[Jennifer Beddor:] Welcome everyone to GAO's Centennial Webinar Series on Major Challenges for the Next 100 Years. My name is Jenn Beddor, and I am an engineer with GAO's science and technology team, and I will be moderating today's panel. To begin, we have a message from the comptroller general, Gene Dodaro. [Gene Dodaro:] Hello. I'm Gene Dodaro, comptroller general of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Twenty twenty-one marks GAO's 100th anniversary serving Congress and the American people. As part of our centennial celebration, we are pleased to present this webinar series called Foundations for Accountability, Oversight Issues for the Next 100 Years. We really on a deep pool of expertise within and outside the agency to help monitor changes in public policy and management. In addition to our own people at GAO, we also consult with advisory panels such as the comptroller general's educators advisory panel, independent researchers, and agency managers who implement the policies and programs we audit. We are proud to bring these experts together for webinars covering the following topics, leading practices to manage, empower, and oversee the federal workforce, building integrated portfolios of evidence for decision making, managing complexity across public policy challenges, the legal context of accountability, and major challenges for the next 100 years. These webinars will explore the goals, conflicts, tensions and challenges that shape the need for rigorous, evidence-based decision making to improve government and support oversight. They will highlight promising and effective practices that can help achieve these goals and demonstrate what GAO has done and will continue to do to support an effective, economical, efficient, equitable, and ethical federal government. I hope you will find them informative. Please enjoy. [Jennifer Beddor:] First, I would like to thank the comptroller general for his introduction and our panelists for agreeing to participate in today's webinar. I would also like to thank the many people who have been working behind the scenes to make this event happen with special thanks to Mandy Pritchard, Brody Gardner, and Carrie Burgott. This year, GAO is celebrating its centennial, 100 years since its founding. During this celebration, we have had time to reflect on GAO's progress and accomplishments over the past century such as our work in areas like health care, foreign policy, natural resources, and defense. But for this webinar, I would like to take the opportunity to focus our attention on the next century. What challenges will we face? What trends or events will defends GAO's future, and perhaps more importantly, how should we be prepared to respond to these challenges? Although we can't predict the future, that doesn't mean that we have to wait around for a challenge to surprise us. Instead, I'll be curious to hear what our panelists think on how to best prepare and to meet future challenges. As Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "Plans are nothing. Planning is everything." I'm very excited to hear the range of perspectives from our panelists today. For our listeners, please feel free to type questions in the chat box on Zoom, and we will try to use those questions in our Q and A with the panelists. To begin with, I'd like to introduce the speakers. I will read each speaker's bio, and then we'll turn it over to the speaker and panelist for them to give us a little bit more information about themselves if needed and then to answer the following question. What do you see as a persistent or future challenge in your field, and how do you think we could best prepare to meet these challenges? So, we will kick it off today with Dr. Anthony Wilbon. Dr. Anthony Wilbon is a Dean of Howard University School of Business. Dr. Wilbon's expertise is in strategic technology management. He is also a certified project management professional. Dr. Wilbon's area of research includes technology strategy, quantitative analysis, information technology, and technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He has also explored research in sustainable environmental engineering through the integration of social, environmental, and economic considerations into system design methods through funded NOAA research projects. Dr. Wilbon has previously held positions at organizations such as the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and Booz, Allen, and Hamilton. His professional experience and capabilities extend to business, management, and technology-related topics including systems application and technology, production and operations management, project management, systems development life cycle, and research methodology. Thank you so much, Dr. Wilbon, for joining us today. I will hand it over to you to continue your bio and to tell us what you think the challenges are. [Anthony D. Wilbon:] Thank you, Jenn, and I appreciate the invitation from GAO. And, so again, thank you for the bio. I've done quite a few things in my career starting as an engineer and kind of blending my experiences in technology and management and business, so, I kind of have a pretty good feel for some of the dynamics that happen between the two worlds. And so, based on my experiences, the challenges that I see happening, and I'll speak to this from an education perspective but also kind of an entrepreneurship perspective because that's where my, a lot of my research has occurred, and I think the two cross over quite a bit. We are starting to prepare a lot of our students to consider the world of entrepreneurship as an option for them, because I think, again, small businesses, as we all know, are the engines that drive our economy, and it's important that we sustain them and support them, but in doing so, we also have to make sure that we recognize that there is a need to have a technology base for them. Technology literacy is critically important, and so we're infusing that in our students, but I think we also have confused that in the businesses that we create. We have a dependency on technology for consumer purposes and focus on the end user, but we really have to kind of infuse and upskill people so that they understand the dynamics of functions of technology and the applications for technologies and the development of technologies. That's going to help build the infrastructure, create things like broadband networks and high-performance computing that will actually impact small businesses. And if we don't do that, I think the outcome is that you'll have a situation whereby we create a, you know the term, digital divide, which has been an ongoing issue, but it's shifting. So, you know, it was the, the divide used to be that we'd be focused on people or businesses that didn't have access to technologies. Now, it's not about access; it's about the type of technologies and the breadth and depth of the technology that you have. So, we have people who have small businesses that, for example, don't have access to broadband networks, and that creates a disadvantage for them. So, we have to really focus on building the infrastructure, and in doing so, we have to deal with issues such as cybersecurity and big data and those kinds of things. So, there's a lot of technology fusion with business and application that we have to really try to address that's going to be a challenge for us going forward to have an impact not only on our economy but the social structure that we live in and also the international placement of the United States in general. So, those are kind of the things that will be, that I think are important. And I hope we can have that discussion about some of that stuff today. Thanks Jenn. I'll turn it back over to you. [Jennifer Beddor:] Great. Thank you for that. Our next panelist is Dr. Sian Mooney. Dr. Mooney is the Dean of the Indiana University Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Dr. Mooney's research interests lie in the questions related to the use of natural resources and the environment. She is an economist that has worked for many years on topics related to water use in the western United States, endangered species and the impact of climate change, and has secured more than $4 million in external grant funding. Recently, she has become interested in the incentives that scientists face to address complex problems as part of multidisciplinary teams and the role of science information in decision making. So, welcome Dr. Mooney, and I'm going to hand it over to you. [Sian Mooney:] Great. Thank you so much, Jenn, and thank you for inviting me today and welcome to everybody. Certainly a tremendously interesting topic. I'm going to focus my comments on natural resources, environment, and then also a little bit of education as well. Certainly, we are facing tremendous challenges right now, many of them very present at the current time as we're looking at exceptional seasons of wildfire, exceptional flooding, and many natural disasters related to climate change and environmental change at the present time. And, you know, clearly, this has been on our minds for many years, and I think that this is one of the sort of persistent and ongoing issues that we as a country have been dealing with. Some of the things that we have already put in place are things like monitoring systems and protections for natural resources and environment, but I think that we're about to experience probably a very uncertain period going forward where we're likely to see lots of change, variability, and perhaps the greatest, perhaps a great velocity of change actually as we go forward. And so, this is going to have, essentially driven by climate change, this is going to have tremendous impacts on our natural resources, environment, human health, and then also the economy, and as I mentioned, the pace of change is really increasing. So, Jenn mentioned earlier on a really great quote, "Plans are nothing. Planning is everything." And I do really think that as we are moving forward into this new era, planning most definitely is everything. I think that some of the challenges that we're going to face are going to be really quite large in these areas. We have an increase in extreme events. We have perhaps a change in both terrestrial resources and aquatic resources, so land and water, their productivity and their ability to sustain economic activities and then also provide habitat for wildlife is really quite changing as is also their spatial extent. And so, I think that some of these things are going to be really some of the major challenges, like how do we manage for resilient resources and environment as we move forward into the future, and then also, I think, in concert with this, the intersection between the vast income