From: George F McClure
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003  10:13:26  PM US/Central
To: r3-excom2003@ieee.org, sec-r03@ieee.org
Subject: Reg. 3 PACE Coordinator's Report - Part 2

IEEE Region 3
New Emphasis on Grassroots PACE


IEEE has 230,000 members in the United States, two-thirds of the total
worldwide membership.  These members represent a resource that can be
harnessed more effectively for supporting legislation benefiting our
members and society at large.  Some current issues include control of
H-1B guest workers, new pension legislation, energy deregulation, and
Internet access privacy. 

To build on its grassroots program, IEEE-USA has added to its staff
Russ Harrison, with experience in grassroots activities.  The
components of the grassroots program include:

* Congressional Visit Days
* The CARE (Congressional Advocacy Recruitment Effort) Program
* The IEEE-USA Website Legislative Action Center
* PACE training sessions
* Congressional and Executive Fellows program
* State level grassroots activities

To broaden the base of support, the cadre of present active
volunteers  some 500  will be expanded to ten percent of the
membership within a year.  A new tool, a grassroots database, will be
developed to identify members by IEEE region state, congressional
district and technical societies included in their membership.  This
will permit members to be alerted when an issue or interest to them or
involving their legislators is up for consideration, so that their
support can be enlisted.

For each region, a Government Activities Committee for each state will
be developed by the regional PACE coordinator.  The GAC will be
involved in state level legislative activities and in federal
legislation as well.  Further, the GAC will recruit others to the CARE
network, for state level activities.

Those members signing up with the CARE network are invited to
participate in future events and may be contacted when issues of
interest arise.  The initial goal is to get ten percent of members to
do this.  Detailed CARE information is found at
https://www.ieeeusa.org/forum/care/CAREKit2003.pdf

Current action alerts cover the following topics:

* Stopping unsolicited E-mail Spam
* Improving security for Information Technology
* Temporary H-1B Work Visas
* National Nanotechnology Legislation

At the state level, vigilance will be required to prevent adoption of
the Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act (UCITA).

Further information will be available at the Congressional Visits Day
on H-1B (July 14-15) in Washington, DC.  Some 35 members are
participating, with Regions 3 and 5 heavily represented.

George F McClure    (g.mcclure@ieee.org)
PACE Coordinator, Region 3
5/6/03