What We Do
We take a normative view of technology: how something gets built matters as much as what gets built. Our clients come to us when they need to ship ambitious work in environments where a single product decision can implicate researchers, regulators, civil society, and the public — and where the policy and the product cannot be designed separately.
We work with technology companies, regulators, foundations, and research institutions on the policy questions that determine whether a product can ship at all.
How We Help
Tech policy work fails when it is treated as a separate function from the products it supports and enables. Tech policy work fails when it is treated as a press release rather than an operational commitment. Tech policy work succeeds when policy capabilities are wired into product delivery, are defensible to external scrutiny, and remain durable across organizational change. We help our clients create durable and enabling tech policies.
Representative Work
Working Paper is a small firm by design. The work below reflects what you're hiring when you hire us — engagements led at Working Paper, and the senior careers our principals brought with them.
Digital Services Act compliance. We designed and led the DSA strategy for two designated Very Large Online Platforms, working with C-suite leaders to establish new organizations, internal capabilities, performance measurement tools, and response processes. Inside Meta, we led the interpretation and compliance strategy for DSA Article 40 and provided guidance to product and engineering teams on Digital Markets Act data use and isolation requirements.
Implementation of DSA data access mandates. Through a Knight Foundation Fellowship at George Washington University's Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics, we lead the only pilot test of the DSA's data access mandates, conducted on behalf of EDMO and the French (ARCOM and CNIL), Dutch (ACM and AP), and Irish (DPC and Coimisiún na Meán) regulators.
Policy-relevant research at platform scale. At Meta, we led strategic planning and policy product development at the intersection of the Global Policy and Research organizations, out of the office of the President for Global Affairs. We created the cross-company process to collect, prioritize, and resource policy-relevant research, and we designed and managed the governance for the 8-figure 2020 Election Research Project. We also owned the policy strategy and product counseling for research data sharing across Meta, including launching the targeting transparency components of the Ad Library and the social mobility dataset published in Nature.
MCP governance and AI agents policy. We have built deep expertise in the Model Context Protocol and the policy questions agentic AI systems raise — from authentication and authorization patterns to data minimization, observability, and incident response. We organize regular convenings on MCP governance, contribute to FPF's Frontiers workshops on agentic infrastructure, and advise clients on the governance frameworks they need before they ship agents that act on their users' behalf.
AI reliability benchmarking governance. We help shape how industry measures and communicates AI risk through our work on AILuminate at MLCommons, including drafting Responsible Disclosure Policies, Taxonomy Maintenance Processes, and convening frontier-model labs.
Operationalizing patient data rights in low- and middle-income countries. We launched the Responsible Data Initiative at Medic, translating a fragmented global data protection landscape into institutional policies and software design practices for an open-source digital health platform serving sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Published at the ACM CHI conference, the work shows what it takes to move from regulatory compliance to responsible data practice in operational software. It articulates the institutional pre-work designers and implementers need to do to put patient data rights into action.
Privacy-enhancing technology policy. Through a Senior Fellowship at the Future of Privacy Forum, we lead the subject-matter work on the NSF- and DOE-funded Research Coordination Network on PETs, partnering with global privacy regulators to create a clearer regulatory environment in support of broader PETs usage.