You don’t have to be a political expert to roll up your sleeves and start advocating for your business and your industry. Just ask one of the 60-plus IT executives that attended the TechVoice D.C. Fly-In this month in Washington, D.C. Hosted by CompTIA, the Fly-In encourages IT leaders to meet face-to-face with Congressional members to promote legislation that will support growth and innovation within the IT sector.
The 2013 agenda included support of Startup Act 2.0 (now Startup Act 3.0 thanks to constituent effort and representative support) as a means to boost economic recovery by providing greater support for high-paying, high-skilled science, technology, education and mathematics (STEM) jobs. This could create a new visa for U.S.-educated students and entrepreneurs, enabling U.S. employers to fill 250,000 open, IT-related jobs. This legislation also would allow for tax incentives for those investing in U.S. start-ups. Research has shown that a new immigrant that starts a STEM-related business employs 2.6 people, which further grows the IT workforce and IT industry.
The Fly-In group also asked for a uniform approach to data breach notification laws and urged their congressmen to join the Congressional Small Business Information Technology Caucus to educate Congress on the important issues facing the IT industry and to advocate for policies that will help our industry grow and will impact our economy.
While this all may sound intimidating, CompTIA’s public advocacy team took great care in preparing the Fly-In participants on issues, requests, meeting etiquette and more. The representatives and their staffers were welcoming and generous with their time and many of the IT executives in attendance found their Fly-In involvement to be the experience of a lifetime.
TechVoice is a partnership of CompTIA and the Technology Councils of North America (TECNA) and participating regional associations. TECNA represents thousands of technology companies across the country employing millions of workers and hosts events nationwide.
For more information on how you can get involved with CompTIA’s public advocacy initiatives, visit www.techvoice.org.
