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The ongoing effort to expand products covered by the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) got a helpful congressional boost at today’s trade hearing by the Subcommittee on Trade of the House Ways and Means Committee. Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) began the hearing, expressing the frustration so many are feeling with China’s “intransigence” on this effort, underscoring the importance that any final [...]
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Today the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved with unanimous support a bipartisan bill, the EPS Service Parts Act of 2014 (H.R. 5057), introduced by Reps. Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Paul Tonko (D-NY), that will extend current energy efficiency standards so manufacturers can continue to produce, distribute and service energy efficient external power supplies (EPS) for older, out of production [...]
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Earlier this week, the President signed the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 (S.1681 – P.L. 113-126). The bill authorizes appropriations for intelligence and intelligence-related activities across 16 federal agencies in the intelligence community (IC). The IT Alliance for Public Sector (ITAPS) has been monitoring provisions of interest for contractors as it moved through the legislative [...]
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Some good news coming out of the high-level U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) in Beijing this week is that China has signaled it is continuing domestic consultations to raise its level of ambition to expand product coverage of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA). And this signaling was apparent during the meetings today and yesterday at very senior levels. The bad news is that [...]
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Negotiations on the Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA) launched this week at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva aimed at removing tariffs on a broad range of environmental technologies. ITI, as part of the Coalition for Green Trade, is advocating for a timely and ambitious negotiation of the EGA to ensure a wide range of new and innovative technologies designed to protect the environment [...]
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Legislation intended to promote domestic firms that actually would cause more harm than good for U.S. businesses did not advance before the New Jersey legislature recessed for the summer. Momentum on the bills – Senate Bill 1811 (Sweeney-D) and Assembly Bill 3059 (Egan-D) – waned as legislators learned that the proposals could unintentionally isolate New Jersey from U.S.-based businesses that are [...]
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Earlier this year, I wrote about why it was important for the Florida legislature to bring back the position of state chief information officer (CIO) and reestablish (and also fully fund) a centralized agency focused on managing the state’s information technology. State lawmakers agreed and passed legislation, H.B. 7073, which was signed into law by the governor and goes into effect today. Before [...]
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This week, the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) jointly convened a dialogue on the ENERGY STAR® program that has reaffirmed the benefits that strong and focused public-private cooperation can generate. The groundwork that was laid this week could evolve the ENERGY STAR program to achieve greater energy savings with significant benefits [...]
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The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs today will be marking up H.R. 1232, the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, or FITARA. It’s significant because it is the first time the Senate will formerly consider the House’s signature acquisition reform bill. What remains to be seen is how similar the Senate’s marked-up version of the bill will be to FITARA. [...]
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We applaud Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) for introducing S. 2505, the bipartisan Wi-Fi Innovation Act. Americans increasingly depend on smartphones and portable devices that rely on spectrum for connectivity and ITI has long held the view that we must make efficient use of all spectrum to meet our nation’s growing demand. The 5 GHz band provides tremendous opportunity to expand [...]
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