inequality that we see here in this country and the ability of individuals to thrive under a potentially much more volatile climate situation. So, preparing to meet these challenges, some of these, some of the things that I think that we can do is continue to really focus on producing a very well-educated and ethical workforce with the skills to help us robustly monitor, forecast, and develop and design policies for the future that can be critically evaluated and monitored perhaps on a more frequent basis. As I mentioned, I think the pace of change is really increasing. I think important in that will be to train people who can really understand these complex situations from a variety of viewpoints. I think it's important that we generate a workforce that is able to interact across numerous different viewpoints because I think that these are important situations that cannot be just solved with a single viewpoint. I think really also understanding, being able to better understand some of the values and services obtained from nature some of the things that we obtain right now, is also going to be really vitally important as we move forward into the future. And with that, I'll end my comments. Thank you. [Jennifer Beddor:] Thank you so much Dr. Mooney. Our next panelist today is Mr. Stephen Stanford. Mr. Stanford is the Managing Director of GAO's team on Strategic Planning and External Liaison or SPEL. Mr. Stanford leads strategic planning and foresight programs for the GAO. Prior to becoming managing director, he was the Director of the GAO Center for Strategic Foresight. As a leader in public sector foresight and design thinking, he directed the team that developed GAO's 2018 to 2023 strategic plan and accompanying trends, and in 2018 he served as the assistant director leading the team that produced GAO's first technology assessment on artificial intelligence. He frequently speaks to public sector, international, and private sector organizations about emerging issues and the use of foresight and strategic planning to improve organizational performance including presentations on artificial intelligence, enterprise planning, and leadership to U.S. and global audiences. Mr. Stanford is also the founder and host of GAO's foresight speaker series. Welcome, Mr. Stanford, to this panel. I'll hand it over to you. [Stephen Stanford:] Thank you, Jenn. Great being here with you and with such a distinguished panel. Good to see the members of GAO's Educators Advisory Panel joining us today. and you know. a lot of what's been said already resonates quite a bit as we, you know, contemplate the last 100 years and think ahead about the 100 years to come for GAO and not only for GAO but also for our government, our system of government. I think from my perch at GAO where we think about the future of GAO and we also help facilitate the agency's links to the outside world, connecting GAO to international partners, connecting GAO to the audit and accountability community at the federal level and also throughout the states and localities across the entire United States, we are often confronting a host of extremely complex problems that face all levels of government, and I think that's probably where I feel the biggest challenge rests in the future for not only GAO but also all entities interested in good government and good governance. The types of problems, the types of challenges that Dr. Wilbon, that Dr. Mooney have already alluded to really are anchored in complexity, and I think the key unifying concept around a lot of the challenges we face right now is around complexity. The challenges don't sit neatly within any one silo or any one subject area or domain. These are multi-domain, multi-sector, multi-layer problems, whether we're talking about different layers of government in the United States, whether we're talking about transnational boundary issues, whether we're talking about the intersection of the public sector, the private sector, the non-governmental sector and whether we're talking about, you know, spillovers from one domain like healthcare into another like the economy or supply chains. And we've seen this play out as we are still fighting our way through the pandemic. We've seen what started as a health issue, a virus, spill over into areas affecting education, technology, supply chains, the economy. The COVID, you know, crisis has shown very dramatically how interrelated and how quickly different domains are and how quickly they can spill over into each other. So, I think there's a powerful lesson there, and there's no shortage of other examples where we see similar things happening. So, as we contemplate the challenges for the next 100 years and talk today as a panel, I think keeping in mind some of the things that have already been said about complexity are really essential, and then, Jenn, you also said something that resonates with me from our planning and foresight standpoint that you can't predict the future, and that's absolutely right. Foresight is not about trying to predict the future but rather being prepared for the future and imagining the different futures we might encounter and thinking about what we can do today to be ready. So, happy to join you all today, look forward to the conversation. Thank you. [Jennifer Beddor:] Thank you. Our next panelist is Mr. Mark Gaffigan. Mr. Gaffigan is the managing director for GAO's natural resources and environmental team based in Washington, DC. The natural resources and environment team is responsible for GAO's assessment of federal efforts to manage our nation's land and water resources, protect the environment, ensure food safety, manage agricultural programs, and ensure a reliable and environmentally sound energy supply, meet the nation's science challenges and address U.S. and international nuclear security and cleanup. Mr. Gaffigan began his career with GAO in 1987 and has worked on a variety of reviews of federal programs with an emphasis on budget and program reviews of the U.S. Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Welcome to the panel today. I'll hand it over to you. [Mark Gaffigan:] Thank you, Jenn, and thank you to my fellow panelists. It's an honor to be on this panel with such distinguished folks. You know, when I got the charge to talk about what's going to happen in the next hundred years, I think the first challenge I sort of think about is, well, I don't think I'm going to make it for the next 100 years, although I will do my best. But I do recently have added to my family two grandsons. So, I hope that they're around for the next 100 years, and so, this one is for Cedric and Jace. You know, it's very interesting, we had the comments about planning, and I'm reminded of a magnet that was on my mom's refrigerator for a number of years, and it said, we plan and God laughs. And I'm a big believer in planning. Thank you, Mr. Eisenhower, for the interstate highway system. That's part of planning. But I think what that quote tells us is we're going to have to evolve. We're going to have to be flexible. We're going to have to adjust, and I see that happening over the next 100 years. As Steve talked about, the complexity of things we face become more and more complex. I'm going to bring the perspective of a performance auditor. The work that I've done in my career at GAO, looking at how government can do things better to help in various situations and through various programs. And so, as many of the folks who meet me who are new to GAO quickly learn, I quickly quiz them on what's the secret of GAO, and I sometimes get a puzzled look, but it starts with what are the criteria that we're looking at, that we're assessing. You know, what, and ultimately that is what is that federal government role. That's sort of our starting point, and we go out and assess the condition of what is against, you know, what should be the criteria, and in that work, we try to see if there's a disconnect between those two things and address our recommendations towards the cause of a disconnect between the condition and criteria, and what strikes me about the challenge for performance auditors going forward is dealing with the complexities that the panelists have mentioned and, in particular, the cross-cutting nature of these issues, and as federal auditors, we come in with a perspective of, okay, what's the federal role? That's a common question we ask at the beginning. And that's become more and more complicated due to the cross-cutting nature of the issues we're facing today. I mean climate change is a classic example of that. It doesn't require just the government to do something, right. It's just not solely the federal government's role. It requires a whole, not only a whole of government at all levels, federal, state, local, tribal, but a whole society approach in the non-governmental sector to address these issues, and that's really reflected in the UN's sustainable development goals, which if you look at, they're about the health and well-being of people, which directly aligns with GAO's goal one, where we talk about, you know, the health and well-being of people, the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the chemicals that are in our, in our economy. Those are all things that are directly in my portfolio, and that's where we direct our efforts to try to provide some sense of what the federal government can do, and we have found that identifying that role in concert with recognizing the other roles that are played is really important in our work, and I see that as a particular challenge. If we're going to address these issues as a society, we're going to need all hands on deck,. It really will require a whole society approach, and government does play a role, but the federal government is not the only answer to this. And one of the things we've done in the performance audit side that I've seen is a really great tool is criteria around collaboration, the importance of collaboration in addressing these issues, and it starts with, for example, defining roles and responsibilities. Who's doing what and how? And, you know, the recent pandemic and the response there and kind of the confusion on how to respond things is a classic example of what can go wrong when we don't sort of have a plan and defined roles and responsibilities of who's going to address that. So, I see that as a major challenge for our society going forward and in our work as auditors looking at what the federal government can do. And in the climate change arena, for example, we have developed not only using collaboration criteria, but pointing out a framework, for example, in building resilience in response to these issues, where we talk about the federal government can play the role of integrator, right, bringing