POLICIES AND POLITICS

The world’s trading partners have differing views of governments’ role in IT implementation (Fagerberg et al., 2004). Governments, businesses, and users have concerns about ownership, access, and distribution of information. Governments play a major role in emphasizing the importance of telecommu- nications to national and business infrastructures by building and maintaining national backbones and helping to provide gateways to other nations. While a few governments still treat IT policy as part of the national science policy, most governments have realized the need to treat science policy and IT policy as two separate entities (Metcalfe, 1995).

In the early 1980s, the Singapore government initiated and established the fi rst formal IT policy in 1980. It was expanded in 1986 to include communica- tion infrastructure as a key element of the new national IT strategy. The National

192 Shayo et al.

Computer Board in Singapore in 1992 announced the IT2000 Plan, resulting in the creation in 1998 of SingaporeOne, the world’s fi rst nationwide broadband network. Today, this network covers 99% of the island and has direct connectivity to all the key cities in Asia Pacifi c.

In September 1993, the United States government introduced the National Information Infrastructure Initiative (NIII), the main thrust of which was to link businesses, governments, researchers, educators, and the general public with telecom- munications networks that will provide access to huge information resource databases from anywhere, anytime. Individuals and organizations will have access to educational resources, healthcare data, and government information. They will also have the ability to conduct e-commerce transactions. Whereas the Offi ce of Science and Technology Policy continued to coordinate overall research and development activities in the country, responsibility for the implementation of the NIII was distributed among the various government departments, such as the department of energy and the department of commerce. Each department subsequently developed its own information policy under the NIII (IT21, 1999). For example, through the Internet Two Initiative, the Department of Education wants every school in the United States to have access to the Internet. Internet penetration as a percentage of the population in the United States increased from 54% in 2001 to 68% in 2005. By 2007, it is estimated that more than 70% of all U. S. workers will have Internet access.

Inspired by the NIII effort in the U. S., the E.U. launched the European Information Society project in the same year. The Bangemann Report detailed the overall IT vision for the E. U. The main objective was to narrow the digital divide between Europe and the U. S., and to maintain global competitiveness of European enterprises. (Anttiroiko, 2001). Each member of the E. U. has embarked on initiatives that clearly demonstrate commitment toward creating a global mar- ketplace. For example, the Danish government is aggressively pushing the country toward a virtual workplace. It developed a technical blueprint for achieving this goal, including a plan to have 75% of households equipped with personal comput- ers and modems by the year 2000. Estimates indicate that by 2005, almost 20% of Denmark’s work force will comprise teleworkers (Jensen, 2000).

Although the general thrust by governments toward creating a virtual national community is not yet commonplace worldwide, some countries’ political commitment to building virtual communities is noteworthy because it is the government that is taking the responsibility to create the foundation for change.

POLICIES AND POLITICS