U.S. Government Helping to Promote Global Internet Revolution

By Eric Green
Washington File Staff Correspondent

Miami -- The explosive growth of the Internet and the telecommunications industry in the United States has created an economic phenomenon where supply is now outstripping demand -- 350,000 high-tech jobs in this country remain unfilled because companies can't find enough qualified people for the positions, says Regina Vargo, deputy assistant Secretary of Commerce for the Western Hemisphere.

Speaking December 10 at the conclusion of the 4-day Miami Conference on the Caribbean and Latin America, Vargo said the Internet explosion is such that "each second that I speak, three people somewhere in the world are logging onto the Internet for the first time." Vargo, who participated in a forum on electronic commerce in the Americas, said that for the three hours the forum lasted, 33,000 new Internet users had joined the global information superhighway.

Vargo noted that a Commerce Department study shows that the creation of new high-tech industries are accounting for one-third of the U.S. economic expansion, and that this explosion in Internet use is fundamentally changing the way business is being done in this country.

However, Vargo said the biggest challenge created by this new industry is how to make the new technology work for everyone -- "how do we get the most good for the greatest number" of people. Vargo suggested that the challenge facing the U.S. government in this regard is to ensure that its citizens have the "means, tools, skills and desire" to be part of the new high-tech economy.

Vargo said the government's role should be to help provide the education and training necessary to allow people to get high-tech jobs, because "you can't compete if you can't log on."

Her agency, Vargo added, recognizes that access to the Internet varies across a wide range of incomes, race, and geography, and in some cases those differences are profound. The administration's goal, she said, is to use the new technology to "bridge the gap between rich and poor" with a campaign that would make the Internet accessible to all citizens of this country, especially in poor and rural communities.

In addition, because of the administration's belief that the developing world should not be excluded from the information superhighway, the United States is working, with the help of the World Bank, to create Internet start-ups in 11 countries, with three of those countries in the Americas -- Guatemala, Jamaica and Haiti. In that last country, Peace Corps workers are helping Haitians to connect to the Internet.

Vargo said the administration rejects the notion that an overarching national or world body is needed to regulate the growth of the information technology field. For one thing, she said, it would be virtually impossible to regulate Internet growth, with thousands of new web sites being created around the world. With some exceptions, the government should let the private sector take the lead in allowing electronic commerce to fully reach its potential, she said.

Vargo said her boss, Commerce Secretary William Daley, has suggested that perhaps their department should be renamed to reflect the explosion in electronic commerce. The new name, she said, would be the "E-Commerce Department," whereby Internet users can log onto the agency's web site for up-to-the minute weather reports from Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. During this year's hurricane season in the United States, Vargo said, people who wanted to get the latest storm forecasts were logging onto the agency's National Hurricane Center web site.

As part of this move to go electronic, Vargo added, Commerce intends to have Internet users register patents on-line with the agency's Patent and Trademark Office, and to fill out data on the web site for the U.S. Census Bureau, another Commerce agency.

To illustrate the magnitude of the high-tech revolution, Vargo said she was amazed to read that a panel in Maryland voted in favor of a recommendation that the state give all of its citizens an E-mail address at birth.

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