The Center for Digital Information’s mission is to lead the policy research community — think tanks, foundations, government agencies, NGOs and educational institutions — in a fundamental rethinking of how it communicates its findings in a digital society.

While researchers currently rely upon an old model of publishing static documents online, CDI seeks to advance the field toward developing entirely new interactive modes of presentation that utilize the unique capabilities of digital media.

Through interactive production, collaboration, and leadership, CDI’s goal is to ensure that high-quality research remains relevant, engaging and informative to both the public and policymakers as they consume information in new ways brought on by rapid technological change.

The Center’s approach is based on an important distinction between “digital distribution” and “digital information.” Digital distribution is characterized by transmitting material via new media in forms borrowed from a pre-digital era: reports, white papers, articles, issue briefs, fact sheets, and press releases; distributed as static text and PDFs. Digital information is distinguished by communicating natively in new media, using the unique interactive capabilities of the technology.” Source: The Center for Digital Information