Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer lays out agenda for tech growth and innovation

Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer announced a new agenda to spur tech growth and innovation last week. The five-point plan includes incentivizing economic growth and innovation, expanding access to communication services, embracing technology and modernizing outdated rules, adopting regulatory restraint and champion oversight and transparency.

Sen. Deb FischerNebraska Sen. Deb Fischer announced a new agenda to spur tech growth and innovation last week.

The five-point plan includes incentivizing economic growth and  innovation, expanding access to communication services, embracing technology and modernizing outdated rules, adopting regulatory restraint and champion oversight and transparency.

“The nation’s innovators face outdated policies and regulations that stifle creativity on everything from healthcare to telecom that needs to change,” Fischer said in a release last week. “(This agenda) is an effort to spur a real debate about the best federal policies to empower creators and consumers.”

Fischer, who sits on the Commerce and Small Business committees, said reforming the government’s approach to technology and innovation is one of her top priorities.

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She titled the plan “A Fresh Technology Agenda for Growth, Innovation, and Opportunity.”

Last week, Fischer visited tech firms in Silicon Valley including Google, Facebook, Apple, Uber and others, seeking feedback on the proposal and learning more about their ideas.

One example of tech and government friction are the ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft that most local governments have been slow to respond to.

The next wave of those types of companies and technological solutions is just around the corner, she said, and the government has to be ahead of it.

“Our nation’s innovators get it, but Washington is way behind, regulating rapidly growing industries like health IT with old rules that predate the VCR,” the Republican senator said. “This has to change.”

Among the proposed plans:

  • Update the Food and Drug Administration’s policies to make it easier for low-risk mobile health applications to be approved. Fischer says its authority to regulate traditional medical devices such as MRI machines was never intended to apply to the new modern tech.

    “Low-risk health IT deserves a modern oversight framework that promotes innovation, supports job growth, and protects patient safety,” she said. “Congress should send the message that startup innovators don’t need costly corporate counsels and D.C. lobbyists to navigate the FDA and open the right political doors. All anyone should need is a good idea and a dream.”

    Fischer the introduced bipartisan legislation, the Preventing Regulatory Overreach to Enhance Care Technology (PROTECT) Act that would codify the common-sense idea that new technologies shouldn’t be tied up with old red tape.

  • Improving local access to broadband by eliminating fees that make it cost-prohibitive to bring the Internet to people. She also proposes a modernization of universal service rules so that providers have more incentive to bring broadband Internet service to consumers.
  • Congress must also address policies that unfairly block innovation, she said. Uber, the controversial ridesharing service, has learned the hard lesson that sometimes regulators and entrenched political interests can hold back progress, she said. “Government needs to get out of the business of picking winners and losers.” The Helping Innovation and Reviving Entrepreneurship (HIRE) Act promotes opportunities for innovators and individuals by requiring that the FCC approve new technology applications within a year. Improving government’s responsiveness to technology applications and license requests.
  • Another looming concern for Congress is how to meet consumers’ demand for wireless spectrum — the resource wireless phone carriers use to bring faster, more reliable, service to consumers’ Internet devices. Congress needs to stay engaged on spectrum issues and work to make sure the FCC administers the upcoming spectrum auction appropriately.

“Ultimately, government must do a better job of listening and understanding the tech industry,” Fischer said.”Right now, government is stuck in an analog mindset, while innovators have moved the rest of the country into the digital age.

You can read the full proposal below.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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