Senate Passes S 88 – DIGIT Act

Yesterday the Senate amended S88, the Developing Innovation and Growing the Internet of Things (DIGIT) Act, and passed the bill under the unanimous consent process. There was no debate and only the one amendment (S 769, pgs S4889-90), substitute language offered by Sen. Wicker (R,MS). That amendment was also adopted under the unanimous consent process.

Changes in the Bill

The substitute language made three changes to the bill:

• In §3, removed the definition of ‘appropriate committees of Congress’ as the term was not used in the bill;

• In §4(c), added the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to the list of federal agencies to be represented on the Federal Working Group; and

• In §4(f)(2), added a specific list of congressional committees to which the final report by the working group would be submitted.

Moving Forward

The bill now moves to the House for consideration. There is a companion bill in the House, HR 686. No action has been taken on that bill beyond referral to the House Energy and Commerce Committee for consideration. Unless someone with more influence in that Committee than Rep. Welch (D,VT) becomes a sponsor of the bill, it is very likely that both bills will languish in Committee in the House.

Commentary

There is another problem with this bill that I had not mentioned in my post about the introduction of the bill or in the post on HR 686. There is no definition of ‘Internet of Things’ in the bill. The problem here is that a working definition is going to have a major impact on the scope of the report required in this bill.

On one hand if we use the IoT definition found in HR 3010 [“the set of physical objects embedded with sensors or actuators and connected to a network” {§2(h)(1)}], we would almost certainly have to include most of the realm of industrial control system components in the Working Group’s study.

A more limited definition; “the interconnection via the Internet of computing devices embedded in everyday objects, enabling them to send and receive data”; would still have a rather broad impact, but would rule out control system components and medical devices, for instance. That would make this a much more manageable study.

HR 686 Introduced – IOT Support

Last month Rep. Paulsen (R,MN) introduced HR 686, the Developing Innovation and Growing the Internet of Things (DIGIT) Act. This is a companion bill to S 88 that was introduced in the Senate. That means that the language of the bill is the same and it allows for work to begin on the bill in both houses of Congress at the same time, instead of sequentially.

Paulsen sponsored a very similar bill (HR 5117) in the 114^th Congress. No action was taken on that bill, at least partially because Paulsen was not a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and his co-sponsor {Rep. Welch (D,VT)} was not an influential member of that Committee. The same holds true for this session as well; except that Welch’s influence has increased some because this is his second term in the House. The bill will probably not see action in committee.

The bill would probably be approved in committee if considered and would similarly pass if it made it to the floor of the House since no regulatory authority or new spending is provided.