Policy

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 that was recently signed into law includes incentives to help consumers buy electric vehicles — as long as they meet strict criteria — but that’s not necessarily the ultimate goal.

A California school district has updated its policy aimed at reducing energy and water consumption, ensuring new machinery is zero-emissions, reducing vehicle emissions and establishing a climate crisis task force.

For fiscal year 2021, UC San Diego and San Diego State University used $1.64 billion in research funding to integrate different sources of energy into power grids, to improve lab tech on research vessels and to study COVID-19.

The U.S. Department of Education is wiping out debt for 208,000 former students of the for-profit ITT Technical Institute, which shut down in 2016 after misleading about job placement, accreditation and other matters.

Officials with the Ogdensburg Bridge and Port Authority in Upstate New York say that a smartphone app that is now required to enter Canada may be discouraging some from cross-border travel.

While momentum has gathered behind plans to charge drivers entering certain areas of Manhattan, a similar plan in San Francisco is being put on hold until pre-pandemic traffic levels return, officials say.

The newly formed office is one of three initiatives announced by Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy that are aimed at expanding high-speed Internet access to unserved and underserved areas throughout the state.

All 50 state attorneys general, Republicans and Democrats, have come together through a newly formed task force to go after U.S. telecommunications companies that allow overseas robocalls to reach their customers.

The Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology continues to work on developing its new National Ed Tech Plan. Once the contract is awarded and work commences, the plan will take 12-18 months to finish.

Steve Nichols, chief technology officer at Georgia Technology Authority, offers his observations and predictions for what's trending and what's to come with regard to cyber incident notification laws.

Missouri transportation officials are preparing to spend more than $100 million on electric vehicle charging stations as part of a national plan to boost the number of battery-powered cars and trucks on the road.

Local and regional law enforcement agencies are being encouraged to apply for up to $50,000 in state grants to offset the costs associated with buying and maintaining body cameras and other programmatic needs.

Recent federal legislation gives the National Science Foundation $10 billion to create roughly 20 regional technology hubs, which could mean STEM funding and scholarships for institutions like Columbus State University.

The bill includes $52.7 billion earmarked for semiconductor research, development, manufacturing, and workforce development and within that is $2 billion for legacy chips used in automobiles and defense systems.

The nonprofit’s annual report on how to improve K-12 education in the U.S. includes recommendations to bridge the digital divide, promote education innovations, develop new assessments and recover from learning loss.

The editorial board of the Fresno Bee weighs the pros and cons of schools forbidding students from using their phones during the day. A year after San Mateo High did this, 96 percent of its teachers support the policy.

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection will oversee the $45 million, three-year pilot program, choosing a variety of districts and contractors to test different technological and funding approaches.

More than 1,000 K-12 individual school buildings and districts in Ohio will receive funds to improve security, to be used for staffing more resource officers, buying new security cameras and other tech upgrades.