Date: Fri, 24 Jun 94 12:36:55 EDT From: "W. Curtiss Priest" Subject: NII Council Composition To: Larry Irving , "Ronald H. Brown" , Charley Rush , Don Druker , Thomas Hardy , Carol Hamilton , Mike Nelson , Ed Fitzsimmons , Dexter Fletcher , Kathleen Fulton , Linda Garcia , David Lytel , John Clement , Duffy Mazan , Donald Lindberg , Peg Dawson , Rachelle Hollander , Linda Roberts , James Mitchell , Nancy Vose , Ken Komoski , "Dr. Warner Slack" , Harry Stevens ====================================================================== To: Larry Irving, NTIA (DOC) From: Curtiss Priest, CITS Regarding: Composition of NII Council Date: June 24, 1994 Our Center's mission is the improvement of information technology and communications for education, health, and governance. We concentrate on these areas out of the belief that it is here that government, in particular, plays a major role in our future given the "public goods" nature of these activities. As you may know, we are an "interested party" to NIST and have published a series called "The Will to Create the Future" on the NII (available via gopher from world.std.com under nonprofits). We have also contributed to eight OTA studies over the last ten years on issues related to educational technology, intellectual property, and health communications technology. ******************************************************************* We formally request that you consider some changes in the composition of the NII Council. As currently comprised, we believe the areas of education, health and governance are severely underrepresented in important ways. First -- in education With Bonnie Bracey's change in position we find the K12 education representation to be lacking. As you may know from the discussions on NII-TEACH, Bonnie brought to the Council a "teacher's perspective." We believe that her new position no longer provides this important ongoing perspective. We suggest that you add to the council someone who has ongoing experience within a school system. One possibility is a middle school teacher of science in the middle school of Melrose, MA. Her name is Nancy Vose and her email address is vosen@a1.mec.mass.edu and telephone 617-662-2000. Also, we do not see a "consumer" representative for education on the Council. We strongly urge you to consider Kenneth Komoski, Executive Director of the Educational Products Information Exchange (EPIE) who has for 26 years provided independent information and reviews of educational technologies. He has testified before Congress on educational issues and has been a pioneer of the BET program (Businesses for Equity in Telecomputing) to help solve the educational equity issue. Ken Komoski's email address is komoski@BNLCL6.BNL.GOV and telephone 516-728-9100. Second -- in health and medicine It is important that the Council have access to information about health and medicine from the physician/patient side. In our 3 year NSF funded study on "Medical Information Systems" we identified the "physician-innovator" as one who creates excellent hospital-based medical information systems. These systems are very responsive to physician and patient needs. In this regard, we suggest you add Dr. Warner Slack of the Center for Clinical Computing. This is a joint Center between Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and Harvard University. Dr. Slack can be reached at wslack@bih.harvard.edu or 617-732-5925. We found his work to be the highlight of these kinds of innovative systems and, as you may know, his Center developed PaperChase which is a user-friendly alternative to MEDLARS. Third -- in governance and democracy We suggest that you add a person with a combination of legislative experience and information technology development experience. We know of only one candidate for this, Dr. Chandler (Harry) Stevens. Harry Stevens ran and was elected to two consecutive terms in the Massachusetts State Legislature as an independent. He is the only person in the history of Massachusetts to have achieved this. Harry Stevens also was President of Participation Systems and developed a computer teleconferencing product called Participate that was used by legislators across the country as part of LEGITECH through the Council of State Government. Participate, known as PARTI on Compuserve, is an alternative, topic driven messaging system which enables users to concentrate, only, on areas of their interests. It is an alternative to the "listserve" approach. Harry Stevens is now based in Minnesota and is involved in community- based systems. His email address is harry_stevens.inbox@parti.inforum.org and his telephone number is 507-437-2974 (or 507-433-0364). ******************************************************************* We trust you will take these suggestions in the spirit of strengthening the ability of NTIA to make the NII fully responsive to the needs of this country. If you have any questions or comments I can be reached by telephone or email (below). Thank you for your attention. _______________________________________________________________________________ | W. Curtiss Priest, Ph.D. *********************** | | Center for Information, Technology, & Society * Improving humanity * | | * through technology * | | 466 Pleasant Street *********************** | | Melrose, MA 02173-4522 | | Voice: 617-662-4044 Gopher to our publications: | | Fax: 617-662-6882 WORLD.STD.COM (under nonprofits) | _____________________________________________________________________________|