Last Updated: May 3, 1994

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Introduction



DRAFT FOR PUBLIC COMMENT



"I know of but one single means of increasing the prosperity of a

people that is infallible in practice that I believe one can

count on in all countries as in all spots.  This means is naught

else but to increase the ease of communication between

men...America, which is the country enjoying the greatest sum of

prosperity ever accorded a nation, is also the country which,

proportional to its age and means, has made the greatest efforts

to procure the easy communication I have spoken of.  Of all the

countries of the world America is the one where the movement of

thought and human industry is the most continuous and swift."



                                                    -- Alexis de

Tocqueville, 1835



PART I: Introduction



The goal of this document is to express how improvements in the

technical foundation upon which modern communications rests can

benefit all Americans.  We call this platform the National

Information Infrastructure (NII), meaning the facilities and

services that enable efficient creation and diffusion of useful

information. We wish to focus the public debate on the uses of

the NII and the benefits to be derived by applications of

advanced computing and communications technologies. This

collection of papers describes a national vision for how the

evolving NII can: 



- enhance the competitiveness of our manufacturing base



- increase the speed and efficiency of electronic commerce, or

business-to-business communication, to promote economic growth



- improve health care delivery and control costs



- promote the development and accessibility of quality

educational and lifelong learning for all Americans



- make us more effective at environmental monitoring and

assessing our impacts upon the earth



- sustain the role of libraries as agents of democratic and equal

access to information



- provide government services to the public faster, more

responsively, and more efficiently 



In addition to articulating a national vision that can serve as a

framework for discussion and dialogue, a second goal of this

collection of papers is to improve public policy-making, to

identify critical barriers, enablers, and the tools of government

action most effective in each of these areas. In this way we can

maximize the benefits of government activities in support of the

development of the NII while we minimize unintended or

undesirable consequences.



While the term NII is new, the promotion of innovation in

communication and transportation is among the proudest elements

of our American heritage. From the postal roads, canals, and

railroads to the telegraph, telephone, interstate highways, and

the spacecraft with which we loft our satellites skyward, America

has been fearless in its pursuit of new and better ways of moving

people and their ideas. And nearly every generation has sought

ways to pursue public purposes by properly guiding these

innovations.



Moreover, the facilitation of free and open communication is the

centerpiece of American law and culture. Freedom of speech and

expression, protection of an inviolate private realm, and

institutions by which the popular will may be expressed are the

fundamental principles upon which our nation was founded. The

task before us is not just to defend these ideals as historic

artifacts, but to deepen, enliven, and enrich them; to give them

new life in our time and a foundation that will maintain them in

the new century that lies before us, as ever more capable tools

for human communication evolve and are adopted. 



Yet, while the American people acting collectively through their

government have established and enforced guiding principles, it

has been the American people acting through private industry who

have built and maintained most of the core elements of the

infrastructure in previous generations. This will not change. The

very dynamism that forces us to address questions of industrial

convergence -- technological innovation in fields ranging from

electronics to entertainment -- stems in large measure from our

past commitment to seeing the business of communications remain

in the hands of private citizens.



The government's role is to set the rules for competition and

enforce them, ensure that improvements in public communication

benefit all Americans rather than a select few, promote the

adoption of standards that allows systems to interoperate, ensure

that intellectual property rights are respected, support research

to improve information systems and make them easier to use, be a

wise purchaser of information technologies and services, and

reduce uncertainty and risk by funding pilot projects that

demonstrate the usefulness and economic efficiency of new

services and applications.



This introduction will identify some of the themes common to all

of the papers in this first collection. Before doing that,

however, a few other introductory notes are important concerning

the scope of these papers and the process for ensuring widespread

circulation and comment.



These papers are the first set the Committee on Applications and

Technology has chosen for development. We identified these as the

core set because there are significant public interests to be

served by the application of advanced information and

communication technologies in these arenas and some key

government activity already underway. The next collection of

papers could include such things as entertainment, arts and

culture, demand-side management of electrical power, the NII and

Americans with disabilities, information technologies in the

workplace, political participation and community networking,

transportation, telecommuting and other topics.  We look forward

to getting the next set of papers underway and welcome input on

topics of greatest interest.  



