so I’m a measurement guy I measure the
effectiveness of governments and
charities all over the world and I’ve
always been passionate about public
policy I’ve believed in the power of
government to do good things in this
world and then I came across a statistic
that shocked me a statistic that was so
compelling that it threatens the very
foundations of our democracy and that
statistic is this only 18% of the people
in this country trust our government 80%
that’s scary
how can we possibly sustain our way of
life if we don’t believe in our own
government and globally that statistic
isn’t very different only 14% of people
trust their national governments around
the world so why is trust so low well
there’s two competing explanations the
first is it’s all about the people it’s
about the political leadership well it’s
all about this guy it’s tunnelled
Trump’s fault that’s why we don’t trust
government but the data doesn’t support
that in fact Trust was lower during
certain times in the obama
administration than it is in the trump
administration and all throughout
history Democrat to Republican
Republican to Democrat Trust continues
to decline other than a temporary spike
during 9/11 so if it’s not about the
people the other philosophy is it’s
about the spending now we’re not
spending enough money on the people who
really need it but the data doesn’t
support that either
in fact we spend 16 percent of our GDP
on social programs when you factor in
private social spending it’s the second
highest in the entire OECD
we’re spending over three trillion
dollars a year on social outcomes and
all through the years as spending has
gone up Trust has actually gone down so
clearly it’s not about spending so what
does explain trust well my theory is
this the reason why we don’t trust our
government is not because we hate it or
we think it’s evil the reason why we
don’t trust government is because it
doesn’t work it doesn’t produce results
it doesn’t produce a bang for the buck
for our tax dollar and all of the most
important social issues year after year
are only getting worse more people are
in poverty and economically insecure now
than in many many years the rate of food
insecurity is the highest that’s ever
been in modern history and obesity for
children has doubled in the past 30
years there are many other statistics I
can share with you and you’ve read them
in the paper and seen them with your own
eyes but social problems are not getting
any better
and even here in Illinois we did a
survey to ask people how much they think
government works in 80% of the people in
Illinois gave government AC a D or an F
in terms of producing outcomes and that
was during a democratic administration
so if government doesn’t work how can we
make it work better well it turns out we
have a big black box problem government
is the only sector of the economy that
only measures after they invest we
literally spray money all over the place
and hope it adds up to some outcomes but
no other part of the economy works this
way there’s no lawyer that goes into
court and then checks Westlaw or
LexisNexis after the case is over nobody
gives you a mortgage and then checks
your credit score afterward no
invest in a public company and then
checks the Bloomberg terminal later we
have predictive data that helps us
determine how we allocate our resources
to produce the best bang for the buck
the best return on our investment now
some would say well it’s impossible to
predict government effectiveness or the
effectiveness of social programs they’re
all so different they’re operating in
different contexts
with different people we could never
possibly compare one program to another
but we have cracked the code on complex
things before in fact we’ve cracked the
code on human biology with the Human
Genome Project
what’s more complex than that and we can
predict health outcomes by looking at
the common genes among people and we’ve
also cracked the code on music with
pandora’s Music Genome Project we can
now compare songs like and music like
Taylor Swift to Aerosmith to Coldplay by
realizing that they all have the same
underlying genes the same core elements
things like Tambor rhythm and degree of
improvisation or guitar solos and we can
code those songs to compare them to
predict which songs you will like so I
had this idea this crazy idea that if we
could code biology and if we could crack
the code on music why couldn’t we crack
the code on social programs so on a lark
I reached out to the guy who invented
the Music Genome Project for Pandora
his name is dr. Nolan gasser of Stanford
and I sent him an email I said hey Nolan
how would you like to do for the world
what you did for music three hours later
I got an email saying I’m in and
together we created something called the
impact Genome Project it is one of the
most ambitious undertakings in the
history of social science and here’s how
it works we started reading articles
research studies about social programs
some that work some that didn’t
like this one on science technology
engineering and math it was about a
summer camp for stem and at first it
seemed like all these studies were
different they all use different words
and phrases and concepts but then as we
started highlighting splices of text
certain genes popped out at us well all
these programs are doing similar things
this one’s playing with toys and this
one has kids playing with LEGOs and this
one’s has kids playing with robots but
they’re all using the same mechanism or
gene of hands-on active learning and we
realized that some genes were more
