Policymakers

[Commentary] On Election Night 2016, a few hours before the results were fully in, I wrote a blog post titled “Why I’m staying at 18F”. I felt it was important, to me, to make a decision based on principle before I knew the outcome. Earlier in July, I decided to leave government service.

They may seem completely unrelated to most, but I’ll try to explain why to me they were evidence of the same dangerous “denormalization” of our government. The first thing that happened was the release of the written testimony of the former FBI Director, James Comey. For anyone in public service to ask for the personal loyalty of anyone else in government is an affront to our core values. For the President to ask it of the FBI Director is beyond “not normal." The second thing that occurred that very same day is that the technology and design organization I have worked for since before its public launch, 18F (and the larger service we created for it and its sibling organizations, the Technology Transformation Service), is being reorganized via administrative order into the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Acquisition Service.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced the appointment of Jerry Ellig as chief economist for the FCC. Dr. Ellig currently serves as a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Dr. Ellig’s work focuses on the role of economic analysis in the U.S. regulatory process, competition policy in telecommunications, broadband and electronic commerce, and performance management in government agencies. Most recently, he has published a series of papers that assess the quality and use of regulatory impact analysis in both executive branch and independent agencies. These papers identify best practices, shortcomings, and reasons for variation in the quality of agencies’ analysis.

Dr. Ellig has worked as a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University since 1996. He previously served in the federal government as deputy director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission (2001-03) and as a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress (1995-96). He has also served as an associate professor of economics and adjunct professor of law at George Mason University. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in economics from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, and a B.A. in economics from Xavier University in Cincinnati.

Federal Trade Commission Acting Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen announced that Abbott (Tad) Lipsky, Acting Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, retired effective July 3, 2017. Lipsky was previously a partner in the law firm of Latham & Watkins LLP, and brought 40 years of experience in antitrust law to the position, including previously serving as Deputy Assistant Attorney General to President Reagan’s first Assistant Attorney General, William F. Baxter. He also served on the Trump administration transition team for the FTC.

Alan Devlin, an Acting Deputy Director of the Bureau of Competition also left the Commission July 3, 2017, for private practice.

Markus H. Meier, who has served as Acting Deputy Director of the Bureau of Competition since November 2015, replaces Lipsky as Acting Director of the Bureau of Competition. Meier has led the Health Care division within the Bureau of Competition since 2006. He brings nearly 30 years of experience in antitrust, serving previously in private practice and the U.S. Army. As part of these changes, Acting Chairman Ohlhausen has also appointed Haidee L. Schwartz as an Acting Deputy Director of the Bureau of Competition. Schwartz previously served as an Attorney Advisor to Acting Chairman Ohlhausen, and as a counsel practicing antitrust law at O’Melveny & Myers LLP in Washington D.C. Marian R. Bruno will continue to serve as Deputy Director, Bureau of Competition, a position she has held since 2008. She will continue to bring her strong leadership, immense skills and expertise to the Bureau’s mission.

[Commentary] I left the White House that day with dramatically mixed emotions. I remain convinced that we should help a government initiative that can do real good, despite my deep concerns about the current administration’s policies. I saw only a sliver of all that went on that day, given the many concurrent sessions, but I wish I’d seen more evidence that the leadership of the tech industry can actually help government do a better job, given that so many of those who seem to be engaging have a lot invested in the status quo. I guess in some way that means that I leave this event not that far from where I started, remembering that “No one is coming. It is up to us.”

