To listen to the debates over IT policy in the U.S. these days, it would be easy for a casual observer to believe that the U.S. has only one policy goal for the digital economy: spurring broadband deployment and adoption.
Conference after conference, blog after blog, report after report are devoted to broadband. Don't get me wrong, we at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) -- a nonpartisan think tank -- are all for broadband, having held many of these conferences and written many of these blog postings and reports.
In fact, ITIF has written more than 10 major reports on broadband policy over the last 18 months. We have explored why the U.S. is lagging behind the international broadband curve; why we need a national broadband policy; the right way to think about broadband competition; and why overly stringent network management regulations will stifle broadband evolution.
But while broadband is important, it's not everything.
In fact, broadband is just one of a considerable number of key areas America needs to get right if it's to make digital progress. And by digital progress I am not talking about everyone getting a Facebook page, starting to Twitter, or reading blog posts like this one. I am not talking about this consumption side, which gets the lion's share of attention in Washington, but rather the production side of the digital economy.
By the production side, I mean digitizing our health care system and being able to mine that data to develop knowledge about what works. I mean digitizing our surface transportation system (roads, cars, and public transit) so that we can rely on much more real-time data about traffic and transit conditions, using this information for pricing and to hold governments accountable for how they spend transportation tax dollars.
Digital progress means creating a real system for identifying ourselves digitally so that we can do things like sign contracts online with digital signatures. It means developing a mobile commerce system on par with countries like Japan and Korea, so that with my cellphone or smart card I can pay at movies, stores, parking garages, vending machines, and kiosks.
It means making our environment alive with digital information, like the Web-accessible air quality monitoring system in Cambridge, Mass.; making our utility systems (electricity, water, and others) smart; working with the manufacturing sector to create digitally integrated manufacturing systems; and developing a national GIS strategy so we can finally move to a real "Internet of things."
And speaking of RFID, digital progress calls for much more widespread deployment of RFID across all supply chains, including retail.
To be sure, broadband is helpful to some if not all of these applications. But by setting our sights so low (broadband for all), we are fighting yesterday's war. We should have solved the broadband problem five years ago (as did many other nations, including Japan, Korea, and Sweden). But we were asleep at the switch, believing naively that the magic of the market would get us there.
We've made progress in the last few months, as the Obama administration and Congress have helped drive digital transformation by including in the stimulus plan sizeable investments in health care IT and smart grid (and some, of course in broadband).
Of course, the market and the private sector are integral to broadband progress specifically and to digital transformation in general, but absent committed, sustained, and strategic actions by government to drive digital transformation, we will continue to get further and further behind other nations, and more importantly, behind the digital technology possibility curve.
So the next time someone says "broadband," say, "Thanks, I've already done that. I'm working on America's digital transformation."
Nice article & very timely. If internet speed is increased 5x, it does not mean that you can do five times 'more' things or the 'utility of those things' would become 5x.
Broadband is just the speed- only a single piece of a much larger picture. High speed data is the facilitator, not the enabler. We need more pieces like comprehension, accuracy, interfaces with real world & real devices to complete the picture-of-our-digital-future & to take the show to the next level of evolution.
IMO the maturity in our digital age will come with a key milestone. Instead of USING Internet to do things, we use Internet to do things FOR us. Beyond receiving alerts & easing communication, internet would use tools like virtual assistants, exploration of deep web, multi-layered A2A & the like to DO MORE for us.
I slogged through the BTOP RFI mega page. The vast majority of it was people saying Broadband is good. The actual RFI asked for specific ways to solve the problem and raise the level of Mbps for the rural community. The number of actual solutions offered was woefully small. One stood out from the crowd. A company Called Telepulse Technologies actually offered what looked to me like an action plan that would level the broadband playing field and raise the standards for EVERYONE.It was based on some wiz-bang they created called DTMD.I do not know if this DTMD works or where it works and where it doesn’t but it looked like radically more Mbps for radically less $$$.Rather than shovel out billions to the usual suspects and get the usual non-results why not take a look at new technologies like this one.Even if we are wrong on this we can stimulate some actual new ideas for the phone system. Stimulus…get it
Excellent perspective and I could not agree more. Actually, the disjointed way we are going about digital transformation is wasting time and resources. This is like if we had all tried to build the national highway system by linking our own individual roads - we would never have gotten there!
