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4. Taking a Ride on the Information Superhighway

4.1 Building The InfoBahn

The Vice President has popularized the concept of the Information Superhighway (also known by many other names, like the National Information Infrastructure, InfoBahn, and IWay). Yet even today, few people outside technical circles really understand what it is or can be. In his address to the International Telecommunications Union in March 1994, the Vice President defined it as:
"Hundreds of different networks, run by different companies and using different technologies, all connected together in a giant 'network of networks,' providing telephone and interactive digital video to almost every American."

This sounds remarkably like the definition of the Internet, doesn't it? Dr. Jack Gibbons, the President's Science Advisor, also made the following statement about the NII:
"The NII will provide all Americans with the information they need, when they need it and where they need it, at an affordable cost."

Herein lies the rub. Many companies would like to build the Information Superhighway, or it least their private "tollroad" version of it, and they get very nervous with discussions about affordability.
So even before the administration took office, a debate was raging about the government's role in developing the Information Superhighway. One thing is clear. The government's primary role is to focus on the crucial issues of information and telecommunications policy, to encourage private sector development of new technologies, to promote competition and guarantee fair access to service for all Americans, and to protect citizens' rights of access and privacy in the electronic age, balanced with law enforcement and national security concerns. Further, the Administration has taken an aggressive stance in making government information widely available in electronic form, as I have described in the previous section. The cost to access such information by American citizens, who have already paid for its collection, need only be sufficient to recoup the cost of making it available electronically.

The Federal government has an additional role to play as the (only remaining) patient investor underwriting the development of early technologies at the Nation's universities, laboratories, and the industrial technology base. The Federal government can reduce risk and foster interoperability at an early stage of development by sponsoring extensive testbed demonstrations with the private sector. This strategy fosters consensus-based open and non-proprietary standards that have been validated by actual use.

The gigabit communications testbeds, developed under the sponsorship of ARPA and NSF, offer an attractive model for government-industry-academic research partnerships. Each testbed, cost-shared between government and the private sector, brought together companies from the computer and telecommunications industries, research groups from universities and the National Laboratories, and applications developers from the leading centers of high performance computing. The testbeds made it possible for researchers to experiment with high risk networking technology while driving the early-stage development of interoperability. This fosters interoperation at an early development stage while helping to transfer innovative technology to industry.

The government itself has critical needs for certain large-scale applications, like environmental monitoring, for which no "off the shelf" solution is likely to exist. Thus the government, as an early prototype of these and other NII applications, and teamed with industry, laboratories, academia, can drive the development of key contributing technologies to the NII, such as electronic commerce, computer-based acquisitions, and agile manufacturing systems, leveraging (and influencing) commercial developments wherever possible.

Vice President Gore proposed Five Principles that underlie the government's role in developing the Information Superhighway: In addition, in February 1993, the administration proposed a Five Step Plan as the initial strategy for developing the Information Superhighway: By early 1994, all five of these points had been implemented. The High Performance Computing and Communications program formulated a new research area entitled Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications (IITA). The Information Infrastructure Task Force, under the leadership of Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, was formed to address the complex policy issues of the NII. The National Telecommunications and Information Agency (NTIA) of the Commerce Department began funding projects to interconnect schools, libraries, and local communities to the Internet. [26] And through the establishment of the Welcome to the White House World Wide Web page, many Federal agencies have placed considerable information on the Internet, as well as publicly accessible bulletin boards.

4.2. Setting the Speed Limit: The Information Infrastructure Task Force

The Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF), formed to address the crucial policy issues of the Information Superhighway, is a perfect example of a cross-government "virtual agency" in operation (see Section 5 for more on the virtual agency concept). It has placed a special focus on privacy and security issues, and with a priority on making government information widely available in electronic form.

Figure 4 shows the organization of the IITF in more detail, as well as its relationship to the National Science and Technology Council (also see http://iitf.doc.gov). The three committees consist of Telecommunications Policy, Applications and Technology Policy, and Information Policy. Each of these consist in turn of more focused working groups to formulate policy proposals in each of the areas in support of the National Information Infrastructure. One of these, the Technology Policy Working Group, is identifying critical technology roadmaps for NII technologies to identify places where government supported research and development can help accelerate their creation.

The Applications and Technology Committee also contains the Working Group on Government Information Technology Services (GITS). This group is responsible for defining the government applications of the NII, suggesting needed technology developments, and proposing pilot projects to experiment with advanced information processing technologies in testbeds with real government users. GITS is also responsible for developing the plan that will implement the proposals of the National Performance Review for "reengineering government through information technology," which are described in the next section.

The IITF is a parallel organization to the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). The goal of the former is policy formulation focused on the NII. The latter coordinates the Federal government's science and technology activities over all fields of endeavor. It is organized into nine committees, chaired by senior executives from the Federal science establishment. For example, Dr. Neal Lane, the Director of the National Science Foundation, chairs the Committee on Fundamental Research, while Dr. Anita Jones, Defense Director for Research and Engineering, chairs the Committee on Information and Communications.

Despite all of the excitement associated with the InfoBahn, one potential "oil slick" is the government's encryption technology. A strong tension exists between the needs for personal privacy on the one hand, and law enforcement on other. It is possible for a senior administration official, Dr. Michael Nelson, Special Assistant within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, to utter in the same speech (HPCC Symposium, March 1994) the following:
"We need to protect the American public. " (from terrorists, child pornographers, etc.)
"People should be able to use the NII to consult with their lawyer, their accountant, or their doctor just as though they were in the same room." (implying, Big Brother should not be in that room)
While it has not been well publicized, a large number of system intrusions already involve cryptography. The intruders use it to cover their tracks. The encryption genie is already out of the bottle; a policy geared towards trying to control it appears to be unenforceable. The Administration has retreated from its initial proposal to use only National Security Agency algorithms and hardware. But the concept of key escrow remains a controversial cornerstone of the government's plan.

A second cloud is the long promised goal of telecommunications reform. A cornerstone of the Vice President's plan is to foster greater competition in telecommunications services. However, powerful political and business forces are in play. The Administration has lost the initiative to the Congress. But the bill recently approved by the House is likely to be vetoed by the President for "not going far enough" in terms of breaking up existing monopolies.

Footnotes

26. The NTIA programs have been targeted for elimination in the latest budget proposals from Congress.
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Randy H. Katz, randy@cs.Berkeley.edu, Last Updated: 21 December 95