The Federal Communications Commission met Wednesday to discuss obstacles to enacting a national broadband policy that will provide high-speed Internet access to every American.
President Obama has made universal broadband access a key goal. Grants and loans for helping make universal broadband access a reality have already started being doled out as part of Congress' economic stimulus package.
In an effort to ensure that new programs and policies work toward achieving the same goal, the FCC has been tasked with developing a national broadband plan to help direct policy makers in getting affordable broadband to every American. A task force, headed by Blair Levin, who had been chief of staff for former FCC chairman Reed Hundt, is developing the plan that will be presented to Congress on February 17, 2010.
Levin and his staff appeared before the FCC Wednesday to present what they see as gaps or obstacles that must be overcome to develop clear recommendations and policy for universal broadband.
Levin said that commissioners and policy makers must consider the broadband ecosystem if they hope to achieve the president's goals. This means taking into account not only consumer needs but also considering the needs of the industry, which will likely fund the bulk of the $20 billion to $350 billion that will be needed to build new infrastructure and develop new programs for spreading broadband throughout the country.
In considering these needs, Levin said it is important to identify and come up with ways to overcome some hurdles that stand in the way for achieving the ultimate goal of providing broadband to every American.
Obstacles to universal broadband access
One major issue has to do with the Universal Service Fund, a program funded through extra charges on consumers' phone bills. The USF was originally designed to provide subsidies to pay for phone service in rural communities. But the task force believes that more of the $7 billion that is allocated each year from the fund should also be used to help subsidize the cost of deploying broadband in rural areas.
Today, most of these funds are used for voice services and not broadband, the task force reported. And of the money that is used to subsidize broadband, the group noted it is often used inefficiently so that gaps in broadband deployment are still not filled.
The task force also reported that there is still a high level of disparity in income levels between people who subscribe to broadband service and those who do not. Nearly 90 percent of families with incomes of $100,000 or more subscribe to broadband services, compared to 35 percent with incomes of $20,000 or less. Rural households are less likely to subscribe to broadband service than urban households. About 65 percent of white households subscribe to broadband, while only 40 percent of Hispanic households subscribe to broadband and 46 percent of African-American households have broadband.
Another issue that was brought up by the task force during the meeting is the fact that broadband service providers tend to favor higher-income regions in more populated areas over low-income areas.
The data suggests that many low-income people in these parts of the country are offered only one broadband service option. The data also suggests that these consumers who have only one option tend to pay higher prices for service.
What this means is that lower-income people, who have less disposable income, are often the ones forced to pay higher prices, while people who have more money pay lower prices for service.
Deployments in rural areas are often affected by the high cost of building infrastructure and providing service. The task force noted that "middle mile" costs are almost three times higher than general network operations costs. This high cost is often a serious barrier to rural broadband deployments, the group said.
Blair Levin, head of the task force developing a national broadband policy for the FCC.
This "middle mile" infrastructure consists of equipment and fiber that connects local cable head-ends or telephone company central offices with bigger points of presence that connect those networks to nationwide networks. The task force said there was a lack of efficient coordination when carriers or other utility providers dig trenches for fiber infrastructure. The group also noted that these deployment gaps don't only affect rural consumers, but many residential neighborhoods and small business marketplaces as well.
As the Internet and television markets converge, the task force also noted that a lack of innovation exists in the TV set-top box market. Specifically, the majority of consumers today use set-top boxes provided through their subscription TV providers. And only a very small number of devices are even available to purchase at retail. By comparison, there are hundreds of devices available in the mobile phone market. Due to a lack of competition, innovation has been stifled. And the task force recommends the FCC adopt policies to encourage a retail market for such devices.
That said, the FCC has tried to encourage the consumer electronics industry to develop set-top boxes that could be bought separately from cable services, but so far the efforts have largely failed.
