Our intrepid CTO, Andy Glover, spent some time on The Hill this week, working with The Association of Competitive Technology as part of the ACT Fly-in.
The objective, as explained by ACT’s Morgan Reed, was simple:
“The pace of innovation that is taking place right now in the app economy is remarkable. Washington should avoid taking steps that would unnecessarily hinder the continued growth of our industry.”
Andy had a front row (or should we say front line?) perspective on the effort. The big areas of emphasis:
Privacy
App dev, as an industry, should be capable of policing ourselves. The government does not need to get in the mix. Like the film industry, the mobile app community can develop a rating system that explains to consumers precisely the level of privacy an app’s use might entail.
This was an especially heated topic, with many legislators feeling an urgent need to do something about app privacy regulation. Many advocated the European Union “opt in” model, which is proving to have a big impact on downloads and deployment.
The better approach might be to continue meeting consumer expectations for free content that is driven by advertising. Developers are regretting making apps for sale (rather than adhering to an ad-driven model) and prefer the in-app sales opps that industry self-policing will invite.
Spectrum
There’s no question that as a nation we are running out of available spectrum. As a result, we’re reaching the limits of mobile device empowerment. The obvious solution is for the government to free up some of the more than 60% of the available spectrum they are sitting on! Digital TV broadcasters share some of the responsibility as well, as they haven’t started sharing spectrum promised in the wake of the HDTV explosion.
Labor Shortage
There’s a serious shortfall of talent in the app dev industry, and that means we’re looking overseas to bring in good talent. Unfortunately, this isn’t easy. H1B visas are a tough fight, and while plenty of foreign nationals come to the US to get educated, they quickly return home (taking their skill and economic impact with them) because of outmoded immigration/labor policy. We need to energize and modernize today’s hiring practices, get behind Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education efforts, and let the people who learn, stay and work for us. Let that slide, and we can probably count on the next generation losing the innovation battle with China and India.
