Visiting Professor and GovLab Director Beth Simone Noveck Wins Internet Excellence Award from Oxford

Beth Simone Noveck, who directs the Governance Lab (GovLab) at New York University and currently holds the Jerry Hultin Global Network Visiting Professorship at the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, has been given an Internet and Society Award from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) for her outstanding leadership in exploring and implementing new applications of technology that improve people’s lives by changing the way institutions govern.

Noveck’s work at the GovLab is based on the hypotheses that institutions that govern themselves more collaboratively solve problems faster and with greater success, and that greater engagement leads to both more legitimate democratic governance and better solutions for citizens. She is helping to develop practical designs for processes, technologies, and institutional arrangements to support collaborative democracy and put those designs into practice in the real world. OII Director Helen Margetts explained the impetus behind the honor, saying, “Beth Noveck is one of those rare individuals, able to navigate both academic and policy circles with demonstrable ease. Her work on open government has had real impact and we are delighted to recognize her achievements.”

The awards presentation, held at Balliol College on November 7, marked a nostalgic return to the University of Oxford for Noveck. She had studied post-World War II allied cultural policy as a student at one of the university’s other constituent schools, Christ Church College. Noveck, who served in the White House as the first U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer and director of the White House Open Government Initiative (2009-2011), has other ties to Great Britain as well; she was once appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron as a senior advisor for his own Open Government efforts.