More spectrum needed
On the wireless side, the key barrier is a lack of spectrum, the task force said. The problem is simple, as demand for mobile broadband increases, there is a need for more spectrum to support these services. Demand for these services comes from the rapidly growing market for smartphone wireless devices and Netbooks. By 2011, smartphone sales are expected to overtake standard mobile phones.
The task force said it is critical for the FCC to identify and reallocate available spectrum as soon as possible. The group said the nation could face a spectrum shortage as soon as 2013 or 2015, if nothing is done today.
The wireless trade group CTIA and the Consumer Electronics Association support this claim. And the groups sent a letter to FCC chairman Julius Genachowski on Tuesday urging him to investigate using broadcast TV spectrum for mobile Internet use.
The measure is opposed by the broadcast TV industry. But the FCC task force noted that as the need for wireless broadband spectrum increases, the need for broadcast TV spectrum is actually decreasing. Specifically, smartphone subscriptions have increased by 690 percent since 1998, while over-the-air TV viewership decreased by 56 percent. This proposal is already generating criticism from lawmakers supporting the TV broadcast industry.
Levin and his staff acknowledged there are many other barriers that exist in providing affordable broadband access to every person in the U.S. Levin said his staff is on track to meet its February deadline, but he said the process will remain open throughout the remaining 90 days that are left to incorporate new ideas. He also emphasized the fact that the ultimate success or failure of the national broadband plan will be in the hands of Congress and policy makers who must remain committed to implementing the plan.
"In my experience and seeing what has worked in other countries, you can plan all you want, but there really needs to be a long-term commitment for such plans to succeed," he said.
Also as part of the meeting, the five-member FCC unanimously voted to impose a "shot clock" for wireless tower applications to speed up the time it takes for wireless operators to deploy new cell phone networks.
Chairman Genachowski promised last month at the CTIA tradeshow in San Diego that the Commission would do what it could to speed up this process. And the Commission's vote solidified that promise.
"Tower siting is a vital piece of our industry," CTIA president and CEO Steve Largent said in a statement. "It enables mobile services, including voice and broadband, for consumers, public safety, and businesses. Both Congress and the Supreme Court recognized the importance of taking concrete steps to ensure that the zoning process does not become a barrier to the reasonable deployment of, and competition among, diverse wireless networks."
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--President Barack Obama on Friday called on the U.S. Congress to pass energy-and-climate legislation, a move he said would stimulate technology innovation and improve the economic competitiveness of the United States.
Obama delivered a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here after touring student laboratories and before attending a fund-raiser for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
President Obama speaking on clean energy at MIT on Friday.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)A "comprehensive" energy-and-climate bill will address both environmental and economic problems, Obama said. Countries around the world recognize that energy supplies are limited while demand is rising. That situation is giving rise to a "peaceful competition" among countries to develop clean-energy technologies that "will propel the 21st century."
"There are going to be all sorts of debate both in (the) laboratory and on Capital Hill, but there is no question that we have to do these things," he said. "The nation that wins that competition will be the nation to lead the global economy. I'm convinced of that, and I want America to be that nation."
Obama urged Congress to pass an energy-and-climate bill the Senate is now considering, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. He specifically praised the bill co-sponsor Democratic Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who was present at the talk, and Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham. The senators co-wrote an editorial in the New York Times earlier this month outlining the main components of a desired bill, which was seen as a key step toward passage.
The House bill, which narrowly passed in May, includes a national mandate for utilities to use renewable energy and a cap-and-trade system in which large polluters can buy and sell permits for carbon dioxide emissions.
The president did not weigh into the details of the existing bills, but he did outline the contours of an energy policy that reduces the country's reliance on fossil fuels while making better use of natural resources.
The ingredients of energy policy should include clean use of coal, oil, and natural gas; "safe nuclear power;" sustainably grown biofuels; and energy from wind, solar, and wave power, Obama said.
"It is a transformation that will be made as swiftly and carefully as possible, to ensure we are doing everything we can to grow this economy in the short, medium, and long term. And I do believe that a consensus is growing to achieve exactly that," he said.
