Abstract: Dr. Wang will be discussing some of the formal governmental and non-governmental collaborative mechanisms between Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, and other countries (including the US) on survaillance and reporting for flu. He will also discuss lessons learned from SARS, including the development of specific policies, protocols, or procedures, and new technologies deployed for public health preparedness.

C. Jason Wang, M.D., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Center for Policy, Outcomes, and Prevention at Stanford University.  He received his B.S. from MIT, M.D. from Harvard, and Ph.D. in policy analysis from RAND.  After completing his pediatric residency training at UCSF, he worked in Greater China with McKinsey and Company, during which time he performed multiple studies in the Asian healthcare market. In 2000, he was recruited to serve as the project manager for the Taskforce on Reforming Taiwan's National Health Insurance System. His fellowship training in health services research included the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and the National Research Service Award Fellowship at UCLA. Prior to coming to Stanford in 2011, he was an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health (2006-2010) and Associate Professor (2010-2011) at Boston University and Boston Medical Center. 

Among his accomplishments, he was selected as the student speaker for Harvard Medical School Commencement (1996).  He received the Overseas Chinese Outstanding Achievement Medal (1996), the Robert Wood Johnson Physician Faculty Scholars Career Development Award (2007), the CIMIT Young Clinician Research Award for Transformative Innovation in Healthcare Research (2010), and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2011). He was recently named a “Viewpoints” editor and a regular contributor for theJournal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).  He served as an external reviewer for the 2011 IOM Report “Child and Adolescent Health and Health Care Quality: Measuring What Matters” and as a reviewer for AHRQ study sections.

Dr. Wang has written two bestselling Chinese books published in Taiwan and co-authored an English book “Analysis of Healthcare Interventions that Change Patient Trajectories”.  His essay, "Time is Ripe for Increased U.S.-China Cooperation in Health," was selected as the first-place American essay in the 2003 A. Doak Barnett Memorial Essay Contest sponsored by the National Committee on United States-China Relations.

Currently he is the principal investigator on a number of quality improvement and quality assessment projects funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (USA), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and the Andrew T. Huang Medical Education Promotion Fund (Taiwan).

Dr. Wang’s research interests include: 1) developing tools for assessing and improving the quality of healthcare; 2) facilitating the use of innovative consumer technology in improving quality of care and health outcomes; 3) studying competency-based medical education curriculum, and 4) improving health systems performance.

Abstract:
This discussion will focus on the potential utility of innovative technology to address the governance obstacles to the provision of critical public services.  Using the challenge of maternal and child mortality reduction as an illustrative example, this discussion will outline the role political forces and governance failures play in shaping the public infrastructure of service provision and opportunities for reform.  Of special focus will be the potential role of technology to create and address these opportunities.  While there are numerous efforts underway to use new technologies to enhance the breadth and efficiency of health services in low-income settings, this discussion will focus on how these technologies could be “liberating” by being designed and used to address the political determinants of inadequate public service commitments and capacity. 

Dr. Paul Wise is the Richard E. Behrman Professor of Child Health and Society, Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine, and Senior Fellow in the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.  He is Director of the Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention and a core faculty of the Centers for Health Policy and Primary Care Outcomes Research, at Stanford University.  Dr. Wise has served as Chair of the Steering Committee of the NIH Global Network for Women’s and Children’s Health, a member of the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Service’s Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health and Society and currently serves on the National Advisory Council of the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, NIH.  Dr. Wise’s research focuses on U.S and international child health policy, particularly the provision of technical innovation in resource-poor areas of
the world. 

Abstract:
Centralized digital infrastructure has created a dangerous environment for both activist movements and consumers. Intermediation impacts the character of conversation and limits innovation throughout countless ecosystems. Decentralized alternatives could address many of these problems, but most have failed to gain widespread adoption.

I will survey the recent history of these technologies and reasons for their failures, discuss the possibilities in a world where decentralization was the norm, and introduce Tent, an open protocol, which makes many of these possibilities a reality today.

