Elliot E. Maxwell advises public and private sector clients on strategic issues involving the intersection of business, technology, and public policy in the Internet and E-commerce domains. He is a Fellow of the Communications Program at Johns Hopkins University, and Distinguished Research Fellow at the eBusiness Research Center of the Pennsylvania State University. He also advises the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, EPCglobal/GS1, the entity implementing the Electronic Product Code version of radio frequency identification (RFID), and the Committee for Economic Development.

From 1998 until 2001, Maxwell served as Special Advisor for the Digital Economy to U.S. Secretary of Commerce William Daley and U. S. Secretary of Commerce Norm Mineta. In this position he was the principal advisor to the Secretary on the Internet and E-commerce. He coordinated the Commerce Department's efforts to establish a legal framework for electronic commerce, ensure privacy, protect intellectual property, increase Internet security, encourage broadband deployment, expand Internet participation, and analyze the impact of electronic commerce on all aspects of the economy. He was deeply involved in the development of E-government activities and was a founding member of the Federal Interagency Working Group on Electronic Commerce.

After leaving the government he was Senior Fellow for the Digital Economy and Director of the Internet Policy Project for the Aspen Institute’s Communications and Society Program. The Communications and Society Program focuses on the impact of communications and information technologies on democratic institutions, the economy, individual behavior, and community life.

Previously, Maxwell worked for a number of years as a consultant and as Assistant Vice President for Corporate Strategy of Pacific Telesis Group where he combined business, technology, and public policy planning. He served at the Federal Communications Commission as Special Assistant to the Chairman, Deputy Chief of the Office of Plans and Policy, and Deputy Chief of the Office of Science and Technology. Maxwell also worked for the U.S. Senate as Senior Counsel to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities.

Maxwell graduated from Brown University and Yale University Law School. He has written and spoken widely on issues involving the Internet, electronic commerce, telecommunications, and technology policy. His most recent work, "Harnessing Openness to Improve Research, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education," was issued by the Committee for Economic Development (CED). The predecessors of that work, "Harnessing Openness to Transform American Health Care," "Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness," and "Promoting Innovation and Economic Growth: The Special Problem of Digital Intellectual Property" were also published by CED. The RFID Journal recently published his views on "Rethinking Privacy."

In 2005, Maxwell presented "Some Reflections on the Future: Dipping a Toe in the Datastream" to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris. That same year, the Economic Policy Institute published his report, "A New Future for Telecommunications Policy: Learning from Past Mistakes." His study of Internet Governance “Rethinking Boundaries in Cyberspace,” written with Erez Kalir, was published by the Aspen Institute in 2002.