There clearly needs to be a common vision that guides and directs the private enterprise and then adds value to the systems created.
I think other parts of the world are further ahead because they have a greater need for connectivity and less investment in alternatives. The net result may be that they pull ahead of us.
="And Cyborg, while security can certainly get better, I would counter with the question, why have other nations made more progress, when using essentially the same IT systems and security."
talk about ducking the question !!
the issue is that computer security today is in poor shape: 2008 was a banner year for hacking
and you want us to do banking, contracts and medical records over the net?
the computers that are used as communication nodes on the net must be secure before they can be used for commercial business. you are already using them for business before the security question is addressed and with predictable result: you have a mess on your hands.
now go back and wash the dishes before you can go out to play.
I want to thank folks for their thoughtful comments on my post. With regard to Paul Whyte's comment, its true that much of the lag is in areas with more of a public sector involvement, but I would argue that there are also many areas where the private sector's progress is not anywhere near fast enough: why not more mobile commerce in the US to match rates in Japan? why not vastly more self-serve kiosks? Why isnt the discount e-realty industry more than a small sideline? etc.
Regarding hounhosp's point question "do we need to digitize everything to think we are making progress", I would say "yes we do." or more seriously, we need to make robust and sustained progress toward widspread digitization to get real progress. Because absent this, its difficult to increase productivity, wages and standard of living.
Amy, I agree that one of the challenges we have is balkinization. We see it in Health IT, smart grid, ITS, and a host of other areas. I looks like one reason why Japan and Korea lead in some of these areas is because they are able to have real coordination and common standards.
And Cyborg, while security can certainly get better, I would counter with the question, why have other nations made more progress, when using essentially the same IT systems and security.
This is also an important angle of the problem. The key message of the article from my standpoint is that we need quickly to promote the multi-dimensional role of broadband to other sectors of the economy and not only to ICT industry.
At the same time, educating and informing citizens can increase the number of people involved and help communities make better use of broadband for personal and society welfare.
RDA: you have got to fix the security problem before you can go on with all this good stuff
I don't mean patched
I mean FIXED
="By the production side, I mean digitizing our health care system and being able to mine that data to develop knowledge about what works. I mean digitizing our surface transportation system (roads, cars, and public transit) so that we can rely on much more real-time data about traffic and transit conditions, using this information for pricing and to hold governments accountable for how they spend transportation tax dollars.
Digital progress means creating a real system for identifying ourselves digitally so that we can do things like sign contracts online with digital signatures. It means developing a mobile commerce system on par with countries like Japan and Korea, so that with my cellphone or smart card I can pay at movies, stores, parking garages, vending machines, and kiosks.
I hear you, Amy. As various standards and interest groups weigh in, a decent and noble project can get pretty much bogged down. It's like overloading an aircraft so heavily it can't take off.
Too many cooks ... It's time for a few of them to step aside and allow others to take the helm.
Whenever I think that I've made a major realization that puts me "ahead of the pack," I find a lot of other people that already know what I just discovered.
Amen and kudos.
In the past two years, it has become increasingly obvious to me that information technology needs more information. Valuable content producers are a rare commodity -- such that a single content provider (like a decent cartoonist) can "change the game" for an entire web-based business. While ten thousand teenagers whining about their relationships does little or nothing.
I think we've nearly exhausted the "information consumption" technologies that can be created without generating more "real" data to share. I've brushed off my Electrical Engineering books and started programming microcontrollers with the hope of building some "information creation" tools that will allow me to build a website with some real value.
I'm glad you brought up the smart grid, Mary. And I'm glad for Robert's reminder that it's not all about how fast one can download Season V of "The L Word."
Much as I appreciate Robert's vision of what digital transformation would look like and the cost, time and other benefits that would accrue to people, companies and countries, aren't there too many disparate entities, each charged with digitizing their own little corner of their industry or region, to ever attain the kind of seamlessness alluded to in this elegant article?
As an example, regional, state and federal government entities may commonly seek to deliver electricity through smart networks that recognize, compensate for and track demand surges or drops, but their disparate politics/policies/servers/you name it can only stand in the way of the kind of transformation a South Korea or a Denmark has been able to attain.
What standards can possibly guide the movement toward true digital transformation? Who puts them out there--the IETF, the UN, the White House? The EU? PUCs? How can such a transformation be accomplished *without* industry's agenda infiltrating <and tainting> these noble goals?
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