Dear colleagues,

You are warmly invited to another webinar hosted by The Digital Statecraft Academy (DSA), which may be of interest to those working in local government, economic development, public policy and digital infrastructure.

DSA Webinar: Data Center Decisions: How Municipalities Navigate Complexity

Date: Wednesday 28 October 2026
Time: 12:00 (GMT)
Register now: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/249f58c1-2f62-4cfc-a360-fee1813388df@f8ff7417-c954-4bf8-ba5a-1c103f38279d

Data center development raises hard questions for local leaders: power, water, land use, infrastructure, economic growth, community impact and state policy, often with competing claims about each. Beneath all of these sits a simpler question: how do you actually make the decision?

DSA Cambridge Fellow Dr Rhonda Syler (Associate Professor, James Madison University) will share her fellowship work on municipal data center decisions. Her approach follows four steps: Know, Ask, Verify, Decide. 

She will be joined by two guests with direct experience of Northern Virginia, home to the largest concentration of data centers in the world:

• Buddy Rizer, Executive Director, Loudoun County Economic Development
• Delegate David Reid, Virginia House of Delegates, District 28

Together they will discuss what local leaders need to know before they can ask the right questions, where communities find the process most difficult, and how to move from competing claims to a decision they can explain and defend.

The session will be hosted by Tim Gordon, Co-Founder of The Digital Statecraft Academy. The webinar is open to all. Register via this form. Please feel free to share this invitation with colleagues who may be interested.

Best regards,

The Digital Statecraft Academy & Data for Policy