================================================================= ALAWON Volume 6, Number 35 ISSN 1069-7799 May 15, 1997 American Library Association Washington Office Newsline In this issue: (116 lines) ALA SUBMITS COMMENTS ON DRAFT NEXT GENERATION INTERNET INITIATIVE CONCEPT PAPER _________________________________________________________________ ALA SUBMITS COMMENTS ON DRAFT NEXT GENERATION INTERNET INITIATIVE CONCEPT PAPER The Clinton Administration has proposed a Next Generation Internet (NGI) Initiative involving research and development programs across federal agencies, with $100 million requested for FY98 (see the April 29 ALAWON, v6, n29). The Advisory Committee on High-Performance Computing and Communications, Information Technology and the Next Generation Internet had input into the draft NGI Initiative concept paper -- which outlined the concepts and goals of the initiative -- and will be commenting further on it. Two members of the Advisory Committee -- Ching Chih Chen, professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College and Sherrilynne Fuller, director of the Health Sciences Libraries and Information Center, University of Washington -- bring library experience to this committee. Public comments to the draft NGI initiative concept paper were requested by May 15. A summary of the comments submitted by ALA is as follows: "Above all, we are concerned with useability. We want to assure that the network of the future is accessible to and usable by everyone, and that the benefits of the NGI Initiative flow broadly to individual users and organizations. We have five specific recommendations: 1. Progress toward the NGI should be evolutionary; interoperability with the first generation Internet should be a major goal. Individual and organizational users have made large investments in current technology. It is also our impression that the information industry and services providers are investing heavily in improvements to the capacity and reliability of current architecture. An NGI research program must be compatible with these private endeavors. The program should be framed as a full partnership between government, industry, and public institutions. 2. To be consistent with the President's announcement last October, the budget must more strongly reflect a civilian focus. In particular, the role of the National Science Foundation (whose share was only $10 million of the $100 million proposed in the FY 1998 budget) should be significantly expanded. NSF is the agency with the broadest charter in support of a wide range of education and research efforts. 3. The NGI program needs to have an explicit applications component and budget. High-end applications and fundamental network architecture are closely interdependent, and a research program focused on simply enhancing basic network capabilities without a sensitivity to application requirements would run the risk of creating unusable or under used capabilities. Since technology flowing from the NGI program is intended to be eventually adopted by a larger user community, more thought is needed towards areas such as libraries, education, museums, historical societies, the cultural community, and health. 4. A strong and specific diffusion plan should be developed to assure that the benefits of the NGI research flow not just to industry but to future government, education, arts and humanities, and library users. Such diffusion needs to be planned and encouraged, not just assumed. 5. Some important agencies and programs are noticeably absent from the draft NGI plan. In particular, the National Library of Medicine should play an explicit role in the NGI program. Digital library programs such as those at the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should be linked to the NGI effort." The full text of ALA's comments on the draft NGI Initiative concept paper is available at http://www.ala.org/washoff/ngi.html. The draft concept paper on the Next Generation Internet Initiative is available at http://www.hpcc.gov/ngi-concept-08Apr97/ _________________________________________________________________ ALAWON is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. To subscribe, send the message: subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname] to listproc @ala.org. ALAWON archives at http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. Visit our Web site at http://www.alawash.org. ALA Washington Office 202.628.8410 (V) 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, #403 202.628.8419 (F) Washington, DC 20004-1701 800.941.8478 (V) Lynne E. Bradley, Editor Deirdre Herman, Managing Editor Contributors: Carol C. Henderson Rick Weingarten All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. =================================================================