---
id: "workshop:government-and-higher-education-partnering-for-ai-success"
type: "InnovateUS workshop"
title: "Government and Higher Education: Partnering for AI Success"
url: "https://innovate-us.org/government-and-higher-education-partnering-for-ai-success"
date: "2024-04-18"
duration: "60 minutes"
language: "English"
instructors: ["Neil Kleiman"]
recording: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9WBHlRuXFA"
transcript: "automatic, from the recording"
source: "InnovateUS (innovate-us.org)"
licence: "CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), as stated on innovate-us.org"
---

# Government and Higher Education: Partnering for AI Success

InnovateUS workshop · 18 April 2024 · 60 minutes

Join us for this 60-minute virtual training with Neil Kleiman, urban policy professor at Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and a Senior Fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change and the GovLab. In this training, Neil will outline how to establish a working and productive relationship with local colleges and universities around shared artificial intelligence (AI) goals. Often, the areas in which governments and agencies could most benefit from AI and technological assistance are precisely the areas in which colleges and universities excel: in engineering talent, data storage, and computational capacity. This session will discuss the benefits of partnering with local colleges and universities for AI success, as well as the challenges in pursuing these partnerships. Neil will provide examples of such collaborations that have proven successful, and impart concrete strategies around how to establish these partnerships in your city or state.

## Learning goals

- Gain an understanding of the potential benefits of partnering with local colleges and universities for AI initiatives, particularly in areas such as engineering talent, data storage, and computational capacity
- Develop strategies for establishing and maintaining productive relationships with academic institutions to leverage their expertise in AI and technology

## Speakers

- **Neil Kleiman**, Professor, Northeastern University & Faculty Director, InnovateUS

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9WBHlRuXFA

## Transcript

Automatic transcript of the recording: names and terms can be misheard, and the times can be a few seconds off. Each time links to that moment of the video. The transcript alone: https://innovate-us.org/government-and-higher-education-partnering-for-ai-success.txt (plain text) and https://innovate-us.org/government-and-higher-education-partnering-for-ai-success.json (every segment with its start and end second).

**Unknown speaker**

[0:01](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=1) Over to you.

**Neil Kleiman**

[0:05](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=5) All right. Thanks, Hannah, and so great to be here. I feel as though I'm not only a presenter, but part of the team with Hannah. I'm part of Innovate US, so it's always so nice to have this connection. I'm going to set myself an alarm to make sure that we have some time for Q&A, so there's an opportunity for more dialogue. But I am a professor, and the setup here is that it's a bit of a lecture at first, so hopefully it's of interest. I spent a bunch of time on this presentation for you. And also, in addition to being part of the team, I am part of higher ed. So I am pointing the finger at myself, because I feel as though government officials at the federal but certainly at the state and at the local level partnered far too infrequently with universities, with colleges, with medical centers, with hospitals, with what I think of as anchor institutions. But here we're going to focus on higher education.

[1:07](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=67) And I also point the finger at myself, because I think most of the blame lies with us, not with public sector officials. And so please take this entire presentation in the spirit of trying to provide some guidance, some framework, some data points, so that you can do a better job of partnering with folks like us, because I do think it's worth it. We are not easy to partner with, but the payoff and the benefit is tremendous. And so with that, I'm going to do a little bit of setup for us just to level set where we are going to go with this presentation. In terms of our session goals, it's both to broadly talk about university and local government partnerships, and how universities can particularly be helpful around artificial intelligence, which is the technology that has captured all of us. In terms of my particular focus, Hannah did a little bit of background in terms of my career, but I would say that essentially I'm a local government person.

[2:10](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=130) I've spent my whole career, whether it's doing direct technical assistance or university research, it's always focused on local government. And within that, my frame has been around data and technology, so how local governments can use data and technology to better engage residents and better improve services. More recently, I have been focusing on organizational culture. So you're going to feel or hear a bit about the whole notion of organizational culture and structure, both within universities and colleges, but also within public sector institutions. I also focus a lot on partnerships. I'm a partnership guy. I really like networks. I've managed a number of networks. I've managed networks of chief information officers, chief data officers, and chief budget officers. And so I have this orientation to how we can do things better together, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, is sort of my guiding ethos in everything that I do.

