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whle a bit old, it is still interesting to note the vitality of the new information infrastructure
From: David Farber <farber () linc cis upenn edu>
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 1994 09:29:37 -0500
What It Takes To Make It Happen:
Key Issues For Applications Of The
National Information Infrastructure
Committee on Applications and Technology
Information Infrastructure Task Force
January 25, 1994
This paper is intended for public comment and
discussion. Your comments can be sent to any of
the following addresses:
Post: Committee on Applications and Technology
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Building 101, Room A1000
Gaithersburg, MD 20899
Phone: (301) 975-2667
FAX: (301) 216-0529
E-Mail: cat_exec () nist gov
THE COMMITTEE ON APPLICATIONS AND TECHNOLOGY
This issue paper was prepared by the Committee on
Applications and Technology of the Information Infrastructure
Task Force (IITF) in support of the President's action plan for
developing, in partnership with the private sector, an advanced
information infrastructure for our country -- the National
Information Infrastructure. The Committee is charged with
coordinating Administration efforts:
to develop, demonstrate, and promote applications of
information technology in manufacturing, electronic
commerce, education, health care, government services,
libraries, and other areas, and
to develop and recommend technology strategy and policy
to accelerate the implementation of the NII..
The Committee works with the Subcommittee on High-
Performance Computing and Communications and Information
Technology, which was established as part of the Federal
Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering and Technology to
coordinate the development of new information technologies. The
Committee on Applications and Technology also is responsible for
implementing many of the recommendations of the Vice President's
National Performance Review that pertain to information
technology.
ABSTRACT
This paper highlights important issues that need to be
addressed in the development, demonstration, and promotion of
applications for the National Information Infrastructure (NII).
The paper is intended for three important audiences: the
public, the committees and working groups of the Information
Infrastructure Task Force (IITF), and other agencies and
departments in our government.
The goal is to identify and describe the issues so they can
be considered and discussed by these audiences, leading to their
eventual resolution. Some of these issues, such as privacy,
intellectual property rights, information security and the
scalability of projects are already being addressed by the
committees and working groups of the IITF. Others, such as user
acceptance and organizational learning, still need to be
addressed by the IITF in order to allow the private/government
partnership to evolve and to work together to build and shape the
National Information Infrastructure.
GLOSSARY
Term Definition
CTI Critical Technologies Institute
ED Department of Education
FCCSET Federal Coordinating Council for
Science, Engineering and Technology
HHS Health and Human Services
HPCCIT High-Performance Computing and
Communications and Information
Technology
ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network
IITF Information Infrastructure Task Force
LOC Library of Congress
NII National Information Infrastructure
NIST National Institute of Standards and
Technology
NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration
NSTC National Science and Technology Council
OMB Office of Management and Budget
OSA Open Systems Architecture
PTO Patent and Trademark Office
TVA Tennessee Valley Authority
USDA United States Department of Agriculture
USPS United States Postal Service
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following people have provided the time, effort and
expertise to develop this paper on behalf of the Committee on
Applications and Technology.
Area Experts
Herb Becker (Library of Congress) - Libraries
Voice: (202) 707-6207Fax: (202) 707-0955
Email: hbec () seq1 loc gov
Chuck Chamberlain (United States Postal Service) -
Electronic Commerce
Voice: (202) 268-5262Fax: (202) 268-5040
Ernest Daddio (National Atmospheric and Oceanic
Administration) - Environmental Monitoring
Voice: (202) 606-5012Fax: (202) 606-0509
Email: edaddio () hpcc noaa gov
Michael Fitzmaurice (Department of Health and Human
Services) - Health Care
Voice: (301) 594-1483Fax: (301) 594-2333
Cita Furlani (National Institute of Standards and
Technology) - Manufacturing
Voice: (301) 975-4529Fax: (301) 216-0529
Email: furlani () micf nist gov
Tom Giammo (Patent and Trademark Office) -
Telecommuting
Voice: (703) 305-9400Fax: (703) 308-6694
Email: giammo () pioneer uspto gov
Linda Roberts (Department of Education) - Education
Voice: (202) 401-1444Fax: (202) 401-3093
Email: lroberts () inet ed gov
Jasmeet Seehra (Office of Management and Budget) -
Government Services
Voice: (202) 395-7231Fax: (202) 395-7285
Email:
/pn=jasmeet.seehra/prmd=gov+eop/admd=telemail/c=us/@sprint.c
om
Other Members of the Issues Paper Group
Jim Gray (Tennessee Valley Authority)
Voice: (202) 479-4412Fax: (202) 479-4421
Gregory Parham (United States Department of
Agriculture)
Voice: (202) 720-8155Fax: (202) 690-0289
Bruce Don (Critical Technologies Institute)
Voice (310) 393-0411 x6425Fax: (310) 393-4818
KEY ISSUES FOR NII APPLICATIONS
The publication of the Agenda for Action on the National
Information Infrastructure (NII)1 in September 1993 greatly
heightened the level of public debate on information technology
and social change.
