Michael Trucano is the World Bank's Senior Education & Technology Policy Specialist and Global Lead for Innovation in Education, working on issues at the intersection of technology use and education in middle- and low-income countries and emerging markets around the world.

At a practical working level, Mr. Trucano provides policy advice, research and technical assistance to governments seeking to utilize new information and communication technologies (ICTs) in their education systems. Over the past 20 years, Mr. Trucano has been advisor on, evaluator of, and/or working-level participant in, educational technology initiatives in over 50 middle- and low-income countries.

A frequent public speaker and interview subject on the use of technology in education around the world, and on ICT use for development (ICT4D) purposes more broadly, he is the principal voice behind the World Bank's influential EduTech blog. He also regularly serves as a 'master of ceremonies' or moderator at conferences and industry events, including the annual global symposium on ICT and education in Seoul, which he helped to establish in 2007. 

Mr. Trucano co-leads the World Bank's global edtech team and global solutions group on 'technology and innovation in education', which maintains the World Bank's knowledgebase on related topics; provides technical support and guidance to large scale national education projects around the world; coordinates a community of 26 internal 'EdTech fellows', frontline staff from across the World Bank's education global practice working in every region around the world on over 50 edtech-related topics; and sponsors numerous knowledge-sharing events each year. 

He leads research and analytical work under the World Bank's flagship Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) initiative as it relates to information and communication technologies (SABER-ICT), including a related working paper series. Short papers include Documenting national educational technology policies around the world and their evolution over time; Building and sustaining national ICT/education agencies: Lessons from international experiences (with Gavin Dykes); and Technologies in education across the Americas. Mr. Trucano was a contributor to the World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends and, together with Birger Fredericksen and Sukhdeep Brar, was a co-author of the 2015 book, Getting Textbooks to Every Child in Sub-Saharan Africa : Strategies for Addressing the High Cost and Low Availability Problem.

In addition to his advisory work on projects funded by the World Bank and other international aid agencies and donors, including the EdTech Hub and the mEducation Alliance, he serves on a number of external advisory boards for non-profit groups, international development agencies and prize committees, including Digital Promise, Dfid's Digital Advisory Panel and the International Literacy Prizes of the U.S. Library of Congress. Concluded external advisory work included terms on the international advisory board of the International Institute for Communications in Development (IICD) in the Netherlands; NMC's K-12 Horizon Report; the education committee for the Mobile World Congress's GLOMO Awards, and the External Advisory Board for Education & Learning for the Toronto-based Mastercard Foundation. Mike is a Distinguished Fellow of the Research Centre of Fundación Ceibal in Uruguay.

Mike is also known for his work organizing off-the-record efforts to help groups learn from 'failed' projects and initiatives, in the hope that sharing lessons from 'failure' might make 'success' more likely in the future.

More information about Mr. Trucano can be found here. Find him on Twitter @trucano.