people together, defining roles and responsibilities, it can provide the role of providing information, you know, good data, so we know what to do, how high to build that wall if we're trying to strengthen for climate change, and it can provide incentives in the form of pushing folks in different directions, which are going to help address those problems. So, that's something that we talk about in terms of work that we're doing in building resilience to climate change, but it's something that could be used in almost any of the work we do. Again, recognizing the complexity, cross-cutting nature of many of these issues, and trying to define what that government role is in the context of the whole of society. So, I see that as a major challenge going forward. Thank you, Jenn. [Jennifer Beddor:] Yeah, thank you so much, Mr. Gaffigan. Our last, but certainly not least, panelist today is Dr. Tim Persons. Dr Persons is GAO's Chief Scientist and one of two managing directors of the Science, Technology, Assessment and Analytics team. The team conducts technology assessments, provides oversight of federal science and technology programs, provides technical assistance on science and technology issues to the Congress and develops innovative analytical techniques for carrying out audits and evaluations. Dr. Persons joined GAO in 2008. Prior to that, he served in key executive roles at the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity and the National Security Agency. Dr. Persons is a recipient of a 2020 Fed 100 Award in recognition of national artificial intelligence leadership. Dr. Persons, I'll turn it over to you now. [Tim Persons:] Thanks, Jenn, and thanks very much for the organizers for this. It's a privilege to be able to stand at the cusp of GAO's newest century, looking back and standing on the shoulders of the giants from the first century, and for my part, I think we'll just make it a, you know, run the whole table here. I'm a big fan of Eisenhower's quote as well. Planning is essential, and that's why I'm proud to be here to talk about this and do this in terms of our work with respect to science and tech issues as well as the work that Steve leads in terms of our strategic foresight work within GAO. So, very nice to be here. Jenn as you mentioned, my background, I have been in the national security and intelligence community, so, I have a little bit of insight on that, which will inform my opening remarks today as well as some prior service I was in our biomedical system with a lot of advanced technologies things, which probably by now are outdated, but nonetheless, having a little bit of the, what I might call the bio info nano-type view of things, meaning the biologic life sciences, the information age that we're in, and then the nano in terms of material science and things that we're seeing. And so at the top, I'll just say we really are in an era where as the national academies calls it, where we're talking about convergent technologies. It's not enough that we have, for example, as Anthony mentioned, 5G wireless. That is a key thing. It's just that's just opening the bandwidth of the data pipes to pass around and ship around the data and operate in a world of the internet of things and so on that is driving the digital economy. But that's one thing, and then you start to lay in the fact that we really are in the era of the algorithm, and so, if things, our lives are being run by optimized algorithms and that can be very good in many cases, is extremely good in many cases, but can be challenged or cause challenges, nonetheless. And so, we have to think about what that means. So, I think those conversion issues about like taking the algorithms plus the massive amount of data, the rate at which the data is being put around and so on is just creating an entire new, I guess, what is driving the fourth industrial revolution, as the world economic forum calls it, is the fusion of the digital world in the physical world. The four key challenges that I see that really are part of this in this conversion-type era that we're in, I see, first of all, just starting off with the idea of digital services itself, I mentioned AI, artificial intelligence, that captures our imagination with all of the cool Hollywood movies and sci-fi films that I certainly am a fan of. I love all of that, but that apocalyptic dystopian vision is not the reality. We do have risks with machine learning and AI and data management and so on, but it's not the take over the world and destroy humankind kind of risks on that. We have to think about, and really AI's under the umbrella of digital services, we have this emerging and emergent digital services-oriented economy, and we're just on the cusp of that. And just as in the late 19th Century the steam engine drove the economy into the 20th Century, and we still have steam-generated power structures today, so too, digital is like the new steam engine of driving that economy, and we're just back in sort of that late 19th Century era, in my view, to do that. But again, if you're passing around a lot of data, if you have these connected systems, then you really are talking about increasing your attack surface and cybersecurity, and that's why GAO has a very good IT and cybersecurity team, a sister team to STAA, working on all those issues including privacy and civil liberties, but also why we have an innovation lab to explore the algorithm and what that means for oversight and things like that. So, but it does require different statistical thinking in terms of the workforce. So, as Anthony mentioned, there's a workforce transition that needs to happen. We need to train them to think statistically regardless of where they are. They don't have to become [inaudible] statisticians, but nonetheless, that's where we are, and really, as we're seeing through this pandemic is a change in the future of work. The second area is really, as Sian was mentioning, is what I'll just call environmental stewardship. And Mark's team leads our climate change portfolio. So, you can't have that conversation about environmental stewardship without climate change, and really, a lot of the conversation in the next century is going to be about adaptation to that particular change, but it's not only that. It's how we think about circular systems or circular economies with materials so that what ends up in the landfill or do we even have a landfill because we're smart about thinking through a life cycle on how we use and manage materials all the way through. The other thing is how we think about our oceans, the blue economy. We haven't ever monetized really what our oceans mean to us, though we know they mean a lot. So, those are our key things that we have to think about, and so, the environmental area is the key issue. The third key, I think, pillar of this is that you have public health, and of course, Steve mentioned the pandemic, and we're all in the midst of that. It is a massive sort of glacial change of not, I don't mean the right of that, but just as it's forging, in part, the new economy driven by digital and the future of work and things, so, but we have to get better at dealing with emerging, predicting and dealing with emerging infectious diseases. And GAO has done years' long work of this particular thing before the pandemic. But I would also say the aging demographics is a big thing. Every day 10,000 thousand baby boomers in the United States are retirement eligible or become that way, and that's going to be inexorably a march for up to the next decade or the next many, many years. So, how that change happens and how we provide healthcare services or think about the longevity of life is a big issue. I would also say that in the public health area, that food security is a big deal and not just for developing countries. We have challenges in the United States, a developed country, and there's food deserts even in various wards in the District of Columbia, and there's research that Howard has done or is doing on this particular thing. Anthony may speak to any of that, but those are the kind of things that we need to think about as a public health issue, to make sure that we're pursuing food security and equity of access and so on, to health care, among many other things. And then lastly, for the national security topic, my fourth, is just I think we're seeing a return of the great power competition. And so, it's the rise of China that's the big thing economically. We have close trade and ties with that that's good for stability between the countries, but as the countries continue to grow in prominent significance and as this digital economy emerges, how we protect our intellectual property, how we secure research and development, which are kind of the stem cells of ideas that go into the future patents and the future value creation systems that we have and need, that's going to be a key issue in our national security area in addition to the cybersecurity dimensions that I mentioned earlier in our digital economy. So, thank you for having me. Those are sort of the four key areas, but there's many things to go into. They are interconnected, as Steve says, and I think there are some good things to speak on in the following time. Thank you. [Jennifer Beddor:] Great. Thanks to all of our panelists for a great introduction. I am definitely already hearing lots of themes such as the complexity of challenges, how the response will likely have to be interdisciplinary and involve many different groups, and that all of our panelists really like planning, which is great. So, we're going to transition now into the Q and A portion. So, I'd like to invite all the panelists to turn on their video. I would also like to remind the listeners that they can go ahead and use the chat box if you'd like to submit questions for our panelists. I have actually already received one question. So, I will kick us off with a listener sent-in question. So, this listener is asking about how the challenges are again cross sector. You need lots of different people to get on board, and they're very complex. So, this listener asks, do the panelists think that our ability to build consensus and respond has increased. So, for example, the government, in order to do something might have to build consensus with a lot of different stakeholders. So, this listener is asking for your perspectives on that. Are things like technology, are they dividing society rather than promoting consensus? So, I will pause there, and I will let any of the panelists who'd like to respond do so. [Stephen Stanford:] Well, I'll get us started, and then maybe, you know, tag team to others as they want to chime in. But what I've understood from a lot of conversations with Tim and Mark and others