News | DOI: 10.1145/1536616.1536625
IT Drives Policy—
and Vice Versa
Technologists discuss government policies affecting broadband,
patent reform, privacy—and President Obama’s effect on it all.
THe U.s. economic stimulus package loomed large over the third annual Tech Policy Summit, attended by more than 300 people at the Mar-riott San Mateo/San Francisco Airport
Hotel from May 11 to 13. With the first
day dedicated to a broadband innovation agenda, there was particular
focus on the $7.2 billion made available for broadband development
through the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act. Broadband issues
also pervaded the following two days,
especially the problem of the “
middle mile” connecting the Internet
backbone to rural regions increasingly served by local wireless networks.
However, discussions at Tech Policy
Summit ‘09 also ranged to areas outside of broadband and IT as well, with
health care and energy policy receiving prominent attention. Whatever
the topic, computer technology’s role
eventually took the foreground. “The
number-one threat to the country’s
financial stability is the cost of health
care,” noted Blair Levin, managing
director at investment banking firm
Stifel Nicolaus and cochair of the technology, innovation, and government
reform working group for the Obama-Biden transition team. “The Obama
administration is saying that IT is central to its solution.”
On that note, several participants
reported positive interactions with the
Obama administration about technology initiatives. Software developer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Mitch
Kapor said he believes that “the level
of knowledge within the [Obama] administration is very broad. I didn’t see
that in the Bush admin, and if you go
back to Clinton, it was isolated around
Al Gore. It wasn’t a priority to understand and take advantage of technology and innovation.” Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg agreed.
“Obama’s the first president who lives
in the digital world,” he said. “That’s
not extraordinary. That’s the lifestyle
Tom Geller
that everybody in this room lives. Al
Gore did as well, but he was never the
president.”
According to Natalie Fonseca, principal of conference organizer Sage-Scape, Tech Policy Summit ‘09 drew
slightly more than half its participants from the Silicon Valley region,
with the most of the remainder coming from Washington. Fonseca, too,
believes Silicon Valley is more willing
to deal with government now. “There
was interest in government involvement before, but now there’s more
opportunity for such initiatives to be
successful,” she said. Jim Dempsey,
the vice president of public policy for
the Center for Democracy and Technology, agreed. “When I came to the
first one of these conferences three
years ago, it was heavily dominated
by D.C. people,” he said. “But today,
it’s a lot more entrepreneurs—and to
me that’s good. Innovators need to
understand and be involved in policy, and not just say, ‘Give us more
H1-B visas.’ ”
U.S. Representative Mike Honda
(D-CA) was among those who echoed
the need for technologists to participate in Washington-based policy decisions. “Years ago I asked technologists, ‘What do you want me to do for
you?’ ” he said. “They answered, ‘Just
stay out of my way, because whenever
you guys do anything, it ends up being
a lot more work for me.’ But as a former schoolteacher, I know that field
trips teach people a lot. If policymakers don’t know what they’re looking at,
the policies they make won’t make any
sense. So it’s a really good idea for you
to talk to leaders and policymakers.”
© 2009 aCM 0001-0782/09/0800 $10.00
PhotoGraPh by anDre W feInberG
Tom Geller is an oberlin, ohio-based freelance writer
covering science, technology, and business.