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The 100 Questions Initiative seeks to map the world’s 100 most pressing, high-impact questions that could be answered if relevant datasets were leveraged in a responsible manner. The 100 Questions is an Initiative from The GovLab, in partnership with Schmidt Futures and others.
Why do we need 100 questions?
The complexity of challenges facing our world today - from climate change to the reinvention of work to economic inequality to mass migration - is unprecedented, and our policymaking and problem-solving approaches are insufficient. We need both innovative solutions and innovation in how we develop solutions.
Data held by private-sector entities can be leveraged to provide public value
Data has been widely recognized as a possible source of innovation, and data collaboratives offer a particularly promising avenue. Data collaboratives are a new form of public-private partnership, in which data held by private-sector entities is leveraged in a responsible and ethical manner to provide public value.
The 100 Questions will help us understand the questions that matter
Yet despite the clear potential of private-sector data, its impact has been limited to date. This is primarily because we don’t fully understand how it can best be used. We don’t have an authoritative list of challenges facing our society that would be amenable to data solutions. This is where the 100 Questions come in. The 100 Questions will help us understand our most important public dilemmas and the most vexing problems we face across sectors and geographies. They will help us establish priorities, so that we may make the most of scarce public resources.
We will capture the 100 Questions by creating and sourcing curated communities of “bilinguals” from around the world – practitioners across fields who possess both domain knowledge and data science expertise. In particular, our methodology comprises the following:
The Governance Lab (GovLab), based at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, seeks to improve people’s lives by changing how we govern using new technologies. In recent years, The GovLab has pioneered the concept and practice of Data Collaboratives and has initiated a network of Data Stewards – decision-makers from across the private sector seeking ways to maximize the public value of their company’s data. The 100 Questions Initiative builds on The GovLab’s Smarter Crowdsourcing methodology that seeks to match societal problems with diverse ideas from curated global experts. The 100 Questions Initiative will take a similar but updated approach to engage relevant bilinguals across domains and around the world.
