The American Technology Council (ATC) will hold its first session next month, according to industry sources who obtained the inaugural meeting’s agenda earlier this week. The gathering will see major Silicon Valley tech giants including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook meet with officials from the White House to discuss a wide variety of topics, including government modernization and immigration of high-skilled workers, the latter of which might prove to be a friction point between the United States government and tech companies. It’s currently unclear whether the meeting will be presided by President Trump personally, though Vice President Pence is expected to helm the session in case of Trump’s absence. The ATC’s first gathering will be held on June 19, according to the same source.
Trump established the ATC with an executive order signed in late April that described the newly formed task force as Washington’s latest attempt to overhaul its information technologies and related frameworks with the goal of making the administration more efficient. Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law was reportedly one of the main proponents advocating for the establishment of the ATC and despite the polarizing nature of many of the current administration’s policies, the formation of the new task force wasn’t largely criticized by the opposing Democratic Party and was largely seen as a bipartisan move. The White House previously said that the ATC is aiming to modernize its IT infrastructure with the goal of allowing the general public to communicate with the administration more easily, though it didn’t provide more details on how it intends to fulfill those goals. It’s understood that top government officials who are members of the ATC still don’t have firm policies in mind and will only start drafting more concrete plans later this year, following consultations with the country’s largest tech companies and other experts in the field.
According to recent reports, the task force intends to overhaul the federal process of purchasing computer hardware and software, in addition to tackling immigration in the Silicon Valley. While it remains to be seen how quickly will the ATC proceed with its agenda, an update on its activities is expected to follow shortly.