That and other white papers, studies, and commentaries
dramatically sketched a vision of the near future, in which a web
of advanced communications networks and computers would bring
vast amounts of information and greatly improved services to the
homes of virtually every citizen - if we as a nation properly
manage the technology.
With this paper, the Committee on Applications and
Technology of the President's Information Infrastructure Task
Force proposes a basic set of critical issues which our nation
will face as the NII evolves. Our perspective in selecting these
issues is that of applications that will use the NII.
The reasons for taking this perspective - indeed, for
creating this Committee - are grounded in the unique role the
Federal government plays in the development of the NII.
The National Information Infrastructure is not a cliff which
suddenly confronts us, but rather a slope - and one society has
been climbing since postal services and semaphore networks were
established. An information infrastructure has been with us for a
long time, continuously evolving with each new advance in
communications technology. Why the sudden debate?
Change is coming much faster, and more thoroughly, than ever
before. In our lifetimes we will see information technology bring
more changes to more aspects of our daily lives than have been
witnessed in the preceding century. Digital technology is merging
the functions of television sets, telephones, and computers.
Fundamental changes are in store for us in the ways we work,
learn, shop, communicate, entertain ourselves, and get health
care and public services. And those are just the applications we
can foresee.
Private industry will be responsible for virtually every
major facet of the NII and the information marketplace it
creates. Private industry will build and manage the networks,
provide the information tools and much of the information that
travels the networks, and develop the many of the applications
that use the networks.
But government remains a major participant in the NII. One
reason is obvious - government policies are a major force in the
information infrastructure. One of the principal goals of the
Information Infrastructure Task Force is to develop and foster
informed government policy that promotes our societal goals for
the NII without unnecessarily hampering industry.
As Vice President Gore has observed, "Our goal is not to
design the [information] market of the future. It is to provide
the principles that shape that market. And it is to provide the
rules governing this difficult transition to an open market for
information. We are committed in that transition to protecting
the availability, affordability and diversity of information and
information technology as market forces replace regulations and
judicial models that are simply no longer appropriate."2
Less obvious, however, is the fact that government plays a
major role in the development of NII applications:
As one of the nation's biggest users of information
technology, the government develops NII applications to speed and
improve the delivery of its services. Examples include making
social security payments by computer or disseminating census
data.
Government research agencies play a national role in
R&D for the information infrastructure. This research often
includes the development of prototype applications as a proof of
concept, or to help speed the development of useful applications
by the private sector. Examples include work on advanced medical
information applications, work on NII tools for educators, and
research on advanced manufacturing applications using computer
networks.
The Committee on Applications and Technology was created in
part to provide a forum for discussing and coordinating the host
of applications efforts across the Federal government. So
pervasive is the NII and the issues it represents that virtually
every department and function of government is involved.
The Committee's goal is to encourage Federal researchers
working on NII applications to view their work in the greater
context of the NII as a whole, and to:
promote the sharing of information among Federal
agencies developing NII applications;
highlight opportunities for cooperative efforts between
Federal agencies and between government and industry;
and
promote discussion of critical technical and social
issues in the development of the NII that affect the
development and use of advanced NII applications.
Viewing the development of the NII from an applications
perspective is important for the lessons we learn about the
practical effects of complex issues such as intellectual property
rights, privacy, and equitable access. Building applications for
real users is a powerful tool for rooting out the bugs in the
system.
The Committee has selected seven major application areas for
initial study:
libraries,
education,
manufacturing,
electronic commerce and telecommuting,
environmental monitoring,
health care, and
government services.
These are not all-inclusive, but they span a broad and useful
range of social objectives.
Viewing the NII from these seven application areas, we have
identified 16 issues for debate and resolution. For convenience
and clarity, we can group these issues by those that primarily
are concerned with people, the users of the NII; those concerned
with information, the commodity of the NII; those concerned with
software, hardware, and networks, the media of the NII; and those
concerned with financing the NII:
People issues:
Providing equitable access to the NII
User acceptance of NII applications
Privacy safeguards
User training
"Organizational learning" of the new paradigms and
organizational structures needed to take maximum
advantage of the NII
Private sector acceptance of government-developed
applications technology
Information issues:
Intellectual property rights
Information security
Information access
Information and data standards
Information conversion from "old" storage to NII media
Software, hardware, and network issues:
"User-friendly" hardware and software
Interoperability standards
Scalability
Finance issues:
Cost and pricing
Funding
In the following sections we discuss these application areas
and issues in greater detail. Note that this paper only provides
descriptions of these issues as a stimulus to further debate. We
by no means intend to imply that these are all the important
issues. We also do not wish to imply that government should or
ought to be involved in the resolution of every single one of
these issues.
