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Tom Kalil, Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Science and Technology, gave a talk today in Technology and Policy where he discussed information technology policy he was apart of during the Clinton and Gore era. He reviewed the accomplishments of their administration, where he served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, including things like encouraging R&D, making NetDay, addressing Digital Divide issues, maximizing technology policy in the national interest, protecting children's Internet interests and preserving privacy.
Regarding NetDay, he told a story which he said has not been widely reported. Apparently, in 1995 Kalil ran into John Gage of Sun and they discussed the idea of NetDay, after which Gage sent Kalil a mock webpage promoting a day that was yet to be organized, with not-yet-enlisted sponsors such as Apple, Sun, etc. Kalil showed it to Gore, who misunderstood its purpose, and took it to Clinton and said, hey, we're in California next week, and this is going on and you should announce it there. Done! So Kalil called Gage and in one week, they pulled together support from the companies on the mock webpage, got 10,000+ volunteers and held the first event in March of 1996.
He also talked about how technology policy is different than other kinds of policy, where the challenge comes with the rapid pace of change, the few people (though growing) in government who have a background in the relevant issues and with how this area of policy can be broad and ill defined, and affect many different areas.
As for the regrets, in answer to an audience question, he said "...if I had it to do all over again, I'd take back the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act." This is because he feels that intellectual property policy is tilted too far towards the copyright industry now, and in light of Public Choice Theory, where there are concentrated benefits (for say, Disney) and diffuse costs (for say, the public domain and the public), the public loses.
The other regret was over encryption policy, where the FBI/NSA believed that even though encryption technologies were available over the web, verses say being included in a Windows OS, that having restrictive policies in place were better. He said the NSA believes that everyday you can delay those technologies from being standard in systems is a good day. So the administration would have people laughing at their encryption policy but NSA types happy with it.
Interesting talk by the guy whose current job is to think strategically about organizing technology and science developed at UC. The class is full of CS, Mech Eng, law, SIMS, Biz, Public Policy and Journalism grad students who can look forward to an outstanding line up of technology and policy speakers.
Links here to papers by Kalil on Leveraging Cyberspace, The Case for Putting Internet Applications on the Policy Agenda and A Broader Vision for Government Research.
Posted by Mary Hodder at September 03, 2003 11:01 PMI've got to thank you, Mary... for lighting the fire that has resulted in this class. It's a whole lot of fun and I can imagine there's not much like it anywhere else.