FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.
They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.
FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.
FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, 2nd floor, Encina Hall East
Published in conjunction with the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC), Georgia Institute of Technology.
From the Introduction:
"The election of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1997 signaled renewed interest in IT and the Internet. The BJP advocated economic liberalization and listed IT as one of the government's top five priorities, along with more traditional issues such as the provision of potable drinking water and education [10]. "Indian IT has had many small voices, but the BJP is attempting to give IT a national voice" [10]. In May 1998, Prime Minister Vajpayee organized a national IT task force to make recommendations for a comprehensive policy overhaul. The task force's recommendations were instrumental in initiating wide-ranging and fundamental changes in Indian IT policy.
The speed with which the Indian National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development moved was indicative of the changing government attitude. Within 90 days of its establishment, the Task Force produced an extensive background report on the state of technology in India and an IT Action Plan with 108 recommendations [10,11]. The Task Force could act quickly because it built upon the experience and frustrations of state governments, central government agencies, universities, and the software industry. Much of what it proposed was also consistent with the thinking and recommendations of international bodies like the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and World Bank. In addition, the Task Force incorporated the experiences of Singapore and other nations, which implemented similar programs. It was less a task of invention than of sparking action on a consensus that had already evolved within the networking community and government.
Prime Minister Vajpayee captured the changing attitude toward technology in India in his claim that "IT is India's Tomorrow" [13]. This assessment offers a vision of a 21st century India substantially different from that of the 20th century. With its high levels of poverty, bloated and corrupt bureaucracies, protectionist policies, and large size, 20th century India was like the Asian elephant, plodding and turning slowly. At the dawn of a new millennium, Vajpayee and a growing number of politicians, bureaucrats, industry leaders, foreign investors, and bright-eyed entrepreneurs are trying to teach this Asian elephant to dance [14]."
Drell Lecture Recording: NA
Drell Lecture Transcript: NA
Speaker's Biography: Sally K. Ride, the first American woman in space, has advocated elevating the position of space on the national security agenda throughout her career. She is President and CEO of Imaginary Lines and the Ingrid and Joseph Hibben Professor of Space Science at the University of California, San Diego.
Kresge Auditorium
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, 2nd floor, Encina Hall East
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Whitfield Diffie is a consulting scholar at CISAC. He was a visiting scholar in 2009-2010 and an affiliate from 2010-2012. He is best known for the discovery of the concept of public key cryptography, in 1975, which he developed along with Stanford University Electrical Engineering Professor Martin Hellman. Public key cryptography, which revolutionized not only cryptography but also the cryptographic community, now underlies the security of internet commerce.
During the 1980s, Diffie served as manager of secure systems research at Northern Telecom. In 1991, he joined Sun Microsystems as distinguished engineer and remained as Sun fellow and chief security officer until the spring of 2009.
Diffie spent the 1990s working to protect the individual and business right to use encryption, for which he argues in the book Privacy on the Line, the Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption, which he wrote jointly with Susan Landau. Diffie is a Marconi fellow and the recipient of a number of awards including the National Computer Systems Security Award (given jointly by NIST and NSA) and the Franklin Institute's Levy Prize.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Center, 2nd floor, Encina Hall East
Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Ken Robinson served in a variety of Infantry, Special Forces and Intelligence units until his retirement from the U.S. Army in 1999. He is a combat veteran of multiple contingency operations, and has conducted missions throughout the world. During his career he commanded a diverse selection of units, including a Special Forces A Team, Joint Intelligence Task Forces and Special Mission Units. In addition, he was responsible for coordination, tasking, oversight, and intelligence policy for all DoD Special Mission Units in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is currently the President of Robinson Consulting International, a professional services company specializing in crisis and consequence management, policy planning and terrorism exercise development.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, 2nd floor, Encina Hall East
Professor Ehud Sprinzak is dean of the Lauder School of Government, Policy, and Diplomacy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel and Professor of Political Science at Hebrew University. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton, Georgetown and American universities, and was a Senior Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center and the United States Peace Institute. In 1995 he received the Gedalia Gal Fellowship from the Association for the Commemoration of Israel's Intelligence Community and was selected as the 1992 Baruch Yekutieli fellow of the Jerusalem Institute for the Study of Israel. In 1992 Sprinzak was awarded the Landau Prize for best political science book for The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right. Professor Sprinzak holds a Ph.D. from Yale University.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, 2nd floor, Encina Hall East
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, 2nd Floor, Encina Hall East
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, 2nd floor, Encina Hall East
