Commerce Dept. offers guidance on foreign tech regs

The Commerce Department's International Trade Administration will be testing a new Digital Attache program, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker announced in a March 11 blog post.

"The primary goals of the Digital Attaches, members of our Foreign Commercial Service of commercial diplomats, will be to provide support and assistance to help U.S. businesses successfully navigate digital policy and regulatory issues in foreign markets and expand exports through global e-commerce channels," Pritzker wrote.

She said at an event that the program would launch in six to eight countries but provided no timeline or estimate of the program's eventual size. However, it's not the first time the government has recognized that businesses need a hand in an increasingly digital world.

"You can no longer be a viable company of any significant size and not have a plan for global competition," ITA CIO Joe Paiva told FCW last week, prior to the program announcement.

"We serve about 25,000 American companies today," he added. "But there are about 250,000 American companies that we need to be helping compete and win globally, and if we don't, America's economic future is at stake."

Increasingly, Paiva said, global competition will eschew the Don Draper, personal deal-making of the past and will instead take digital shape as the emerging middle classes of India and East Asia demand products and services online.