Chelsea Clinton said she believes technology and technological innovators can do more to help solve problems in the developed and developing world. Lack of access to clean water, America's obesity epidemic and problems with agricultural commodities can all be addressed by efforts from the world's tech community, she said during her keynote at South by Southwest Music and Media Conference on March 11.
Clinton serves as the vice chair of the Clinton Foundation, an organization dedicated to addressing global issues such as health security and economic empowerment.
"Technology has disrupted the nature of how we can improve the world by empowering individuals to make a difference," Clinton said.
Clinton said the lack of a "solutions hub"—a place where people involved in development can see what programs and strategies are the most successful in addressing certain issues—is concerning to her.
"Technology has the potential to revolutionize the way development measures, reports and analyzes the successes and failures of its work," she said. "We need a greater emphasis on not just understanding dollars invested, but in results: what works and what doesn't."
One of the factors paralyzing the tech and development communities from being able to address these problems is what Clinton called a "massive data gap." It is hard to use standardized metrics and measure results when a lot of the necessary data does not exist.
As an example, she said 2/3 of births in the Democratic Republic of Congo are not reported. Those children are not factored into studies into the efficacy of child-focused programs in that country.
"That's an extreme example, but not a unique one," she said.
During the question and answer session following Clinton's speech, one Twitter user asked how the tech community can help address these issues.
"I think certainly there are places where we haven't figured out what works, but I think our greater challenge now is that almost every challenge has been solved by someone somewhere," she said. "We need more transparency into what really works.
"I might know a lot about what works with global health and the agriculture space because we do a lot of work there, but I still can't say with a high level of certainty if what we're doing is the best answer or not. So where we could use a lot of helpis we really need standardized metrics and we really need a solutions hub that is diagnostic."
Other highlights:
- "I'm obsessed with diarrhea. I will find quite specious ways to talk about diarrhea and you're not all going to be laughing by the time I finish. I find the fact that more than 750,000 children still die every year around the world because of severe dehydration due to diarrhea unacceptable."
- "In 4th grade, girls are just as good in math as boys are, and just as many want to be engineers or astronauts or geneticists or tech innovators. By eighth grade, that's no longer true. So we know that happens in those critical years where girls are told either, 'Don't worry about it. You don't have to be good at math,' or 'Maybe this area—reading, history, social studies—might be a better match for you.' So we know we need to change all of that so we're not losing half our country's ability to contribute to our workforce today or imagination for tomorrow."
- "I finish today by asking each one of you what you will do with your power and your platforms to make a positive contribution. I hope you'll find an organization that you think is responsible and dynamic enough to deserve your talents, your energies, your ideas and your ingenuity."
