The U.S. Congress is on recess this week, following a budget dominated week that featured a shutdown-avoiding final FY2011 appropriations act, and a House-passed FY2012 budget proposal that cut trillions of entitlement spending over the next decade. The budget is likely to dominate the federal legislative calendar throughout the year.

Ed-Tech Government Forum held in Washington, DC
The averted government shutdown ensured that SIIA’s annual Ed Tech Government Forum took place as planned. SIIA brought more than 100 education division members to Washington, DC for discussions with key education leaders about the impact of public policies on the school software market. Attendees networked with more than 150 local and national education leaders, and took advocacy visits to dozens of Congressional offices.

Among the highlights were remarks by Senator Patty Murray, FCC Commissioner Clyburn and U.S. Education Secretary Duncan’s Chief of Staff Joanne Weiss. Session presentations and session summaries will be archived. While education (and education technology) was being cut, SIIA and Senator Patty Murray helped release a report profiling how federal school technology grants helped transform and improve education.

ICANN releases new Guidebook
In other news, ICANN released a new version of the Draft Applicant Guidebook yesterday, continuing the debate over the rollout of new generic top level domains (gTLDs). The Guidebook can be found here. The public comment period runs from April 15 to May 15, and SIIA is working on comments through its constituency group, the Coalition for Online Accountability.

Administration releases NSTIC
On Friday, April 15, the Administration released its National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC). This “private sector-led effort to create a new infrastructure for the Internet, built on interoperable, privacy-enhancing, and secure identity credentials,” was released in conjunction with an event at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The lead Administration agency is the National Institute for Standards and Technology, which announced at the same time that it will be moving forward with a series of workshops on Trusted ID in the coming months.

Web Tracking and User Privacy Workshop to be held
On April 28 and 29, W3C will hold a workshop on Web Tracking and User Privacy at Princeton, New Jersey. Experts from academia, industry, civil society and government will discuss the role of anti-tracking technology to preserve use privacy on the Internet. The agenda can be found here. SIIA’s Director of Public Policy, David Leduc, will join a panel of experts on the first day of the workshop discussing the mechanisms that could be used to implement such a proposal. His submitted paper can be found here. 

House Judiciary Commitee passes patent bill
On patent reform, last week the House Judiciary Committee passed H.R. 1249, the America Invents Act.