[3:17](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=197) Here's just really quickly, Hannah had gone through this, some of the background that I bring to all this. I've done a lot of work with private foundations, which was at Living Cities. I was part of a federal network to support local governments through the National Resource Network. I've worked a lot with Bloomberg. I've written a book on data and technology called The New OS, and I'm now at the Burns Center working with Hannah. So let's dive in to our topic at hand, which is the importance of partnerships to government. So I want to provide a big picture sense of why is it we would even engage in partnerships? Why do we need to work with universities, colleges, and other anchor institutions? And for me, this comes back to the fact that, and I'm not going to use too much academic framing in this conversation, but I am going to start with one, which is that we live in a federalist system. I think we all know this. And a federalist system means we don't have one big national government like you might have in most countries in Europe. We have a federalist government, which means that we split power.

[4:27](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=267) And I know some of us might have disagreements in terms of quite how well that power is split, but we do have relatively coterminous power between the federal government and the state government. And then, of course, cities and other jurisdictions have authority and autonomy as well. But the fact is, we have divided, fractured, stratified levels of government in this country. We live with it every day. It can be confusing. And by that fact alone, partnerships are critical to get things done. And then the second academic point that I want to throw at you is this notion of what's called government regimes. This is a phrase that a lot of us in the political science community use, and I think it's an important one. And it has a lot to do with what I think of as indirect or informal partnerships. And the point here is that in the United States, if you want to accomplish something, if you want to build a highway, if you want to fill potholes, if you want to ensure that people are receiving Medicaid in a timely fashion through their hospitals and service providers, oftentimes, almost always, it necessitates having partnerships.

[5:49](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=349) And those partnerships, at times, are strongest when they're informal, when they're behind the scenes, when they're understood, when they're not codified in laws. And so it's really important to understand what we think of as these governing bodies are, governing enterprises that might not be written down in paper, but are critical to getting things done. I observe this all the time when I work in different states, and I see some states or some cities that are doing really well from an economic perspective, and those that are struggling. And almost every time, it's those places that are not good at forming partnerships, at making friends, at creating governing regimes to get things done that are struggling. I remember for a long time, I was working very closely over a period of 10 or 15 years with the mayors in Indianapolis and the mayors in Detroit.

[6:49](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=409) And what was very clear in my relationship with those mayors was that Detroit has a history of great companies, of great civic institutions, good government, but just an inability to get along and to work in a partnership capacity nearly as well as was happening in Indianapolis, despite the fact that they had many similar demographics and economic conditions. So I can't stress enough how important partnerships are for us to do our jobs well. Now, in terms of more specificity around why partnerships are needed, again, this is something we know really well. At the state level, we have federal mandates that force us to do things, some of them for good reason. Other times, we might not be so happy about it, but either way, there are mandates that we have to enforce and administer. And at the city level, that's even doubly the case, because often there are federal and state mandates.

[7:50](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=470) For a number of us at the state level, but certainly at the sub-state level, there is little autonomy in terms of raising revenue, which means we're often in a position where we just don't have the money to get things done at the level they need to happen. And the third reason partnerships are so important is implementation is hard. It can be very difficult, again, to ensure benefit access and receipt or to build a new bridge. Implementation is incredibly challenging. And for those reasons, partnerships are incredibly beneficial. Other reasons they're beneficial? Cost savings. As we're going to talk about more, when you talk about technology advancement, a lot of that has to do with data storage. Well, how much money would we save if we could have a local university store our data and protect confidentiality? Millions, regardless of our size. There are complementary skills. Oftentimes, universities and colleges have skills that are the exact ones we desperately need in the public sector. And credibility. I can't emphasize this enough, and it links to the other point here, which is avoiding exposure or overexposure on controversial issues.

[9:10](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=550) Especially when we talk about a new technology like AI, which has a lot of potential to do good, it also has a lot of potential to put us in a difficult situation, in a controversial place. And what better to provide cover, support, a neutral convening place to make sense of issues than universities? I want to now move on to the importance and also really get more concrete about what are the challenges in terms of working with colleges and universities. So, first, let me continue the conversation about why we should work with universities with a particular focus on artificial intelligence. But you could also apply this to data and technology more generally. So, number one is computational infrastructure. So, if we were having this conversation 70, 80 years ago, for those of you that saw the movie Oppenheimer, and I'm guessing most of you did, we'd be talking about nuclear energy. How do we make sense of that? How do we harness nuclear energy? How do we make sure it works for us rather than against us?

