New America Foundation

The award supports activities related to launching and sharing the results of the 2018 Corporate Accountability Index published by Ranking Digital Rights, a project of New America.

New America Foundation is a think tank and civic enterprise committed to renewing American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the Digital Age. The award supports the activities of New America’s Open Technology Institute and Ranking Digital Rights project. The Open Technology Institute operates at the intersection of technology and policy to ensure that every community has equitable access to digital technology and benefits. Core to its work is seeking to advance civil liberties and civil rights protections in the digital environment. Ranking Digital Rights produces the Corporate Accountability Index that evaluates leading technology and telecommunication companies according to indicators focused on corporate disclosure policies and practices that affect users’ freedom of expression and privacy.

The award supports a day-long policy discussion convening technical and policy experts to discuss encryption as an important defensive cybersecurity tool.

New America Foundation is a think tank and civic enterprise committed to renewing American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the digital era. It develops and promotes new ideas, bridges
the gap between technology and policy, and sparks broad public conversations. Its current projects address a wide array of issues, including cybersecurity, drones, income inequality, and early childhood education. This grant contributes to New America's "Reinventing the Think Tank Initiative," which is designed to create a national network with hubs in different parts of the U.S., potentially including Chicago, to advance the way public problems are addressed throughout the country. The objective is to bring New America's ideas, expertise, experience, and other resources to several cities across the country. It will link successful approaches to public problems developed in those cities with other cities and regions and to national policy conversations in Washington. Specifically, this grant helps support the staff time to develop extensive knowledge of Chicago's existing infrastructure of civic innovation, and to assess how that work could be advanced by New America's particular skills and resources. The grant period
will conclude with a decision about whether to establish a New America office in Chicago and, if the decision is made to do so, a plan for the work in Chicago.

Housed within New America's Open Technology Institute, the Ranking Digital Rights project is creating a first-of-its-kind public ranking system that evaluates the world's major Information Communication Technology companies on polices and practices related to free expression and privacy in the context of international human rights law. The project increases company transparency while improving their policies and practices as they relate to freedom of expression

The grant will support the Open Technology Institutes efforts to advance transparency, accountability, and security on the Internet and related technologies through evidence-based research and policy analysis focused on the U.S. government and private sector actors.

The grant supports two pilot annual reports of the Ranking Digital Rights project, which will assess the world’s largest information and communication technology companies on free expression and privacy criteria in the context of international human rights law. The reports will also shed light on how specific elements of legal and political regimes prevent companies from protecting basic human rights in the digital world.

This one-year planning grant to New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute will support the development of a new annual ranking of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) companies on free expression and privacy criteria. While ICT companies – ranging from Internet service providers to social media platforms – exercise growing influence over the political and civil lives of people all over the world, little is often known about their commitment to core human rights issues. The rankings would aim to increase transparency and public knowledge about influential ICT company policies and practices that impact free expression and privacy on the Internet.

Founded in 1999, the New America Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States. This grant supports a project, Transition: U.S. National Security in 2012 and Beyond, which seeks to provide policymakers and the public with the results of fact-based, non-partisan research and analysis on the most critical foreign policy issues facing the United States. The requested grant would support a series of high-level bipartisan public discussions, during and immediately following the U.S. presidential election. The project is a tripartite collaboration among three Washington-based think tanks; the New America Foundation, the Center for a New American Security, and the American Enterprise Institute. MacArthur and the Carnegie Corporation plan to jointly support the project.

Housed at the New American Foundation, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is a bipartisan, non-profit organization that educates the public about issues that have significant fiscal policy impact. It will use this grant to build support for a comprehensive debt reduction plan. Building upon its previous efforts to advance a bipartisan approach, the Committee will continue to provide policy ideas and support to lawmakers, and to build a network of public supporters - business leaders, experts, local leaders and citizens - that seeks to achieve a comprehensive solution to stabilize the debt in the medium term and reduce it in the longer term.

To support the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget for The Moment of Truth Project, which seeks a bi-partisan solution to the country's long-term fiscal challenges.

To produce a paper on the implications for ordinary Americans of a failure to address the Federal fiscal crisis.

In support of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget to advance a national dialogue aimed at generating solutions to ensure the nation's long-term fiscal future (over two years).

In support of general operations (over three years).