Several issues have arisen in the discussion of the National Information Infrastructure since the subject was first raised by then-Senator Al Gore, Jr. during the 1992 Presidential campaign. U.S. industry was at first concerned that the infrastructure would be created and run by the Federal government, counter to the long tradition in the United States of private sector ownership of telecom- munications systems. Over the course of time, the government's role has been clarified: to focus on the crucial issues of information and telecommunications policy, to simultaneously encourage private sector development of new information and communications technologies, and to protect citizens' rights of access and privacy in the electronic age, balanced with law enforcement and national security concerns.
Moreover, the Federal government has a critical role to play to reduce the risk in creating a National Information Infrastructure, while ensuring that the technology will be cost effective and appropriate for developing implementations to the National Challenge applications. Information infrastructure technologies will play a critical role in the Federal government's own plans to re-engineer its work processes. In a recent articulation of the government's role in information infrastructure, Vice President Gore has drawn an analogy between the NII and the first use of telegraphy in a limited government-sponsored demonstration (between Washington and Baltimore), subsequently followed by widespread private sector deployment on a national scale.
The HPCC-sponsored gigabit testbeds offer an attractive model for government- industry-academic research partnerships, and represent a strategic resource upon which to build prototype implementations of the National Challenge applications. Each testbed, cost-shared between government and the private sector, brings together companies from the computer and telecommunications industries, research groups from universities and the National Laboratories, and applications developers from the leading centers of high performance computing. A critical function of the testbeds is to experiment with high risk networking technology while driving the early-stage development of interoperability.
The gigabit testbeds will continue to examine the next generation of high speed networking technologies, while also integrating more diverse communications modes like satellite and cable distribution. However, some portion of the gigabit testbeds will be transitioned into a more operational mode (where these capabilities are not duplicated by commercially available services) to support advanced National Challenge applications prototyping teams. These will provide a crucial research tool with which to experiment with new kinds of information services, intelligent interfaces both for users and machines, and new systems development environments. As the HPCC Program expands to encompass new kinds of applications challenges, a critical need will be to nurture interdisciplinary National Challenge applications prototyping teams with access to the network testbeds.
Will government in general, and the HPCC Program in particular, implement the National Challenge applications? In some cases, such as environmental monitoring, the answer is clearly yes. Because of the risks involved or the government's being the only customer, the private sector will not undertake such development efforts. However many of the National Challenges, from health care to education and training to design and manufacturing, will require very substantial investments by the private sector. Government's first role is to be the patient investor underwriting the development of early technologies. Its second role is to foster interoperability at an early stage of development by sponsoring extensive testbed demonstrations with the private sector.