[10:25](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=625) And what we did in this country is we set up national labs. So, beyond the Manhattan Project that they talked about and the Oppenheimer film, we all know that there are national labs dotted throughout the country to provide that energy and that nuclear infrastructure that we need in this country. Well, we need the same thing when it comes to data and technology and certainly to artificial intelligence. We have not set up a national lab network yet when it comes to data and technology. It's a whole other story. That is something that I'm beginning to discuss with many other partners around the country with the federal government because I believe it's something we need. It might not look like the national labs, but it is something that is necessary. But in the absence of a national lab infrastructure, universities and colleges right now have the potential to provide that data and technology infrastructure to ingest data, to protect data in terms of confidentiality and privacy, and to analyze data.

[11:36](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=696) That is what I mean by computational infrastructure. And then, of course, that analysis and that evaluation of data and AI and, by extension, the policies and the programs that we're responsible for are things that universities are intrinsically and consistently working on. Now, a bit more broadly about how universities can be beneficial in terms of AI specifically, economic development. As we all know, right now, AI has become a bit of a gold rush. People are rapidly moving to see how they can take advantage of AI for their own government agencies and certainly in the private sector for their businesses, whether those be incumbent and large businesses like Google and Microsoft and Facebook, but also startup businesses. And those that get ahead of the AI curve are going to benefit enormously.

[12:40](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=760) So it's hugely important for us, from just an economic development perspective, forget working directly with universities and colleges, but if we can be supportive of universities and colleges attracting and developing and facilitating AI economic development strategies will have significant benefits for us. And this has to do with things like incubating new companies, technology transfer, spinoffs, and then, of course, helping to develop that talent pool, the workforce that we need for AI. The last piece I would mention here, and I mentioned it before, is that universities and colleges provide a convening space to bring companies together, to bring communities together, to begin essentially making sense of AI with universities in a neutral environment.

[13:41](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=821) So what I'd like to talk about now is something that I'm sure everybody is thinking about, which is what are the difficulties? Those of you who have tried working with colleges and universities, and I don't mean trying to make sense of financial aid forms for your kids, or even trying to ensure that you or any young people in your life can get through the registration process, which, of course, is a brain damage activity, but I really also mean what does it mean for us as government enterprises to have the ability to do that? We have large-scale and visible and positive partnerships with colleges and universities, and it is hard. And I want to walk through each of these challenges because all of them are difficult. I know they feel insurmountable, but they're not, and I will give examples of how we can overcome them, but they are quite significant.

[14:44](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=884) So the first is that colleges and universities work in a siloed culture. They tend to operate in blissful ignorance of how government works or how things happen around them. They seem to feel that magic is everywhere. Police and fire and the environment and roads will be taken care of for them, their students, their faculty, and everyone else. So it's unfortunately important for us to understand what that culture is like and how we can break through it. Of course, their work processes are very different than those in the government sector. We are held accountable. Universities and colleges are rarely held accountable. I know that's not quite the case these days. Those of you that saw the headlines or read about it or listened to how Columbia University was grilled during the congressional hearings, that was the rare time in which universities were held to account, but they rarely are. And they tend to work on their own clock, where we often in the government sector are held to a clock of get it done now, get it done by the end of the day.

[15:54](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=954) And we also work in an environment where we're often drinking out of a fire hose, where universities tend to have the luxury of operating on their own time frame, which is very slow. Right? So very different work processes here. Another issue is that universities and colleges can feel as though no one is in charge or everyone is in charge. If you call someone who runs the government partnership office, they might not know the person that's running the budgetary office, or they might not know the person that's running the environmental office, or they might not know much of anything that's going on at that university. It's almost impossible, and it's certainly maddening, that there is not a single point of contact or even clarity in terms of what the organizational structure is within anchor institutions like colleges and universities. Another issue that I found that's challenging working with government is that most government agencies, and this is usually at the sub-state level, not at the state level, but it generally applies to government, that when you think about partnerships, the default is to work with the business community. We in government have historically had good partnerships with companies, particularly local companies and chambers of commerce and other business associations and business groups, and when we can make those partnerships work, it's fantastic.

