Hillary Clinton Details Initiative for Technology and Innovation

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has stated her commitment to building an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. Going way beyond rhetoric, sloganeering, she has put forward five major goals at the core of her vision for a stronger economy that helps us grow together:

1. A 100 Days Jobs Plan to Break Through Washington Gridlock and Make the Boldest Investment in Good-Paying Jobs Since World War II.

2. Make Debt Free College Available to All Americans.

3. Rewrite the Rules So that More Companies Share Profits With Employees, and Fewer Ship Profits and Jobs Overseas.

4. Ensure that Corporations, Super-Rich and Wall Street Pay Their Fair Share.

5. Put Families First by Making Sure Our Policies Meet the Challenges They Face in the 21st Century Economy.

Here are details from the Hillary for America campaign outlining the initiatives she is proposing to cultivate technology and innovation:

In setting forth this agenda, Hillary recognizes that technology and the internet are transforming nearly every sector of our economy—and she believes that with the right public policies, we can harness these forces so that they lead to widely-shared growth, good-paying jobs across the country, and immense social benefits in healthcare, education, public safety, and more.

Hillary laid out a comprehensive agenda for leveraging technology and innovation to create the jobs of the future on Main Street. These ideas are a core component of the jobs plan she will put forward in the first 100 days of her Administration, along with investments in infrastructure, clean energy and manufacturing.

Highlights of her technology and innovation agenda include:

Spurring entrepreneurship and innovation clusters like Silicon Valley across the country, by investing in incubators and accelerators, expanding access to capital for start-ups, and facilitating tech transfer to bring ideas to market.

Allowing young entrepreneurs to defer their federal student loans for up to three years, so they can get their ventures off the ground and help drive the innovation economy.

Connecting every household in America to high-speed internet by 2020, while hooking up more public places like airports and train stations to the internet and enable them to offer free WiFi to the public, and helping America deploy 5G and next generation systems that can offer faster wireless speeds and help unleash the Internet of Things.

Providing every student in America access to computer science education by the time they graduate, including through engaging the private sector to train 50,000 new computer science education teachers in the next decade.

In full, Hillary’s agenda for technology and innovation has five components, laid out below:

Building the Tech Economy on Main Street

Hillary’s technology agenda will be a catalyst for creating good jobs in communities across America. She is committed to making entrepreneurship and participation in the digital economy widely shared—across regions, across classes, and across generations.

Hillary will:

Invest in Computer Science and STEM Education by:

Providing Every Student in America an Opportunity to Learn Computer Science: To build on the President Obama’s “Computer Science Education for All” initiative, Hillary will launch the next generation of Investing in Innovation (“i3”) grants, double investment in the program, and establish a 50% set-aside for CS Education.

Engaging the Private Sector to Train up to 50,000 Computer Science Teachers: Hillary will launch an initiative to expand the pool of computer science teachers—both through recruiting new teachers into the field, and through helping current teachers in other subjects gain additional training.

Encouraging Local STEM Education Investments: Hillary’s Department of Education will support states and districts in developing innovative schools that prioritize STEM, implementing “makerspaces,” and build public-private partnerships.

Build the Human Talent Pipeline for 21st Century Jobs by:

Opening up the Higher Education and Job Training Landscape: Hillary’s College Compact dedicates $10 billion in federal funding to enable students to participate in promising new programs—such as nanodegrees, accelerated learning programs for computer coding, and online learning.

Rebooting Job Training around Industry Needs and Job Credentials: Hillary will create a grant program to support public-private partnerships to tailor job training opportunities to match labor demands in technology-driven industries.

Supporting Programs to Diversify the Tech Workforce: We must break down the barriers to full and equal participation by all groups in the 21st century economy.

Spur Entrepreneurship and Innovation Clusters like Silicon Valley across the Country: Hillary will support incubators, mentoring, and training for 50,000 entrepreneurs in underserved markets, while expanding access to capital for small businesses and start-ups.

Support Young Entrepreneurs: Hillary will allow entrepreneurs to put their federal student loans into a special status while they get their job-creating ventures off the ground. For millions of young Americans, this would mean no payments on their student loans for up to three years—zero interest and zero principal—during the start-up phase. She’ll also give innovators who start social enterprises or new businesses in distressed communities the opportunity to apply for forgiveness of up to $17,5000 of their student loans after 5 years.

Attract and Retain the Top Talent from Around the World: As part of comprehensive immigration reform, Hillary would “staple” a green card to STEM masters and PhDs from accredited institutions, and support visas that allow top entrepreneurs from abroad to come to the U.S., build companies, and create jobs for American workers.

Invest in Science and Technology R&D: Hillary will grow the research and development budgets of entities like the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and DARPA, so that we can tackle big challenges—like ensuring America continues to lead the world in High Performance Computing, green energy, and machine learning. She will also devote more resources to technology transfer, so we get ideas to market.

Ensure Benefits are Flexible, Portable and Comprehensive: As the nature of work in America changes, the government must do all that it can to update the safety net and ensure that benefits are flexible, portable, and comprehensive.

