Beth Simone Noveck
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Professor, Director of the Governance Lab (The GovLab)

Beth Simone Noveck directs the Governance Lab (The GovLab) and its MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance. She is a Professor in Technology, Culture, and Society and affiliated faculty at the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and a Fellow at NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge. New Jersey governor Phil Murphy appointed her as the state’s first Chief Innovation Officer and Chancellor Angela Merkel named her to her Digital Council in 2018. She is also Visiting Senior Faculty Fellow at the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. Previously, Beth served in the White House as the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer and director of the White House Open Government Initiative under President Obama. UK Prime Minister David Cameron appointed her senior advisor for Open Government.
At the GovLab, she directs better governance programs, including work with public institutions on public engagement in lawmaking (CrowdLaw), expert-sourcing innovative solutions to hard problems (Smarter Crowdsourcing), co-creation between cities and citizens (City Challenges). She also coaches "public entrepreneurs." working with passionate individuals to take their public interest projects from idea to implementation.
A graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School, she is a member of the Scholars Council of the Library of Congress and the EPSRC Centre for the Mathematics of Precision Healthcare. Beth also serves on the International Advisory Board of the NHS Digital Academy and the Yankelovich Democracy Monitor as well as a member of the Inter-American Development BankPresident’s Commission on Transparency and Corruption and the Global Future Council on Technology, Values and Policy for the World Economic Forum. She is a member of the Steering Committee for the Collective Intelligence Conferences and GIGAPP (Grupo de Investigación en Gobierno, Administracion y Politicas Publicas). She is co-editor of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Digital Government Research and Practice journal.
In 2018, Beth was awarded a Robert Schumann Fellowship at the European University Institute and a Richard von Weizsaecker Fellowship by the Robert Bosch Foundation. Beth was named one of the “World’s 100 Most Influential People in Digital Government 2018” by Apolitical. Previously, she was selected as one of the “Foreign Policy 100” by Foreign Policy as well as one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company and “Top Women in Technology” by Huffington Post.
Beth is the author of Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing (Harvard Univ Press 2015) and Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger and Citizens More Powerful (Brookings 2009) and co-editor of The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds (NYU Press, 2005). Her next book, Solving Public Problems: How to Fix Our Government and Change Our World will appear with Yale Press in 2021. Her TED talk is here. She tweets @bethnoveck.
Research Interests: Open government, open data, institutional innovation, technologies of expertise, information law and policy
Yale Law School 1997
JD, Law
University of Innsbruck 1996
PhD, Political Science
Harvard University 1992
AM, Comparative Literature
Harvard University 1991
AB, Social Studies
Noveck, Beth Simone. Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing, Harvard University Press, 2015
Noveck, Beth Simone. Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful, Brookings, 2009
Balkin, Jack M. and Beth S. Noveck, eds. 2006. The State of Play: Law and Virtual Worlds, NYU Press, 2006
- Pillemer K, Subramanian L, Hupert N. The Importance of Long-term Care Populations in Models of COVID-19. JAMA. Published online June 05, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.9540 (non-credited author)
- Beth Simone Noveck, Dane Gambrell, "How Congress can improve productivity by looking to the rest of the world", The Hill (May 15, 2020)
- Beth Simone Noveck, “Public Entrepreneurship and Policy Engineering: Training the Next Generation of Leader and Problem Solver” in Communications of the ACM, Vol 62, Nr. 12 (December 2019).
- Beth Simone Noveck, “To restore trust in government, we need to reinvent how the public service works,” The Conversation (Aug 12, 2019) (with R. Glover).
- Beth Simone Noveck, “Today’s Problems, Yesterday’s Toolkit,” ANZSOG (August 2019) (with R. Glover).
- Beth Simone Noveck foreword in “The State of Open Data: Histories and Horizons,” Tim Davies et al, Eds (May 2019).
