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Currently, there is a staggering backlog of 700,000 investigative products, including simple record checks, that are plaguing the federal government. The backlog has grown so egregiously that the government has moved Top-Secret security clearance reinvestigations from five to six years to cope with the backlog. And, it now takes 500 days to obtain a Top-Secret Clearance and 300 days to obtain a Secret [...]
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The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) agreement negotiated 25 years ago predates many technologies we use every day, even some of the companies that created them, and would benefit from an update. A modernized NAFTA that addresses a wide range of digital priorities would turbocharge the U.S. economy. Already strong U.S. exports of technology goods and services—in 2016, total U.S. exports [...]
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The United States last passed comprehensive tax reform in 1986 before anyone could conceive the transformative impact the digital economy would have on society. Businesses of all sizes are harnessing the power of the internet, entering new markets, selling goods and services, creating over 6.7 million tech jobs in the United States and around the world, and investing capital bolstering our economic [...]
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For the fifth time in seven years, ITI has submitted comments on Net Neutrality as Federal Communications Commission (FCC) again weighs changing the rules—ITI's position supporting a free and open internet remains unchanged. Instead, what has crystalized is the need for Congress to act and settle the matter with certainty for the future of the internet. Over the past two decades, the internet has forever [...]
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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took a significant step on fifth generation, or 5G, wireless networks by releasing a notice of inquiry, or proposal, on a range of spectrum bands, last week. Spectrum is the finite and valuable radio frequencies that all wireless communications use. Your smartphone, Bluetooth speaker, streaming devices and connected appliances, cars and commercial equipment [...]
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The G-20 just concluded its annual meetings in Hamburg, Germany, where all the countries except the United States reaffirmed their joint commitment to the Paris Climate accord, an agreement the United States led in brokering. After President Donald Trump announced the United States would withdraw from the climate accord, a groundswell of thousands of states, governors, mayors, cities, businesses and [...]
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The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, is coming to Washington, D.C. next week for his first meeting with President Donald Trump since the president took office. While defense cooperation between the two countries will likely dominate their talks, this first meeting between these two important leaders also presents an opportunity to address economic cooperation in ways that will serve to make [...]
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The IT Alliance for Public Sector (ITAPS) recently sent a letter outlining our concerns with California’s A.B. 1546, a bill that would create a statutory mandate for the California Department of Technology (CDT) to develop a standardized contractor performance assessment to evaluate the performance of a contractor on certain information technology (IT) projects. While we support the need for accountability [...]
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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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Although President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from the COP-21 Paris Climate Agreement, the tech industry remains committed to the goals of the accord, and our determination to combat the threats posed by climate change has not wavered. It is with that spirit that we have joined more than 1,000 signatories — including U.S. governors, mayors, investors, universities, and companies (many [...]
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