The Digital Opportunity Investment Trust: A Digital Gift to the Nation

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The Digital Opportunity Investment TrustA
Digital Gift to the Nation

• Lawrence K. Grossman
• Newton N. Minow
• Co-Chairmen
• Anne G. Murphy
• Project Director

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Needs and Opportunities

• Information Technology has already begun to
  revolutionize much of todays society --
  industry, finance, entertainment, communications,
  national defense
• Many of the required information technologies
  exist, but have not yet been integrated into
  education and training environments
• Many of the efforts underway in education are
  developed in isolation with inadequate funding to
  achieve goals or make intended impact

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Needs and Opportunities (contd)

• Information ? knowledge
• Vast amounts of learning content exist, but have
  not yet been digitized
• Advances in IT have the potential to transform
  the knowledge landscape

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Precedents

• Once each century,
• during a time of grave national crisis,
• our country has made a bold investment
• in transforming education.

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• In the 18th Century
• The Northwest Ordinance set aside public land for
  the creation of public schools.
• In the 19th Century
• The Land-Grant Colleges Act set aside public land
  for every state to pay for public higher
  education.
• In the 20th Century
• The GI Bill offered opportunities for higher
  learning to millions of American veterans.

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The 21st Century Challenge

• Public Education
• Needs advanced learning programs to support
  teachers and make learning more engaging for
  students
• Libraries, Museums, Universities, Cultural
  Organizations
• Need to make their collections available beyond
  their walls and to serve as navigators in the
  vast sea of information that is available
• The Nations Workers
• Need re-training to keep pace with the changing
  workplace

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The DO IT Proposal

• The Federal Government Establish an independent
  educational trust fund to meet the urgent need to
  transform learning and training in the 21st
  Century
• The Digital Opportunity Investment Trust (DO IT)
• The Trust Financed by revenue from auctions and
  fees authorized by Congress from commercial use
  of publicly owned electromagnetic spectrum
• Purpose To spur innovative uses for information
  technology to transform research, teaching,
  scholarly communication and lifelong learning and
  training

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DO IT will do for research, education, and
training what THE NATIONAL SCIENCE
FOUNDATION does for science, THE NATIONAL
INSTITUTES OF HEALTH do for health, and THE
DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY does
for national defense.
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Purposes of the Trust

• Research and Development
• Digitization
• Prototypes
• Standards and Practices

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Possible Trust Activities

• Digitize the collections of our libraries,
  universities and museums thus creating a massive
  knowledge repository for lifelong learning.
• Stimulate new research and learning by making
  special collections and hidden collections
  accessible.
• Fund RD and projects that would create
  innovative paths to content.
• Build partnerships to stimulate creative research
  and development projects that will lead to
  transformations in the way we teach, learn and do
  research.
• Provide federal level spotlight on these efforts.

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Possible Trust Activities (contd)

• Address intellectual property and standards
  issues
• Create new tools to
• aid in the authentication/validation of content
  and preservation of data
• automate (or semi-automate) content and metadata
  creation
• enhance access to special collections
• Develop other applications and services to
  improve multimedia information retrieval

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Funding

• In the 21st century, we should use proceeds from
  publicly-owned spectrum to help transform
  education for generations of Americans
• This could amount to 20 billion for the Trust
• Invested in Government notes and bonds, this
  would generate income of 1 billion per year for
  the Trusts grants and contracts

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• In the emerging information economy, there is no
  more valuable public asset than the airwaves
  the electromagnetic spectrum
• Congress mandated the FCC to conduct auctions for
  new licenses for their commercial use
• These auctions are expected to generate billions
  of dollars
• In past centuries, we used proceeds from public
  land to fund public education

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The Road Weve Traveled

• 2000 - Idea is born
• 2001 - Published Digital Gift to the Nation
• 2002 - Coalitions developed. Leadership
  committees formed to guide the project. First
  legislation drafted
• 2003 - Appropriations received report
  commissioned and delivered to Congress.
• 2004 - Legislation drafted introduced in House
  and Senate. 2nd appropriation received to
  outline a management plan.

