Last week, Afghan president Hamid Karzai surprised U.S. and coalition officials by announcing the creation of a special tribunal and prosecutor to seek redress for the almost two year old Kabul Bank scandal. And earlier this month, the Afghan House of Representatives rejected the proposed federal budget in part because of the allocation of U.S. $80 million to Kabul Bank. Already, the Central Bank has poured $450 million into the beleaguered bank after it lost almost a billion dollars in the 2010 financial scandal.

Editor’s Note: Contributors to this post will be part of a panel on the topic taking place on Thursday, February 9th in Washington, D.C. Sign up for the event here. This post is part of the Global Innovation Showcase created by the New America Foundation and the Global Public Square.

In an era of presidential tweeting and daily briefing, the unique role of the State of the Union is easy to miss. From a speech that was originally meant to "recommend to Congress¹s consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient," the event has now become an opportunity for the president to make the case on the national stage that his vision for the country has been and will continue to be the best response to the issues of our time.

Call 2011 the year of the biometric ID. Once the territory of high-security enclaves and spy novels, identification by iris scan, fingerprint, and other unique physical features has now become de rigueur around the world—especially in India, whose program to ID every citizen has been the subject of almost giddy reports about the technology's potential to democratize society. The New York Times described India's biometric database as "building real citizenship" for the first time. Wired emphasized how biometrics can finally bring the disenfranchised into the formal economy.