What We Learned In PIT-UN's First Year

Launched in March 2019, the Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN) envisions a future in which the public interest can be pursued by technologists moving comfortably across all sectors—be they public, private, or nonprofit. It aims to cultivate an area of inquiry, education, and practice—what we call public interest technology—that positions the next generation of students to more effectively design, build, and govern new technologies in ways that directly advance the public good.

While those who work in government and nonprofit sectors often see the public good as a natural outcome of their missions, it remains an open question how the private sector understands its part in contributing to the public good. PIT-UN offers a platform for such an exploration. As one of our educational partners recently remarked, the field of public interest technology (PIT) offers a mechanism for the private sector to grapple with seeing a “return on investment not only in dollars but in the security and prosperity of people.” PIT calls for a redefining and an articulation of what it means to speak of the public good across all sectors.

In its inaugural year, PIT-UN’s twenty-one charter institutions affirmed their commitment to prioritize educating students who will connect their technical education and practice to questions of individual rights, justice, social welfare, and the public good. They agreed to meet quarterly and explore how to operationalize the vision of public interest technology within their institutions. The focus of the work has been on how to develop new curricula, research agendas, and experiential learning programs. As coordinator of the Network, New America PIT offers these key lessons that we hope to translate into a deeper and richer pursuit of PIT-UN’s goals in year two.

Composition of the Network

PIT-UN invited educational institutions from the Building the Future landscape analysis of public interest technology in academia to continue the dialogue that they started in July 2018 at a meeting of presidents, provosts, and faculty in a more formal network. As Susan Crawford points out in her write-up of the event and the far reaching activities taking place on campuses throughout the U.S. “much more could be done, and far more systematically.” PIT-UN reflects an attempt to create a structured and systematic approach to public interest technology within higher education.

While charter members represent all regions of the country, most are from the north, west, and south, respectively. Twelve are private institutions while nine are public. Overwhelmingly, institutional leads in the Network come out of public policy and public affairs schools, with a few from schools of information, computer science, engineering, and political science. Seventeen of the charter members’ particular areas of focus are at the graduate level.

Guided by the working definition of public interest technology—crafted by a subset of faculty scholars with New America—with its emphasis on graduating students with multiple fluencies that require a base of interdisciplinary education and experiences at the graduate and undergraduate levels, PIT-UN aims to include a wider array of institutions and educational departments for year two. PIT-UN wants to identify institutions that graduate students that are underrepresented within science and technology fields and offer an approach to PIT that varies from the current charter members.

Role of the Designee

Each Network member identified a designee to take the lead on public interest technology on its campus, maintaining and facilitating its institution’s membership activities within PIT-UN. Many were faculty members whose experiences in government, civil society, and the private sector helped them to identify the need for a new type of education for students. Our faculty designees were instrumental in introducing public interest technology framing within their institution through their work in law, public policy, computer science, and engineering. It was the Network’s good fortune to have such early adopters of public interest technology as designees.

Having a designee that is well-integrated within their respective school and has the ability to work across other schools and departments remains key. However, the designee alone cannot be responsible for the labor of establishing public interest technology on a campus. Designees need to have the institutional leverage to move PIT initiatives forward; network members have suggested that such a role might be best suited for individuals at the dean’s level, as they can marshal institutional resources more effectively. Regardless of the position held by the designee, it’s very important that they serve as guideposts not only for PIT-UN but for those in the institution who seek to support the public at the intersection of technology and all disciplines.

Network Activities/Engagement

Activities within the Network membership continue to expand and evolve from year one. Designees had the arduous task of helping to stand up the Network, increase campus awareness of their membership within it, and direct one of the significant activities of PIT-UN, the launch and execution of a Network Challenge over the course of just five months. Their participation in other activities besides the quarterly calls were necessarily diluted as they sought to do the relationship building so essential to PIT-UN on their campuses. However, membership in PIT-UN is also about more than campus activities; it reflects a larger commitment to operate and function as a Network offering shared resources and shared knowledge.

To that end, PIT-UN has established three key Committees for members to engage and offer resources that will impact the larger Network and PIT, more broadly. They include Governance; Membership/Outreach; and Communications (internal/external). Governance asks: how will the Network hold each other accountable? What structures will be most effective in becoming self-sustaining? And how can the Network develop and maintain a sense of community? Membership/Outreach asks: how will the Network partner with others to effectively meet the goals and expand the reach and scope of the work being done? How can the Network identify cross sector partnerships that will be most instrumental to helping students, faculty, and administration build capacity for PIT? Lastly, Communications asks: how can the Network more effectively tell the stories of PIT? How can Network members increase their capacity to learn from each other and share best practices? The work of these three committees in year two will demonstrate PIT-UN’s own commitment to pursue the labor of multidisciplinary engagement in action, effectively modeling one of the key values of public interest technology.

The Network Challenge

Through the generous support of the Ford Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Mastercard Impact Fund, Siegel Family Endowment, Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, Schmidt Futures, and Raikes Foundation, the Public Interest Technology University Network Challenge was able to fund 27 projects at PIT-UN institutions. Fiscally sponsored by New Venture Fund, the Network Challenge was a way to seed and support initiatives to grow public interest technology within the 21 charter member institutions. While the Network Challenge pushed members to generate projects in a compressed timeline, designees expressed that it allowed them to surface individuals committed to public interest technology and to identify departments and schools that could work together. The funded twenty-seven projects will serve as learning models for the next twelve months, helping Network members refine effective ways to develop and sustain public interest technology work on their campuses. In year two, the Network members will have more time to craft and shape projects that will hopefully build upon the lessons of previously funded projects and identify new avenues to tackle with their colleagues. A key takeaway for PIT-UN from year one is that the Network Challenge offers a unique opportunity to seed collaborative efforts that will enhance the scope and reach of individual members to have a deeper impact.

Overall, the launch and execution of PIT-UN and its activities in year one have further strengthened New America and the Network’s commitment to its mission. Its aim of providing a space for institutions to engage with each other about how to best serve the public’s good has proven to be a resource for faculty and administrators seeking to wrestle with these questions. Network members have helpfully grounded the conversation about why educational institutions need to pursue this labor either within the bounds of PIT-UN or on their own. Harvard has offered this useful guide for doing a scan of public interest technology on one’s campus while Stanford enumerates its approach to rising to the interdisciplinary challenge of public interest technology. Additionally, charter members Arizona State University; Carnegie Mellon University; Columbia University, and University of California, Berkeley have begun the necessary work of demarcating how students and faculty can pursue their interest in public interest technology on their respective campuses.