1. Introduction
The Presidential elections of 1992 were an exciting time for the baby boomer
generation. For the first time in national politics, technology issues became
a cornerstone of a Presidential campaign. The candidates used electronic
mail and computer networks to reach their potential supporters. I vividly
recall my excitement at being able to download the Clinton-Gore's campaign
literature on "Technology and America's future prosperity."[1]
Like many members of my generation, I decided that being in Washington for
a few years-to perhaps assist in implementing the new President's policy
agenda in information technology-would be very exciting. So I took a two
year leave of absence from my university position to work as a program manager
in the Advanced Research Projects Agency.
I arrived in Washington at the beginning of January 1993, during the last
gasps of the Bush administration. My most memorable event during the weeks
before the Inauguration was my lunch in the White House Mess[2]
with my colleague Dr. Eugene Wong, then serving in the Office of Science
and Technology Policy. The White House and the Old Executive Office Building
were largely deserted, as political appointees scrambled for new jobs. Even
the White House mess' supply of M&Ms-imprinted with the Presidential
seal-no longer bore George Bush's signature in silver ink. (Click here
to see the Presidential M&M's).
However, things were very busy at DARPA (Clinton renamed it ARPA, but it is
back at DARPA again).
From the moment I arrived I was involved in drafting ambitious research
program plans for the National Information Infrastructure (NII), even while
Clinton's transition team was planning the Inauguration.[3]
But little did I realize that things were about to change in ways I could
not possibly have imagined. One day in the middle of February 1993, my boss
at DARPA received a momentous phone call from the White House. Could he
identify some people willing to work on a newly forming White House Information
Technology Task Force. It would probably involve working straight through
the long President's Day weekend. As David Gergen has said, "When the
President asks for your help, the only acceptable answer is 'Mr. President,
when do I begin?'" For the next two years I would have the experience
of a lifetime meeting the President [4], the First Lady,
the Vice President, and Mrs. Gore-and all of the pets including Socks, but
none of their children!-while being intimately involved with "wiring
the White House" and "reinventing government."
(Click here to see just some of my ID badges.
The blue one with the big "W" was my White House pass!). This is the
story and the lessons I learned along the way. It has not been cleared or
edited by anyone in authority. I firmly believe in the Department of Defense's
policy of "don't ask" even if I don't fully believe in the "don't
tell" part.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In the next section, I describe
what it was like to work in the Advanced Research Projects Agency. Section
3 discusses my experiences as a member of the White House Information Technology
Task Force, and our success in interfacing the White House to the Internet
despite considerable obstacles. Section 4 describes the Information Superhighway,
and my role in formulating a part of the government's R&D plans in support
of this visionary concept. My participation in Vice President Gore's National
Performance Review, and its key information technology recommendations,
are given in Section 5. Section 6 describes my somewhat jaundiced experiences
with Congress. I look back on my Washington experiences in Section 7.
Footnotes
1. You can expect to see even greater use of the Internet
for reaching technology-literate constituencies in the 1996 elections [NY
Times 95a]. The first 1996 election web page has already appeared: http://dodo.crown.net/~mpg/election/96.html,
as well as the first electoral parody page: http://www.dole96.org/.
2. The lunchroom in the basement of the White House, located
directly opposite the White House Situation Room, is run by the U. S. Navy.
It is open 24-hours a day, for the workaholics. It doesn't look like any
cafeteria you or I have been to lately, but more like a gentlemen's club,
with expensive wood paneling and historic (and priceless paintings) on the
walls. The waiters all have military style haircuts. The Clinton Administration
was the first to open it up for all staffers with access to the White House.
Before that, it was reserved for "senior staff."
3. I could not even get tickets. Have you ever attempted
to convince a congressional office staffer that even though your address
is in Northern Virginia you actually do vote in California? I watched the
it on CNN, like almost everyone else in the country.
4. In fact, I almost knocked the President over with a
huge HP LaserJet II printer one fine Spring day in 1993, much to the consternation
of the Secret Service. For a while, I was the most highly trained and well
paid tech support person in the White House. This is not an unusual circumstance,
where people with law degrees work as receptionists!
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Randy H. Katz, randy@cs.Berkeley.edu, Last Updated: 25 March
1996