[17:25](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=1045) Businesses in the private sector can be excellent partners for the things that we do if they're managed well, but it means that there's not as much of a tradition or orientation to work with universities and colleges. So what I've often found when I've advised governors and I've advised mayors that they say, oh, we spend a lot of time working with the private sector. I was just at a business luncheon last week, or the speech that I just gave to the chamber of commerce had a nice article in the local papers, and I have a great relationship with the president of the chamber, and then I say, well, what is your relationship like with the university provost or president or chancellor? And the response is often, I didn't even think of it. I haven't even met them, or I met them once two years ago when the president was newly appointed at a local university. So we have to break out of that tradition of just working with the private sector and not working with colleges and universities. A little bit more about what these challenges are, and this first point goes to this notion of how universities can work in a silo, and the way I kind of think of it is that Cambridge model. The universities and colleges in America were built on the Cambridge and Oxford model in England, which means to be off in the country, away from cities, away from government, away from human beings. Universities and university officials, I find, feel most comfortable when they're not actually engaged in partnerships or actual dialogue with other human beings, and they operate as though there's a moat that is surrounding their campus, right? And again, this is the kind of thing we've got to break through that. And the power dynamics, I want to mention, can often feel, and for better or worse, they are unequal. I've spent a lot of time working

[19:27](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=1167) with universities like Syracuse, of course in Syracuse, New York, and usually the chancellor of Syracuse University is in a position of having more power and more money and more of an ability to get things done than the mayor of Syracuse. That's begun to change in the sense of that chancellors at Syracuse have become more humble, and the mayor has begun, a series of mayors in Syracuse have begun to understand that they are coming from this of a position of less power, but starting to overcome it and work out ways to establish strong partnerships. But whatever happens, there needs to be an understanding of what those power dynamics are and how to work through them. Another thing that can be challenging is the confusion around leadership at a university. Those of you who have ever had the benefit or the tragedy of working within a university culture probably know that the actual leadership has far less power and authority than you would imagine.

[20:37](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=1237) And oftentimes it's the faculty that have significantly more power and authority. One way I usually try to explain this to government officials is that fascinating and maddening dynamic between the executive branch and the legislative branch, meaning that amazing tension you'll find between a governor and the state legislature or mayor or city council, and of course, between a president and Congress. Within universities, it's different, but it's similar in the sense of a lot of what leadership tries to accomplish can be stymied and blocked by faculty, and it's important for us to be aware of those dynamics. These last two points I would mention around challenges are critically important, and I think we often screw them up. We just do. One is fuzziness around goals. I have worked with so many government leaders that feel as though they have attained significant success working with colleges and universities, but in fact, it's really been around a one-off project, a particular focus on economic development, when in fact, the city is more interested in infrastructure development, a sense that if just top leadership is involved in the partnership, that that spells success. Essentially, not enough time is spent strategically thinking about what you want to accomplish in those partnerships with colleges and universities and getting icy cold clear on what your goals are. And then to make it that much harder, you need to get that same level of specificity, clarity, and strategy on the university side. There has to be clarity around goals on both sides for this to ever have enduring success. And then the last point is that, and I started to say this, oftentimes, the majority of the times when there are good government and anchor institution partnerships,

[22:37](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=1357) they tend to be one-offs. We've done a great project with our local university building our sustainability and climate action plan. Yay, that's great. And then five years later, is there any connection between the university and government? Usually, no, it just peters out, right? A lot of times there's motivation to do a big partnership effort, shaking of hands, good work, back padding, but that is not enough. What really needs to happen is enduring structural and enterprise-wide partnerships between anchor institutions and government. That has been and will be my focus in this conversation. And I really implore you to do it because it is so easy to engage in episodic and one-off partnership arrangements. Now, what I'd like to talk about is a bit of our current history in terms of anchor institutions working with government. And I could pass on a report that I wrote a few years ago that documented this, but the fact is that these partnerships are on the upswing. We're seeing a lot more of productive, enduring, systemic connections between colleges and universities and state and local governments, which is great. It's fantastic.

[24:00](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=1440) And in a way, we're overcoming that history of the town gown environment. And the reason that we're starting to see more of these collaboratives and these partnerships is, one, private foundations are more interested in this. So whether that be a national foundation like the Ford Foundation or the Gates Foundation has put a lot of money into this, a lot of local foundations. So one example is I've spent a huge amount of time working with the Cleveland Foundation and, of course, Cleveland. And there, the vast majority of their grant-making for a long time, I don't know if it's still the case now, but for quite a while, was around helping government engage in productive partnerships with Case Western and Cleveland Clinic, which are their anchor institutions that have incredible importance to the local economy and how things operate in the Cleveland metro area. So there could be local foundations or national foundations to support the efforts that you would like to advance. AI is driving new partnerships.