We welcome your comments.
THE APPLICATIONS PERSPECTIVE:
A FRAMEWORK FOR ADDRESSING NII ISSUES
One of the important lessons of the "applications
perspective" is the need to consider critical NII implementation
issues in the context of the whole. Things are connected,
interdependent. Issues tend to cut across several applications;
applications tend to depend on several critical issues.
The applications perspective provides a framework for
debating
these issues. In the following analysis, we attempt to catalog
how
each issue affects the applications areas from our initial list,
consider how important such issues may be in achieving the
societal
goals that each application supports, and identify missing
issues.
The Committee on Applications and Technology includes
representatives from most agencies that are involved in
developing and using NII applications. The following discussions
reflect hands-on experience.
The following table summarizes our initial analysis. In this
table, designates an issue that is particularly important for
the application area in question; designates an issue that is
critical for the given application area. Note that most of these
issues are cross-cutting and affect several applications areas.
Some, however, appear to be particularly important for specific
applications areas; in short, they are critical issues that have
to be resolved for any progress to be made in those areas.
NII ISSUES AFFECTING SPECIFIC APPLICATION AREAS
ISSUES Health Environ- Manufac- Elect.
Gov. Educatio Librarie
Care mental turing Comm. &
Services n s
Monitori Telecom-
ng muting
People
Equitable Access
User Acceptance
Privacy
User Training
Organizational
Learning
Private Sector
Acceptance
Information
Intellectual Property
Information Security
Information Access
Information and Data
Standards
Information
Conversion
Software,
Hardware, &
Networks
User-Friendliness
Interoperability
Standards
Scalability
Other
Cost & Pricing
Funding
ISSUES THAT CUT ACROSS APPLICATIONS AREAS
We discuss cross-cutting issues in this section and critical
issues in the section that follows.
PROVIDING EQUITABLE ACCESS
Providing equitable access is important for many of the
applications areas considered. This issue includes access to
other
individuals and citizen groups via the NII as well as access to
information. For health care, it is important that all medical
providers (doctors, hospitals and clinics, for example) have
access to
health care information, and colleagues, on the NII. For
education and
for libraries, all teachers and students in K-12 schools and all
public libraries - whether in urban, suburban or rural areas;
whether
in rich or in poor neighborhoods - need access to the educational
and
library services carried on the NII. All commercial
establishments and
all workers must have equal access to the opportunities for
electronic
commerce and telecommuting provided by the NII. Finally, all
citizens
must have equal access to government services provided over the
NII.
USER ACCEPTANCE
User acceptance will be an important issue in NII,
particularly in applications areas that extend computer-based
information services to new groups of users who have been
noticeably "computer-skeptical" in the past (e.g., shop floor
workers and doctors) or who simply will not be inclined to learn
obscure or non-intuitive rules simply to interact with computers.
National jokes about the notorious difficulty of programming
video recorders provide a cautionary parable in user acceptance.
PRIVACY
Privacy will be an important issue in those applications
areas involving sensitive information about individuals or
organizations.3 This area includes health care (individual
medical records), government services (income tax returns, for
example), and education (grades of individual students or teacher
evaluations, for example.)
While privacy concerns in these areas are easily
appreciated, other less apparent areas are affected as well. For
example, while library patrons increasingly accept materials in
digital form accessed over networks, such acceptance is still far
from universal. Some users are concerned that the use of
electronic technology provides an easy way to monitor what people
are reading and researching. Assurances that the kind of
information people access in libraries is a private matter and
protections for that privacy will be necessary to allay such
concerns.
USER TRAINING
User training -- learning how to use the new technologies
and
applications -- will require new approaches in the workplace, the
classroom, and the home. Understanding the user education and
training requirements of advanced NII applications is a challenge
in
itself; for example, education may not take place in the
traditional
classroom. Given the public benefits of this learning, it is
likely
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- whle a bit old, it is still interesting to note the vitality of the new information infrastructure David Farber (Jan 25)
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- whle a bit old, it is still interesting to note the vitality of the new information infrastructure David Farber (Jan 26)
- whle a bit old, it is still interesting to note the vitality of the new information infrastructure David Farber (Jan 26)