- Beth Simone Noveck, “The Open Policymaking Playbook,” The GovLab White Paper (April 2019) (with Rose Harvey and Anirudh Dinesh).
- Beth Simone Noveck, “Crowdlaw:inteligência coletiva e processos legislativos,” Democracia Digital, Nr. 4 (2019) (C. Freitas, trans.).
- Beth Simone Noveck, “Our Opportunity for More Data-Driven Nonprofit Program Evaluation” (with T. Gyateng), Stanford Social Innovation Review (Jan 24, 2018).
- Beth Simone Noveck, “Before training public servants, you must educate yourself” July 22, 2019
- Beth Simone Noveck, “Public Entrepreneurship: How to train 21st century leaders”, June 19, 2019
- Beth Simone Noveck, “Forging Smarter Cities Through CrowdLaw,” December 21, 2018
- Beth Simone Noveck, “Report of the Expert Advisory Group on Anti-Corruption, Transparency, and Integrity in Latin America and the Caribbean,” Inter-American Development Bank White Paper (Nov 2018) (with Engel et al.) (named to Foreign Affairs Best Books of 2019).
- Beth Simone Noveck, “Smarter Crowdsourcing for Anti-Corruption: A handbook of innovative legal, technical, and policy proposals and a guide to their implementation,” GovLab/Inter-American Development Bank White Paper (April 2018).
- Beth Simone Noveck, "CrowdLaw: Collective Inteligence and Lawmaking", Analyse and Kritik 2018 (40) Heft 2, November 2018
- Beth Simone Noveck, "Elections won't save our democracy. But 'crowdlaw' could", October 2018
- Beth Simone Noveck, "Public Sector Digest: Leadership & Change Management", June 2018
- Beth Simone Noveck, "New win and new bottles: The promise of research in the age of big data", February 2018 (Review of Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age, Matthew J. Salganik)
- Congress Is Broken. CrowdLaw Could Help Fix It. (Forbes, 2018)
- Rights-based and Tech-Driven: Open Data, Freedom of Information, and the Future of Government Transparency (Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal Volume XIX, Page 1, 2018)
- Building the Smarter State: The Role of Data Labs and the Data Labs Case Studies (GovLab White Paper Series) (with Anirudh Dinesh) (Dec 2017).
- How to mobilize group intelligence, Nature 551 (November 30, 2017): Beth Simone Noveck’s review of Geoff Mulgan’s book Big Mind
- Beth Simone Noveck, "Smarter Health: Boosting Analytical Capacity at NHS" (with Stefaan Verhulst, Andrew Young, Maria Hermosilla, Anirudh Dinesh, and Juliet McMurren) (February 2017)
- Beth Simone Noveck, Is Open Data the Death of FOIA?, 126 Yale L.J. F. 273 (2016)
- Beth Simone Noveck and Stefaan Verhulst, "Encouraging and Sustaining Innovation in Government" (August 2016)
- Shaping a post-pandemic future: The role of data and technology in institutional reform
As we navigate a post-Covid-19 future, the role of data in global, national and local policy decision-making is being brought to the fore. On an international scale, countries have used different ways to track and inform their response to the pandemic, raising questions about the legitimacy and responsiveness of governments, as well as fuelling household debates on whether we should trust Big Government over Big Tech, how to ‘flatten the curve’ or the value of international Covid case comparisons.
- Public Problem Solving: Ensure Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education for All
How is COVID-19 reshaping the future of e-Learning and Online Innovation for Universities? Put on by the World Summit on the Information Society
- Crowdlaw at Digital Dictatorship or Democracy Conference
Hosted by the University of Vienna
- When the Future of Work Arrives Early. What Now?