[25:08](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=1508) Universities want to get in on the AI moment that we are all living in. And so what a great opportunity to be a partner. If universities want something, then let's take advantage of that interest on their end to engage with them. And connected to AI, a lot of times for universities, it's about data, data, data. Those of you who have started to look at AI probably know that AI runs on data. It's basically swallowed up the whole internet. That's how it's able to produce a lot of the answers that we put at AI, because it just vacuums up all of the information really on the planet. And universities are the same way. They want to input data so that they can study it, so that they can research it, so that there are opportunities for students and faculty. And you have some of the most valuable data that exists for universities, which is administrative data. And there are lots of ways in which those partnerships can be done safely, productively, and beneficially with universities. And connected to that, universities want to have more of an impact locally. You may not know this, but one of the reasons that students are choosing to go to certain colleges and universities are based on their connections to the surrounding community. So without you even having knowledge of this, some colleges and universities are advertising to their students, hey, come here, and we'll connect you to a great internship, research, or volunteer opportunity. I say take advantage of that and make it much more structured and to your advantage. I'll quickly say one of the universities that has had the greatest success in the last 18 years is Tulane University in New Orleans. And that's because after Hurricane Katrina wrecked the university in the city, the university instituted the first private

[27:12](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=1632) institution mandate requirement for students to engage in volunteer work and credit service hours in order to graduate. It's a wonderful program, and it's one of the things that has made Tulane University the hottest school in the last 15 years in the United States based on giving back to the community. Well, guess what? As wonderful as that is, I work a lot in New Orleans, and I can tell you that service learning is not structured, it is not strategic, and it is not something that the public sector broadly benefits from. This is what I have heard directly from engaging with my public sector colleagues. They appreciate it, they like it, but they think it doesn't do nearly as much good as it could. And again, who's responsible for that? It's both government and the university seeing how to take advantage of this particular dynamic that we see now in terms of universities wanting to do more around AI, data, and by translation, working and engaging with government and surrounding communities. So now let me talk about a few examples where this actually works. I don't want to be a negative on all of this. I've seen some incredible instances where this has worked historically and where it's working now, and having incredible positive effects in the communities that make that commitment. So first, just starting with one of the most long-standing university and college collaboratives of all, and by all I mean globally. The land-grant institutions that were established in the 1800s in this country have just done so much to allow our country to thrive economically, and we are still benefiting from those institutions that have a tradition of collaboration. And you can look no further than

[29:14](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=1754) the A&M system in Texas, and then Cornell University, which is one of the few private land-grant institutions in New York City. I would also point to the North Carolina Community College system. This was a college system that was set up almost overnight in the 1950s by the governor of North Carolina who said, I want to create an entirely new community college system with the exclusive focus on helping local communities advance economic development. And any of you who work in North Carolina know that everywhere in that entire state, economic development is driven by community colleges working A more recent example, and there are a lot of recent examples, is the Applied Sciences Competition in New York City.

[30:20](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=1820) Here you had an example where Mayor Michael Bloomberg knew that universities wanted to be in an urban environment, they wanted to experiment with data and technology, so he created a competition. It turned into a global competition where everyone was fighting each other to establish a new engineering campus. And Cornell University, working with Technion in Israel, won that competition. And you know what they won from that competition? They had the distinct benefit of having to raise billions of dollars from donors to build their own campus. It was amazing. So here's an example where government did not give away money, as government often does, to businesses or to build sports stadiums, but they said, we know what the university interest is here, self-interest, we're going to make them work for it. And now we have a gleaming new engineering campus right in the heart of New York City. The Urban Labs at the University of Chicago are a relatively new effort in which there's an education lab, a prime lab, an environmental lab.

[31:26](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=1886) They just put anything under the heading of lab, which essentially means the University of Chicago focuses on what it does well, which is RCTs, randomized control trials, which is a particular type of evaluation of government programs. But essentially it means that the university has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to advance this type of evaluative method working with government. I want to give a couple of examples that are connected to us. Those of us who are here at Northeastern at the Byrne Center are involved in a number of efforts, also specifically around AI and partnerships with government. One is we call the AI Impact Co-ops, which is run by Beth Novick, my colleague, and also Santi Garces, who is the chief information officer in Boston. And essentially what's happened here is the new governor of Massachusetts has brought her cabinet together and said, come to this cabinet meeting with some AI issues that you have, whether it's to create better access for our programs, whether it's healthcare, or to address issues of transit, accessibility, and multimodal solutions for people with disabilities and figure out how AI can help.