at GAO is on some of these really important national issues that involve competitiveness, technology, the place of the U.S., vis-a are the other competitors in the world, there's a lot of bipartisan support for looking at how the government is responding to those challenges, and I think that's an area where moving forward, especially when it comes to these grand challenges around environment and science and technology, the voices of which we're hearing from today on this panel, I think there are strong indicators of bipartisan interest in these issues, especially when it comes to U.S. competitiveness and our role, vis-a the others in the world. So, I'll kick it off with that and see if others have something to add. [Tim Persons:] I would agree with that, Steve. I would just say I like the phrase someone coined about we really are in this, what I think of as a complex adaptive systems era, right. It's not enough to say, well, we need to solve the emerging infectious disease problem of public health without talking about climate change, because we are thinking actually, in this panel, about the next century. So, you do have to think in centennial time frames around climate change. That's what distinguishes it from the day-to-day weather that we feel. You have to really have a long-term, but that sort of changing things, a changing climate will drive changing demographics, will drive changing public health outcomes and risk will shift, and so there's a, there's certainly, I think, the need to think in a more, Jenn used the right words, we really do need this interdisciplinary approach, and we have two senior academicians on the panel. I think there's definitely room, in my opinion. Our university system by far is number one. It's fantastic, but there still has to be reform about how do we think about that, the training in that interdisciplinary, because just solving one thing of a global problem, one corner of it, is not going to solve the whole thing. And I think our backing up to the legislative conversation, I think we have to think in legislative terms in that way as well. So, I think there's some massive changes coming. We're going to struggle adapting to it, but I think we can think through that planner lens, like Eisenhower does and maybe help mitigate risk. And I think that's a key role for GAO. [Sian Mooney:] I could jump in on some of those comments as well, Tim, and I agree with you in terms of, you know, the need for a group of individuals, a workforce that is able to deal with this kind of complexity, to work across different sectors, public, private, non-profit, and then also to be able to communicate across kind of a broad scope of disciplines and not be so siloed. You know, in terms of technology and the question of balkanizing society, I mean, you know, definitely we read a lot about that right now, but I also think, you know, that technology offers tremendous opportunities for us going into the future. I mean it's kind of, it's a mixed bag, clearly, and but, you know, I think our ability to be able to track and to monitor, to be able to look at water quality, air pollution, to better forecast sort of near-term weather, and also to kind of look to the future using technological approaches is a really great asset, and, you know, in my opinion, you know, I really do think that, you know, something from the educational perspective that we might want to stress, and this is just one thing, as you know, I really do think, you know, that this more interdisciplinary training, you know, people who are, for example, scientists that are deeply embedded in a particular technology or a particular area but also have, you know, a good understanding of some of the issues of sort of policy, management, evaluation, so that we can kind of talk across sectors and across different perspectives, and then similarly, you know, for those who, you know, that might be more in the area of sort of, you know, economics, accounting, or other sort of management areas, you know, to have an understanding of also what might be driving some of the science so that there's more ability to kind of communicate across all of these different areas. [Anthony D. Wilbon:] And I'll add one thing as well to follow up on what Sian suggested from the educational perspective. I mean I often tend to look at technology as being results-oriented and non-partisan to some degree, because that's where the focus is, is in the outcome, and I believe that we try to create environments whereby we are inclusive in that regard. So, for example, as several have mentioned, interdisciplinary focus is key on the academic institutions that I know of. We're working together on a lot of different projects to solve problems and bringing in all the disciplines to do that. So, I think, for example, we've been doing some work in cybersecurity, and that particular work includes not only people from the technology perspective but the business applications have impact, the political scientists, the economists. We even have people from Russia, from the Russian language department, who are involved. All of that is part of trying to build a solutions-oriented application that's going to be able to address some of the issues that we're facing. Now, again, the flip side of that, again, is being so results oriented, also as I mentioned earlier, does create an opportunity for us to build a division of sorts between the people who have the access to the technologies and the people who do not. And the risk that we run in doing that, creating a division, as Tim mentioned, is not having a mature workforce that can come along and actually involve itself in continuing the build of that technology going forward. So, there's a there's a dual operation that needs to take place. We have to focus on the technology and addressing those needs. We also have to focus on bringing everybody into the fold to be part of the solution process. [Mark Gaffigan:] Yeah, I'll just finish by adding, you know, the original question about consensus. Consensus is hard, and we're talking about, you know, going across governmental levels, you know, going into the private sector. Just within the federal government, there are so many programs that are set up to address issues that aren't working together, you know, whether you're talking about a response to climate change, food safety. I was mentioning just prior to this meeting the recent report we did with our health care team looking at the nexus between, you know, information about healthy eating and health care and chronic diseases, lots of initiatives and a common recommendation of us, and this is just within the federal government, is to work together and come up with a strategy. And I mentioned earlier, the collaboration criteria. Who's doing what? Who's in charge? That is like a key question, and so if we're struggling to do that just within the federal government, imagine doing that across multiple levels of government, and then the non-governmental sector. So, that is a challenge, and that, it's hard work, but that's what our democracy is about, right? Bringing different perspective stakeholders together. It's messy, but it's what we do to try to bring all those perspectives together, and that's the same thing we'll face in addressing all these issues. And again, not just in the U.S. but then internationally as well. Thank you. [Jennifer Beddor:] Thanks, all, for your perspectives. I want to pivot us a little bit to technology and technological innovation. You know. I think if we look at the past 100 years, it's very much defined by advances in technology, and I think several of our panelists have a background and experience in that. You know, even this video call here, you know, probably couldn't even happen a decade ago. So, I'm thinking as we look forward, what are ways we can actually foster that innovation, or maybe the opposite, what are ways that would really just suppress that innovation? I'll be curious to hear our panelists' thoughts on that, so feel free to jump. [Anthony D. Wilbon:] I'll start and suggest that fostering innovation kind of historically has happened in three ways, and I think my panel members may agree with this. It happens either through small businesses, people with less than, you know, 10 people, they're tinkering with ideas, and they're creating solutions, and they really have the flexibility and the autonomy to really dig into ideas and problems and find solutions. And that leads to commercial products, to commercial solutions to some of the most pressing problems we have. And we go back historically. We can talk about, you know, automobiles and consumer products, consumer electronics with Apple, Microsoft, social media. All of those were started by small companies with two or three people working on trying to find an innovative solution to a problem. The second way that innovation occurs is through large companies who invest in R and D, and so they make a conscious effort to invest large amounts of money into science and technology and innovation labs and so forth. And we think of, for example, the three M's, the Pfizers, the AT&Ts, the Apples, and all those kinds of things. And then the third way that innovation is fostered is through mission-driven government research that finds its way into commercial applications. And so, work that DoD and NIH and NASA is doing. So, all three of these things we talk about, Stephen talked about complexity, I think where we really can foster innovation using that historical model is to figure out a way to get all three of these entities to work together, to work on solutions and innovative solutions to problems, and all three of them play, I think, an important role, and particularly government, and government has an opportunity to be a leader in this regard by creating policies and standards and support for intellectual property and sustaining an investment in R and D and science infrastructure and innovation to enhance our competitiveness as a country. And so, I think the government can take a leadership, that GAO can take a leadership role in that and accelerate the development and commercialization of new technologies and innovation, not only just meeting national goals, but also just meeting the levels of expectations that us as normal people do with using technology in a daily basis. Now, some of the issues that may suppress that or create impediments for that is this whole concept of the, you know, structural inertia that takes place when you have large entities like bureaucracies and governments being in control of that, and we have to figure out a way to be more nimble and flexible and adaptable so that we can encourage innovation. Structural inertia is, I think, one of the key impediments to an environment