JFF Horizons 2020 Conference
- Transformations: How to Upgrade Institutions Beyond the Pandemic
Digital Government Initiative, New America
- Open Source Government: How AI, Crowdsourcing and Open Data Can Build a Smarter State in Asia and Beyond
Georgia Tech
- Open Source Government: How AI, Crowdsourcing, and Open Data Can Build a Smarter State in Asia and Beyond
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. November 2019
- Harnessing Digital Technologies in the Social Sector: Opportunities, Challenges, and Strategies
4th MSF-CSC Social Sector Conference, Singapore. November 2019
- Public Problem Solving and Innovation Skills
Institute of Public Administration of Canada Webinar. November 2019
- CrowdLaw: 2019 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference
United States House of Representatives, Washington DC. October 2019
- The City as a Collective Intelligence
How do we design for crowd and istitution collaboration? Hosted by NESTA. London, UK, October 2019
- Institutionalizing Collective Intelligence
Barcelona CrowdLaw Conference, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain. October 2019
- Strengthening the Research-Policy Interface for the SDGs Panel
International Conference on Sustainable Development, Columbia University. September 2019
- Reboot Democracy: Innovations in Election Tech
NYU Entrepreneurial Institute, New York. September 2019
- CrowdLaw Conference
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. June 2019
- Workspheres
Museum of Modern Art, R&D Salon 31. May 2019
- Innovations in Government: The Case of New Jersey
National Association of State CIOs. May 2019
- Innovations in Government: The Case of New Jersey
NJ Technology Summit. May 2019
- Ponencia - Prepararse para la Incertidumbre: Nuevas Tecnologías y el Futuro de la Democracia
Evento Retina: Tecnología y Sociedad, El Pais, Madrid, Spain. November 2018
- How Millennials Are Changing Politics
The 9th Annual Berkin-Friedman Forum, Baruch College, New York. October 2018
- Tecnología, Gobierno Inteligente y Justicia Abierta at Observatorio
Participation Ciudadana y Cultura de la Transparencia y la Legalidad, Mexico. october 2018
- Innovating Government
Metrolab. October 2018
- CrowdLaw, Digital Dimensions, Democratic Constitutional Design
The Future of Public Engagement, University of Iceland. September 2018
- Designing Collective Intelligence: Mobilising Humans and Machines to Address Social Needs
NESTA, London, UK. September 2018
- Democracy on Trial - Is Democracy Dead?
Monash University. August 2018
- The Future of Work
Maurice Blackburn Lawyers Future of Work Forum, Melbourne. July 2018
- Artificial Intelligence Meets Collective Intelligence
Tallinn E-Governance Conference, Tallinn, Estonia. May 2018
- Anticipatory Regulation of New Technology and Digital Democracy
Arizona State University. May 2018
- Technology and the Fight Against Corruption
Summit for the Americas, Lima, Peru. April 2018
- CrowdLaw: Social and Behavioral Experiments and the Study of Citizen Engagement
Cornell Tech. March 2018
- Better Use of Data in a Fact-Hostile World
ANZSOG, Melbourne, Austalia (online). March 2018
- Bigotry, Bias, or Balance? Reimagining Policy-Making for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Geneva Tsinghua Initiative for the Sustainable Development Goals, World Economic Forum, Davos. January 2018
- Designing a Research Agenda on Collective Intelligence and Governance
Society of Chilean Public Policy Researchers, Santiago. January 2018
- Future Summit
Santiago de Chile. January 2018
- Smart Cities Conference
Barcelona. November 2017
- Open State
Australia. October 2017
- ConDatos
Costa Rica. August 2017
- Our World, Our Data
MIT Media Lab. April 2017
- Data, Ethics, and Precision Medicine
Imperial College. November 2016
- The Tech Presidency: Governing in the Age of Big Data and Machine Learning
LinkedIn Speakers Series
- Solving Public Problems with Data
