IP Democracy: The Alphabet Soup of Silicon Valley in DC

Sean Garrett at the 463.com rails today about the fractured, splintered and otherwise relatively ineffective lobbying of Silicon Valley and high-tech companies in Washington, DC. This is merely conventional wisdom by now.

What is new is the open call by Phil Bond, CEO of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), to consolidate his group with the sixteen or so trade groups that represent the high-tech industry’s interests in Washington. Bond shared his thoughts on the industry’s disarray via this op-ed piece in yesterday’s San Jose Mercury News.

For our leaders to get the message, our industry should speak in a unified, powerful voice. Instead, there are more than 16 organizations clamoring for attention from the same decision makers. Sometimes we’re saying the same things. Sometimes we’re not.

Check out this alphabet soup: ACT, ACT-IAC, AeA, BSA, CCIA, CSIA, CDT, CompTIA, PFF, EFF, EIA, SIA, SIIA, TCC, ITIC and ITAA. That list does not even include the Silicon Valley-launched TechNet or a council representing about 40 regional IT groups across the country, which recently entered a partnership with us at the Information Technology Association of America (we’re the ITAA in the above soup).

Therefore, Washington has far too little appreciation for the fact that IT drives innovation, growth and prosperity across the entire economy. Our industry’s contributions to breakthroughs in areas such as genomics, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, imaging, health care, communications, entertainment and financial services — to name a few — are not well understood.

The bottom line: Our industry’s lobbying, our brand, and our political support are all splintered. We do not have our act together.

Sean raises an intriguing possible solution to Silicon Valley’s scatteredness when it comes to policy matters: use Web 2.0 tools, specifically blogs, to organize people. It’s very sad but very true that high-tech industry representatives in Washington (and I might add the reps of the communications industries…cable, telco, broadcast, Hollywood, wireless and so forth) don’t even read blogs much less write them.

Instead, many in DC take it as a badge of honor that they don’t read blogs. Suggesting that they actually write or comment only gets you quizzical stares. “What are you? From San Francisco?”

Verizon and Cisco are two notable exceptions to this rule. But much of the rest of the DC tech and communications community look upon blogs much the way corporate executives looked upon email ten years ago (they used to make their assistants print out their emails and place the electronic missives on their desks, remember?) The lobbyists simply haven’t caught up yet.

Compounding this cultural lag, most people involved in policy are either lawyers or politicos, two types of professionals who are resistant to writing things down lest they leave evidence, or fingerprints, behind.

So, while Sean has a great idea, chances are pretty slim that it will ever become a reality. If, however, Silicon Valley were to apply its own technologies to policy matters, it might go a long way toward “solving decade-old industry issues.”

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on February 13, 2007 8:53 PM to IP Democracy