For 25 years, IT giant IBM has operated a government focused think tank. It’s called the IBM Center for the Business of Government. To commemorate the Silver Anniversary, the center is holding an essay contest. It’ll take the form of a challenge grant, and seeks essays on the future of government. For details, Federal Drive with Tom Temin  spoke with the Center’s Executive Director Dan Chenok.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin So tell us what you’re doing here. Are you seeking essays or are the essays on route to something larger in terms of a challenge grant?

Dan Chenok So a little of both. We always are thinking about what’s next for government. And to commemorate our 25th year since our founding, we wanted to have people in government academics who are working and studying government, nonprofit partners give us ideas about what the future holds in a number of different areas. We’ve done these kinds of challenge grants before. It really sparks a lot of imagination across the field, in terms of what can come next and what are some good ideas for what government might look like in the future and how we get there.

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Tom Temin And you have some specific areas you’re actually looking to look into.

Dan Chenok Yes, Correct. So we picked six domains, and one could write about any one or a combination. And the domains are artificial intelligence, data and evidence, number three is cloud, four is cyber, five is shared services, and six is customer experience. And within each domain, we kind of have a little statement of the state of play, if you will, in terms of how governments  addressing that domain and how partners are helping government advance. And then some questions to scope some ideas. And the process will work that people will send us sort of an abstract, if you will, and then we will review the submissions and we’ll give grants with some stipends to write up a longer essay for those that are sort of reach top of the pile.

Tom Temin And definitely a technology application focus here. You’re not looking at the government as an employer or training or best places to work. That kind of focus that a lot of other organizations are focusing on these days.

Dan Chenok We’re looking at the application of these technologies to do the business of government better. So yes, they are fairly technologies at the front end, although we are looking at shared services, which is a broader element in how agencies set up customer experience effectively, which is a broader topic. And then more importantly, we’re looking at not just what’s cool about the technology and where is it going to be in five years, but how can this help agencies deliver a better service to constituents receiving, things like student aid or grants from [Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)] or services through the IRS.

Tom Temin Can you be open to something that may not be on the list that nobody’s thought of?

Dan Chenok We framed the challenge grant with these six areas, but if somebody has a brilliant idea, aside from the six, whether it’s through the challenge grant or otherwise, we’re always open to a dialog on that.

Tom Temin And to whom is this open? Can anybody submit something or do they have to be a federal employee?

Dan Chenok So anybody can submit. In fact, in the last challenge grant we did for our 20th anniversary, we had a number of state government employees, two from King County, Washington, who submitted and responded. So we welcome ideas from federal employees, from federal partners, from academics. Really anybody it’s best idea wins and we’ll go that way.

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Tom Temin I was going to say, the IBM Center doesn’t simply focus on federal either, does it?

Dan Chenok No, we have a remit that state and local, and that’s also international. And we do a lot of work with the [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on topics and we have a number of large initiatives that are international in scope as well. And we’ve really, over the 25 years sort of expanded that work, as governments have learned that good ideas, good thinking from academics who are really studying these issues and packaging those ideas in a way that’s usable by government and implementable is a niche that hadn’t really been filled. The center kind of sits at that cross-section between academic research and government practice. And that’s really what we are trying to focus on here as well.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Dan Chenok. He’s executive director of the IBM Center for the Business of Government and also former federal official himself. And in the challenge grant, what is the grant part of it? In other words, somebody is going to judge these and then you’ll get more extensive essays. Then what happens?

Dan Chenok We provide the stipend to those people that are awarded the extensive essay. We will write in the later part of the year. We’re still kind of determining the shape of this, it might be in a book form or it might be a long form report, but we will publish the essays. We’ll work with the authors who are the winners to publish. We’ll also look for ideas, even from essays that didn’t necessarily win the challenge grant. There might be good ideas across a range of essays. So we’re going to look for themes and work with a variety of folks on that. And then we’ll release this at a 25th anniversary event that we’re planning on in late fall, maybe a Christmas holiday type thing or a holiday season activity. So, Tom, you’ll be invited.

Tom Temin All right. I’ll look forward to it.

Dan Chenok We’ll make it a party.

Tom Temin And by the way, the prize is $2500 to the finalists.

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Dan Chenok $2500 to the finalists.

Tom Temin And by the way, we should talk about the center itself. You describe a little bit about what it does, but. What are your priorities? What do you see ahead? You’ve been looking at this. You’ve probably been 20 years at the IBM Center, and then spent a long time at OMB. So what do you see ahead, Dan?

Dan Chenok Yeah, actually, I’ve been here about ten years, but time flies.

Tom Temin Seems like 20, seems like you’ve always been there.

Dan Chenok So we have a number of priorities that we’re working on this year, in addition to the Challenge grants. One is we’re working with the National Academy of Public Administration on a series of convenings called Future Shocks, which are designed to help the U.S. and foreign governments allied partners and local governments as well, kind of understand how to get better for the next risk event that can happen. Which used to be called black swans, but are increasingly getting more light in color because they’re getting more frequent.

Tom Temin Or it’s more a flock of black swans.

Dan Chenok Right. So most of the time people have treated these in particular domains like cyber, supply chain, climate. There are skills and capabilities within those domains that carry across for learning, but people don’t necessarily think about it that way. So we’re convening a series of sessions in the U.S. and working with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development overseas to address sort of what are the learnings in each of these areas, and then how can one area teach another? So how can responding to a cyber incident teach people who are in supply chain management about how to understand sort of the cyber risks in the supply chain, or how can we develop workforce skills that can enable government to be better able to anticipate and respond to disasters. And for each of these, we’re writing reports and we’re going to have a big capstone event at the National Academy for Public Administration fall meeting in November. Chris Mihm, the former GAO director of strategic issues, I’m sure a frequent guest of yours in the past, is actually our integrating author. And Chris, after leaving GAO, he’s been working with the U.N. and the World Health Organization, among other places. And we’re fortunate to have Chris, and we’ve had Tony Scott, as you know, on your show recently who wrote the report on cyber. So that’s one set of initiatives.

Dan Chenok Another is really different domain. But in the military and intelligence context, we’re working with the Institute for the Study of War, a group that’s well known because they produce the maps that are often in the paper on the Ukraine conflict. We’re working with them on how do you visualize information operations during a time of warfare or generally. So we know how to draw a map of tanks. Military has lots of ways to articulate different domains of warfare. We don’t really have a discipline for how do you articulate information operations in a visual form. And so we’ve been holding a roundtable discussions with defense leaders, intelligence leaders, both in the U.S., Europe and with our allied partners in the Pacific. And we’ll be releasing a paper on that in May where we try to advance the state of the art. So those are two of our major projects this year. In addition to our ongoing work with authors to publish research that benefits government.

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