United Nations, Executive Boards of UNDPAINFPA/LINOPS. June 2016
- Smart Government
Efficient State Congress, Behöden Spiegel (in German). May 2016
- Smart Government
Central European E-Government Summit, Budapest. May 2016
- Smarter Citizens, Smarter State
Vancouver, BCTechSummit. January 2016
- Inauguración Ciudades Democráticas
CONSULCon 18, Madrid, Spain. November 2018
- Google and Apple’s rules for virus tracking apps sow division among states (Politico, June 2020)
- How Congress can improve productivity by looking to the rest of the world (The Hill, May 2020)
- How to run the world remotely (Vox, May 2020)
- N.J. hospitals were expected to hit peak capacity last weekend. It didn’t happen. Here’s why. (New Jersey Local News, April 2020)
- Coronavirus preparedness: Insurers and Medicaid need to relax prescription refills (The Hill, March 2020)
- How a Government Innovation Office Aims to Modernize Its Services (Brink, February 2020)
- Never listen to advice but do get lots of information (The Commons, January 2020)
- People learn in different ways. The way we teach should reflect that (Apolitical, January 2020)
- A Form that functions (The Aspen Institute, December 2019)
- Digital Economy: Digital democracy (The Economist Podcast)
- Internet está creando desigualdad, pero hay formas de arreglarlo (RETINA, April 1 2019)
- Das tägliche Entscheider-Briefing zu Digitalisierung & KI, 28.03.2019 (Der Tagesspiegel, 2019)
- Salon 31: Workspheres (MoMa R&D, May 2019)Professor Beth Simone Noveck’s talk at the MoMA R&D Salon which discussed the changing landscape of workspheres in the current political and social climate.
- Beth Noveck, Asesora de Obama, Nos Explica Cómo la Tecnología Puede Hacer Más Transparentes Nuestras Democracias (El País, December 16, 2015)An article in El País describing Professor Beth Simone Noveck’s tenure in the White House as Deputy Chief Technology Officer.
- Beth Noveck: On the C-SPAN Networks (C-SPAN, 2009)
- Professor Beth Simone Noveck discusses topics like transparency, open government, and civic engagement across three appearances in the C-SPAN video library.
- How Germany is preparing to digitize government and labor (Deutsche Welle, May 2019)
- Igualdad: Internet Está Creando Desigualdad, Pero Hay Formas de Arreglarlo (Montse Hidalgo Perez & Guillermo Vega, Retina, April 1, 2019)
- The Future of City Innovation (Beth Noveck, Bloomberg Cities, March 19, 2019)
- New Ways of Working for Government (Bloomberg, 2018)
- El Ejemplo de Madrid y por qué la Participación Ciudadana Aún no Funciona (Jordi Pérez Colomé, El País, December 10, 2018)
- Top 10 Books About Building Cities (Jonathan Carr, The Guardian, March 13, 2019)
- New Jersey Chief Innovation Officer Beth Noveck: Using Technology to Shape Policy (Casey Leins, US News, September 21, 2019)
- Who knows best? Cities consult citizens for fresh ideas (Sophie Davies, Thomson Reuters Foundation News, February 12, 2019)
- Beth Noveck on How Open Data and Direct Democracy Could Restore Our Faith in Politics (Australian Broadcasting Corp, September 12, 2018)
- Elections Won’t Save Our Democracy. But ‘CrowdLaw’ Could. (Beth Noveck, The Washington Post, October 2, 2018)
- NJ’s First CIO Explains How Technology Can Improve Government Services (Briana Vannozzi, NJTV News, October 1, 2018)
- Innovation Lead Will Help New Jersey Modernize Process, Support the Tech Economy (Theo Douglas, GovTech, August 27, 2018)
- Artificial Intelligence and the End of Government (Daniel Araya, Forbes, January 4, 2019)
- Digital Crusaders: Technology Offers Weapons for the Battle Against Corruption (Chris Wellisz, IPS News, December 18, 2018)
- Renovating Democracy from the Bottom Up (Nathan Gardels, The Washington Post, October 5, 2018)
- NJ’s first CIO explains how technology can improve government services (NJTV News, October 1, 2018)
- New Jersey Chief Innovation Officer Beth Noveck: Using Technology to Shape Policy (US News, September 21, 2018)
