Technology issues on back burner in US Congress

With a huge fight over health-care reform unresolved, many observers of technology-related legislation before the U.S. Congress have low expectations that major bills will be passed in the remainder of 2009.

Issues including net neutrality, cybersecurity mandates and patent-litigation reform may sit on the back burner late this year as Congress continues to debate controversial plans to provide health insurance to more U.S. residents. "I don't think this is a big telecom session," said Jot Carpenter, vice president for public policy at CTIA, a trade group representing mobile carriers. "Too many of the key players ... are busy with other projects."

Congressional staffers for two tech-savvy lawmakers agreed, saying health care was likely to take up much of Congress' bandwidth. "It's tough to say what will move after Congress deals with health care and appropriations," added Colleen Ryan, a Dell spokeswoman.

Still, it's hard to predict what could still happen as congressional leaders promise to keep lawmakers in Washington, D.C., until late November, said Ari Schwartz, vice president and chief operating officer of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), an advocacy group focused on a free and open Internet.

"October and November could be very long months," he said Tuesday. "You have a lot of staff not working on health care, who have a lot of time to do other things."

In addition, Congress could move forward some tech-related legislation to set it up for passage in 2010. Unlike in an election year, legislation approved in committee in 2009 can carry over and be approved in the full Senate or House of Representatives without having to be reintroduced.

And while health-care reform may not be directly related to the IT industry, a lot of tech vendors are watching that debate closely, said Ginny Terzano, a spokeswoman for Microsoft in Washington, D.C.

"Companies like Microsoft care about the health-care legislation," she said. "Microsoft has expressed support for improvements that will increase access to quality, affordable health care. In addition, we think good legislation can help meet reform goals and create incentives that will drive adoption of innovative information technologies to enhance efficiency and help lead to cost savings."

Here are some tech-related issues that Congress could still tackle late this year:

Cybersecurity

Lawmakers have introduced several bills related to cybersecurity, the most controversial being the Cybersecurity Act, introduced in April by Senators Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, and Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican.

The first version of the legislation would have allowed the U.S. president to shut down or limit Internet traffic to critical infrastructure information systems during cyber emergencies. A new draft of the legislation would allow the president to declare a cyber emergency and direct a national response, but the power of the president over private networks is undefined.

The new version waters down a provision that would allow the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to establish software security standards, but it continues to give the U.S. Department of Commerce the authority to develop or coordinate a national licensing and certification program for cybersecurity professionals.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.