Obama said the Pentagon and energy security hawks are stepping up efforts to reduce oil imports while businesses and environmentalists are working together. Young people, too, view energy-and-climate as the challenge of their generation, he added.
"We are seeing a convergence. The naysayers, the folks (who) would pretend this is not an issue--they are being marginalized," Obama said.
He said key pieces of the Senate bill have been approved in various committees but he warned that opposition to passing an energy-and-climate bill will increase as passage gets closer.
There were about 700 people at the MIT talk, including a number of local green-technology entrepreneurs, investors, and students at the university, which has become a hotbed for energy science and technology research.
Flickr has adopted a less severe way of handling copyright infringement claims after a small firestorm of controversy erupted about a photograph of President Barack Obama modified to look like The Dark Knight's rendition of the Joker comic-book villain.
Previously, certain copyright infringement complaints were met with the removal of an image, and if the complaint was overruled, the Flickr member who posted the image was allowed to repost it. After the Joker Obama case, Flickr decided to merely replace the image in question with a message, a move that means the discussion below the image is preserved and that eases republication if the removal is overturned.
The Obama Joker image still is widespread on Flickr.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)The move illustrates the complexities that have arisen in the digital era where photos can be transferred and modified with ease. Copyright law is a much older concept than the Internet, though it's been renovated a bit relatively recently with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Under the DMCA, a party holding copyright to a photo or other work can request that a Web site remove content posted by a third party that infringes that copyright; the Web site can avoid liability in the matter if it takes down the work in question when it receives the notice of infringement. The DMCA also includes a provision to let the third party that published the content challenge the claim.
The Joker Obama image was swept up in this DMCA process in August. The resulting discussion led the Yahoo photo-sharing site to change its policy Tuesday:
"Upon receipt of a complete NOI (notice of infringement), the U.S. Copyright Team will replace the image with a new static image that bears the following copy: 'This image has been removed due to a claim of copyright infringement,'" said Heather Champ, Flickr's director of community, in a comment.
The change was the suggestion of a Flickr user, The Searcher, and Flickr said it liked the idea.
The Obama Joker image was posted on the Flickr site of Firas Alkhateeb, who told the Los Angeles Times he created the Obama Joker image using Photoshop and a Time Magazine cover photograph. The Obama Joker image spread farther after somebody else created a poster with the image and the word "socialism."
Flickr, though, removed the image after it received a DMCA notice of infringement, Champ said in a forum posting.
Among those to criticize the move were Thomas Hawk, an outspoken critic of what he sees as Flickr censorship and the chief executive of Flickr rival Zooomr. He argued in a blog post that the image qualified as a parody under the fair-use provision of copyright law that permits some uses of copyright material.
"Whatever you may or may not think about this image and its appropriateness, the image would absolutely and unequivocally be considered parody and parody has always been one of the most effective defenses against any copyright complaint," Hawk wrote.
Added TechCrunch's Mike Arrington, "In the past Flickr has deleted accounts of users who are critical of President Obama, but as far as I know nothing like this was done to users who were critical of Bush. It's clear that the Flickr team wanted to take this image down."
However, image copying and modification permissions can vary according to context. While creating a parody from an image might be permitted under fair use, copying that parody might not be.
And there's evidence some original rights holders aren't involved. Photo District News reported that Time and DC Comics both said they hadn't send Yahoo the DMCA notice, and that the office of the original Obama photographer, Platon, wasn't even aware of the controversy.
Hawk also quoted the DMCA notice Flickr sent Alkhateeb letter that identified the infringement complainant to be Edward Przydzia.
Yahoo hasn't detailed its rationale for removing the image, saying its privacy policy forbids it from discussing particulars of the situation. However, it did indicate politics were not involved.
"There appears to be a whole lot of makey uppey going in the news and blogosphere about this event," Champ said in a forum post. "We very much value freedom of speech and creativity...I'm not sure how complying with the law has led to the idea that we (the Flickr team) have a particular political agenda."
