TechVoice recently spoke with Brooks Raiford, president and CEO of the North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA) and one of the recipients of the 2014 TechVoice Champion Awards. NCTA leverages events to advance its policy agenda, as well as links member companies with public sector contracts, fostering growth and opportunity for the North Carolina IT sector.
What are some of the initiatives you’ve implemented that have advanced NCTA’s policy agenda the most?
Back in 2008, when I started in my current role at NCTA, we launched a series of Congressional briefings. Several times a year in different regions of North Carolina, we invite members of Congress to a location within their district to talk with our member companies on relevant policy issues. Our members really have a chance to meet and hear from their representatives. The Congressional briefings have proved to be very popular. They display our Congressional activity to wider array of our audience, and they allow us to have a say in the conversation. We can set the tone for the types of questions or issues covered as well as the format of how we can engage with our Congressional members. These Congressional briefings have morphed into our new North Carolina TechVoice chapter. Our member offerings are now enhanced because of the added expertise and relationships with the CompTIA team. They know the chairpersons of relevant committees. They already know many members in Congress, as well as key staff members across the country. The TechVoice participation has improved the quality of our Congressional briefing activities.
Parallel to these events are the continued TechVoice Fly-Ins in February. Without having to organize it ourselves, a staff member and I meet with members of Congress and officials from across the country in a condensed space and time. This allows us to engage a little more deeply on some of the issues that are broadly of interest to the IT industry, not just specific to our state. We really get the best of both worlds.
For a number of years, we have also hosted a Tech Day at the legislature, which focuses on North Carolina policy. We release our annual public policy agenda at a press conference with key legislators, have member companies exhibit in the interior courtyards of the legislative building, and take our volunteer leadership — like our board chairman and public policy chairman — to meet with the speaker of the house, the president of the Senate and other key committee members. This has given many members a unique exposure to the political process, and it’s also a more effective advocacy approach than relying on staff and lobbyists for representation.
For Tech Day, we let the House and Senate members know who will be there representing the tech sector and invite everyone to a breakfast in the legislative cafeteria. We usually get a very strong turnout; more than half of the legislature typically attends. We tell them about our sector [and] our growth [and] emphasize the importance of IT to the state. Then we fan out and our members visit their legislators and stroll the building. We also hold a press conference with key legislators and committee chairs to unveil our legislative ideas. We’re actually the envy of a lot of the other lobbyists and associations because very rarely does an industry group have the kind of broad appeal that we do. Everybody wants to be associated with technology! Others always marvel that we have legislators who literally find out we’re having a press conference and then line up for a chance to say a few words about how strongly they support the tech sector — even ones we haven’t formally invited.
NCTA is not viewed as partisan at all. We have very strong relationships with both parties and in the governor’s office. It’s a great position to be in, which our members appreciate. As a result, we are able to get our voice heard during the course of the year to express a concern or to encourage action in certain ways. Tech Day just helps consolidate that visibility and gives our members a chance to be with us.
Which NCTA policy successes have fostered growth and opportunity for the SMB IT sector?
The North Carolina legislature this past year attempted to reform the state tax system, including elimination of almost all tax credits. We fought to save the R&D tax credit, which had an $80 million budget impact. We were successful despite both the House and Senate eliminating it in their initial budget drafts — and it is highly unusual to get something back when it’s absent from both chambers’ proposals.
In a previous session, we successfully fought a proposal to begin applying state sales tax to the purchase of software by businesses, and we were able to strike from the proposed budget a provision that would have mandated that the state of North Carolina claim partial ownership of intellectual property when vendors provided IT solutions to state agencies.
Success in lobbying is often what you keep from happening versus what you make happen. That’s true for us. There are occasions when we have an initiative we promote and try to get legislation to pass, but often times we work hard to educate legislators or legislative staff about why a certain action or activity might do more harm than good. We spend a lot of time playing defense in that way. Fortunately, most of the time no one is trying to do harm to our industry; it’s just maybe a bill or some detail within legislation that might do our sector harm.
We pick up on that and ask for either an amendment or removal of a certain provision. We’re usually pretty successful. We keep an eagle eye on the legislation details to ensure we don’t let unintended consequences pass through.
You’ve linked members with public sector contracts. How do you foster these?
We offer a government vendor network, which meets regularly during the year. We invite various leaders including the executive branch, legislators and staff, as well as various state agency CIOs, to meet with our members who do business with the state. These officials share their priorities regarding procurement and deployment of IT within their agencies, and the vendor community shares their ideas and concerns. This ongoing dialogue has led to a collaborative approach to policy and procedure development.
A lot of our lobbyists and members are plugged in and can get meetings anytime they want, but they say going to a meeting under the association’s umbrella is a lot more relaxed, open and frank than when they go in wearing their own vendor hat.
More recently, we launched an RFP portal so that both companies and governments can post RFPs that are viewable by our members. This is a great way for our members to become aware of opportunities that may not otherwise be on their radar. For a company that doesn’t do state procurement very often, it’s just easier for them to go to our site, find something and then pursue it.
How does participating in TechVoice as an alliance partner help your organization be successful?
TechVoice enhances the quality of our advocacy efforts in several ways. We’ve merged our Congressional briefings into the TechVoice model, and have incorporated experts and expertise from CompTIA. We also benefit from the network that TechVoice provides with other state and regional technology associations, which share their activities and priorities with each other on a regular basis. It’s very helpful to know who might be dealing with similar issues, opportunities and challenges and be able to glean insights from them. It’s also very helpful to get federal policy updates and action opportunities directly from TechVoice and CompTIA. We know we can trust the quality and credibility of information that we get.
We have Capwiz — an online tool that allows messages to be sent to key legislators at the state and national levels — but we haven’t used it as much as some other states. Enter a ZIP code and the program comes back with all the information about who the area legislators are and how to contact those legislators. We have Capwiz integrated into our website, but it’s not something we have promoted as widely as we could. I think that’s one thing we’d like to do a better job of in the future.
