Science, Society, and Policy
The Science, Society, and Policy Team advances the President’s commitment to ensuring all of America can participate in, contribute to, and benefit from science and technology. An inaugural White House team, Science, Society, and Policy role is to develop evidence-based policy at the intersection of science, technology, and innovation, reflecting the perspectives of the individuals and communities who make up civil society. The Science, Society, and Policy Team directs priority efforts to protect the integrity of science in the federal government, broaden participation in STEM fields, strengthen the U.S. research infrastructure and its security, and ensure that all Americans have equitable access to the benefits of new and emerging technologies and scientific innovation.
The Science, Society, and Policy Team brings a broad and multidisciplinary set of expertise to develop policy that addresses Biden-Harris Administration priorities to:
- Promote the best-available science and data to drive decision making in the federal government, with particular emphasis on the role of social and behavioral science evidence and the advancement of equity through the Year of Evidence for Action;
- Advance equity across the science and technology ecosystem, especially for marginalized, under-served, and under-resourced populations in science and technology fields, by removing structural barriers that prevent equitable participation through The Time is Now initiative, and a national science and technology equity strategy;
- Ensure automated technologies, including AI, advance democratic values, by coordinating a civil rights based framework for the development, deployment, and use of emerging technologies through an “AI Bill of Rights”;
- Protect the integrity and independence of the federal science ecosystem by promoting open science, safeguarding against interference, and making the insights of scientific research more accessible to all people
- Increase public access to and engagement with federally funded research results, resources, and data repositories; including robustly engaging the public on these issues and updating U.S. public access policy to make federally funded research freely available without delay; promoting findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable open data principles; advancing community-driven research agendas ; prizes, challenges, “citizen” science, and crowdsourcing.