On August 4, White House aide Macon Phillips announced the launch of flag@whitehouse.gov, which encouraged Americans to report "fishy" information related to the Obama health care proposal. Phillips' announcement was titled "Facts Are Stubborn Things."
Well, so is public opinion, as the White House acknowledged on Monday by quietly pulling the plug on the flag@whitehouse.gov e-mail address.
Messages sent there are now bounced back with this response:
<flag@whitehouse.gov>: host mailhub-wh2.whitehouse.gov[63.161.169.140] said: 550 5.2.1 <flag@whitehouse.gov>... The email address you just sent a message to is no longer in service.We are now accepting your feedback about health insurance reform via:http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck (in reply to RCPT TO command
The "Reality Check" Web page on WhiteHouse.gov doesn't encourage reporting misinformation to Washington, D.C.; instead, it features some videos about President Obama's proposal. There is an option to submit comments, but the Web form stresses "Please refrain from submitting any individual's personal information, including their e-mail address, without their permission."
That's almost the opposite of the original flag@whitehouse.gov program, which had no obvious privacy safeguards--and which became the focus of spirited criticism over the last two weeks.
Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, wrote in a letter to the president that: "I am not aware of any precedent for a president asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White House for pure political speech that is deemed 'fishy' or otherwise inimical to the White House's political interests."
Cornyn wasn't alone. On his radio program, Glenn Beck dubbed flag@whitehouse.gov an "enemies list," and talk show host Rush Limbaugh characterized it as "Obama's own exclusive private domestic spying program." A t-shirt saying "REPORT ME" has appeared, and some conservatives mocked it by reporting themselves to the White House on grounds they were spreading "disinformation" by criticizing the Democratic health care legislation.
This hasn't been a very good month for the White House and its attempts to use e-mail communications. Earlier on Monday, the White House changed its e-mail sign-up procedures so make sure that people won't get spammed.
Acting White House Cyberspace Director Melissa Hathaway, who has reportedly resigned her post, addresses cybersecurity during the RSA computer security conference in April.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)Melissa Hathaway, acting cyberspace director for the White House's National Security and Homeland Security councils, has resigned from her post, citing personal reasons, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The White House press office did not immediately respond to a call seeking confirmation of her resignation, but a spokesman has offered an e-mail statement to other publications.
"We are grateful for her dedicated service and for the significant progress she and her team have made on our national cybersecurity strategy," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said in an e-mail to the publication Federal Computer Week.
The timing of Hathaway's resignation is a bit surprising, given that President Obama was reportedly getting close to choosing a permanent replacement for her post as the country's "cyberczar," a position he created in late May. Hathaway, who had worked for the director of national intelligence in the Bush administration, led the Obama administration's recent 60-day review of the federal government's cybersecurity efforts.
At one point, Hathaway was considered a leading candidate to take over the cyberczar post permanently. But the Journal said she took her name out of the running two weeks ago. "She said she was leaving for personal reasons and that she plans to remain working in the cybersecurity arena," according to the Journal post, which added that her resignation will take effect August 21.
The former head of Google's public policy team will soon reportedly be working for the public.
Andrew McLaughlin, currently listed as Google's director of global public policy, will leave Google to accept a position within the Obama administration reporting to the nation's new chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra, according to a report in The New York Times. McLaughlin's new title will be deputy chief technology officer, and he would become the third high-profile Google executive to join the government since Obama was inaugurated in January.
Google confirmed that McLaughlin plans to leave, but is still with the company. The White House could not be reached for comment.
McLaughlin oversaw Google's interests regarding governments around the world, for example, devoting ample time in 2006 to managing pressure over Google's policies in China. He'll join former colleagues Katie Stanton and Sonal Shah in the new administration, which has been advised on technology matters by Google CEO Eric Schmidt since Obama was on the campaign trail.
