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President's Information Technology Advisory Committee |
February 2, 2000
Co-Chairs:
Raj Reddy
Irving Wladawsky-Berger
Members:
Eric A. Benhamou
Vinton Cerf
Ching-chih Chen
David Cooper
Steven D. Dorfman
David Dorman
Robert Ewald
David J. Farber
Sherrilynne S. Fuller
Hector Garcia-Molina
Susan L. Graham
James N. Gray
W. Daniel Hillis
Bill Joy
Robert E. Kahn
Ken Kennedy
John P. Miller
David C. Nagel
Edward H. Shortliffe
Larry Smarr
Joe F. Thompson
Leslie Vadasz
Andrew J. Viterbi
Steven J. Wallach
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The President of the United States
The White House
Dear Mr. President:
PITAC is enthusiastic about the way this nation, both public and private
sectors, has begun to develop the necessary strategies to resolve
the Digital Divide. In our report to you last February, Information
Technology Research: Investing in Our Future, we called for policy
decisions and research to help our nation better understand the impact
of information technology on the society. Part of this effort includes
the access issue, which is at the heart of the Digital Divide discussion.
Clearly, if the nation is to realize the vision of a transformed American
society that we articulated in our report, it is essential to ensure
that all Americans have access to the information infrastructure,
along with the relevant tools and skills necessary to fully participate
in the information age.
On October 19, 1999, the PITAC held a conference to explore this issue.
Resolving the Digital Divide: Information, Access, and Opportunity,
hosted in association with the Joint Center for Political and Economic
Studies and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars,
focused on information technology access for racial and ethnic groups
in the U.S.. The conference report and a brief summary of the major
findings are attached. We are planning two additional conferences
in the coming year on the issues of geographic disparities and small
university access to information tools.
One of the major conclusions of our October conference is that a national
initiative is required to close the gap between the information haves
and have-nots. Thus, we were very encouraged by your December 9 Executive
Memorandum, Narrowing the "Digital Divide:" Creating Opportunities
for All Americans in the Information Age, directing various cabinet
agencies to develop strategies and strengthen programs to make information
infrastructure accessible to the information "have-nots." We believe
that attention to Digital Divide issues is a national imperative,
and this type of leadership provides a much needed catalyst to better
understand them and develop meaningful strategies to address the issues.
PITAC would like to work with you to foster the efforts of government,
industry, academia and non-profit sectors to ensure that partnerships
and properly coordinated activities will help to resolve the digital
divide in the near-term. We hope that the findings of our October
conference and those planned for later in 2000 will help guide the
development of a more comprehensive national agenda for advancing
opportunity among individuals and institutions in the digital society.
We look forward to continuing to advise you on these important issues.
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Sincerely,
Raj Reddy
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Irving Wladawsky-Berger
Co-Chairman
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c/o National Coordination Office for Computing, Information, and Communications
4201 Wilson Boulevard · Suite 690 ·
Arlington, VA 22230
(703) 306-4722
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