Government & Communications

Democratic presidential candidate Sen Kamala Harris (D-CA) is introducing the Digital Service Act of 2019 on March 14 that would give state and local governments access to a pool of $15 million a year in grant funding, which they could use to set up tech teams and overhaul the often outdated tools and websites their constituents use every day. The bill is modeled after the United States Digital Service, an elite team of geeks inside the White House working on ways to make federal government technology less clunky and confusing—and maybe even good.

He prefers Sharpies over email. His aides cart around cardboard boxes of work papers — not laptops — for him to sift through on Air Force One. On pressing technology matters, he prefers a nonscientific approach. In short, President Donald Trump often operates on the theory that older is better. “It doesn’t put the best face forward for the United States to have a president talking that way,” Darrell West, the director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview. “It makes us look like we’re not a scientifically literate country.”

Google, a shrewd Washington player, has shifted into overdrive and adapted its approach as calls to regulate Big Tech have grown louder. A person familiar with Google’s strategy for influencing public debate says the company generally doesn’t seek to change experts’ thinking but, rather, to underwrite their time and encourage them to be more vocal on issues important to Google. Google may pre-vet op-eds and ask that certain statements be made stronger or weaker, which seems small but ends up having a big impact, the person said.

Sens Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) urged the Senate to take the cyber threats to congressional computers and cell phones seriously by providing an annual report on the number of successful hacks of Senate devices. In a letter addressed to the Senate Sargent of Arms (SAA), Michael Stenger, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee members wrote: “During the last decade, hackers have successfully infiltrated US government agencies including the Office of Personnel Management, health care firms such as Anthem, and technology giants like Google.

The United States and its allies are arguing over whether governments should use telecommunications equipment manufactured by Huawei. However, 5G is not the only important communications network. In other parts of the world such as Latin America and Africa, Huawei is laying the submarine cables that carry most long-distance communications traffic.

What could help a body as large and overwhelmed as Congress get its tech facts straight? Rep Mark Takano (D-CA) focused his South By Southwest speaking time on one possible answer: a call to re-fund the Office of Technology Assessment, whose budget was nuked by the Newt Gingrinch-led Congress of 1995. Since the OTA's funding fallout, Takano says, members of Congress have found themselves without access to federally funded, tech-specific research on whatever the OTA deems relevant in terms of either current-tech expertise or trend forecasting. What's a representative to do, then?

After repealing the Open Internet Order and ending net neutrality, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai doubled down on his efforts to ruin online culture. He released a cringe-inducing YouTube video titled "7 Things You Can Still Do on the Internet After Net Neutrality" that featured his own rendition of the "Harlem Shake" meme. Muckrock editor JPat Brown filed a Freedom of Information Act request for emails related to the video, but the FCC rejected the request, claiming the communications were protected "deliberative" records.

President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget request seeks $150 million in new funding for the Technology Modernization Fund, which provides seed money to governmentwide IT projects that agencies are ultimately expected to pay back. So far, TMF has funded seven projects totaling close to $90 million of the total $125 million Congress authorized for the program. The president’s request for more TMF funding is far from a certainty. Appropriations for TMF were only authorized through the 2018 and 2019 budgets through the Modernizing Government Technology Act.

House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr.

A global reckoning around the future of the internet is underway as autocratic regimes look to censor the internet in their countries, and races to develop new internet technologies, such as blockchain and 5G, heat up between the US and China. The next version of the internet could be split between countries that embrace an open web and isolationists that don't. It could also be fractured by different technologies that could fundamentally change the interconnected nature of the network and limit who can do business where.