Business as Usual? The 2013 Defence White Paper and the US Alliance

Shifts in the global and regional strategic posture of Australia’s main ally, the United States, have been one of the key triggers for producing the new Defence White Paper. As Defence Minister Stephen Smith explains in the foreword, America’s ‘rebalance’ towards the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region has been among the major developments influencing “Australia’s national security and defence setting.” The White Paper also had to account for the “substantially enhanced defence cooperation with the United States.”1 The Minister was referring to the Gillard Government’s offer during US-President Barack Obama’s visit in November 2011 to host US Marines and US Air Force contingents for rotational deployments in Northern Australia.

Spotlight

County of Ventura

Ventura County, Calif., is the absolute most desirable place to live in America (Washington Post - August 2015) Beautiful Ventura County is one of 58 counties in the State of California. Geographically, the county offers a stunning 42 miles of coastline and the Los Padres National Forest. Ventura County has a strong economic base that includes major industries such as biotechnology, agriculture, advanced technologies, oil production, military testing and development, and tourism.

OTHER WHITEPAPERS
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FEDERAL HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK

whitePaper | March 25, 2020

The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) is the principal means by which the Executive Branch coordinates science and technology policy across the diverse entities that make up the Federal research and development enterprise. A primary objective of the NSTC is to ensure that science and technology policy decisions and programs are consistent with the President’s stated goals. The NSTC prepares research and development strategies that are coordinated across Federal agencies aimed at accomplishing multiple national goals.

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The Role of Monopoly in America’s Prescription Drug Crisis

whitePaper | December 10, 2019

The Trump administration, members of Congress from both parties, and many states have introduced proposals to combat high drug prices. Too often missing from these reform efforts, however, is a clear understanding of a root cause of the crisis: the suppression of fair market competition through various forms of monopoly. This white paper examines and proposes solutions for the two main ways that monopoly drives up the costs and lowers the quality of prescription drugs: increasing corporate concentration in the pharmaceutical industry, and the monopoly markets for individual drugs created by a deeply flawed and increasingly abused patent and regulatory system.

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Nudging Government to Use Evidence

whitePaper | March 30, 2022

Why have we written disparaging statements about government when our firm is so deeply committed to public sector excellence? These include statements like “as the fire rages on, our governments seem powerless” and “hunches no longer pass for evidence these days, unless we’re talking about government policy.” We have compared the policy-making process to a chaotic game of tag and suggested that government policymakers can act as seemingly irrational as Cosmo Kramer did on Seinfeld.

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Sustaining and Scaling Civic and Government Technology: A White Paper on Challenges, Best Practices and Recommendations

whitePaper | March 17, 2023

The International Republican Institute (IRI) is one of the world’s leading international democracy development organizations. The nonpartisan, nongovernmental institute has supported civil society organizations, journalists, democratic governments and other democratic actors in more than 100 countries since 1983—in Africa, Asia, Eurasia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa—with a current presence in over 70 and working in over 100. Through its global support network to advance digital democracy initiatives, IRI provides capacity building trainings to strengthen grassroots actors’ ability to launch, sustain and scale digital democracy projects; and supports civictech and govtech projects around the world.

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Recommendations on Updating the National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan

whitePaper | March 16, 2022

A long-term commitment to sustained federal research and development (R&D) funding in AI is critical to advance the United States’ leadership in global innovation. The federal government should increase non-defense investment in AI and basic research to strengthen research in critical fields of AI R&D, including healthcare, education, finance, and more, that underpin economic stability and robust growth. Such investment should reflect a multidisciplinary approach, focused on advancing basic and applied R&D, research on AI governance and norm-setting, and supporting research infrastructure with multi-agency collaboration.

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Appian Government Cloud Security and Availability

whitePaper | March 14, 2022

Appian Government Cloud (AGC) is a cloud service offering with a DISA Provisional Authorization (PA) at Impact Level 5 (IL5). US Department of Defense Mission Owners can leverage the AGC PA to reduce their security responsibilities and accelerate their Authority to Operate (ATO) for cloud applications. Applications deployed on AGC are built using the Appian Low-Code Platform

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Spotlight

County of Ventura

Ventura County, Calif., is the absolute most desirable place to live in America (Washington Post - August 2015) Beautiful Ventura County is one of 58 counties in the State of California. Geographically, the county offers a stunning 42 miles of coastline and the Los Padres National Forest. Ventura County has a strong economic base that includes major industries such as biotechnology, agriculture, advanced technologies, oil production, military testing and development, and tourism.

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