The GovLab

The Governance Lab (The GovLab) aims to improve people's lives by seeking new ways to solve public problems using advances in technology and science.

Innovations in technology and science are empowering individuals to engage with one another -- and with traditional institutions of governance -- to tackle problems more collaboratively, and drive progress more rapidly than ever before. Through collection, computation and visualization of large-scale data sets, we can make better informed decisions. We can use new methods for generating ideas from more people in response to wicked challenges. New insights from social and behavioral research are teaching us how to use tools like prizes, games, challenges and "nudges" to create incentives for engagement. We are developing social machines -- collaboration platforms -- for organizing work at a distance so we can solve problems more democratically.