Critical Technologies for a Post COVID-19 World

Building short- and long-term recovery strategies

While COVID-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented new challenges, some of the most dramatic issues are in fact due to the underlying weaknesses in national technology and innovation policy that existed well before the pandemic:

• The staggering delay in obtaining life-saving PPE has laid bare the extraordinary weaknesses in manufacturing supply chains and the fragile interdependencies that keep key sectors running, necessitating long-term investments in new infrastructure, technologies, and processes.
• The ensuing economic downturn has highlighted the vulnerability of lower income households and the precariousness of the financial stability of the middle class.
• Current labor trends have emphasized that some jobs and skills can become essential as others become obsolete, all while illustrating how the rate at which a worker must acquire new skills is rapidly accelerating.

Moreover, the United States lacks a comprehensive strategy to decide who should receive testing on a national level has forced states, municipalities, and private companies to deploy a variety of methods independent of each other, many of which are not informed by data-driven decision-making.

To this end, the urgent need for innovation, flexibility, and policy interventions is not merely limited to the immediate impacts of the pandemic. The post COVID-19 world demands strategic action that will require all of the tools in the policymakers’ toolkit, particularly if these interventions seek to make long-term progress and promote not simply recovery, but growth.

While it may seem counterintuitive to advocate for long-term thinking amidst a global pandemic and likely the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, that is exactly what is needed in times like these. Decisions made today around safely reopening the economy should lay the foundation for renewed investment into long-term growth strategies.

We have identified two key areas of investment:

1. Workforce Restructuring and Training

Workforce demands are changing rapidly, and with it, so too are the skills required by workers. As such, federal agencies tasked with supporting workers must have the tools at their disposal to treat workforce development as an ever-evolving exercise in innovation. However, as the Department of Labor currently has no R&D budget, federal technology innovation has remained the purview of the energy, defense and health sectors.

Moving forward, we must not only invest in research that drives innovation in education and worker training, but brings organizations that support and represent workers more squarely into this innovation process. As the COVID-19 crisis has emphasized, providing this infrastructure is essential to both economic resilience and workforce protection.

Moreover, the pandemic has set the stage for the largest natural experiment in remote work and education that the world has ever seen. However, it has also thrown into stark relief the impacts of the digital divide and reinforced that Internet connectivity is a necessity for participating in the modern economy, just as access to roads, electricity, and railroads were a necessity at the turn of the last century. While the the virtual training and education practices that worked during the pandemic may finally produce policies to help workers and students quickly and inexpensively acquire the necessary skills to stay ahead of global and technological forces, this will be for naught without matching infrastructural policy and investment to ensure that no one is left behind.

2. Supply Chain Resiliency and Critical Technologies

The COVID-19 crisis has laid bare significant, long-standing weaknesses in both national and global supply chains. While in many sectors, the pandemic has highlighted the need for new private sector investments in supply chain innovation, there is also an important role for policymakers in supply chain reform. Investments that improve the flexibility and resilience of supply chains also create important opportunities for workforce development. Reform in manufacturing, wholesale, and other industries to improve flexibility and increase the adoption of new technology will require complementary investments in new worker training and reskilling. Such a two-pronged national strategy could kick off a new era of American manufacturing that not only provides greater resiliency to future global shocks, but creates new and better jobs and buoys the long-term competitiveness of the manufacturing sector.

Learn more:

• Read our white paper “Critical Technologies for a Post COVID-19 World.”
• Watch our Congressional Roundtable, “Critical Considerations for Restarting a More Resilient and Robust US Economy Post COVID-19,” featuring Representative Susie Lee (Congresswoman, Nevada’s 3rd District), Erik Brynjolfsson (Director, Stanford Digital Economy Lab), Erica Fuchs (Professor of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University), Ramayya Krishnan (Dean, Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy), and Tom Mitchell (Founders University Professor of Machine Learning, Carnegie Mellon University), moderated by David Wessel (Director, Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, Brookings Institution)
• Explore our work related to COVID Response and Recovery efforts.