Interest Area
Infrastructure
Our Thinking
The internet and emerging technologies have changed the way we engage with one another and our institutions, and reshaped elements that underpin our civil society. The choices and values driving the building and maintenance of our infrastructure shape our future. It’s essential that we rethink how to define, design, govern, and fund it. We apply our multidimensional framework for infrastructure to deliver positive community outcomes and address the urgent challenges facing American society.
Strong communities require just and equitable infrastructure – and just and equitable infrastructure require engaged communities. Yet, as a result of excluding the social and physical spheres, inequities persist in the design of digital services and accessibility of those services. How might we increase the meaningful participation and agency of communities to shape the development, deployment, use, and stewardship of the digital infrastructures upon which they rely?
Our Inquiry Areas
We prioritize practices that empower communities in co-creating sustainable digital, social, and physical infrastructure centered on their unique values, needs, and aspirations.
Inquiry Area
Public Interest Technology
With the increasing prevalence of digital technologies in our lives, there must also be intentional efforts to ensure that our society’s priorities and aspirations are reflected across its lifecycle. We work with policy-makers, technologists, researchers, and educators to ensure that the design, deployment, and use of technologies are leveraged in a way that advances the public interest. Our grantees use technology to enhance delivery of government services and strengthen public institutions, imagine solutions that address a community’s needs, and critically examine technology’s impact on civic life.
Inquiry Area
Beyond Connectivity
Inequities persist not only in access to effective digital services, but in the quality of peoples’ experiences online and the ways in which those experiences shape offline communities and physical spaces. These disparities – in connectivity, reliable information, knowledge, opportunities, resources, government services, and more – result in a lack of connectedness and participation in vibrant, healthy communities. We prioritize practices that empower communities in co-creating sustainable digital, social, and physical infrastructures centered on their unique values, needs, and aspirations.
Inquiry Area
Technology Policy
Just as values are inherent in the design, development, and deployment of technology, we recognize that our democratic values should also inform and guide the shaping and implementation of our technology policy. Our interest in policy research seeks to support and empower academics, scholars, researchers, and others who bring a public interest lens to this difficult endeavor of technology policymaking.
Highlighted Grantees
Govern for America
Govern For America is fighting to reactivate the promise of democracy: government of, by, and for the people it serves. We connect emerging leaders into full-time government jobs and provide the training, mentorship, and community they need to build the skills to lead while sparking a lifelong commitment to public service.
Public Interest Tech Fund
The Fund is a shared space for philanthropists to leverage one another’s expertise, incubate investment strategies to advance visionary concepts, and catalyze big ideas that can transform the use of technology to serve the public interest.
All Tech is Human
All Tech is Human brings together people, organizations, and ideas to tackle wicked tech & society issues and co-create a tech future aligned with the public interest. They are committed to co-creating a better society.
Infrastructure Insights
Big Ideas | From Our Grantees
Introducing our Public Interest Technology Case Studies
Siegel Family Endowment is committed to advancing a vision of technological change that includes and improves the lives of all…
Big Ideas | From Our Grantees
Introducing Our BRIC Case Studies
The Black River Innovation Campus (BRIC) in Springfield, Vermont, is a powerful example of community-driven innovation in a rural community…
Reflections | Research
AI as Multidimensional Infrastructure
When we look at AI through its components and relationships, we can identify discrete but overlapping physical, social, and digital…