White House Pledges to Push Congress on Technology Goals

The Obama administration plans to put pressure on Congress in 2011 to move ahead on key technology policies such as patent reform and privacy.

"Much of the policy work is really contingent on congressional action or budgetary action, so you're by default waiting for some bigger stakeholders to participate," White House technology chief Aneesh Chopra said at a Politico forum. His comments were reported by Reuters.

Chopra said he wanted to balance long-term goals, such as expanding high-speed Internet, and the need to deliver results in a 90-day timeframes.

Republicans are due to take control of the U.S. House of Represenatives in January. Still, lawmakers speaking at the forum seemed supportive of Chopra's goals.

"Spectrum, (universal service fund) reform, privacy issues -- those kinds of things we need to work on and we can work on in a bipartisan fashion," Republican Senator John Ensign said at the forum.