Speculation has grown in recent months that the new administration would be taking a closer look at Google, which dominates the market for Internet search and advertising. Google and the Federal Trade Commission are apparently discussing Schmidt's role as a member of the board of directors of both Google and Apple, and the Department of Justice is reportedly taking a look at Google's recent settlement with book publishers.
This was originally published at CBSNews.com.
President Obama on Friday confirmed that his presidential campaign suffered a cyber intrusion in which hackers gained access to a range of files.
Barack Obama says of cyberattacks: "It has happened to me."
(Credit: CBS)In a speech in which he unveiled a plan for a comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy, the president said he understands what it is like to be a victim of a cyberattack because "it has happened to me and the people around me."
Between the months of August and October, Obama said, hackers accessed files including policy papers and travel plans. Files pertaining to fundraising information were left untouched, he assured his supporters in a joking manner.
Obama noted that his campaign's vulnerabilities reflected those of the rest of the world in the digital era.
"It's no secret my presidential campaign harnessed the Internet" to communicate with a wide swath of supporters, he said. However, the hacking was "a powerful reminder...one of your greatest strengths, our ability to communicate...could also be one of your greatest vulnerabilities."
The campaign worked with federal agents and hired security consultants to address the breach, Obama said. Newsweek reported in November that federal agents were investigating cyberbreaches of both the Obama and McCain campaigns.
The spotlight is on President Obama's accomplishments at the end of his first 100 days in office.
(Credit: White House photo by Chuck Kennedy)This was originally posted on CBSNews.com.
A White House "virtual town hall" that Barack Obama hosted last month was intended to be an exercise in open-microphone democracy that would allow the president to interact with average Americans.
Aides billed it as permitting members of the public to "pose a question or vote for a particular question" using the Google Moderator utility. A new area of the WhiteHouse.gov Web site was titled Open For Questions, and nearly 1.8 million votes were cast.
That was the plan. After voting began, though, a committed group of mischievous activists (and their friends) deluged WhiteHouse.gov with their votes--and questions advocating the legalization of marijuana soon topped the site's "green jobs," "financial stability," "jobs," and "budget" categories. Obama eventually told the live audience that he doesn't think pot legalization is "a good strategy to grow our economy."
The White House's experience with reefer madness reflects the challenges that Obama faces when living up to his campaign pledge to create a "new level of transparency" through "cutting-edge technologies."
At 100 days into the Obama administration, Washington observers said that the president has made some significant steps toward using technology and the Internet to honor that campaign promise. In other ways, they said, Obama has not yet lived up to it.
"In general, we've been very optimistic," said Ari Schwartz, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Compared to his predecessors, Obama is an unusually wired chief executive. Bill Clinton sent only two e-mail messages as president and has yet to pick up the habit. George W. Bush ceased using e-mail in January 2001 and said toward the end of his presidency that he's looking forward to e-mailing "my buddies" after leaving the nation's capital.
But Obama, whose campaign made aggressive use of the Internet, is an inveterate e-mailer, saying "I'm still clinging to my BlackBerry" before taking office. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters after the inauguration that, thanks to a "compromise," his boss could keep a security-enhanced BlackBerry for e-mail.
Schwartz and others suggested that it's unfair to judge Obama's record on technology and openness after 100 days, especially when the president himself set a 120-day deadline for an internal review.
One of Obama's first acts as president was to sign a directive ordering his chief information officer to devise ways to make the administration more Internet-friendly within that time period. (The memorandum says agencies must "harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public.")
In early March, Obama named Vivek Kundra, Washington, D.C.'s chief technology officer, to the position of federal CIO. Kundra said that he wants "to ensure the public has access to information, and to rethink the way the public interacts with the government in an information economy."
One of his office's projects is the not-launched-yet Data.gov Web site, which is intended to be a warehouse of government data for public consumption. (For the District of Columbia, Kundra's office created the D.C. Digital Public Square Web site, which provides data feeds and even ways to follow government activities through Twitter and Facebook.)
The White House also faces the challenge of upgrading a clunky and out-of-date computer system to allow them to do things like send SMS text messages and mass e-mail updates.
