President-elect Joe Biden speaking in Seattle in 2016. (GeekWire File Photo)

First, get the COVID-19 pandemic under control, and strive to bring the country together with a new sense of national unity.

But beyond those top priorities, President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration has an opportunity to make progress on several key tech-related issues, including equitable broadband access, the long-term impact of AI and automation, and issues of digital privacy and security.

That’s the message from leaders at tech companies in the Seattle region and elsewhere as Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris prepare to take office in January.

“It’s going to be a very busy time in the world of public policy,” said Michael Schutzler, the CEO of the Washington Technology Industry Association, in an email message as the election results were still coming in last week.

WTIA CEO Michael Schutzler. (WTIA Photo)

“Federal and state legislators in both parties are increasingly interested in regulating our industry on everything from data privacy to autonomous vehicles, from facial recognition to labor laws,” Schutzler wrote. “Every level of government in the country has less tax revenues because the pandemic has been stomping on our consumer economy and our small businesses. This means state and local budgets will need to be balanced via reductions in spending or hiking taxes, or more likely some combination of both.”

Brad Smith, the Microsoft president, outlined the company’s positions in a post over the weekend.

“At Microsoft, we believe that Americans share more common ground than many pundits acknowledge, particularly when it comes to technology issues,” Smith wrote. “On many of these matters, there is an opportunity to separate policies from politics so we can make a real difference in people’s lives.”

Smith pointed to the ways the pandemic has highlighted the digital divide, and called for a new focus on broadband access across the country.

“Today, too many rural families find there is no broadband service available, while too many underprivileged urban families find no broadband service that is affordable,” he wrote. “A nation that would not tolerate millions of Americans living without electricity should no longer accept millions of families without broadband.”

Among other issues, Smith cited the need to reform the nation’s approach to data privacy, saying “we continue to live with a national electronic privacy law enacted in the dial-up era of the 1980s, and when it comes to issues such as safeguards for facial recognition, we have no national law at all. We need new laws fit for the future.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who has called for stronger national leadership on the pandemic, highlighted a range of additional issues in his response to the outcome of the election, highlighting issues including “poverty and climate change, and addressing issues of inequality and opportunity at home.”

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who has been a frequent target of President Trump, said on Instagram that the election of Biden and Harris shows that unity, empathy and decency “are not characteristics of a bygone era.”

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