World Solve

Addressing dual citizenship rules remaining strict is critical for achieving the 2030 Agenda. Current efforts fall short in scale, speed and equity, leaving the most vulnerable behind. Any viable solution must function in low-resource settings with limited specialists, transport, laboratory capacity and broadband. Proposals should specify quantifiable biological, social or environmental outcomes, openly discuss potential risks, and present a realistic pathway for long-term maintenance and local ownership beyond short research pilots.

Long-lived infrastructure and environmental decisions can impose costs on people who cannot vote today. The unresolved problem is creating legitimate institutions that represent future people without removing accountability from current citizens. The solution must work with limited capital, intermittent services, and local maintenance capacity. The research opportunity is to define measurable success criteria, test the approach in realistic settings, identify failure modes, and create a pathway from prototype to accountable deployment.

If sleep becomes a tradable commodity sold in discrete blocks, the poorest citizens may be forced into permanent light or irregular cycles. The challenge is designing access systems that treat restorative sleep as a basic need rather than a market good, while still allowing voluntary exchange for those who choose it.

Future governments will need near-real-time visibility into commitments, arrears, off-budget liabilities, and contingent risks. The open problem is building financial transparency systems that ordinary citizens and auditors can actually use. This becomes particularly difficult in informal settlements, because public institutions must remain fair, resilient, and accountable while adapting to new risks.

States may invest in national AI systems for education, law, defense, planning, and public administration. The unresolved problem is ensuring such systems remain bounded by law, reviewable by citizens, and resistant to capture by narrow interests. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Governments currently discount long-term harms because future people cannot vote today. The open problem is creating formal institutions that represent future citizens in budget, infrastructure, climate, and technology decisions. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Future states will need identity systems that work for migrants, displaced people, informal workers, and citizens missing formal paperwork. The challenge is building identity infrastructure that expands access without becoming a surveillance or exclusion tool. The challenge is especially acute in informal settlements, where legacy systems, coordination failures, and weak oversight can magnify harm.

Many consultation processes collect comments but provide no traceable response or rationale. Structured argument maps, versioned policy records, and privacy-aware participation analytics could improve accountability without reducing deliberation to popularity. The opportunity is intentionally human-scale: a cooperative, clinic, workshop, school, or municipal team could pilot it within one locality and measure outcomes before expanding. Mathematical modeling can help with coordinate uncertainty, incentives, or resource constraints; entrepreneurship can turn a reliable workflow into a viable service.

Advanced surveillance technology developed for legitimate security purposes can end up being sold to and misused by governments to suppress dissent. Preventing this kind of misuse through export controls or corporate accountability remains inconsistently enforced.

Citizens feel democracy is not delivering security or prosperity, driving support for radical solutions and coups. Civic-engagement platforms and institutional-performance dashboards can rebuild trust.

Citizens navigate multiple portals and in-person visits for basic services. One-stop e-government platforms and identity systems can improve experiences.

Weak or absent data-protection laws in some countries leave citizens' personal data vulnerable to misuse by companies and governments alike. Regional data-protection frameworks modeled on best practices could improve safeguards.

Without citizenship or identity documents, affected populations cannot access education, healthcare, or formal employment. Digital identity verification systems designed for displaced populations could restore basic rights access.

Without reliable ID systems, citizens struggle to access banking, healthcare, and government services. Interoperable biometric ID platforms, if privacy-protected, could unlock major efficiency gains.

Weak public financial management means allocated funds for hospitals and schools often go unspent or misdirected. Real-time budget-tracking dashboards accessible to citizens could improve execution rates.

Sidewalks, public buses, and government buildings across Asian cities overwhelmingly lack ramps, tactile paving, and elevators, excluding disabled citizens from public life.

Centralized national identity databases lack modern cybersecurity protocols, exposing millions of citizens' biometric data to commercial misuse and state surveillance.

When a regulator fails to catch a problem, like an unsafe product or a financial scandal, there's often no clear path for citizens to hold the regulator itself accountable for that failure. This leaves oversight bodies with limited pressure to actually improve.

Government budgets are often published as static yearly documents rather than something citizens can track as spending actually happens. Real-time transparency into public spending remains rare rather than standard.

Public spending or contract data is sometimes released in formats so disorganized or incomplete that meaningful analysis by journalists or citizens becomes impractical. True transparency requires usable data, not just published data.