of fostering innovation, and we have so much of that happening, not only at the government level but in large organizations and large corporations, and that's why you see the bulk of it happening in smaller businesses, but I think all of us have to work together in order to figure out a way to find an answer to that. [Tim Persons:] I think Anthony's answer is well said. So, all I'll say is, you know, sort of some symmetry with that is that mission-focused, more agile, as Anthony was, I'll just put that word on it, more flexible, more open aperture-type R and D. So, it's not the "usual" suspects, but you are doing things, and we have seen innovation in the R and D process with things like the DARPA Grand Challenges, so prize-like approaches to doing things that really democratizes a lot of that kind of thing. So, I think more of that along the way is part of that. But then you have to cross the valley of death, whether it's the technology or the manufacturing of the technology, those sort of things, and so, I think there's a key role for public-private partnerships. That's generally an amorphous kind of thing that needs to be contextually defined. So, that's both good and bad, but I think that, you know, again as we think, if these challenges and opportunities, I appreciate Sian bringing up opportunities, because that has to be here. It's not all a scary future. We can use foresight to try and imagine the future we would like and capitalize on still our country is considered, and I'm told by my friends overseas, the most innovative country in world history. And so, we can continue that. Riding the digital way of doing things but coming up with ways to work in public and private partnerships are very useful models there. And then, as I mentioned, the digital way, I think, you know thinking about how we capitalize on that and generate value and [inaudible] out of that, we do have to think about research infrastructure, and I think that's part of what you see in a push for like a national research cloud, right. Because the idea of like a National Science Foundation grant paying for a principal investigator, and they do this great work, but then it's parked at university of X's, you know, digital servers and not widely shared apart from the papers that are generated themselves, I think we're missing some opportunities in that kind of interconnectedness, interdisciplinary, those sort of things where we've seen that. So, we've seen successes on the messenger RNA viruses because you're starting to tie in sort of a bio computational perspective with the long-term biologic research of the NIH, and it really was the mRNA that resulted in [inaudible] Moderna came from DARPA from 20 years ago. So, it's that, that's that early stage, agile, problem, and mission centered-type thing that then moves up the value chain through these systems, and I think we can tweak and add and do better. [Stephen Stanford:] Yeah, I would just add very briefly, you know, the landscape that Dr. Wilbon laid out in terms of those three elements, building off of what Tim just said too, this forms an ecosystem, and no one of those elements is alone sufficient to propel the U.S. forward in terms of maintaining competitiveness and realizing the types of technological advances that have just been described. The other thing I'll note too is a little bit related to your question, Jenn, I think that the types of things that can derail some of the innovation curve as well as a fear-based approach or looking only at the potential downsides of technology, all technologies can be used for good and for ill. An airplane can unite countries and people and enable a global economy. It can also be a weapon. So, understanding that but also planning for it, I think of the work GAO just did with the AI accountability framework, which works to set up some of those guard rails and questions to ask to make sure technology is used in a fair and responsible way, things like that are really important markers along the road to make sure innovation can remain on a forward path and not get derailed by, of course, legitimate concerns, but there are ways to address those concerns and mitigate the risks to enable technology development moving forward, and that's where this whole ecosystem comes together and everyone has to be working in partnership. [Jennifer Beddor:] Thanks. I wanted to pull the thread a little bit specifically with Dr. Wilbon. You know, you mentioned the private sector and their key role in innovation, and I think our GAO audience would be really interested to hear what your thoughts are on trends in the private sector that you see defining the next century. You know, you talked a lot about entrepreneurship. So, how you feel like that fits in and what folks at GAO might need to know as we plan for the next century. [Anthony D. Wilbon:] Sure. So, in terms of trends, one of the things or a couple of things that I think are important to realize, and I think it was touched on by a few people already, and that is the concept of collaboration and creating an ecosystem between small businesses, big businesses, governments, and also other nations, to ensure we have a competitive landscape, but one trend in terms of technology, I think, that we all have to recognize, and some people know this already is you've heard the term the product life cycle and the compression of the product life cycle, where we go through this introduction growth phase, maturity, and decline, all of that's been shortened and compressed. So, for example, you know, to have a product in a development, research and development cycle and get it to the introduction phase to get to the market has been shortened because you really don't have time to spend a lot of time on R and D before a competitor will come and sweep you off your feet. And so, we have a very small timeframe to get a product from an R and D phase to a commercial phase, and then that growth phase is even shortened. So, it's much more aggressive. The maturity phase has been adjusted because it's been compressed, and we have companies who don't have the capacity to sustain a long maturity phase like we used to, where we had GM, for example, who was able to sustain the combustible engine for many, many years, even though there was a lot of push for electric cars until recently, they were not able to keep those on the sideline. And then also products are going into decline much faster. So, we have to be much more progressive in our thinking about how to manage products and the whole life cycle of technology, because it's changing so fast. And we, I think we see even in recent examples with the COVID, the pandemic, how that's actually happened, right. Traditionally, we had these scientific methods where you had to go through this linear process of clinical trials and so forth and clinical research, and that's shifted dramatically because we needed to in order for basically survival. So, we couldn't have this linear approach whereby you would do the research and go through these phase trials and then you, the company would get approval, and then you create a product and manufacturing and so forth, we had to collapse all of that, right. So, at the same time that the phases were going on, Pfizer was actually producing vaccines and Moderna was producing vaccines, and we were waiting for the approval process to take place through FDA, and while all that's happening, we're also building up the markets, right, in order to distribute the products, and so, we have this compression taking place, and everybody's involved, big business, government. Small businesses are a part of the innovation process because they're creating rapid tests and so forth. Local governments are involved because we have to execute and distribute these vaccines, and at the same time, once the FDA approval takes place, then you can start the process and launch and continue in a much faster pace. If we don't have that compression or manage that product compression, we're going to find ourselves in a very difficult situation, right, where we're not going to be able to respond on the next crisis as quick, and this compression is going to happen more and more. So, those trends are very important for us to manage, and I talked about the term structural inertia. The more structures we put in place that inhibit that ability to manage these types of crises is going to be detrimental to our long-term survival of some of these organizations, the efficiency of government and other entities, and these challenges are real, right. They're happening not in just technology that we know of. We have this health challenge, but somebody mentioned environmental issues, you know, same types of issues, right. Fires, hurricanes, floodings, droughts economic dependencies, human and demographic changes, all these things are going to have a huge effect on how we live, and you have to figure out a way to be much more agile in responding to some of these issues. And so, I think those are the things that we really have to kind of pay attention to as we move forward and particular trends that we can wrap our arms around when it comes to building this ecosystem and looking forward to the next 100 years. [Jennifer Beddor:] Yeah, I appreciate that, and this segues nicely into a question that someone from the audience had about the pandemic. So, Dr. Wilbon, you mentioned that this compressed life cycle of getting products out, we saw in the pandemic with vaccines and test kits and that sort of thing, the question from the audience asked, you know, what are the lessons learned that we've learned from the pandemic and how can we apply those going forward in the future. So, I will, that's a free-for-all for anyone who wants to take it. [Tim Persons:] Jenn, I'll kick us off because we've done a lot of work on this at GAO, and there's a pandemic preparedness perspective, like think of it like as in the way FEMA would do sort of in that homeland security-type domain, but there's also the public health answer as well, which is really, I think, the macro lesson that we have on this is we really do need to get serious about surveillance systems. We're in a world where Google is a verb, and we have all this, you know, like we're talking about this digital data, all these sort of things, but we're not leveraging it algorithmically or seeing it in that way. We have a world-leading epidemiological system, right, that works on data, but we're still thinking in terms of, an older frame of reference that is what we have found. So, whether it's the data and the modeling, remember the White House daily briefings on modeling and things and the models we know were going to be wrong, the question was just by how much. Nonetheless, the decisions have to be