Darrell West

Darrell M. Westis the Vice President of Governance Studies and Director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. He holds the Douglas Dillon Chair in Governance Studies. Previously, he was the John Hazen White Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University. His current research focuses on workforce issues, technology policy, artificial intelligence, and data analytics.

West is the author of 23 books including The Future of Work: Robots, AI, and Automation (Brookings, 2018); Megachange: Economic Disruption, Political Upheaval, and Social Strife in the 21^st Century (Brookings, 2016), Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust (Brookings, 2014), Digital Schools (Brookings, 2012), The Next Wave: Using Digital Technology to Further Social and Political Innovation (Brookings, 2011), Brain Gain: Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy (Brookings, 2010), Digital Medicine: Health Care in the Internet Era (Brookings, 2009), Digital Government: Technology and Public Sector Performance, (Princeton University Press, 2005), and Air Wars: Television Advertising in Election Campaigns (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2013), among others.

He is the winner of the American Political Science Association’s Don K. Price award for best book on technology (for Digital Government) and the American Political Science Association’s Doris Graber award for best book on political communications (for Cross Talk). His books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and he has delivered nearly 150 lectures in a dozen different countries, including China, Japan, Russia, Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Turkey, Bahrain, and the United States, and has been quoted in leading newspapers, radio stations, and national television networks around the world.

The Center that he directs at Brookings examines a wide range of topics related to technology innovation including governance, democracy, and public sector innovation; health information technology; virtual education, and green technology. Its mission is to identify key developments in technology innovation, undertake cutting-edge research, disseminate best practices broadly, inform policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels about actions needed to improve innovation, and enhance the public’s and media’s understanding of technology innovation.