Sen. Warren proposes to reinstate Office of Technology Assessment, created in 1970s to help Congress legislate on science and tech; OTA was dissolved in 1990s
one of the reasons Congress is so bad at tech is that it literally doesn't employ anyone whose job it is to figure it out. https://www.theverge.com/... Lukasz Olejnik / @lukolejnik : One US presidential candidate pledges to hire competent tech policy advisors (in the Office of Technology Assessment). To what extent this move may refer to Brussels? https://elizabethwarren.com/ ... https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Alex / @axfelix : this is actually the right idea, the problem is finding enough nerds who are actually committed to antagonizing corporate power and can't be talked around immediately. not a common nerd trait. https://twitter.com/...
Congress would regain an in-house body whose job is evaluating science and technology claims before voting — directly relevant as lawmakers weigh bills touching the platforms named in Warren's antitrust plan.
Second-order effects
Executive agencies would follow the same logic rather than wait on Congress: the FTC's later move to [[a:836140|stand up an Office of Technology and roughly double its technologist headcount ahead of Big Tech legal battles]] shows the capacity-building template migrating to regulators.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, the decades-long arrangement where government relies on the companies it regulates for technical information erodes — a shift Lukasz Olejnik's question about Brussels suggests travels beyond Washington, as the EU pushes 'tech sovereignty' measures to cut reliance on US tech giants and would need equivalent evaluative muscle.
The trend: Governments are beginning to rebuild in-house technical expertise after decades of outsourcing their understanding of technology to the very firms they regulate.
When Elizabeth fought for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, she saw how lobbyists use their resources and expertise to overpower ordinary people. Add your name: it's time to give Congress the resources to fight back against corporate lobbyists. https://elizabethwarren.com…
Honestly my favorite part of Warren policy plans. Something Dem might actually do and would have a huge positive long term impact. If you hate lobbyists writing bills, have Congress hire enough smart people to do it. https://twitter.com/...
After seeing how woefully uninformed about the very basics of internet commerce most members of Congress are this is an absolute necessity. https://twitter.com/...
Over the last 20 years, lobbyist spending has skyrocketed. At the same time, Congress has been starved of resources to objectively analyze complex public policy issues, leaving corporate lobbyist propaganda to fill the gap. I've got a plan to fix that: http://elizabethwarren.com/…
Warren's calling for restoring Congress's Office of Technology Assessment as a way of balancing out the intellectual influence that Google, Facebook, et al have with members and staff. https://www.theverge.com/...
Re-upping my 2015 Washington @monthly article with Steve Teles on congressional capacity, which @ewarren cites in her new “Break the Grip of Lobbyists” (https://elizabethwarren.com/ ...) plan. https://washingtonmonthly.com/ ...
Not a political statement at all, nor should it be taken as such, but this is something that every candidate from either party should be discussing. @google and @facebook have zero transparency and no oversight. It's time that our government took a stronger stance towards tech. h…
the question is, and always will be, whether OTA and/or GAO can resist what is essentially intellectual capture by industry, and i'm not sure i've read much from academia on the kind of setup that's best suited to withstand that https://twitter.com/...
Warren endorsing Office of Tech Assessment. If you wanna learn more, my longread from 2018: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Since then, though, one note: GAO got more $$ from Congress to do tech assessment, so some functionality exists. https://twitter.com/...
Someone should do an infographic of where the tech wonks of the Obama administration ended up after their service. Heck, not just the tech people. https://twitter.com/...
This @ewarren plan shares a thesis with a report I wrote: that Congress doesn't have the resources it needs to be effective, particularly on complex science & tech issues. It shares the answer, too: a better-resourced Congress is better for all of us. https://www.belfercenter.org…
It's like @ewarren is campaigning for my vote specifically. I couldn't agree more with her recommendations on helping congress be congress again. https://medium.com/...
It's time to break the grip of corporate lobbyists in Congress. @ewarren has a plan to provide Congress with the resources to do their jobs so that they don't have to rely on corporate lobbyist propaganda. Read and share her plan: http://elizabethwarren.com/...
One of her best plans yet. “Lobbyist” has basically been shorthand for “political corruption” for my entire life, and it's kind of incredible that we've put up with them for so long. https://twitter.com/...
In non-impeachment news, @ewarren wants to bring back the Office of Technology Assessment so that policymakers can know what the heck they're doing when trying 2 make tech policy: https://techcrunch.com/...
Interesting to see Elizabeth Warren pushing Congress to get smarter on tech. That lack of knowledge is the root of a lot of our current problems! https://www.theverge.com/...
When I started covering Congress, OTA was a rich source of information, staffed by top-notch experts. It was a sad day when Gingrich killed it. https://twitter.com/...
Excellent @kellymakena on Warren's plan to bring back the Office of Technology Assessment — one of the reasons Congress is so bad at tech is that it literally doesn't employ anyone whose job it is to figure it out. https://www.theverge.com/...
One US presidential candidate pledges to hire competent tech policy advisors (in the Office of Technology Assessment). To what extent this move may refer to Brussels? https://elizabethwarren.com/ ... https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/...
this is actually the right idea, the problem is finding enough nerds who are actually committed to antagonizing corporate power and can't be talked around immediately. not a common nerd trait. https://twitter.com/...