"They're putting out a report," said Schwartz, referring to the 120-day review. "We've had some conversations with the open government people and they seem to be looking at a lot of the issues we think are important."
The Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that advocates for open government, has created a Web site allowing voting on what's most important to see in the 120-day review. The winner so far: formal data standards, which would allow programmers to extract government databases to be incorporated in their own applications--in much the same way as Google's announcement this week does. (Sunlight also was the sponsor of a so-called Transparency Camp in Washington recently.)
Another area that's attracted more attention under Obama's administration than it did under that of George W. Bush is blogging. The White House has a blog (with comments disabled and no actual posts by the president so far). White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has a blog; so does the State Department and Homeland Security (with comments permitted).
What he hasn't done
Overall, though, the Obama administration has been "more talk than action, that's for sure," said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
It's true, Harper said, "that it takes longer to do a lot of the things the president has promised. However, there are things he promised and things he could have done starting on day one that he didn't do."
One of those is adhering to what seems like a simple, unambiguous promise: Obama pledged that he would "not sign any nonemergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House Web site for five days."
That hasn't happened. Obama signed a slew of nonemergency bills without posting them for comment. A chart shows that Obama posted only one of 14 bills for the required five days.
In addition, before taking office, Obama promised new openness in the presidential transition, saying "you can track these meetings" his transition staff had with groups seeking to influence policy. A "Your Seat At The Table" memo said: "This scope is a floor, not a ceiling, and all staff are strongly encouraged to include additional materials."
That didn't happen. Although Obama did disclose documents submitted to the transition staff, his Web site never provided a list of meetings with the names of groups and identities of participants.
Instead, only a list of documents submitted was made public--meaning that if a meeting took place between the transition team and outside groups and no documents were exchanged, it remained secret. And even though meetings with White House staff are generally more important than meetings with transition staff, no similar disclosure policy has been adopted.
This and the WhiteHouse.gov five-day period could be easily fixed, Harper argues. "It's totally within the purview of the president to say what should happen," he said. "And it's not something he said should happen.
Editors' note: This is a guest post. See Paul Bell's bio below.
When President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress in February, he spoke to the need for the United States to become more energy-efficient. To that end, the stimulus bill he recently signed into law provides more than $30 billion for energy efficiency projects, innovative technology loan guarantees, the retrofitting of federal facilities, and the development of the initial framework for a "smart" electrical grid.
These measures put the country on a long-term path toward so-called green-led growth. But how they are implemented is as important as their passage. Moving forward, policymakers must adopt reforms and take advantage of the stimulus funds to make government IT operations more energy-efficient. They also should set policies that encourage and incentivize the private sector to do the same.
To start, they should spotlight the significant stimulus funds aimed at upgrading information technology in federal facilities. Newer, more energy-efficient IT will drive long-term cost savings and environmental sustainability, while boosting government productivity and reducing energy consumption.
The federal government is a major IT user and, as such, a major energy consumer. The most recent Environmental Protection Agency report on federal energy consumption indicates that federal servers and data centers accounted for approximately 6 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity use, for a total electricity cost of about $450 million annually (PDF). And energy use is slated to double by 2011.
The federal government can lead by example by pursuing two interlocking--but equally important--objectives:
First, the Obama administration should challenge federal agencies to freeze IT-related energy consumption at current levels while boosting computing output. This will be faster and potentially more effective than legislation.
And it's not as difficult as it sounds, but depends on successful implementation of three measures: New federal data centers must use the best available energy-efficient IT; existing federal data centers must be converted to "green" data centers within three years; and federal data centers must be connected to intelligent utility networks or smart grids, where possible. This will reduce energy consumption and drive significant cost savings for consumers, small businesses, large enterprises, and public-sector organizations, while enhancing U.S. competitiveness.
At Dell, we've learned that going green doesn't have to involve building costly new data centers. By applying a green approach to our own data centers, we are on track to save $52 million in related costs by the end of this year, and we've avoided the need to build a new data center altogether. We're able to compute more while consuming less.
