SIIA fully endorsed the Postal Reform Act of 2013, which passed the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform tonight by a vote of 22-17.  The legislation was introduced on Friday July 19 by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA).

The Postal Reform Act of 2013 is exactly the kind of reform we need to get the USPS back on the path to financial stability and to provide a reliable and sustainable delivery service for mailers.

Importantly for SIIA members, the Postal Reform Act of 2013 maintains the Consumer Price Index-based rate structure and also establishes a common sense timetable to evaluate rates and cost coverage for classes of mail not meeting attributable costs. In addition, the legislation re-amortizes retiree health care prefunding requirements, streamlines the process for USPS facility consolidation, authorizes a temporary control authority to restructure the Postal Service, gives USPS increased ability to right size its labor force and allows the USPS to shift to a modified 5-day delivery schedule.

SIIA’s members mail approximately 800 million magazines and newsletters each year. Any rate increases beyond annual CPI will simply drive more and more of those periodicals out of the mail stream and USPS will never get them back. We applaud Chairman Issa for the way this legislation deals with these complex rate issues.

We recently released a member survey finding that two out of three SIIA members would reduce mailed periodicals by an average of 11 percent if postal rates increased by a total of 7.5 percent (estimated CPI and a 5 percent additional surcharge) next year. Such a result would reduce mail volume and revenue to USPS rather than increasing it. SIIA members collectively spend an estimated $260 million in postage each year

Chairman Issa’s legislation wisely puts the impetus for cost saving reforms on the back of the Postal Service rather than mailers who actually provide 90 percent of USPS revenue.

Ken Wasch is President of SIIA. Follow the SIIA Software team on twitter at @SIIASoftware.

The SIIA Government Affairs Council met today to identify the organization’s policy priorities for the remainder of 2013.  We have decided we will focus on the passage of patent troll legislation and develop support for an industry-led code for mobile privacy. We also re-affirmed their commitment to making data-driven innovation a top policy priority.

The SIIA Government Affairs Council includes: Adobe, Cengage, Dow Jones, Intuit, Kiplinger, Google, IBM, McGraw Hill Education, McGraw Hill Financial, Oracle, Pearson, Red Hat, Reed Elsevier, SAS, and Thomson Reuters.

In the first half of 2013, SIIA released a White Paper on Data Driven Innovation, put an increased focus on digital trade issues here and abroad, and launched the SIIA Tech Policy Speaker Series.  The Speaker Series, which kicked-off with an address by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte on legislation to control patent troll abuse, will continue to be key part of SIIA’s policy program.”

For the remainder of the year, a major priority will be the passage of meaningful legislation to reign in abuses by patent trolls in a way that preserves the important role of patents in advancing innovation and that does not discriminate against software patents.

In addition, we will work to advance an industry-led multistakeholder code of conduct for mobile privacy that the industry can consult when it notifies users about information collection.

Recognizing that data is currently one of the biggest drivers of economic opportunity, SIIA will continue its focus on advancing the positive use of data and data analytics.  This effort is a key theme unifying our work on behalf of members. It is essential that public policy reflects the fact that innovation and business strategies are increasingly driven by data.  Importantly, data-driven innovation not only holds the promise of advancing economic opportunity and jobs, but of providing tremendous consumer and societal benefits.  We are convinced that this can be done in a balanced way that protects and preserves privacy and intellectual property rights.

We also announced our policy priorities for 2013 in technology policy, intellectual property public sector IT, and education.

Technology Policy Priorities

• Continue working through the NTIA process to finalize a voluntary code of conduct for mobile app transparency.

• Support enactment of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2013 (S. 607) to level the playing field for access to digital content regardless of where it is stored.

• Promote policies around the world that facilitate cross-border data flows, and develop interoperable legal frameworks that help to advance global implementation of Internet computing.

• Promote critical cybersecurity legislation that will help the public and private sectors work together to more effectively mitigate this threat, without stifling innovation.

• Lead a campaign to educate policymakers and thought-leaders about the economic and social value of data-driven innovation, and to promote the policy recommendations established in SIIA’s recent white paper: Data-Driven Innovation, A Guide for Policymakers: Understanding and Enabling the Economic and Social Value of Data.

Intellectual Property Priorities

• Protect the economic interests and rights of software and content publishers by advocating a narrowly targeted legislative response to the Supreme Court opinion in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons Inc. and any other cases, policies or legislation relating to the copyright law’s first sale exception/exhaustion principle that may unduly limit their ability to control distribution of their software and content products through licensing and other means in the United States and abroad.

• Encourage economic growth and innovation by urging enactment of meaningful legislative and other policy reforms to the patent system to address the ongoing problem of patent trolls, including measures to restrict asymmetric discovery burdens, in a manner that preserves the value of the patent system to promote and protect innovation and does not discriminate against or otherwise accord special treatment to software patents.

• Monitor and advocate for a domain name system that includes meaningful and effective safeguards to protect copyright and trademark owners from piracy and counterfeiting, which includes, among other things, ensuring that domain name and IP address Whois databases are publicly accessible, accurate, reliable and sufficiently detailed, as key tools to combat online infringement of copyrights and trademarks, and other fraudulent or criminal acts online.

• Actively monitor for, and act upon as necessary, hearings, legislative or regulatory copyright reform proposals in the United States and abroad, such as issues relating to orphan works, library exceptions and piracy, to ensure that they advance and do not adversely affect the copyright interests of SIIA members.

• Oppose changes to the CFAA that would unduly limit the ability of SIIA members to deter and prevent unauthorized access – and access that exceeds authorized access to databases, subscription services and cloud services.

Public Sector IT Priorities

• Encourage Administration IT initiatives for federal agencies to be more open, transparent and efficient, delivering better services to citizens, while reducing the overall cost of government.  Information Technology has and will continue to play a role in the Federal government’s effort to deliver better services to citizens, while reducing the overall cost of government.
• Support government policies and initiatives aimed at disseminating the results of publicly-funded research, consistent with the protections afforded to America’s copyright owners. However, it is essential that these policies and initiatives be limited to the direct results of publicly-funded research and not extend to value-added information products and services merely because they contain the research results. The peer reviewed journals that private-sector publishers, professional societies, university presses and commercial publishers publish are examples of such value-added products, rather than examples of Government information.

• Support a continuation of the effort to move agencies to cloud, consolidate and optimize the existing data center infrastructure and better leverage government data.

• Advocate for key administration initiatives that support the overall mission of the SIIA Public Sector Innovation Group including:  Cloud First, Big Data, Data Center Consolidation, Digital Government/Mobile, and FedRAMP.

• Support reasonable reform of the Federal acquisition process, which needs to change to keep pace with the rapid pace of technology.

• Intervene to support member interest in the legislative consideration of the proposal by Chairman Darrell Issa to reform federal IT acquisition to keep pace with technology.

Education Priorities

• Increase federal and state investment in digital learning, including through enhancements to the federal E-Rate and pending federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization.
• Reform outdated regulations in favor of 21st Century e-learning policies, including support for anytime/everywhere learning, competency-based learning and effective use of data to personalize learning.
• Support the value of the for-profit sector in serving education needs, including through government-industry R&D partnership and not government competition with the private sector.

Ken Wasch is President of SIIA. Follow the SIIA Software team on twitter at @SIIASoftware.