MAR 26, 2020 | GLOBAL
BSA Urges Governments to Support IT Infrastructure in COVID-19 Response Efforts
WASHINGTON – March 26, 2020 – BSA | The Software Alliance urges government leaders around the world to prioritize workers essential to enabling and maintaining important IT services and infrastructure in their COVID-19 response efforts. Shelter-in-place orders and related policies should include exclusions to maintain vital, trusted functions performed by information technology and IT infrastructure in order to meet critical needs, foster cybersecurity, and enable remote working.
“Health care providers, first responders, business and government enterprises, and other essential services, including education, rely on IT and IT infrastructure during this crisis,” said Aaron Cooper, Vice President, Global Policy at BSA | The Software Alliance. “Shelter-in-place orders should include exceptions for IT and related services to prevent disruption to essential functions and emergency response, and those exceptions should be consistent across jurisdictions. We urge governments around the world to adopt exceptions, as was done in the guidance from the US Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), in identifying IT and related services as essential during stay-at-home orders.”
Below, please find links to letters BSA has submitted on this issue to date. This list will continue to be updated with our latest communications.
- US - March 20, 2020
- Australia - March 26, 2020
- Belgium (French) - March 30, 2020
- Bulgaria - March 30, 2020
- Czech Republic - March 30, 2020
- Denmark - March 30, 2020
- Finland - March 30, 2020
- France (French) - March 27, 2020
- Germany (German) - April 2, 2020
- India - March 26, 2020
- Indonesia - March 26, 2020
- Ireland - March 27, 2020
- Italy - March 30, 2020
- Japan - March 26, 2020 (Japanese version)
- Korea - March 30, 2020
- Malaysia - March 26, 2020
- Netherlands - March 27, 2020
- New Zealand - March 26, 2020
- Philippines - March 26, 2020
- Poland - March 30, 2020
- Romania - March 30, 2020
- Singapore - March 26, 2020
- Spain - March 27, 2020
- Sweden - March 30, 2020
- Thailand - March 26, 2020 (Thai version)
- United Kingdom - March 27, 2020
- Vietnam - April 2, 2020 (Vietnamese version)
ABOUT BSA
The Business Software Alliance (www.bsa.org) is the global trade association of the enterprise software industry, representing companies that are leaders in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and other cutting-edge technologies. We work in over 20 markets in the US, Europe, and Asia, advocating for policies that build trust in technology so that every industry sector and the public can benefit from innovation.