The federal government must modernize data centers to improve energy efficiency. Most government--and private-sector--data centers have significant unused capacity due to servers consuming power but not always doing a lot of work. That can change by embracing technologies, such as virtualization, that optimize server productivity.
Virtualization is a technology that allows one server to do the work of many. Using software to create multiple virtual machines inside each physical system, virtualization reduces the number of servers required to run a data center. Combined with other technologies, a data center can do as much as three times more work using the same power and space. This unlocks unused capacity, increases computing power, and avoids the expense associated with overprovisioning and buying additional servers.
Second, government should establish policies that encourage greater IT energy efficiency in the private sector. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy found that for every extra kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed by information and communications technologies, the U.S. economy increases its overall energy savings by a factor of 10. In essence, efficient IT saves more energy than it uses.
Congress, regulators, and the Obama administration should start with a comprehensive assessment of government servers by class and power use. They also should develop a national strategy for deploying IT that drives energy efficiency. A senior White House representative, perhaps federal CIO Vivek Kundra, should coordinate federal efforts on energy-efficient IT, working with Congress to advance this agenda.
Policymakers also should develop a framework to support private-sector energy efficiency, including:
- Tax credits to invest in projects that reduce energy demand.
- Immediate expensing, or accelerated depreciation, for retrofitting or replacing IT that improves energy efficiency by at least 25 percent. Similar benefits should be considered for investment in broadband or related IT that supports flexible work or virtual-meeting programs.
- Energy efficiency investments for small-business administration loan programs.
In an era of tight budgets, Washington can invest in greater energy efficiency--an investment that will show a strong, timely return. While this is an investment for the long-term, it's imperative that desired efficiencies can be realized immediately.
Technology is the great catalyst for human progress, and now there is a valuable opportunity for government to help the sector realize vast new efficiencies, reduce costs, and simplify IT management.
This was originally published on CBSNews.com.
When times are hard, people adjust their priorities--even the president. When an unexpected economic disaster imploded as Barack Obama was entering office, some of his technology agenda was put on hold.
Almost 100 days into his presidency, Obama has yet to advance most of the strong technology policies he promised during the campaign.
Thanks in large part to the economic crisis, Obama has yet to put forward his new cybersecurity strategy, or even fill some important technology-related vacancies. At the same time, the downward-spiraling economy has let him to push forward in other ways that were unexpected as recently as last fall.
In orchestrating the development of a $787 billion stimulus package, the president won congressional approval for significant spending on broadband infrastructure, electric smart-grid technology, and electronic health care records. Still unclear, though, are the ultimate results of that spending, or whether it will translate into more investment by the private sector.
"I think it's a positive sign (the administration is) including technology as a cross-cutting issue in all of their priorities," said Ben Scott, the policy director for the media advocacy group Free Press. "So far, with every opportunity to push technology policy into the mix, they've done so. Some of the standalone tech policy agenda has not been an immediate priority, but it would be unfair to demand that, given the other crises the administration is dealing with."
Some of the most important pieces of the president's technology policy are only beginning to unfold. Less than two weeks ago, Obama appointed Virginia's secretary of technology, Aneesh Chopra, to be his chief technology officer. Chopra is responsible for formulating an open government directive within the next 20 days and will work closely with Obama's chief information officer, Vivek Kundra.
Obama's pick to chair the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, has yet to be confirmed, but he is expected to push for more Net neutrality regulation.
All three appointments, Scott said, "reflect a strong commitment to a new kind of technology policy, (and) a commitment to making technology work for the government."
Appointments may hint at approach
Obama has also made some high-level appointments within the Justice Department that may hint at the administration's approach to technology--specifically, toward the protection of intellectual property. The president has filled out the department with lawyers favored by the copyright industry, including attorneys who have represented the Recording Industry Association of America and the Business Software Alliance.
