ITI Announces New Public Sector Venture, Hires Carol Henton to Lead California Efforts

In a major announcement, the Washington D.C.-based Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) said today that it will launch a new initiative called the "Information Technology Alliance for Public Sector" (ITAPS) that "will promote — through market-shaping advocacy — federal/state/local government understanding and procurement of cutting-edge technologies, while fostering an enabling regulatory environment for access to such technologies.”

According to Dean Garfield, ITI President and CEO, the ITAPS efforts will be led by senior lobbyist A.R. "Trey" Hodgkins, Carol Henton, ITI’s first ever California-based lobbyist, Pam Walker and Erica McCann, all four experienced senior lobbyists who abruptly resigned from TechAmerica to join ITI this week.  This follows TechAmerica’s loss in August of lobbyists Kevin Richards to SAP and Kristine Berman to HP.

In a conference call, Garfield touted an enhanced and significant presence in California, with the addition of 13-year veteran lobbyist Carol Henton to ITI’s lobbyist ranks.  While based in Silicon Valley, he said Henton will engage in Sacramento legislative matters.  Hodgkins further commented that Henton has" a deep and rich history in the Valley," and that she will be particularly focusing on updating state policies relating to procurement and acquisition of technology by the public sector, adoption and use of technology by government entities, in addition to tech education initiatives for K-12 and high education, including programs taking place in the Los Angeles County schools and Governor Brown’s ConnectEd initiative.  Henton said she will not be engaging in broad tax or privacy issues on behalf of ITI in California.

According to Hodgkins, the public sector initiative will focus on five issue areas:

1. Homeland security;
2. Procurement and acquisition;
3. State and local education tech initiatives;
4. National security; and
5. Federal-civilian tech initiatives.

Garfield said ITI’s major investment in experienced staff for the public sector space comes because tech companies view this sector as increasingly important to their interests, particularly the challenges of the procurement of technology.  In the procurement area, Hodgkins said ITI would focus on acquisition reform, and ask the hard questions of whether current procurement and acquisition of technology practices used by various levels of government are effective and efficient.  He referenced the recent issues relating to the Affordable Care Act website implementation, demonstrating that the government’s outdated methods of acquisition of technology does not conform to "best practices" in the business community.  ITI would also take on IT acquisition used by the Federal Government for technology, said Garfield, who joked that the current practices appear to have been established in the "horse and buggy" era with Cold War era contracting methods.

As to national security, Hodgkins said one issue area tackled will be the convergence of technologies (for example, cloud, mobile data, social media, mobility and data analytics) and how the public sector is dealing with and adopting these important developments.  On homeland security issues, Garfield said ITI will continue work on complex cybersecurity issues, led by senior lobbyist Pam Walker.

Garfield also announced a second ITI initiative — expanding its efforts in the international market access advocacy area with the establishment of an ITI presence in India.  Garfield said ITI is already "deep along the process" of selecting a consulting firm in India to advance U.S. tech companies interests, with an emphasis on policy issues relating to cybersecurity, privacy and trade (the latter with an emphasis on preferential market access issues).   As India is a leader in its regional area on policy issues, ITI hopes to bring India more into the mainstream of global best practices.