The Department of Commerce established the Digital Economy Board of Advisors (DEBA) in 2016 with the express purpose of advising and providing recommendations to the Secretary of Commerce, through the Assistant Secretary, on a broad range of issues concerning the digital economy and Internet policy.
It is through the input and recommendations provided by the board’s technology industry leaders, innovators, and experts, that advancements in the country’s growing digital economy are made.
Actually, while the workings of the DEBA may not be known to most of us, they do play a crucial role in designing new approaches to market measurements and data collection efforts that are applicable to all business sectors.
Yes, the members of the DEBA represent us, regardless of if we are business people or gas station attendants, students or retired. We are all impacted by the digital economy and as such, as Americans, we also have our values and moral responsibilities.
Moral responsibility has been ceded to big business
The Huffington Post used the following headline on its story today, “President Trump Cedes Moral Leadership To Big Business,” in talking about businesses being more attuned to the public’s response to Trump’s comments in defense of white supremacists in Charlottesville.
The latest exodus followed the resignations of business leaders from the Strategic and Policy Forum and the American Manufacturing Council. With the addition of the resignations from the DEBA, that leaves the American Technology Council, and it is probably just a matter of time before Silicon Valley companies back away and distance themselves from the White House, says Vice.
Politico posted the list of the members of the DEBA who had resigned their positions based on emails from the members. They include:
“Co-chairs Zoë Baird, president and CEO of the Markle Foundation; Mitchell Baker, executive chairwoman of the tech organization Mozilla; David L. Cohen, senior vice president and chief diversity officer at Comcast; Brad Smith, Microsoft president and chief legal officer; Handy CEO Oisin Hanrahan; Karen Bartleson, president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; Marta Tellado, president and CEO of Consumer Reports; James Manyika, director of the McKinsey Global Institute; Sonia Katyal, chancellor’s professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law; and Corey Thomas, president and CEO of cyber security firm Rapid7.”
You will notice that the businesses listed represent a large cross-section of American business, and their resignations from presidential and federal advisory boards signal a growing disillusionment in what the Trump presidency stands for and his lack of understanding of what values we hold dear. It has nothing to do with culture, and much more so with a consciousness of what is right and wrong in society.
