BIS Reorganizing Offices, Hiring New Senior Officials
The Bureau of Industry and Security is undergoing a restructuring to separate its licensing work from its efforts to evaluate and protect emerging and foundational technologies, said Eileen Albanese, director of the Office of National Security and Technology Transfer Controls. She said the agency plans to hire at least three new senior officials to usher in the reorganization, which will help BIS meet its “broader mandate.”
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Albanese said BIS is hiring a new principal deputy assistant secretary along with two new deputy assistant secretaries: one who will oversee “technology security” and one who will be in charge of “strategic trade.” The new strategic trade official will be in charge of the agency’s existing licensing offices, which are in charge of licensing applications, commodity classifications, commodity jurisdictions and determinations, and more.
The technology security official will oversee BIS work surrounding “emerging technologies,” Albanese said during a virtual conference last week hosted by the Massachusetts Export Center. That will include the BIS Office of Technology Evaluation, its defense industrial base division, its investment security division and its data analytics division.
The agency also will create a new Office of International Policy, Albanese said, which will handle “plurilateral efforts,” including export control coordination with allies. She said that office will focus heavily on coordination surrounding controls for Russia and China.
“We'll be changing over the course of this coming year,” Albanese said. “Some new faces will pop up, some realignment in the structure will pop up, but hopefully it will all be smooth and transparent.”
The reorganization comes as BIS faces both an increasing regulatory and enforcement workload stemming from new China- and Russia-related controls and rising pressure from Congress to better restrict exports of critical technologies to adversaries (see 2312070058).