The president has yet to appoint anyone to fill the role of intellectual property enforcement coordinator, a new, congressionally mandated cabinet position responsible for coordinating the White House's IP enforcement efforts. Vice President Joe Biden emphasized the need to find the "right person" for the job, given the significant impact intellectual property has on the economy.
The jury is still out on whether the IP enforcement coordinator will play a meaningful role in copyright and IP policy in the White House, said David Sohn, senior policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT).
"What the person in that position is able to achieve and how much prominence they will have is hard to tell," he said.
While the administration has yet to take any significant actions on the IP front, the Justice Department did intervene last month in a file-sharing case in which it sided with the record label plaintiff.
Obama's endorsement of strong but reasonable intellectual property enforcement generally aligns with the Bush administration's position. President Bush's White House endorsed the legislation that created the IP enforcement coordinator position, after it was stripped of its more extreme provisions.
The Obama White House has yet to greatly diverge from the Bush administration on another tech policy item critical to the nation's economy--cybersecurity--but that could change dramatically in the coming weeks.
Bush in 2008 gave the Homeland Security Department jurisdiction over the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, a new program to coordinate cybersecurity efforts. The program has come under harsh scrutiny, however, and President Obama in February called for a comprehensive, two-month review of all federal cybersecurity efforts. He selected Melissa Hathaway, who worked for the director of national intelligence in the Bush administration, to conduct the review.
The final review was sent to the president for his approval but has yet to be publicly released. Hathaway last week indicated that it may recommend shifting cybersecurity responsibility away from DHS to the White House.
"Signs so far say there will be at least one major difference (from Bush cybersecurity policy) in terms of transparency," said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel for CDT. "The review team's process has so far been transparent, and they've involved stakeholders from industry, Congress, and privacy and advocacy groups. If that carries forth into the execution of the policy, it would be a very good sign and a significant departure from President Bush's approach."
While Obama may be able to learn from Bush's mistakes in the realm of cybersecurity, he also has the fortuitous advantage of having a green light from Congress to invest in new, major initiatives that his predecessor did not.
Doctors and hospitals will have to digitize their patients' medical records under Obama's watch or face eventual penalties under the electronic health record provisions of the stimulus package. The stimulus bill dedicated $19 billion for the digitization of medical records, which Obama has called the "low-hanging fruit" of health care reform.
Challenges to IT adoption ahead
It may be easy in comparison to comprehensive health care reform, but experts say there are dizzying challenges to information technology adoption in the health sector. It is so challenging that it took the current economic crisis to jump-start the process, even though the and called for health IT adoption years ago.
"I think it was a game-changer for (Obama's) entire economic agenda," said Scott, of Free Press.
In the five years Scott has spent advocating for broadband deployment, he said, it has been difficult to envision investments of even around $200 million--much less the $7.2 billion for broadband included in the stimulus.
Back in September 2008, former FCC Chairman Michael Powell said at an FCC forum that it would be unrealistic to entertain "the idea that there's money to get people to dig up streets and put in fiber."
Now, Scott says, it's possible the $7 billion in broadband stimulus funds could be the first of regular annual investments, if the Universal Service Fund is revised to subsidize broadband infrastructure rather than just telephone service.
"The stimulus bill gave the administration an instant opportunity to implement a new theory of broadband policy, which is to begin treating Internet access as a public good, not as a private good," Scott said. "When you put $7 billion in broadband infrastructure, that is a policy which is really unprecedented and positive."
Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, agreed that the stimulus reflects Obama's commitment to advancing the use of technology, whether through the modernization of the health care system or the expansion of broadband. A commitment to technology is likely to be manifest in the president's procurement policies, regulatory changes, and in other areas.
He said it is doubtful, though, the president will be able to promote spending on technology at a significant level ever again.
"While I think the administration has a deep commitment to public investment in these areas, there are going to be so many priorities in other areas that risk crowding them out," Atkinson said. "The stimulus was a one-time opportunity that doesn't come around very often."