made. So, we have to improve our data, our surveillance, that leads to the improvement of data, which then leads to the improvement of the public health decision support system, which is really what that was, and you have to have the workforce along the way that thinks algorithmically in order to support such a system. So, it's in one sense not a technical challenge; it just has to be there. One of the things, we talked about mRNA is that we just need to continue to think about how we develop a national stockpile of these kind of things and work with agility, you know. And Anthony was talking about how we responded to the vaccine and the Operation Warp Speed, it was an unprecedented rate where all the clinical trials were essentially stacked on one another, and we reduced into a matter of nine months what normally would take a decade in terms of getting that. And so, we've proven that with an extremist environment, we can move when we need to, and so the question is well why are we taking a decade for any other thing without a pandemic? Why is that, I think that's going to be totally unacceptable. So, we're going to have to say, well, we have messenger RNA. What do we do with flu? What do we do with Alzheimer's? What do we do with cancer? What do we do with, you know, this or that kind of thing, not just mRNA as a solution to everything, but you get my point, is a more agile way, cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary to it, and again, all driven by digital services oriented thinking, all of that underneath the hood in terms of doing that. [Jennifer Beddor:] Great. Thanks, Tim, for that answer. I know we also have a couple folks that we learned about in the introduction are really thinking about climate change, Dr. Mooney and Mr. Gaffigan. And I think this is really one of those challenges that is very complex, touches a lot of things, you know, has many implications beyond just the changing climate, which I think someone had talked about earlier. So, I wanted to hand it over to you, if you guys, what you all see is the impact of the changing climate and how it's really going to affect us going forward. [Sian Mooney:] I could jump in to start, if you like. Well, I think clearly there are many impacts and probably not even enough time to even make a list of them in the amount of time that we have available. But, you know, I do think that climate change is certainly perhaps if not the, one of the enormous questions, as we go forward to the future, but you know, some of the impacts that I see and sort of trying to think back on this idea of collaboration across sectors. I think Mark mentioned earlier on, you know, in evaluating programs, you know, what are the criteria? What is your role? And, you know, thinking about our many mission-driven agencies that really do excellent jobs, you know, the way, and I think the way in which some of the agencies might approach their mission might be slightly different in the future. You know, we've kind of talked about, you know, the resources that need to come to bear to help them approach their mission might be different as they move forward. You know, we've talked about the interdisciplinary nature of many of the issues, you know, that might sort of, that might suggest, you know, an expanded type of workforce to kind of help address some of these problems, and then also, you know, I think that, of course, climate change and its effect on resources, health, economy, really everything that we can think of, you know, I think leads to this question of communication and how do we communicate effectively across all of these different sectors that are affected. You know, again, you know, of course one of the things I am really interested in is, you know, how you can develop a workforce that is able to be both agile and communicative and be able to at least hear the perspectives and bring them to bear on thinking about really complicated problems. So, I did notice that, you know, that someone had mentioned sort of the role of non-experts as well, you know, in some of these issues. You know, I think that, of course, you know, the number of experts that we have is sort of very small, I think, in relation to the population, you know, that where a number of people are putting out this expert knowledge, and then other people are kind of, you know, needing to sort of in a way trust that, and I think that the more people that you can bring into the conversation so that you hear their viewpoints, because certainly people are affected very differently by some of the events that that we've had recently and that we'll see coming forward, I think that that, again, that communication, bringing people in, is going to lead to, I hope, increased trust and also perhaps more minds brought to bear on how do we solve these problems. Thank you. [Mark Gaffigan:] Yeah, excellent, Dr. Mooney, and you know, we employ a lot of your students after they graduate, so keep sending them to us. We have plenty of work to do. You know, our work in climate change has evolved, you know, over the last 20 years. You know, initially, there was a lot of sort of, well, is this a thing? You know, it goes back to 1990 when they established U.S. global climate change research program, under the Bush administration, and you know, we, early days, spent a lot of time, you know, helping Congress understand what was happening, was this true, what can you do to mitigate, and you know, a lot of work looking at how we address the causes, and I'm sorry, the answer back then is still the same answer today. It's driven by a lot of human activity and primarily the burning of fossil fuels, and that has been the case ever since, but there hasn't been much of an appetite to address that issue directly, and more of the work now has switched to adaptation, and we have done work in both areas, but most recently focused on issues around adaptation, how do we build resilience to the things that are happening? And I think that, I'm hopeful that it'll kind of come full circle, and what is happening is, I'd like to use the analogy of the dangerous intersection without the stoplight, and, you know, nothing happens for a while, and then somebody says, you know, that looks a little dangerous, kind of a blind spot there, or maybe we should put the stop light or stop sign there, and nothing happens. And then, all of a sudden there's an accident, and someone's hurt, and then unfortunately someone's killed. And what we're seeing now is the impacts of climate throughout the world and in our own communities are impacting people, whether it's extreme heat, the wildfires we're seeing, the severe storms, and unfortunately it's almost like we have to be hit with it before we realize we want to do something about it. And, you know, I am hopeful that, you know, we'll continue to do the kind of work that we're doing, to talk about how the federal government can help respond in this area, and again, as we've talked about, collaboration is key, but the federal government can be an integrator. It can provide incentives. It can provide information, but also perhaps want to consider the fact that, you know, an ounce of prevention, you know, might be worth a pound of cure. And if we recognize that fact and bringing it back to technology, when professor Wilbon was talking about the connection between, you know, electric cars and internal combustion engine, you know, electric cars right from the beginning back to, you know, Henry Ford's day, they were in the running, and the reason they didn't win the day is the internal combustion engine with the fossil fuels was the most efficient, cheapest, provided the most power, most reliable, and that's the way we went. And price matters. So, we have to start thinking about those externalities that come from the burning of fossil fuels and whether we want to put a price on those externalities. Otherwise, we're going to be spending a lot more money, all right, on the cure versus the prevention, and again, it's going to take, you know, a commitment, not only in the U.S. but around the world to commit to those things. So, I'm hopeful that, you know, going forward we'll see, continue to see the work and adaptation, but perhaps folks would be more interested in what are some aspects of mitigation that we can do to address some of these problems. So, thank you. [Jennifer Beddor:] Yeah, thank you. So, I think we've got a good, well maybe not a good handle, but I think we've heard about many challenges that we'll have to face in the future. So, my next question is more about the planning side of things. So, what are things to think about when creating a strategic plan? How can we start preparing for change? We might not know exactly what it is, but we know that change will come, and for this question, I'd like to start with Mr. Stanford, since he's had so much experience in strategic planning. [Stephen Stanford:] Yeah, thank you, Jenn. So, strategic planning is really important to GAO. We are in the midst right now of updating and developing a new strategic plan for GAO for another five-year period. We'll be issuing that plan early next year, and it's an important moment for the agency, as with any organization that does strategic planning, to take a strategic pause and think about what are the things it's going to be focused on in the future, and what will it need? Planning is as much a, you know, resource allocation and planning exercise as anything, and as has already been mentioned today, a lot of emphasis on workforce, on technology, you know, it's a good time to think about what are the people, the skills, the experiences we're going to need to meet those challenges in the future? What are the types of technologies we might encounter, and what are the types of technologies we're going to need. So, you know, one example of that is we've already started thinking about data literacy, for example, for GAO's workforce. I'm partnered up with our chief learning officer at GAO and also with the head of the innovation lab in STAA, Kirstin Austin and Taka Ariga, and we're partnering across the agency and thinking about what are those skills that our people need as auditors, as folks providing assurance and accountability. And a big part of that's going to be data, data literacy, and so, anticipating future needs is an important part of strategic planning, having a diverse range of viewpoints and experiences represented at the table from both within and also outside the organization is important. And, you know, as well, making sure that we are focused on the issues of greatest national importance, and that's really what our strategic plan at GAO is. It's a blueprint for us, a roadmap for us to execute our mission in serving Congress, and given the breadth