Today, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo welcomed Australian Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic to Washington, D.C. The Secretary expressed her appreciation for Australia’s close coordination on a variety of initiatives such as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) and the Australia-United States Strategic Commercial Dialogue (SCD). Secretary Raimondo welcomed the...

First Convening of Department-wide Equity Councils The U.S. Department of Commerce convened today the first Congress of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) Councils to accelerate a shared mission to deliver equitable services to underserved communities and create a culture where employees can succeed and thrive. The inaugural meeting of the Councils led by Commerce Deputy...

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced today it has awarded 12 grants as part of the Connecting Minority Communities Pilot Program (CMC). Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves and Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Alan Davidson announced the awards at Coppin State University (MD), one of the...

By Junish A. Arora As the new Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer (CDO) at the Department of Commerce, I wanted to share my diversity story and some recent thoughts on the value proposition for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA). Born in India, my family immigrated to the United States when I was five years old. I grew up in a community in south New Jersey, which at...

NOAA satellites, which are crucial in weather and climate forecasts, helped rescue 397 people from potentially life-threatening situations throughout the U.S. and its surrounding waters in 2022. NOAA’s polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites are part of the global Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking system, or COSPAS-SARSAT, which uses a network of U.S. and international spacecraft to...

The U.S. Department of Commerce invites interested stakeholders to participate in a stakeholder listening session opportunity on February 1, 2023, in advance of the special negotiating round for Pillars II-IV of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) in New Delhi, India. In addition, the Government of India is organizing two in-person stakeholder events in New Delhi for the IPEF...

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration released the final National Strategy to Develop Statistics for Environmental-Economic Decisions, a historic roadmap that will kick off a multi-year effort to put nature on the nation’s balance sheet for the first time, with an emphasis on better data to understand nature’s critical contributions to the U.S. economy and to guide policy and business decisions...

Yesterday, Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves met with Japan’s Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Takeaki Matsumoto. The two leaders presided over the signing of a new Memorandum of Cooperation between the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) on open, resilient telecommunications networks...