SIGCHI US Public Policy Committee

This group within SIGCHI aims to educate and advocate for HCI-related issues as they relate to public policy in the United States and to help raise awareness of HCI-related issues. The committee members are:

Jonathan Lazar, Towson University (committee chair)
Ben Bederson, University of Maryland
Harry Hochheiser, Towson University
Jeff Johnson, UI Wizards
Clare-Marie Karat, IBM Research

Charter

The use of computer technology in a wide range of critical aspects of American life makes their design an important policy issue. The quality of human-computer interaction (HCI) has become a crucial factor in endeavors such as voting, electronic commerce, online government, and telecommunications.

The SIGCHI US Public Policy Committee provides a voice for SIGCHI in addressing HCI issues in US public policy. This function includes:

Providing perspective and guidance to SIGCHI on public policy matters;
Supporting SIGCHI and its members in providing HCI experts when and where needed to inform public policy in the U.S.;
Educating technology professionals, the public, the press, and policymakers about the importance of assuring that technology is usable and useful, and the vital role that CHI professionals can play in achieving greater usability;
Coordinating with the USACM policy committee and public policy committees of non-ACM organizations (e.g., UPA, HFES, IEEE-USA).

Focus

While our focus is on the US, we hope to be a model for world-wide groups that might form to advocate for HCI-related issues everywhere.

If you have thoughts about what you would like our committee to do for SIGCHI, or ideas about how you want to help, let us know!

Activities

Since the creation of the committee in late 2004, we have undertaken a number of activities:

Wrote a white paper titled The Need for Usability of Electronic Voting Systems: Questions for Voters and Policy Makers, in response to a call for input from the National Academy of Sciences
We coordinated the first CHI Social Impact Award, given in 2005 to Gregg Vanderheiden
Held a SIG meeting at CHI 2005 in Portland, on the topic of Making an Impact in Your Community: HCI and US Public Policy note: the link goes to the ACM Digital Library, which requires a subscription
Published a short paper in Interactions on the topic of Policy at the Interface: HCI and Public Policy (link to ACM DL)
Published a fact sheet on the Election Incident Reporting System by Jeff Johnson
Held a workshop on Public Policy at CHI 2006 in Montreal. Position papers and detailed information are available from the workshop. The workshop extended abstract is also available from ACM DL.
The SIGCHI US Public Policy Committee authored a Policy Statement on Universal Internet Accessibility which was approved by SIGCHI-EC on February 20, 2007

SIGCHI US Public Policy Committee

Charter

Focus

Activities

Other Documents