technical in nature things like dosage
how many hours at a time people were
involved in a program or duration or
frequency and some genes were more
nuanced things like degree of parental
involvement or whether there was
leadership training and we could code
those genes from zero to five or
incidental to dominant depending on how
involved they were in the program design
and we had this uncanny belief that we
could translate words into zeros and
ones or data points and ultimately teach
us what were the genetic compositions of
different social interventions and then
we took it one step further we actually
were able to attach statistical weights
to each gene by using mass amounts of
evidence to be able to understand why
some programs worked and others didn’t
and we were able to create algorithms to
predict the impact of a program merely
based on its genomic composition just
like we do in health or music so what
are the real-world applications of this
well first we have gone on to build
genomes not only for science technology
engineering and math but for education
for domestic violence for youth
development for microfinance for almost
every major area of social impact and
the possibility of how to apply this has
been really powerful we started working
with foundations who were giving grants
and we said hey it’s
of guessing what grants you think are
gonna be effective why don’t you try our
jeans let’s work with the grantees to
use our jeans and see if we can make
them more impactful the results were
awesome impact one up by twenty to
thirty percent from those grantees that
used evidence and science to design
their programs versus those that merely
guessed
and then I got a call from these guys an
office called the Privy Council of
Canada it turns out as part of the Prime
Minister’s cabinet their domestic
think-tank and they said hey we’ve heard
you’re working on this thing called the
impact Genome Project well we want to be
evidence-based in outcomes driven in
Canada we want to produce better results
for our citizens so could you help us
design programs with evidence and so we
started first with a hundred million
dollar poverty reduction fund and then
moving on to helping them design
programs around civic engagement and
youth development and now we’re rolling
this out across the government in
different agencies the dream is that we
can use science to produce a better bang
for the buck and make government more
effective and not just for Canada but
for governments all over the world
because my belief is that first we can
start predicting instead of guessing
second we might someday be able to
create twice the impact for half the
cost and third someday we can bend the
arc of trust and restore faith in our
democracy thank you
[Applause]
[Music] [Applause]
effectiveness of governments and
charities all over the world and I’ve
always been passionate about public
policy I’ve believed in the power of
government to do good things in this
world and then I came across a statistic
that shocked me a statistic that was so
compelling that it threatens the very
foundations of our democracy and that
statistic is this only 18% of the people
in this country trust our government 80%
that’s scary
how can we possibly sustain our way of
life if we don’t believe in our own
government and globally that statistic
isn’t very different only 14% of people
trust their national governments around
the world so why is trust so low well
there’s two competing explanations the
first is it’s all about the people it’s
about the political leadership well it’s
all about this guy it’s tunnelled
Trump’s fault that’s why we don’t trust
government but the data doesn’t support
that in fact Trust was lower during
certain times in the obama
administration than it is in the trump
administration and all throughout
history Democrat to Republican
Republican to Democrat Trust continues
to decline other than a temporary spike
during 9/11 so if it’s not about the
people the other philosophy is it’s
about the spending now we’re not
spending enough money on the people who
really need it but the data doesn’t
support that either
in fact we spend 16 percent of our GDP
on social programs when you factor in
private social spending it’s the second
highest in the entire OECD
we’re spending over three trillion
dollars a year on social outcomes and
all through the years as spending has
gone up Trust has actually gone down so
clearly it’s not about spending so what
does explain trust well my theory is
this the reason why we don’t trust our
government is not because we hate it or
we think it’s evil the reason why we
don’t trust government is because it
doesn’t work it doesn’t produce results
it doesn’t produce a bang for the buck
for our tax dollar and all of the most
important social issues year after year
are only getting worse more people are
in poverty and economically insecure now
than in many many years the rate of food
insecurity is the highest that’s ever
been in modern history and obesity for
children has doubled in the past 30
years there are many other statistics I
can share with you and you’ve read them
in the paper and seen them with your own
eyes but social problems are not getting
any better
and even here in Illinois we did a
survey to ask people how much they think
government works in 80% of the people in
Illinois gave government AC a D or an F
in terms of producing outcomes and that
was during a democratic administration
so if government doesn’t work how can we
make it work better well it turns out we
have a big black box problem government
