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Just Another Sales Job
by Sarah Lai Stirland
Bartlett Cleland is leaving the Washington lobbying scene after almost a decade to become CEO of Access Advertising, an advertising company in Kansas City, Mo.
Cleland, who received his law degree from St. Louis University in Missouri, currently works as associate general counsel and vice president of tax and corporate governance policy at the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA). Although his new job appears to be a big leap from lobbying in the nation's capital, Cleland said the skills for both jobs are similar.
"I see lobbying really as sales," he said. "It's selling something to someone who may not actually [understand] the benefits."
Cleland said the hard part of technology lobbying has been persuading members of Congress of the importance of technology policy issues. "It's hard to get someone interested in the intricacies of intellectual property or the tax code," he said, because those subjects don't translate into sound-bitable benefits to members of Congress' representative districts. "It's the most challenging sales job you can imagine," he said.
Cleland exits the nation's capital after almost a decade. He is a veteran of many tech-related debates, including enactment of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the battle to loosen controls on the export of encryption, and corporate tax policies.
He has been director of the Center for Technology Freedom at the Institute for Policy Innovation since 2000, a role he now fulfills on a part-time basis. He also was the technology counsel to then-Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., from 1996 to 1998. Before he joined ITAA, he was the technology and policy counsel for Americans for Tax Reform.
ITAA is seeking two staffers to succeed Cleland, he said. One person will focus on finance and corporate governance issues, and the other will focus on software and intellectual property.
Cleland offered this advice for his successors: "The key to success in this position is, when you're dealing with 400-odd high-technology companies ... listen and find common ground, push the ball forward and push hard to do that." That has not always been easy, Cleland said, because ITAA's members often are fierce competitors in the marketplace, and it is sometimes difficult for them to leave those rivalries behind, even in the sphere of public policy.
In other industry news, members of the technology group AeA elected John Harker as their new board chairman. He is the chairman of InFocus, which makes digital projection systems.
Harker will drive AeA's policies next year on government funding levels for research and development, e-commerce, Internet telephony and telecommunications reform, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, intellectual property, and tax reform.
"John brings to this position an intrinsic understanding of the high-tech industry and the needs of its members," AeA President and CEO Bill Archey said in a statement. "AeA is very much looking forward to his leadership and direction as chairman."
PR Pros Hang Shingles In Tech World
Two public-relations firms have opened in Washington thanks to people with close ties to the technology industry.
Tom Galvin, formerly VeriSign's vice president of government relations, has joined Jim Hock and Sean Garrett of Bite Communications to launch 463 Communications, a PR firm focused solely on technology issues. They expect that the plethora of tech-related issues in the 109th Congress and beyond will provide them with more than enough work.
Issues they expect to focus on include Internet telephony, telecom reform and RFID-related privacy. Their client list already includes Cadence Design Systems, the Computer Systems Policy Project, the Gartner research firm, Slayton Capital, the TechNet lobbying firm and Verisign. The new firm will compete with Dittus Communications, another big tech industry PR firm based in Washington.
Shannon Feaster, meanwhile, has decided to leave her job as communications manager of the Information Technology Industry Council to form her own PR consulting firm, Liberated Marketing & Communications.
Let The Holiday Festivities Begin
Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) President Dave McCurdy and his wife, Pam, hosted a Christmas party for people in the technology community Monday at their Mclean, Va., home. The party followed one by ITAA President Harris Miller on Saturday.
McCurdy, a former Democratic House member from Oklahoma, spent the evening hosting members of the alliance, congressional staffers and their bosses, members of former administrations, and a large group of technology policy lobbyists.
Those spotted at the event included: Phil Budden, the British Trade Department's first secretary of trade policy for technology issues; former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, also the chairman emeritus of both the Carlyle Group and Nortel Networks; Rep. James Moran, D-Va.; Ronald Turner, chairman of EIA's board and CEO of Ceridian; former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley, now a partner at the Wiley Rein & Fielding law firm; and Wiley's son, Doug, who is EIA's senior vice president of government relations.
McCurdy's annual party preceded EIA's executive committee meeting Tuesday, for which many EIA members are in town.
While hosting the party, McCurdy, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he was thinking about intelligence reform. He said he is pleased by news that members of Congress on Monday apparently overcame a legislative logjam blocking action on the issue. The House is expected to vote on legislation Tuesday, and the Senate debate is likely to occur Wednesday.
Protecting 'The Digital Person'
Spurred by the war on terrorism and marketing demands, both governmental bodies and commercial companies are collecting an unprecedented amount of information on people and using ever-increasing computing power to crunch and digest it. The proposed Secure Flight system for screening airline passengers is one example.
"The Digital Person," a new book by George Washington University law professor Daniel Solove, examines the trend and concludes that consumers may have lost control of their personal information because so many organizations already have collected, shared and sold it. Solove calls on policymakers to regulate privacy and protect individuals as much as they do food, the environment and financial institutions.
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