Daniel Siders is a software architect and one of the architects of the Tent protocol. An eighteen year veteran of the software industry, he later studied gender, social science, and emergent norms in disaster environments. Prior to his work on Tent he consulted for large brands and media agencies on the appropriate analysis and application of consumer data in targeting campaigns and storage of such data in closed corporate networks. Since creating Tent he runs the organization the maintains the protocol and co-founded the first Tent hosting company.

Abstract:

The World Bank and IFC's Doing Business project has used indicators capturing important dimensions of the business environment to catalyze reforms in a large number of countries. In its tenth year of operation, this talk will focus on the methodological underpinnings of the project, the results obtained on the ground, the challenges ahead and why this matters for the goal of poverty reduction and economic convergence. For more information, please visit: www.doingbusiness.org

Speaker Bio:

Augusto Lopez-Claros became the director of global indicators and analysis in the World Bank–IFC Financial and Private Sector Development Vice Presidency in March 2011. Previously he was chief economist and director of the Global Competitiveness Program at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, where he was the editor of the Global Competitiveness Report, the Forum’s flagship publication, as well as a number of regional economic reports.

Before joining the Forum he was an executive director with Lehman Brothers (London) and a senior international economist. He was the International Monetary Fund’s resident representative in the Russian Federation during 1992–95. Before joining the IMF, Lopez-Claros was a professor of economics at the University of Chile in Santiago. He was educated in England and the United States, receiving a diploma in mathematical statistics from Cambridge University and a PhD in economics from Duke University. He is a much-sought-after international speaker, having lectured in the last several years at some of the world’s leading universities and think tanks. In 2007 he was a coeditor of The International Monetary System, the IMF, and the G-20: A Great Transformation in the Making? and The Humanitarian Response Index: Measuring Commitment to Best Practice, both published by Palgrave. He was the editor of The Innovation for Development Report 2009–2010: Strengthening Innovation for the Prosperity of Nations, published by Palgrave in November 2009.

Access to information has become one of the most promising tools to combat corruption, increase people’s participation in (self) governance and thus, to strengthen democracy.  Since the 1960s there has been a steady progress in the number of countries that have legislated access to information laws, and over eighty countries have such laws today.  There have also been several social developments and innovations which embrace access to information, such as open constitution reform process in Iceland, open innovation challenges by the United States government, participatory budgeting processes in Germany, Finland and Canada and social audits in India, just to mention few. As a parallel development, the open data movement is evolving in several countries, pushed forward by both civil society and governments, and incentivized by the global Open Government Partnership network. These practices are supported by open innovation and open design strategies, which the public sector is increasingly adopting.

These open and participatory practices give tools for citizens to monitor governments, to hold them accountable, and to practice agency in the public sphere. The right to information and transparency movements can be considerably strengthened by creative use of information technologies – but realizing this potential requires us to revisit the design of RTI policies, tools and practices to update them to serve citizens in the digital age. In re-evaluating the tools for accountability, we should be mindful that increased use of accountability technologies suggests re-articulations of the power structures in modern societies, including new forms of social control, new spaces for public deliberation and new conceptualizations of participation in democracy.

The workshop will convene both practitioners and academics to discuss their work in the area and to examine the theoretical and practical implications of these phenomena. We seek to bring together people engaged in law, policy, social movements, administration, technology, design and the use of technology for accessing information.  We propose to go well beyond the issue of accessing information by looking at the use of technology to record, store, process and disseminate public information, and to create interactive spaces in the public sphere so that the full potential of ICT for transparency can be realized.

For more information, please look at the Conference Website http://www.stanford.edu/group/libtech/cgi-bin/rtitech or contact Tanja Aitamurto at tanjaa@stanford.edu or Vivek Srinivasan at vivekdse@stanford.edu.

While we welcome participants who do not wish to present a paper or a project, we require registration at the Conference Website.

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