ADP PLANS ACTIVE 2004, IS HIRING FULL-TIME EXEC. DIR.

A full-time exec. dir. will be announced for the Alliance for Digital Progress (ADP) in the next couple weeks, becoming its first full-time employee, a spokeswoman for the Business Software Alliance (BSA) told us. The group was formed to oppose legislative proposals to force technology mandates as a way to protect digital content online. The group has been largely inactive in recent months, and Frederick McClure, who carried the ADP title of pres. is no longer formally affiliated with the group, but the spokeswoman said ADP “had a full agenda for 2004.”

The coalition against govt. technology mandates launched in Jan. 2003 with a widely publicized news conference, at which McClure was announced as president (CD Jan 24/03 p3). McClure had worked in the Reagan and first Bush administrations and as a member of the Bush-Cheney transition team in 2000. At the time of the announcement McClure was a lobbyist with Winstead Sechrest & Minick, but his contract with ADP expired at the end of 2003 and BSA has no intention of renewing. McClure “is not involved in the effort of 2004 at all,” the BSA spokeswoman said. He has since joined Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal.

McClure had a different take when we reached him late last week. Disputing the BSA spokeswoman’s contention that ADP was “still a very active coalition,” McClure said “the organization is dormant.” The last press release ADP released, according to its web site, was Sept. 17, 2003; ADP put out only 5 releases in 2003. McClure acknowledged he’s not involved with ADP at the moment because the group isn’t active, but said that if a threat of govt. technology mandates arose “I would hope that we would gather the troops” and McClure would lead the lobbying effort on Capitol Hill. McClure said he hadn’t heard from anyone involved with ADP that he was no longer involved.

Many members of ADP that we spoke with confirmed the group had been inactive. The ADP web site lists 28 organizations as members, but many said their involvement had been limited at best. “We have not done anything [with ADP] since that meeting,” said 60 Plus Assn. Communications Dir. Ed Fulginiti, referring to the launch news conference: “I think I'm safe in saying that’s the only involvement we've had with them.”

“The most we ever did was go to a couple of meetings,” said David Almasi, exec. dir. of the National Center for Public Policy Research. “Our involvement was fairly minimal,” he said, especially when it became clear ADP was a lobbying effort; Almasi’s nonprofit group isn’t registered to lobby, a status shared by some other ADP members. “I thought [ADP] had kind of gone away,” he said. James Plummer of Consumer Alert didn’t recall any ADP meetings after the news conference. A spokesman for Americans for Tax Reform expressed surprise at first in learning the organization was listed as a member, saying their group focuses more on the Internet tax moratorium than technology mandates. The BSA spokeswoman insisted ADP was a true coalition, “much broader than the high-tech industry.”

BSA was the architect of the group. The trade association picked the companies hired to work with ADP. BSA chose Preston Gates as the outside lobbying group, naming its partner Bruce Heiman exec. dir. of ADP. (The BSA spokeswoman said Heiman would continue to work with ADP, but no longer had that title.) BSA has for years used Heiman and Preston Gates for outside lobbying, and in the first half of 2003 Preston Gates received $180,000 from ADP for lobbying on tech mandates. Its filing with the Secy. of the Senate suggests Preston Gates lobbied the House, Senate, the Dept. of Commerce and the White House, and Heiman was joined by lobbyists Lloyd Meeds, Roger Morse, Dennis Stephens, Paul Stimers and Steven Valentine. Heiman said “the group continues along and I'm working with them.”

BSA hired Dittus Communications last year as ADP’s outside PR group; BSA also has a years-long history with Dittus. The BSA spokeswoman said ADP would continue to work with Dittus as well. Dittus apparently has become less involved with ADP in recent months, however. When ADP was launched, Dittus account representatives Kristin Litterst and Rory O'Connor were the official PR contacts for ADP, and were listed as such on the web site. Now the 2 PR contacts listed for ADP work for BSA and the Consumer Systems Policy Project, a group that has acted in lock-step with BSA on the technology mandate issue.

BSA is in negotiations with someone who will be ADP’s first paid employee, an exec. dir. who the BSA spokeswoman said likely would work out of BSA’s office in Washington. The spokeswoman said that because of professional obligations, the new exec. dir. can’t yet be announced, but he will begin “some time in April,” with an announcement due in next couple weeks.

While there apparently has been some confusion over the circumstances surrounding McClure’s separation from ADP, he was proud of the work he did with ADP in 2003. “There’s always the threat of legislation out there,” he said. But he noted Senate Commerce Committee ranking Democrat Hollings (S.C.) didn’t reintroduce his 2002 legislation that would have mandated digital rights management technology if the private sector couldn’t reach agreement. At the beginning of the 108th Congress, many suspected Hollings would reintroduce the bill. “We successfully forestalled legislation last year,” McClure said.