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2005

• Developing with Federation of American
  Scientists, 3 exemplar projects that will
  demonstrate the potential of new learning
  environments.
• Increasing public awareness of the project and
  its aims through meetings and forums.
• Planning for roundtable discussions to assist in
  developing a management structure for the Trust
• Soliciting recommendations for nominations to the
  Board

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The Legislative Roadmap
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Insiders Secret

• What you think will happen probably wont.
• Everything takes longer than you think it will.
• You need to be very flexible when dealing with
  The Hill.

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Four Possible Vehicles for DO IT
DO IT
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Next Steps

• Bicameral and bipartisan legislation will be
  introduced in next few weeks
• House sponsors Reps R. Regula (R-OH), E. Markey
  (D-MA)
• Senate sponsors Sens. R. Durbin (D-IL), C. Dodd
  (D-CT) O. Snowe (R-ME)
• Seeking Additional Sponsors
• Constituent contact with House and Senate Members
• Committee hearings to be held in this Congress

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What You Can Do To Help

• Personal contacts with legislators
• Submit an op-ed in support of DO IT to your local
  paper
• Engage your personal and professional colleagues
  in support of the initiative
• Hold a regional forum

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Digital Promise Leadership Council

• Lawrence K. Grossman,
• Co-Chairman
• Digital Promise Project
• Newton N. Minow, Co-Chairman
  
• Digital Promise Project
• Maxwell Anderson, Leadership Fellow Chief
  Executive Leadership Institute, Yale School of
  Management
• Morton Bahr, President
• Communications Workers of America
• Ellsworth Brown, President
• Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Carnegie
  Museums of Pittsburgh

• Dr. Robert N. Butler, President
• International Longevity Center, USA and Former
  Director, National Institute of Aging
• William M. Daley, Chairman for the Midwest, J.P.
  Morgan Chase Co. and Former U.S. Secretary of
  Commerce
• John Doerr, Venture Capitalist
• Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers
• Eamon Kelly, Former Chairman
• National Science Board and
• President Emeritus, Tulane University

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Digital Promise Leadership Council (Contd)

• Bob Kerrey, Former Senator and
• President, New School University
• Donald N. Langenberg, Chancellor Emeritus
• University System of Maryland
• Leon Lederman, Director Emeritus Fermi National
  Accelerator Laboratory and
• Nobel Laureate in Physics
• George Lucas, Chairman
• The George Lucas Educational Foundation

• Alan G. Merten, President
• George Mason University
• Luis Proenza, President
• University of Akron
• Martin E. Segal,
• Chairman Emeritus
• Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
• Charles M. Vest, President
• M.I.T.
• Irving Wladawsky-Berger,
• Vice-President
• Technology and Strategy, IBM

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Digital Promise Leadership CoalitionOrganizations
Actively Supporting DO IT
Academic Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Co-Laboratory American Arts Alliance American Association of Museums American Council on Education American Educational Research Association American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO American Library Association American Society for Training Development (ASTD) Americans for the Arts Apple Tree Institute for Education Innovation Association of American Universities Association of Art Museum Directors Association of Independent Technological Universities Association of Public Television Stations Association of Research Libraries Communication Workers of America, AFL-CIO Computing Research Association
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Digital Promise Leadership CoalitionOrganizations
Actively Supporting DO IT (contd)

• Consortium for School Networking
• Digital Library Federation
• EDUCAUSE
• E-thepeople
• Federation of American Scientists
• George Lucas Educational Foundation
• International Longevity Center
• International Society for Technology in Education
  (ISTE)
• Libraries for the Future

• National Association of State Universities and
  Land Grant Colleges
• National Education Association
• National Humanities Alliance
• National Initiative for a Networked Cultural
  Heritage (NINCH)
• National School Boards Association
• New America Foundation
• OneCleveland
• U.S. Conference of Mayors

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• For more information on DO IT
• events and current developments visit

www.digitalpromise.org or email info_at_digitalpro
mise.org
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• We need your help in making this real.
• We hope you will join us.

• TOGETHER WE CAN DO IT.