Investing in World-Class Digital Infrastructure

Hillary understands that investing in high-speed broadband and next-generation wireless is a win-win for jobs: it will put people to work in building out and upgrading our digital networks, and it will create millions of opportunities for people who can get online more easily, innovative, start companies, and sell their products. Hillary will:

Close the Digital Divide: Hillary will finish the job of connecting America’s households to the internet, committing that by 2020, 100 percent of households in America will have the option of affordable broadband with speeds sufficient to meet families’ needs.

Launch a “Model Digital Communities” Grant Program: Hillary would create a competitive grant program to give cities, regions, and states incentives to create a “model digital community” with lower cost, world-class connectivity for homes, businesses, and public spaces.

Connect More Community Anchor Institutions to High-Speed Internet: Similar to how the E-rate program, launched under President Bill Clinton, brought broadband to public schools and libraries, Hillary will invest new federal resources to hook up America’s anchor institutions—train stations, airports, and other public places—and enable them to provide free WiFi to the public.

Deploy 5G Wireless: Hillary will help foster the evolution to 5G and other next-generation systems that can deliver much faster wireless connections and support the Internet of Things, smart factories, driverless cars, and much more.

Advancing America’s Global Leadership In Tech & Innovation

Hillary’s technology policy agenda will position American innovators to lead the world in the next generation of technology revolutions — from autonomous vehicles to machine learning to public service blockchain applications. Hillary will:

Fight for an Open Internet Abroad: As Secretary of State, Hillary boldly elevated Internet Freedom to the top levels of American foreign policy. She will continue this work as President — fighting for Internet Freedom, insisting nations respect human rights online, and opposing efforts to block internet access or shutdown social media.

Promote Multi-Stakeholder Internet Governance: Hillary believes that internet governance should be left to the global community of engineers, companies, civil society groups, and internet users, and not to governments.

Grow American Technology Exports: Hillary will promote access to markets for U.S. technology companies and advance Export Control Reform. She will also protect U.S. trade secrets, and resist calls for forced technology transfer or data localization.

Promote Cyber-Security: Hillary will build on the U.S. Cybersecurity National Action Plan by empowering a federal Chief Information Security Officer and upgrading government-wide cybersecurity.

Safeguard the Free Flow of Information across Borders: Hillary supports efforts like the U.S.-EU Privacy Shield to find alignment in national data privacy laws and protect data flows across borders.

Update Procedures Concerning Cross-Border Requests for Data by Law Enforcement: Hillary will seek to modernize the MLAT system, and will pursue agreements with likeminded countries for compliance with requests for data by law enforcement, in a manner that respects privacy, security and human rights.

Setting Rules of the Road to Promote Innovation While Protecting Privacy

Hillary believes the government has an important role to play in laying a foundation for broad-based innovation and economic growth—by reducing regulatory barriers to entry, promoting healthy competition, and keeping the internet free and open. She also believes we should be ensuring that these advances protect individual privacy and security. She will:

Promote Healthy Competition at the Federal, State and Local Level: Hillary believes that all governments have a role to play in laying down rules of the road that foster innovation, promote healthy competition, and protect consumers.

Defend Net Neutrality: Hillary believes that the government has an obligation to protect the open internet, and she strongly supports the FCC decision under the Obama Administration to adopt strong network neutrality rules.

Improve the Patent System to Reward Innovators: Hillary will enact targeted reforms to the patent system to reduce excessive patent litigation and strengthen the capacity of the Patent and Trademark Office, so that we continue to reward innovators.

Effective Copyright Policy: The federal government should modernize the copyright system through reforms that facilitate access to out-of-print and orphan works, while protecting the innovation incentives in the system. It should also promote open-licensing arrangements for copyrighted material supported by federal grant funding.

Commercial Data Protection: Advances in computing like the rise of “big data” and the Internet of Things is yielding transformative benefits, but raising important questions about privacy. Hillary’s approach to privacy will be to encourage high standards—and affirm strong consumer protection—through regulatory enforcement in an adaptive manner that doesn’t stifle innovation.

Protect Online Privacy as well as Security: Hillary supports creating a national commission on digital security, so that the technology and public safety communities can work together on solutions that address law enforcement needs while preserving individual privacy and security

Engineering a Smarter and More Innovative Government

Hillary believes that, beyond enabling innovation and technology-driven economic growth, we should look technology and data to improve the way that government serves the American people. Hillary will:

Make Government Simpler and More User Friendly: Hillary will make the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) and other digital services a permanent part of the executive branch. She will charge the USDS with transforming the top 25-citizen facing government services. She will streamline government procurement, get rid of unnecessary red tape, and make it easier for the federal government to use innovative technology—including open source software.

Open up More Government Data for Public Uses: Hillary would accelerate the Obama Administration’s open data initiatives, including in areas such as health care, education, and criminal justice. She would fully implement the DATA Act to make government spending more transparent and accountable to the American people, improving USASpending.gov so that Americans can more accurately see how and where their taxpayer dollars are spent.