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As summer wound down, the legal, legislative and regulatory issues facing the insights industry continued to wind up, with a ton of new privacy laws, regulations and court cases across the U.S., new laws and legal challenges for artificial intelligence in the insights context, President Trump calling out the decennial census, and more rules and compliance guidance for accessibility online. Let's dive in...

Amidst all the advocacy wildfires for the insights industry, the Insights Association found significant wins on federal tax reporting thresholds, and support for professional insights education. Other legal, regulatory and legislative developments in July included heightened enforcement of data privacy and security rules, evolving policies on artificial intelligence, developments in health care, new state laws on non-compete agreements, challenges to the classification of research subjects as in...

As part of a newly-announced trade deal between the U.S. and Indonesia, the White House stressed the agreement would "unlock major breakthroughs for America’s... digital sectors."

June brought lots of sizzling policy developments for the insights industry -- some promising, others challenging. Thankfully, the Insights Association was right in the thick of it. Let’s look at some wins on privacy issues and political polling, a troubling GDPR case in Europe, lots of new guidance on privacy, AI, HR, and email laws, developments on indirect costs in federally-funded research, and more.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) withdrew a regulatory proposal that could have unfairly applied restrictions in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to the work of many insights professionals. It would have been a misguided legal end-run around Congress to create a federal privacy law.

Legislative and regulatory issues facing the insights industry are blooming all over, including: a new FTC commissioner; proposed reform of the federal government research process; U.S. House-passed legislation to empower insights professionals with more training, while also prohibiting state AI regulation; state sales taxes advancing for insights-related services; a proposed ban on polling by public universities; new compliance guidance for the federal ban on sensitive data transfers to certain...

In addition to the Insights Association's extensive recent comments to the House Energy & Commerce Committee on crafting federal privacy legislation, the nonprofit association also joined a coalition letter supporting a set of broad policy principles to guide such a bill.

The insights industry faced more than just April showers, as the first full month of spring brought tempestuous issues, such as whether recent federal government action against DEI and sex/gender identity means we can no longer ask demographic questions, and determining the current impact of DOGE on the industry. We weighed in with Congress on consumer data privacy legislation, looked at a new privacy law change in Utah and the status of some AI legislation in California, urged more funding for ...

In comments to the House Energy & Commerce Committee, the Insights Association (IA) recommended “a comprehensive federal consumer data privacy law that will respect and protect consumers, facilitate compliance in the private sector, preempt the patchwork of conflicting state laws, centralize enforcement at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state Attorneys General (AGs), and continue to allow for the informed decision-making provided by insights services.”

March blew in like a lion for the insights industry, but it shows no signs of leaving like a lamb, as the Insights Association grappled with lots of advocacy issues, including: complicated new prohibitions on data sharing with certain foreign countries (and companies controlled by them); a new FTC nominee; worrisome tax bills in Maryland; a California bill to restrict artificial intelligence in interactions with research subjects; a new U.S. Labor Secretary potentially hostile to treating resear...