[Jennifer Pahlka is Founder and Executive Director of Code for America]

When a dozen and a half CEOs of the world’s biggest tech companies descended on the White House in June, it turned a spotlight on one of the bigger mysteries of a mysterious White House: They were convened by the Office of American Innovation, the new operation being run by presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Announced with much fanfare by the president in March, the office was set up to bring “new thinking and real change” to the country’s toughest problems, according to Trump, in part by drawing on the lessons of the private sector. Since then, observers have been wondering just what it was, or even if it was. It didn’t help that the sweep of its briefing was almost comically broad, from upgrading federal government’s $82 billion worth of information technology, to spurring the creation of new jobs, changing how the country thinks about apprenticeships and "unleashing American business." Not to mention working with sometimes-antagonist Chris Christie’s commission on tackling the United States' opioid epidemic. (And all this while Kushner is also supposed to be tackling Middle Eastern peace.) But over the past few weeks, its responsibilities have started to come into focus. It now has a staff, which worked behind the scenes to bring in the impressive roster of tech CEOs who attended the summit—Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, IBM’s Ginni Rometty and more. It spurred the decision by the Veterans Administration to buy a new, multibillion-dollar computer system. And it had a hand in Trump’s executive order on apprenticeships, issued before the meeting.

An official from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) said the department's science division is staffed, despite a report saying the last three employees of the division left last week. It was reported on June 30 that the three staffers, who were holdovers from the Obama administration, departed the office last week, leaving the science division unstaffed. However, an OSTP official said there are currently 35 employees in OSTP, and 12 employees in the department's science division, adding that the division is organized and divided differently under the Trump administration compared to the Obama administration.

[Commentary] On June 28, 2017, President Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Brendan Carr for the last remaining open seat on the Federal Communications Commission. Actually, you might call it a “double nomination”: Carr is being put forth to complete the remaining term of former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler which expires June 30, 2018, AND a second full term beginning the next day. The nomination, officially sent to the Senate on June 29, will likely be paired with that of former FCC Jessica Rosenworcel. The two are likely to get a confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee in July. Here’s a short introduction to Brendan Carr and a look at what his nomination might mean for the FCC moving forward. If you like what the FCC has been doing since Chairman Pai took the reins, the recent nominations and hoped-for confirmations are great news. Writing in The Verge, Jacob Kastrenakes notes, “the FCC will be able to start accomplishing a lot more.” Why? The FCC has only had three commissioners this year and “That’s meant fewer people to deal with day-to-day regulatory issues, less expertise on the many technical questions the commission faces, and the potential for stalled votes, since a minimum of three commissioners is needed to approve new policies.” In short, a full FCC gives the commission’s majority a firmer hold. Once three commissioners vote on an item, the other two are forced to take a vote, too, and Republicans can use that to move things along at a quicker pace. They also no longer face the threat of the lone Democrat on the commission skipping a vote so that an item can’t go through, Kastrenakes wrote.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the agency has chosen Larry Hudson to serve as Director of the Office of Workplace Diversity, continuing the work he has been doing as acting director.

Prior to joining the FCC in 2015, Hudson served as the Chief, Employee and Labor Relations for the Bureau of Administration, Bureau of Information Resource Management, and Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations at the State Department. He has held positions at the Federal Transit Administration, Federal Aviation Administration and the National Park Service. Hudson possesses more than 20 years of labor and employee relations experience from the private, public and military sectors. His initial introduction to human resources came while he served active duty in the US Air Force. Hudson is a trained mediator, formerly certified by the Virginia Supreme Court. He has also obtained the Professional in Human Resources (PHR) certification and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) practitioner certification. He has a Master of Science Degree in Human Resources Management from Chapman University, a Master of Science Degree in Administration from Central Michigan University, and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Management from the University of Maryland.

[Commentary] The newly constituted Federal Communications Commission is conservative and deregulatory, but in a way you would expect had any of the establishment Republicans won the White House last November. When Trump won, I worried that he would stack the FCC with nut-job loyalists so that he could follow through with his threats against the media. Luckily, that didn't happen.

President Donald Trump has nominated the Federal Communications Commission's general counsel Brendan Carr to be the agency’s third Republican commissioner — a move that could ensure the end of net neutrality regulations. Carr’s ties to big telecom could help tip the upcoming net neutrality vote in favor of deregulation, since FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to roll back net neutrality rules will likely pass along party lines — as it did for Democrats in 2015.