of the federal government's scope, it is an enormously broad remit in terms of planning, but one which the whole agency comes together to do and is really essential to lay the groundwork for how we're going to organize and operate to meet those challenges. [Tim Persons:] One of the things, Jenn, that Steve mentioned on this question in terms of, you know, is our innovation lab, and then Taka is our chief data scientist. He's is first chief data scientist, and we have the lab doing digital, but this is just an exciting partnership. Steve already mentioned the work that we are doing, our AI accountability framework, and that's been very successful and is going to be an ongoing tool in terms of GAO's oversight, but on the strat planning side, when we founded the innovation lab, the comptroller general told me that his top three priorities were I need the lab to work on some of the big challenges. Number one was improper payments. Number two was working with our fraud team, and then number three was doing what we think of it, what I would call a strategic gap analysis, and so, sort of in my remarks about going digital on things, we're doing that in the lab, because Taka has been working with Steve to develop a way to scan or do sense making of what's coming out of the news, and then we'll look backward and crosswalk and say, what's in our plan, or what's in our published, you know, set of documents and things so that we understand what are we missing. Because it's those errors of omission that we need to see and have that sort of try, we can't predict the black swan event, but we can try and at least try and mitigate. Mark said it exactly right. It's an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and I really do see it as GAO's role and strat planning is a key part of that and having sort of, again, looking under the hood and having this digital algorithmic approach to help, you know, not replace the human. There's still, you know, we still need to determine what are these things, is that a thing, what's the priority, what's the risk? But that's some of the stuff that I think is the future of how we think about strat planning. We have to move GAO from just looking only retrospectively and saying, oh yes, you know, something terrible happened, and Congress says thanks very much, but what could we do about it, right. We do need to always have that look forward at least a little bit even in our art at work to say here's some lessons learned to try to do that, or like Mark has been doing in his climate change portfolio out of NRE to say, look, we're trying to do this now because you really, it's a long time horizon, but you have to start now. And that's really, I think, the key challenge we face. [Jennifer Beddor:] Yeah, thanks for that. I wanted to pull in Dr. Mooney a little bit here because I know, Dr. Mooney, you have some interest in science-based decision making, and I think that might be relevant when we're thinking of strategic planning and how we make decisions and that sort of thing. So, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. [Sian Mooney:] Thanks, Jenn. Well, indeed, I couldn't help but agree that we need science-based decision-making, you know, because I do think that the facts are very important and to get [inaudible] to gather the data so that we understand really what's going on, and then also then to have the personnel that are able to interpret and make either forecasts or conclusions or kind of understand, you know, either look backwards and say, well, now we understand what happened and then also to perhaps be able to use those data to say, well, and we think that this, you know, paired with some other things, we think that this might happen in the future. And I can only say, I mean, you know, the U.S. does have a tremendous science infrastructure and that it has been brought to bear on so many different issues here, but I can only stress that, certainly from my perspective, I just think that that's vitally important going forward, because, you know, without good data, you can't make good decisions, and clearly, you know, we cannot forecast the future. We do not have a crystal ball. There are always unexpected things that come up that you didn't really think about because the world does have a lot of random events that you can't foresee that are coming up at you, but I think, you know, being able to plan for a variety of possible futures and probable futures, being able to look forward and think, well, we think that these five things, for example, might be likely, let's pursue all of these. I also think, you know, if you gather good science-based information on a number of possible futures, if it's not quite what you expect, you also might have enough information that you can pivot and instead, you know, pursue the thing that actually did happen. And so, I do, you know, think a real strong training system, monitoring system, you know, sensors, whatever it is that's required and then also of course the social science aspect of it too, I mean really kind of understanding what's going on in the population, just not necessarily what's happening in the physical environment, is also massively important to pair with that. Thank you. [Jennifer Beddor:] Thanks so much. So, we talked a little bit about challenges, and we just finished talking about planning and decision making around those challenges. I'd like to give each one of our panelists a couple minutes to talk about the natural fall-on, which is what are the opportunities? What are the big opportunities you see in your field coming in the next century? We can predict a little bit if you want if we're all here 100 years from now. I think we're doing great, so we won't have to, you know, worry about if we got it right or wrong. So, let me, let's see, Dr. Wilbon, if you could kick us off that would be great. [Anthony D. Wilbon:] Sure. So, I guess we're talking particularly about education, and we've talked a lot about technology and small business from my perspective, but from education, I think the biggest opportunities for us, and it kind of relates to some of the things that Tim and Steve and other people have mentioned, is a focus on technology literacy and technology skill enhancement. We've become very dependent as a society on data, so big data analysis, artificial intelligence, all those things have to be embedded into the, into the work, into the academic institutions to make sure that regardless of your discipline that you have a basic technology literacy. And so, we have to make sure we infuse that going forward into the next century, and it has to be just kind of a basic process that we go through just like taking math and English and everything else. And secondly, I think that we have to create better environments for experiential learning so that our students, there's going to be, I think, a merger or a collaboration that's going to be much more closely knit than we've had in the past between academics and business, or academics and government, or academics and any corporate entity, whereby there is going to be an opportunity for us to train our students not only with the basics of an academic education but also with the experiences that they need so they can transition relatively quickly into the workforce. All right. So, we're not talking about pure workforce development training that you would see at vocational schools, but there's going to be some derivative of that, where we blend the traditional academic higher education experience with an experiential component, where students can get experiences in the classroom. And then, I think thirdly, we talked about entrepreneurship and innovation. We have to kind of create opportunities for our students to explore entrepreneurship as an option. We cannot just continue to train people to go into the workforce without giving them some kind of exposure to thinking through entrepreneurship and innovation as an option. We're going to need those minds to help us find a solution to these complex problems that we're talking about, and we need to think about them differently than they do through the traditional academic process. And then, lastly, I'll add this because I think this has come up a couple of times. There are a lot of different social dynamics that we need to infuse in the curriculum that we haven't in the past. Some are doing it better than others. Social impacts. What are some of the social impacts of the world that we need to ensure that our students have a basic understanding about. How are we addressing things like sustainable innovation, sustainability and innovation leadership training. We've had various views about the dearth of leadership in corporate structures and government and so forth. How do we make sure we get that kind of training into our students to make sure that we prepare them going forward. So, there's kind of a social entrepreneurship piece attached to this as well. So, I think, again, there's going to be a lot of changes in the academic space that need to be adapted, and it's going to be emerging over time, right. We talk about strategic planning, the strategy that I'd like to use as I think attempt through the word agile at the beginning, is an agile strategic plan, as opposed to a more prescriptive that it emerges over time. And so, as these things shift and changes, we're going to have to make some adjustments in the academic space as well. [Jennifer Beddor:] Thank you. Dr. Mooney, I'll go to you next. What are some opportunities that you're looking forward to in the next century? [Sian Mooney:] Well, thank you. Well, first of all, I would agree with everything that Anthony has just mentioned. I think that he's already really outlined several opportunities, and so, I won't repeat some of that. But a couple of things that I was thinking about as, you know, he mentioned, you know, innovation, data analysis, technical literacy. I would also add to that, you know, this ability for collaboration and communication, again, because of the complex natures of many problems, you know, that we need to train people who are clear communicators, able to collaborate, and then, again, I think this word agile, we might want to think about adaptability, because I think that the pace of change, again, is moving so quickly that as educational institutions, and of course, educational institutions are already thinking about this, but I think that we need to sort of crack this nut, is like the, you know, the constant retraining of people as well, you know, because right now, of course, our model is generally, you know, you'd come in for several years, and you get your degree or which, you know, your master's, your PhD, your bachelor's, and then, you might never come back, again, and I do