[32:49](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=1969) And the different cabinet secretaries come and then we provide computer science students, engineering students, that then create AI programming to address what the governor's needs are. It actually did not take that much effort and that much funding to do this. The governor now has a mechanism by which she is getting her staff, her senior level staff to think about how AI can be helpful, and then can turn right to universities to say, you can do the heavy lifting of the work for us. Another way universities are being helpful is what we're doing right now. This entire talk is brought to you partly by the Institution of Higher Learning we call Northeastern and the Byrne Center at Northeastern. And the last one, and I hope to tell you more about this in a future conversation, is a new collective that has not launched yet, so you're one of the first to hear about it called Rethink AI.

[33:51](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=2031) So this is an effort in which I myself am working with colleagues at Cornell Tech, which I just talked about, the new university in New York, and then also with colleagues at New America, a think tank in Washington, D.C., and also my Boston colleagues at Emerson College. And this is one where we are going to use computational infrastructure at universities and colleges, both in the Northeast but around the country, to help local governments advance pilots around AI specifically. So now what I'd like to do in my remaining few minutes is to talk about a strategy for advancing an anchor partnership approach. So here is my attempt to try and take everything that I have been talking about for the last bunch of minutes into a concise strategy for you to engage in similar partnerships if you haven't already. And if you are involved in these types of partnerships, I think it's useful to apply the schema to it.

[35:04](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=2104) So the first step, and it is sequential, is to identify priorities. As I had said at the outset, it's surprising quite how fuzzy most university and government leaders are about what it is that they actually want. And by clarifying your priorities, it also helps you see what the priorities are of your potential partner. The next is to map the assets that exist, both within government, but more specifically within universities. Who are the professors? Who are the students? Can the universities actually leverage getting others at the table that you might want to have there? And what are the assets that you have as a government? The third piece of this is to engage senior leaders. I find that these partnerships do not work if it's just one individual within government and one champion within the university. So if there's somebody like a faculty member who runs a research center and is partnering with a specific department within government, that's fantastic and that's great.

[36:15](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=2175) That should be supported and celebrated. But it does not translate into an enduring and meaningful and impactful partnership between government and universities. And that's where you really need to have the mayor or the governor or the lieutenant governor that is involved in a consistent, ongoing, visible partnership with counterparts within universities, which can include the president, the provost, or the right deans. The last one, and this is a really important one, is to codify what the goals and deliverables are and to make it public. This is something where we don't need to beat our chest about it, but we need to have something on paper like an MOU, like a contract, or a policy white paper, or strategy document, and whatever it is, release it. Have it out there. If you don't, then you have to ask yourself, what is it that you're hiding and why is there a hesitancy to have public accountability for the partnerships that you are agreeing to take on?

[37:27](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=2247) One of the best examples I've seen of this is in Cincinnati. The University of Cincinnati created something called the Strive Collective, in which they, university leaders, the superintendent of local schools, and government leaders throughout the Cincinnati region came together and they agreed that the priority was reading levels within the K-12 system. There was agreement on what those priorities were. There was agreement about how to get there and what the role of anchor institutions and government would be. There was a timeline that was articulated and it was released to the media. That enabled the media to come back once a year and say, where are those institutions in terms of meeting those goals? Sometimes when you have an agreed upon set of goals and benchmarks, it's referred to as a compact, C-O-M-P-A-C-T. It's essentially saying to everybody publicly, we are holding hands and we are doing this together.

[38:34](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=2314) We are in a compact. We are in agreement as partners. Oh, that's my little ringer going off. And what-

**Unknown speaker**

[38:42](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=2322) It'll take a few minutes. Feel free to-

**Neil Kleiman**

[38:44](https://youtu.be/w9WBHlRuXFA?t=2324) Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I am going to stop there and would love to take any questions or responses that we have. And now trying to see where the- Let me just stop the recording.

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Original page: https://innovate-us.org/government-and-higher-education-partnering-for-ai-success · Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), as stated on innovate-us.org