- The Simple but Ingenious System Taiwan Uses to Crowdsource Its Laws (Chris Horton, MIT Technology Review, August 21, 2018)
- Australia’s Top 4 on the Global Stage of Digital Government Influencers (Harley Dennett, The Mandarin, August 9, 2018)
- The Impact of Technology on Democracy (The Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2018)
- [German] Die Digitalrätin aus New York (Die Zeit, August 29 2018)
- Citizen participation in law-making and public policy: An Interview with Beth Simone Noveck (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, August 28 2018)
- The ex-White House digital champion bringing innovation to New Jersey(Apolitical, August 23 2018)
- New Jersey hires GovLab founder as its first Chief Innovation Officer(Govtech, August 13 2018)
- Best and worst of times: how disruption will reshape work (Sydney Morning Herald, August 11 2018)
- If a robot's eating your job, it's probably eating your life expectancy too (Sydney Morning Herald, July 2018)
- Managing Through Uncertainty: Why Public Servants Should Embrace Data Science. (Public Sector Digest, June 2018)
- Interview with Beth Noveck in ERR Novataar (Eesti Rahvusringhääling, May 2018)
- More Than a Coin: The Rise of Civic Cryptocurrency (Forbes, March 2018)
- City Challenges: Collaborative Governing for Public Problem Solving (Forbes, January 2018)
- La Madre Del Gobierno Abierto (La Vanguardia, 2017)
- Experta expondrá este jueves sobre uso de nuevas tecnologías en el gobierno (La Tercera, 2017)
- The Policy Labs We Urgently Need (Governing, December 13 2017)
- Five hacks for digital democracy (Nature, April 2017)
- Another NHS crisis looms - an inability to analyze data (The Guardian, February 2017)
- The Power of Networking in Reforming Criminal Justice (Governing, February 2017)
- Could crowdsourcing expertise be the future of government? (The Guardian, November 2016)
- Can Smarter Crowdsourcing Stop Zika? (CityLab Miami 2016, Video): Beth Simone Noveck in conversation with Rudi Borrman.
- In the Fight Against Hunger, Technology Brings Power to the People (USA Today, September 2016)
- The International Congress on Government Administration and Public Policy (#GIGAPP2016, Video): An Interview with Beth Simone Noveck.
- The Tech Presidency - Governing in the Age of Big Data and Machine Learning (LinkedIn Speaker Series, 2016, Video): Beth Noveck’s talk at the LinkedIn Speaker Series
- The Obama administration wanted to open up government to citizen input. Why hasn’t it worked? (The Washington Post, 2016): An interview with Beth Simone Noveck
- Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise (#BCTECHSummit, 2016, Video): Beth Noveck’s talk at the #BCTECHSummit
- The big data opportunity (#BCTECHSummit, 2016, Video): Panel discussion moderated by Beth Noveck at the #BCTECHSummit
- The Tinder Approach to Fixing Our Government (The Brian Lehrer Show, 2016, Audio): Beth Noveck on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC 93.9 FM
- The Innovation the Grantmaking Process Needs (Governing, January 2016)
- Swipe right to fix the world: can Tinder-like tech match solutions to problems? (The Guardian, December 2015)
- What Citizens Can Teach Civil Servants About Open Government (Governing, December 2015)
- How Technology can make our democracy more transparent (El Pais, 2015, Video): An interview with El Pais
- Participatory Democracy's Emerging Tools (Governing, March 2015)
- Demand a more open source government (TED, 2012, Video): Beth Noveck at TED2012
- Can the Open Data Revolution Change Our Democracy (TED Radio hour, 2012, Audio): NPR TED Radio Hour
- What government can learn from tech (TechRepublic, 2015): A conversation with Beth Noveck
- Bringing Democracy into the 21st century (Scenario Magazine, 2016): J.P O’Malley in the Scenario Magazine
- The International Congress on Government Administration and Public Policy (#GIGAPP2016, Video): An Interview with Beth Simone Noveck