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This week the Trump Administration, as part of its Workforce Week, is expected to announce initiatives to bolster apprenticeship programs as a way to address the United States’ skills gap. This announcement comes at a pivotal time: millions of Americans are looking for work while millions of good-paying jobs go unfilled. In the tech sector alone, there are over half a million open computing jobs in [...]
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The conventional wisdom in Washington always holds to not expect much from divided government, and those expectations only lower heading into a presidential election year because hyper-partisanship can turn the landscape into frozen tundra. But for every rule there is an exception. Despite the fierce headwinds, issues that are important to the technology industry cut across party lines to find common [...]
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Today the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, will hold a hearing on high-skilled immigration. This hearing is being held at a time when the tone on immigration reform is being driven by presidential candidates after years of Washington “kicking the can” on fixing our broken immigration system so that it works to grow our economy. ITI has long advocated [...]
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Previously I wrote that 2015 was predicted to be a year of gridlock, and yet despite deep partisanship in the nation’s capital, the tech sector saw several of our priorities passed into law. If lawmakers and the President build on that momentum, there are a number of priorities Congress could address this year to propel the growth and ingenuity of the tech sector and our economy, including: Judicial [...]
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As the House and Senate move to conference to reconcile differences and align their respective bills reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), ITI – along with five other five tech trade associations – sent a joint letter to congressional committee leaders expressing our gratitude for their efforts to advance the measure. As they work to conclude the reauthorization, we emphasized [...]
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An op-ed published today in The Hill shares my perspective that when it comes to workforce diversity there is less of a Silicon Valley – D.C. “disconnect” and more of a shared challenge on crafting an inclusive workforce in both the tech sector and the corridors of power in our nation’s capital. Instead of being bystanders, tech intends to lead. And that starts with the candor to own up to the problem [...]
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Google’s publication of its diversity transparency report this week is the perfect culminating occurrence to a month where we commemorated and experienced many reminders of our strength, humanity, and vigilance as individuals and as a nation. This month, we commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision where the Supreme Court declared separate public schools for black [...]
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Today, the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) and IBM unveiled a letter signed by more than 200 businesses, associations, and community groups urging the Senate and House of Representatives to modernize the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins Act). First enacted in 1984, the Perkins Act is a federal program that helps states and localities around the country offset [...]
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In our increasingly connected world, too often the nation’s classrooms are an afterthought. Many schools are at or near bandwidth capacity and are relying on outdated hardware, not to mention teachers who are forced to do more teaching with fewer resources. It’s against this backdrop that we’re reminded that too few students are given the chance to explore digital tools in the classroom. And that’s [...]
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Back in 1996, when the Internet was still a nascent idea in most American homes, Congress enacted a major re-write of our telecommunications laws. Among the many provisions in the new law was a contentious proposal to increase Internet connectivity in American classrooms and libraries. E-Rate, as the program is known, was launched in 1997 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with the singular [...]
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