think, you know, a lot of things are changing very, very quickly, and I think, you know, trying to look at just our whole model, actually, of how we can best serve the country and the workforce, you know, in terms of creating people that have the skills that we need right now, both in science and in business, that kind of thing, you know, I think it's incumbent upon us to try and think of these new models, because I do think that people need retraining with new skills as time goes on, you know, like AI, for example, is relatively new in the big scheme of things. And people that got their degrees 20 years ago might know nothing about this, but yet, it's like really important and has an enormous impact on society. I would also really stress that I think that there is, you know, I think we're already doing this, but I can only stress it again, but I think that, you know, we need to develop people with really strong technical skills but also great soft skills. And again, this points to that we don't work in silos anymore, that nature of work has really changed, and this is really necessary for collaboration. And then, I think that, you know, we talked about also the idea of innovation labs, and I think it actually came up in the context of the GAO's own innovation lab. But you know, I think that that's another area where universities, I mean, we're already doing some of this, but I think we could do some more of this, you know, where we get people together to work on a thorny problem, such as you would do when you leave. So, you already adapt at thinking about, well, you know, there's a number of different perspectives that you might bring to bear to solve this problem, or this problem actually might never be solved within the two months that you have to address it, but what can you do to kind of make progress on. And I think that that's really an excellent opportunity for collaboration. I'll just finish with one comment too, and I also want to echo Anthony's comment here, you know. I think the infusion into many of our technical, sorry, technological problems with the idea of justice and equity as well, I think, you know, looking at some of our problems through these or challenges through these different lenses, I also think that we need to do more of that as we're going forward in the future. And I do feel that the educational system is paying attention to this, but I still think that we have quite far to go to really incorporate that effectively. Thank you. [Jennifer Beddor:] Thanks. Mr. Stanford, I'll go to you next. [Stephen Stanford:] Sure. Thanks Jenn. It's been great being here today with everybody. Yeah, I'll start by saying 100 years is a really long time. We are living in an era where a lot can change in just 100 days. And if we rewind back to 1921 when the budget and accounting act was signed that created GAO and kind of launched our first 100 years, the vision of what GAO was back then and the types of people who worked at GAO, you know, accountants, very, very different from where we are today as an institution. So, it shows over the arc of time, 100 years, a lot of transformation can take place. We have a very different type of workforce right now at GAO in terms of being a multi-disciplinary group steeped in the social sciences and the engineering sciences, in law, actuarial sciences, things like that. So, we bring to the table as an institution a lot more than we did a hundred years ago, and I think that evolution will continue. The other unique thing about GAO is the place we sit in government, being a, you know, trusted resource for the Congress to provide independent, nonpartisan analysis, and with the scope that I mentioned earlier, where we are looking across the whole of government. That's a very unique set of qualities, our people, our values, and also where we sit in the scope of our work. So, oftentimes, in foresight you think about how to change the future and what variables could change in the future, but sometimes you also hold certain things constant and create certain constraints around those [inaudible]. I think those three elements I talked about, you know, our perch in government and the scope we have, our people, and our values are going to be constant over the next 100 years, and there's a tremendous amount of opportunity there for us to adapt further as an institution to meet those future challenges, whether it's real-time auditing or leveraging data in different ways. But all the while, it's going to be, you know, leveraging our people and relying on our people to come up with creative and innovative ways to meet those challenges over the next 100 years. I think that's going to be the key thing for us. [Jennifer Beddor:] Great. Thank you. Mr. Gaffigan? [Mark Gaffigan:] Thanks, Jenn. I'll try to quickly tie a couple things I heard together. You know, Dr. Wilbon talked about technical literacy, absolutely. Earlier, Professor Mooney talked about science-based decision-making. Steve talked about us being a trusted resource. And so, I'll come from the opportunity of GAO, which is to provide the facts, and it's embedded in our core values of accountability, integrity, and reliability, and the role we can play in the next 100 years, the opportunity we have is continue to be that honest broker. We have that reputation of being a trusted resource, as Steve says. What I think the opportunity going forward is to get in the game, because there's still a lot of people that don't know who's GAO, and I'm always struck by a conversation I had with someone who came to GAO, who worked on the hill, and said, you know, I didn't realize how much information you have here and how much expertise you have on a whole variety of issues. And if we are not out there basically marketing what we offer, we're going to get lost. And if everybody is relying on the internet for their information, we're going to be in a world of hurt. It's a great tool, but there's so much disinformation and confusion out there, and if you type in Google climate change is, and you get a different answer depending on what part of the country you're in, that's a problem, you know. Climate change is a hoax depending on, you'll get that, or climate change is the worst thing that's ever going to happen. So, you know, that's a problem, and you know, we had a sort of thing we talked about when I first started at GAO in terms of how you got facts and how we did our work, and it was sort of frowned upon that you would, you know, be, we call it auditing by newspaper, which meant, you know, whatever was in, you know, the newspapers, you would gather facts that way. That was unheard of, and it was frowned upon. So, the internet today is auditing by newspaper. That's not actually where all the facts are. You have to dig, and you got to dig, and you got to dig, and that's the opportunity to make sure you bring all perspectives, so, you have complete, accurate, comprehensive, well-respected information. However, if we're not getting the word out, right, if a GAO report falls in a tree, in a forest, and no one's there to hear it, right, doesn't make a sound, and we got to, we got to take an opportunity to make our products more friendly, to compete, the use of visuals to get the information out to the people that need to hear that information, because that information is a great, that's the starting point for the collaboration to begin to address these issues. So, I see that as a particular opportunity for the GAO in the next 100 years. [Jennifer Beddor:] Thank you. And Dr. Persons, you get the final word. [Tim Persons:] Yeah, so I'll just say, I got my choir robes on. Mark is preaching my sermon. I say yes and amen to that for sure. And that transition has started. We're proud to say we have our pandemic relator Cares Act work is out in HTML format. That's, you know, fitting to that more digital-type media and channels that we have for the warp speed program and oversight. We created a digital dashboard in terms of doing real time for the House Select Subcommittee of Coronavirus. It was wildly successful in terms of their ability to dive in and do that. Anyone can see it at ows.gaoinnovations.gov. But the other thing that's coming out is on our fraud thing. We're going to have a fraud dashboard to help mitigate risk. I mean, everything Mark said is absolutely the case. I think the future for GAO in the next century is turning from a report-centric mindset in terms of a product and turning into a content. Because like Mark said, we are sitting on a Fort Knox of governmental knowledge and wisdom, and we're not leveraging it in the way. It's not, and I'm not blaming anybody on it. I'm trying to just say there's so much opportunity, right, Jenn, to your question that to get that out there and get it in the timely, trusted nonpartisan manner that Mark talked about. So, I think that's a big opportunity. For the United States, I'll just close, I think, you know, our best days are still ahead. We are still the most innovative country in the world. I think we're going to see the crisper, the genetic hacking-type capabilities going to help solve some of the big, gnarly diseases that we're dealing with. Again, help is the key word. I think we're going to, you know, have an incredible, we're still, we've made incredible advances in agricultural science. I think there's still a lot to go. Sian mentioned water. That's another big area. How we manage about water could be the new oil in terms of how those things go on. And to Mark's point, we will adapt. We have to think in a resilient framework to do that. We've adapted before to climate change, and yet, I think it's going to be America that will create the value proposition for the great decarbonization that needs to happen. So, I think that's the big thing that could go on, and I think we can do it with digital services, data-enabled-type things to help drive better solutions toward equity, justice, accountability, etc., across all the boards, whether it's education, whether it's in the environment, whether it's in the food supply, or whatever. All of that is coming. It's going to be very exciting. So, I look forward to seeing what my kids and then their kids after them and, you know, are going to be seeing as they rise to the challenge, as indeed they will, to deal with these things. So, thank you. [Jennifer Beddor:] Well, I just want to say thank you once again to all of our panelists for having this fantastic webinar. This turned out really well. And thank you for celebrating GAO's centennial. This will be recorded and posted on our webpage. So, we're looking forward to that and have a great rest of your afternoon. [Tim Persons:] Thank you. [Sian Mooney:] Thank you. [Stephen Stanford:] Thank you very much. [Anthony D. Wilbon:] Bye, bye.