Government and Business Announce Joint Effort to Assist NYC Businesses

Washington, DC - The Commerce Department, in conjunction with Information Technology (IT) industry leaders and a coalition of New York City, state and business executives, today unveiled WWW.NYITASSIST.COM. This Web site provides a list of IT services and component suppliers to small and medium sized businesses in New York that were adversely affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11th.

Commerce Secretary Don Evans hailed the cooperative effort, emphasizing that "this partnership between industry and government illustrates the kind of hands-on immediate assistance we can provide when we work together."

"I am especially thankful for the IT businesses who have offered price reductions or at-cost services to help these small and medium size businesses get back up and running," continued Evans.

WWW.NYITASSIST.COM, is part of a larger effort to provide rebuilding resources to impacted businesses. This initiative, known as ReSTART Central, WWW.RESTARTCENTRAL.COM,is delivering broad recovery assistance through a coalition of the New York City Mayor's Office, the Empire State Development Corporation, and the New York City Partnership and Chamber of Commerce.

Knowing that New York companies, particularly the smaller ones, would face tremendous challenges in locating and ordering necessary IT products and services quickly and inexpensively, Intel Corporation championed an industry response to help the affected businesses. Within days a coalition was formed to produce a web-based clearinghouse and design a registry for suppliers to list available goods and services. The Department of Commerce's Technology Administration (TA) joined the effort by establishing a fellowship agreement with Intel to increase public awareness of the NYITASSIST.COM resource.

The site now contains a list of New York area IT services and components suppliers that are committed to helping business return to business as quickly as possible. A hotline also is being established to provide assistance to companies that do not have access to the Internet (1-877-727-7567).

In addition to Intel, some of the other industry leaders offering assistance at www.nyitassist.com include Accenture, AOL, IBM, Intel and Siemens. More assistance is still needed. Suppliers are invited to visit the website to list the IT services and resources available.