Last week, BSA’s Board of Directors came to Washington, DC and met with Members of Congress to talk about policy priorities of importance to the software industry. These issues not only affect software companies, but also every industry across America that relies on software to succeed. BSA’s delegation included representatives from Autodesk, Bentley Systems, Box, IBM, Informatica, Oracle, Salesforce, Siemens, Splunk, Trend Micro, Twilio, and Workday.
Our busy day of meetings was focused on BSA’s top policy issue of 2019: data privacy. The group also advocated for Congress to pass the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) because it has the best provisions on data of any trade agreement in the world. We met with Senator Roy Blunt, Senator Cory Gardner, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, New Dem Chairman Derek Kilmer, Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Lujan, Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senator Jacky Rosen, Chairwoman Jan Schakowsky, Congressman Darren Soto, Majority Whip John Thune, Ranking Member Greg Walden, and Congressman Peter Welch.
Privacy is a bipartisan issue, and we were pleased to hear congressional support throughout all our meetings for passing strong, comprehensive federal privacy legislation. Whether it’s cloud services, data analytics, cybersecurity, or other digital capabilities, BSA members are using data to help businesses of all sizes in all industries to grow. Privacy is critical to the services they provide, which is why they support legislation with strong obligations and enforcement to ensure it’s effective.
We thank all the Members of Congress we met with and look forward to working with them to pass federal privacy legislation and USMCA into law.
Learn more about BSA’s position and work on data privacy here.