This collection of papers represents the most detailed effort to

date of the Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) to

articulate the opportunities presented by an advanced NII and

identify some of the obstacles to its deployment.  To invite as

much public comment and debate as possible, the potential actions

identified be low and in the papers themselves are stated as

questions on which we are seeking your views.  We are trying to

move the national debate forward so that our discussions as well

as our actions are considered judicious, and well-informed.



PART II: Issues Common to all of the Applications Papers 



Several themes emerge as concerns common to all of the papers.

They are equity of access, the pursuit of demonstrations and

pilot projects, the standards setting process, privacy and

communications security, training and support, identification of

long-term research and development priorities, and performance

measurements to assess both public and private investments and

experiments.



Equity of Access: Improved means of information access and

dissemination must serve to close the gap between those with more

influence and those with less; it must lower the obstacles to

full and complete citizenship in American society rather than

raising them.



Earlier this year, the President and Vice President set a goal of

connecting all hospitals, clinics, libraries, and classrooms to

the NII by the end of the century. Doing so will empower citizens

and help reinvigorate their public institutions.  Hearings are

being held to assess strategies for achieving universal telephone

service.  While the Administration is funding demonstration

projects through the National Telecommunications and Information

Administration (NTIA), this will only connect a small number of

public institutions to the NII. The Administration's proposals

for telecommunications reform will ensure low cost basic

telephone service and maintain the ability of communities to

require cable operators to connect public institutions at little

or nocharge. To ensure that public institutions can continue to

serve their historic functions this must be preserved in the new

regulatory regime.  To this end, should the Federal

Communications Commission propose regulations that enhance the

availability of advanced telecommunications services to all

educational and health care institutions and libraries by

mechanisms such as preferential rates for telecommunications

services? Are there alternate means for achieving this public

requirement?



Demonstrations and Pilot Projects: Among the key obstacles to the

adoption of new communications techniques is risk and uncertainty

as to the benefits.  In the adoption of health information

systems, for example, uncertainty among private sector purchasers

of these systems about their ability to exchange information

accurately must be overcome before the costs and benefits of such

systems may be proven in clinical practice. In the case of

libraries, mechanisms to ensure that works placed in the system

will be protected from unauthorized uses will be required if

copyright owners will make their works available under

appropriate terms and conditions. Teachers and administrators

must be able to see that networked-based teaching tools improve

the educational process before deciding upon widespread adoption

of these techniques.  How can interactivity as a technical

attribute of advanced networks best be incorporated into services

that facilitate genuine social and political interaction among

citizens and consumers, and between them and the companies and

governments that serve them? The federal government is currently

supporting a host of demonstration projects, as described in this

collection of papers. What future NII applications can be

demonstrated in ways that will allow later scaling to community-

or society-wide status?  How can these simulations be conducted

under conditions that closely resemble what would be found if

they were fully operational?



Standards: Standards for information content, display, and

exchange are such a crucial element in the development of the NII

that it may be said there is no infrastructure without them.  In

addition, there is a significant international component to the

adoption of standards. The United States can no longer assume

that other nations will adopt our standards or purchase products

built to U.S. developed standards.  Standards may be effective

barriers for product entry in foreign markets.  



There is an urgent need to make the selection of standards for

information technologies and services as efficient as it can be.

Broadly speaking, the government's role is to set clear goals and

be an intelligent adopter of standards, and to ensure the best

possible coordination among standards organizations, industry,

and the government so that the private, voluntary standards

system in use in the United States works to maximum efficiency.

How can the adoption of standards best be improved? In addition,

what specific standards-setting activities and decisions are of

greatest importance to the development of the NII? How may the

government facilitate consensus among relevant parties? Is it

possible to identify interfaces between technologies and services

where the establishment of common standards would enable faster

infrastructure development and those interfaces that inhibit

infrastructural improvements because they are not open? 



Privacy and Communications Security: Among the most notable

shortcomings of today's Internet is the inability to be sure of

the identity of someone with whom one is exchanging electronic

mail, and uncertainty as to whether a message was read by

unintended parties. If communications over the NII are not

secure, then people will not honestly report their condition to

their physicians. If physicians do not trust the NII to maintain

confidentiality they may misreport sensitive medical information

to insurance companies. Both of these not only degrade the

efficiency of the health care system but will undercut the

ability of advanced communications to make people healthier.

