Good decisions about technology start with people who trust each other.

For most of the last forty years, the people who write policy and the people who build technology shared an instinct: that technology could make government work better and keep the country ahead. That alliance came apart over the last several years, and the breakdown ran both ways. Policymakers grew wary of the industry, and the industry pulled back from Washington. Disagreements that once got worked out turned into standoffs, and the good faith that held things together drained away.

The country can no longer afford that standoff. Technology is now the foundation under every industry, which raises both the cost of getting this relationship wrong and the urgency of getting it right. Lawmakers and the tech industry still want many of the same things, and getting them done requires their collaboration: government answers to the public and writes the rules, while the industry understands the technology and builds.

The Open Progress Institute exists to rebuild the relationship between the people who build technology and the people who govern it. We put founders, executives, and investors in the same room as the officials and senior staff who write the rules the industry lives by. We make the room and keep it honest. What grows there is the kind of trust that comes from knowing each other and seeing that the other acts in good faith. When that trust takes hold, what becomes possible is more than either could have planned. What’s said in those rooms stays private, but what’s learned in them doesn’t have to. Where it helps, we commission research and briefings that anyone can read.