Conservation (Updated 9/8/2016) Background: Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is a worldwide problem estimated to cost the global fishing industry billions of dollars a year. It degrades environmental, food, and economic security globally with the cumulative effect of undermining afflicted coastal nations’ rule of law and national security. Networks supporting illegal fishing are involved in other illicit activity and transnational crime ranging from human rights abuses and tax evasion to weapons and drugs trafficking. Policy Priority: National Ocean Policy: The 2010 National Policy for the Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes and 2013 Implementation Plan, which created an Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Seafood Fraud Task Force, which notes that the “global issues of IUU fishing and seafood fraud continue to undermine the economic and environmental sustainability of fisheries and fish stocks, both in the United States and abroad.” Execution Obstacles: Coastal states often have limited resources to combat illegal fishing, and need low-cost, sustainable detection and information sharing systems able to separate usable information from the rest of the data and integrate it quickly and easily for local fishermen and fisheries officials.
Potential Tech Solution: (1) Build a game app to encourage users to report and identify unknown fishing vessels in a coastal state’s territorial waters and exclusive economic zone. (2) Build an app and information portal that can pull and integrate real-time information from internet sources about location-based permitted fishing activity; vessel data, including images; and fishing activity associated with vessels. Aggregate the information into a useful, easy-to- search, standardized format that can be used by fishermen, local authorities, and others such as responsible marketers and consumers. Create a free web site with Weebly
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