A proposal to provide free public access to legal information through a federally managed web portal. BY JONATHAN SCLARSIC You cannot Google the law—the United States has essentially privatized access to much of written law. This privatization has created an infamous industry that drives up legal costs and prevents many citizens from accessing important legal […]

How can Democratic campaigns get large numbers of their voters to mobilize their friends to vote? The short answer: no one knows. To date, the only definite insight is that peer-to-peer voter turnout does not scale through mobile phone apps. Despite numerous “relational organizing” technologies receiving millions in funding and mountains of the press in […]

BY ESTHER BRITO In 1993, women represented only 1% of all UN uniformed personnel deployed in peacekeeping missions. In 2017, women peacekeepers remained at 4%, far from the UN target of 15%. The role of women in peacekeeping operations (PKOs)—not only as a matter of principle, but as a necessary condition for their success—has only […]

BY DANIELA PHILIPSON GARCIA Alfonso Cuaron’s most recent film is named after one of Mexico City’s upper-class neighborhoods, Roma. For those who live abroad but call Mexico City home, watching the film is like taking a nostalgic trip to our past, uncovering buried memories. For me, it was a specific memory of when I lived […]

Bogota is 13 times denser than New York City.[1] Colombian cities are 100 percent denser than the global average and 126 percent denser than cities in Latin America.[2] Until now, the consensus has been that the largest determinants of density are population and income. An increase in population increases demand around an economic hub, increasing […]

A new administration is at the vanguard of African leadership, prioritizing national development in a new model of partnership and possibility BY JENNIFER KAMARA Sierra Leone has adopted a new strategy that is reforming its troubled past, piece by piece. Less than a year into his term, President Julius Maada Bio is leading his country […]

The sexual harassment I experienced during my summer internship in Tunisia As first-year students around me at the Harvard Kennedy School lock down summer internships, I reflect on my own internship experience from last summer with mixed feelings. On my way to Tunisia from Boston last June, I had a one-day layover in Istanbul. I […]

BY ISABELLA BORSHOFF Most statisticians will only ever light up the Twittersphere in their wildest dreams. But for census staff at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), those dreams became a nightmarish reality as the country’s first digital census bombed spectacularly, earning its own hashtag, #censusfail. Every five years, Australians sit down on a designated […]

A Q&A with Esperanza Guevara of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights In March 2018, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose department administers the decennial United States census, announced he would include a question on the 2020 Census asking, for the first time since 1950: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” The question […]

BY NICK BUFFIE The U.S. Census Bureau is facing a series of challenges this time around – insufficient funding, a new online component, and an administration that is unwelcoming to diversity. In particular, the Trump Administration and Republicans in Congress have become the newest members of the mole brigade – politicians determined to avoid seeing […]

Abstract In the wake of the implementation of smart-city technologies in Latin American cities, this article reviews both their potential for making municipal administration and local service delivery more efficient and the risk they pose, particularly to vulnerable communities. Based on the literature and the international experience on the social and policy effects of algorithmic […]

BY TERRI ANN LOWENTHAL Every U.S. census faces challenges and controversies; counting a mobile, growing, and increasingly diverse “nation of immigrants” — not to mention a displaced Native population and enslaved peoples at various points in our history — was always destined to be a complex, imperfect effort. Fortunately, the census has gotten more accurate […]