Electronic Commerce also shows the same requirements.  Few

business class applications will develop on the NII until an

infrastructure is in place to guarantee a high level of

authentication and privacy.



The IITF's Privacy Working Group has been working on a Code of

Fair Information Practices that is soon to be issued. This report

will address issues related to the privacy of electronic records.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has been

working on strategies for implementing a national infrastructure

for the management of public key cryptographic techniques for

authentication and confidentiality. It will address such

questions as: How should it identify a registration service that

would issue policies and certificates? What is the best way to

identify the work remaining to be done in protocol development

for the interchange of certificates? How should it identify the

necessary and sufficient services of the infrastructure itself to

support Electronic Commerce and determine the initial entities to

start developing actual services, such as government agencies and

commercial service providers? Should these questions be addressed

by a conference, a panel of experts, or some other process?



Training and Support: Professional development and technical

assistance often lag well behind the adoption of advanced

communications tools. This has been identified as one of the most

important obstacles to the development of NII applications in the

areas of education and lifelong learning, libraries, and health

care. Even the most cleverly designed and implemented advanced

communication techniques will not be used if teachers and

administrators, health care providers, and librarians do not

understand how to use them. Improving the ability of these

professionals to interact with the people they serve depends upon

their being trained and practiced to use the new communications

techniques that are at their disposal. Failure to adequately

train these professionals will obviate any improvements in

services delivered over the NII. How can we ensure the training

that professionals receive keeps pace with advances in the

capabilities of the NII?  



Research and Development: One of the most effective tools for the

promotion of the NII is the investment the federal government

makes in research. Many of the current search and retrieval tools

on the Internet today were created with the help of

government-sponsored research. Government research today in such

areas as advanced manufacturing techniques, digital libraries,

and environmental assessment tools will be the foundation for

future capabilities and commercial products. The newly formed

National Science and Technology Council is charged with advising

the President on how the federal research investment may be best

managed. Under its purview, the High Performance Computing and

Communications program coordinates key NII technology efforts

across the government. How can federal research best support the

key technical underpinnings of the NII, ranging from product data

standards to digital storage, retrieval, and dissemination

technologies?



Performance Measurements: Demonstrations, pilot projects, and

research expenditures are never ends in themselves. Without a set

of metrics, it is impossible to tell if either public or private

experiments with new services or cooperative research efforts

have been successful.  Monitoring and understanding the results

of programs and experiments is therefore crucial for future

decision making. How can we develop program evaluation techniques

that help people understand the effects and results of

experimentation with the tools of an advanced NII? How can the

costs and benefits be best assessed and the understanding be

widely shared, so that many people benefit from government

expenditures, whether they take the form of the funding of pilot

projects or cooperative research and development efforts?  How do

agencies ascertain whether these investments are yielding their

anticipated national benefits?  In short, how can we be sure to

learn the right lessons?



PART III: Conclusions



As we begin to identify and understand the potential benefits of

an advanced NII and develop policies to accelerate its

development, we must tightly couple federal initiatives and

programs to the goals, priorities, and activities of industry,

academia, and labor. Only by effectively linking the

complementary activities of the public and private sectors can we

accomplish technological, economic, and social objectives that

will pay dividends to the entire nation.



There is no ineluctable force pulling these advanced applications

of the NII into being. Nor can the simple statement of desirable

future characteristics of the NII make it so. Success in each

application arena requires the identification of intermediate

goals and objectives and the successful negotiation of outcomes

involving a multitude of different parties. Only conscious,

willful, and well informed public decisions will result in an NII

that meets America's needs.  



We hope that careful consideration of the policy questions in

these papers will both facilitate the development of the National

Information Infrastructure and guide its evolution so that it

best meets public purposes. The most important performance

measurements for the NII are not technical but social. The NII

should -- and will -- be judged not by the speed at which bits

may race to their destination to be reassembled into words or

images, but by how well these technical capabilities make the

nation and its citizens healthier, wealthier, and more wise.

.