is the only sector of the economy that
only measures after they invest we
literally spray money all over the place
and hope it adds up to some outcomes but
no other part of the economy works this
way there’s no lawyer that goes into
court and then checks Westlaw or
LexisNexis after the case is over nobody
gives you a mortgage and then checks
your credit score afterward no
invest in a public company and then
checks the Bloomberg terminal later we
have predictive data that helps us
determine how we allocate our resources
to produce the best bang for the buck
the best return on our investment now
some would say well it’s impossible to
predict government effectiveness or the
effectiveness of social programs they’re
all so different they’re operating in
different contexts
with different people we could never
possibly compare one program to another
but we have cracked the code on complex
things before in fact we’ve cracked the
code on human biology with the Human
Genome Project
what’s more complex than that and we can
predict health outcomes by looking at
the common genes among people and we’ve
also cracked the code on music with
pandora’s Music Genome Project we can
now compare songs like and music like
Taylor Swift to Aerosmith to Coldplay by
realizing that they all have the same
underlying genes the same core elements
things like Tambor rhythm and degree of
improvisation or guitar solos and we can
code those songs to compare them to
predict which songs you will like so I
had this idea this crazy idea that if we
could code biology and if we could crack
the code on music why couldn’t we crack
the code on social programs so on a lark
I reached out to the guy who invented
the Music Genome Project for Pandora
his name is dr. Nolan gasser of Stanford
and I sent him an email I said hey Nolan
how would you like to do for the world
what you did for music three hours later
I got an email saying I’m in and
together we created something called the
impact Genome Project it is one of the
most ambitious undertakings in the
history of social science and here’s how
it works we started reading articles
research studies about social programs
some that work some that didn’t
like this one on science technology
engineering and math it was about a
summer camp for stem and at first it
seemed like all these studies were
different they all use different words
and phrases and concepts but then as we
started highlighting splices of text
certain genes popped out at us well all
these programs are doing similar things
this one’s playing with toys and this
one has kids playing with LEGOs and this
one’s has kids playing with robots but
they’re all using the same mechanism or
gene of hands-on active learning and we
realized that some genes were more
technical in nature things like dosage
how many hours at a time people were
involved in a program or duration or
frequency and some genes were more
nuanced things like degree of parental
involvement or whether there was
leadership training and we could code
those genes from zero to five or
incidental to dominant depending on how
involved they were in the program design
and we had this uncanny belief that we
could translate words into zeros and
ones or data points and ultimately teach
us what were the genetic compositions of
different social interventions and then
we took it one step further we actually
were able to attach statistical weights
to each gene by using mass amounts of
evidence to be able to understand why
some programs worked and others didn’t
and we were able to create algorithms to
predict the impact of a program merely
based on its genomic composition just
like we do in health or music so what
are the real-world applications of this
well first we have gone on to build
genomes not only for science technology
engineering and math but for education
for domestic violence for youth
development for microfinance for almost
every major area of social impact and
the possibility of how to apply this has
been really powerful we started working
with foundations who were giving grants
and we said hey it’s
of guessing what grants you think are
gonna be effective why don’t you try our
jeans let’s work with the grantees to
use our jeans and see if we can make
them more impactful the results were
awesome impact one up by twenty to
thirty percent from those grantees that
used evidence and science to design
their programs versus those that merely
guessed
and then I got a call from these guys an
office called the Privy Council of
Canada it turns out as part of the Prime
Minister’s cabinet their domestic
think-tank and they said hey we’ve heard
you’re working on this thing called the
impact Genome Project well we want to be
evidence-based in outcomes driven in
Canada we want to produce better results
for our citizens so could you help us
design programs with evidence and so we
started first with a hundred million
dollar poverty reduction fund and then
moving on to helping them design
programs around civic engagement and
youth development and now we’re rolling
this out across the government in
different agencies the dream is that we
can use science to produce a better bang
for the buck and make government more
effective and not just for Canada but
for governments all over the world
because my belief is that first we can
start predicting instead of guessing
second we might someday be able to
create twice the impact for half the
cost and third someday we can bend the
arc of trust and restore faith in our
democracy thank you
[Applause]
[Music] [Applause]
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