In the May 31, 2002 Issue:

Copyright State Science & Technology Institute 2003. Information in this issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest was prepared under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration. Redistribution to all others interested in tech-based economic development is strongly encouraged — please cite the State Science & Technology Institute whenever portions are reproduced or redirected. Any opinions expressed in the Digest do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

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Seattle Demonstrates Models for Digital Divide Success
While Congress debates whether or not it should fund national programs to address the Digital Divide, many communities continue their efforts to ensure all local residents have the technology training and access needed to secure high-quality employment and attain skills through lifelong learning. The City of Seattle, through its Department of Information Technology, may offer one of the more sophisticated and successful models for approaching the issue.

With guidance provided by the City's Citizens Telecommunications and Technology Advisory Board (CTTAB), Seattle has identified a number of appropriate roles for the city to play in addressing the Digital Divide, including: access provider, strategic planning, data collection and mapping, technical advisor, coordinating resource development, Web hosting, funding community technology centers and literacy efforts, and promoting civic use of technology.

The department's Community Technology Program includes a Citizens Literacy and Access Fund, which supports a number of community technology centers and digital divide research projects. Monies for the fund, estimated to be approximately $400,000 this year, are derived from cable franchise fees. Grants to community technology centers (CTCs) have been used by some recipients in the past to match or leverage grants from federal programs such as the Technology Opportunities Program in the U.S. Department of Commerce or the U.S. Department of Education's Community Technology Centers program.

The Seattle Community Technology Program also supports an aggressive research program and indicators project to assess the need for and shape of its efforts. The program has released several reports looking at IT usage and Digital Divide issues.

In Sustainability Strategies for Community Technology Centers in Seattle, released in the last two weeks, "sustainability" is defined as "the long-term ability of CTCs to maintain or improve their capacity to deliver services." Functioning CTCs, according to the report, have seven operational elements in common:

The report highlights some of the challenges present in the above elements, as well as strategies to help meet them, addressing the question, "Since Centers vary in size, structure, affiliation, and overall mission, how can strategies that work at one CTC be successfully applied by others?"

The principal challenge, the report suggests, is to consider how CTCs can work together without giving up what they do best individually, including their ability "to adapt their operations to the needs of those who form their core constituencies." Four models of sustained service delivery and public access differ in the amount they must tap resources to be successful, the report states. The models — Pure Enterprise Model, Pure Service Model, "Affinity Group" Model and "Association" Model — are provided as grounds for discussion among the City of Seattle, CTC managers and funders.

The 2000-2001 Information Technology Indicators for a Healthy Community Report presents the first set of measurements describing the state of information technology as it impacts the social, economic and cultural health of Seattle. A chapter is dedicated to business and industrial issues, particularly workforce development and connectivity.

Conducted in November of 2000 as a part of the Indicators Project, the Residential Technology Survey takes into account 1,011 interviews completed via a random sampling procedure. The study measures the following:

Most residents have access to computers and the Internet, the survey notes, but significant divides remain. The survey shows 88 percent of respondents have a computer at home, work or another location, and 82 percent of respondents generally have access to the Internet. Of those who do not have access to a computer, 56 percent are 65 years or older. Similar divides are shown among varying income and education levels.

A similar study of the city's small business community is underway, and the results will be released this summer. Preliminary results of a survey of technology integration in the nonprofit community have been published online as well.

More information on the City of Seattle Department of Information Technology and CTTAB is available at:
http://www.cityofseattle.net/tech/default.htm

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Less R, More D in Defense R&D Bills
Emphasis in the defense research agenda would continue to shift toward advanced technology development and defense-wide programs in Fiscal Year 2003, based on the House and Senate versions of the defense authorization bills that have cleared the respective armed services committees. [Note: authorization bills set the parameters for program spending levels; Congress must pass separate appropriation bills each year to allocate funds to specific programs or agencies.]

According to a synopsis provided in FYI #64, the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Bulletin of Science Policy News (May 30, 2002), spending for applied research will very likely decrease while basic research gets mixed signals between House and Senate versions of the bill. Advanced technology development could see an increase of 8-9.4 percent.

Three categories of R&D spending — basic, applied, and advanced technology development — are referred in defense community lingo as 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3. The table below presents AIP's summary statistics for each category of spending and each defense component. After passage in the House and Senate, differences between the two bills will be reconciled in conference.

Agency/Category House Senate
Army
6.1 (basic)
6.2 (applied)
6.3 (adv. tech. dev.)
Total		 up 2.6%
down 23.3%
down 7.4%
down 13.3%		 up 7.8%
down 19.6%
down 2.3%
down 8.8%
Navy
6.1 (basic)
6.2 (applied)
6.3 (adv. tech. dev.)
Total		 up 1.7%
down 15.8%
down 6.7%
down 8.5%		 up 3.7%
down 21.6%
down 23.2%
down 17.3%
Air Force
6.1 (basic)
6.2 (applied)
6.3 (adv. tech. dev.)
Total		 down 0.9%
up 1.2%
up 38.6%
up 14.6%		 down 3.1%
down 4.8%
up 1.8%
down 2.2%
Defense-wide
6.1 (basic)
6.2 (applied)
6.3 (adv. tech. dev.)
Total		 down 6.4%
up 4.3%
up 15.5%
up 8.5%		 up 2.1%
up 16.4%
up 27.5%
up 20.1%
Aggregate DOD
6.1 (basic)
6.2 (applied)
6.3 (adv. tech. dev.)
Total		 down 1.6%
down 6.3%
up 9.4%
up 1.4%		 up 2.7%
down 2.8%
up 8.0%
up 2.8%


AIP's FYI #64, which includes excerpts from the committee reports that reference particular programs, is available at:
http://www.aip.org/enews/fyi/

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Competitiveness Institute Reviews Ontario's Industry Clusters
The Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity — the research arm of Ontario's Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress — has released a comprehensive view of Ontario's industry clusters, showing for the first time how they compare with similar clusters in other provinces and U.S. states.

A View of Ontario: Ontario's Clusters of Innovation serves as the Institute's first Working Paper on Ontario's competitiveness, productivity and economic progress. It draws on the analytical approach of Harvard Business School's Michael Porter and is the result of collaboration with the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard.

The paper shows Ontario to have an above average share of its employment in traded clusters, led by business services, financial services, and the automotive industry. It further compares Ontario's top 10 clusters with those of Alberta, Michigan, Illinois and Massachusetts and profiles additional clusters, including pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.

Building on research from Statistics Canada, the paper points to three possible causes for sluggish income growth — low productivity, not enough people working in high-productivity jobs, and a poor record of innovation and upgrading by industry.

A View of Ontario: Ontario's Clusters of Innovation is available at: http://www.competeprosper.ca/public/wp01.pdf

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NASA, BIO Partner for BioSpace Research
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe and Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) President Carl B. Feldbaum signed a
memorandum of understanding this week to expand cooperation between NASA and the biotechnology industry.

Biotechnology research already is being integrated into NASA's programs. For example, the upcoming launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour to the International Space Station (ISS) will transport a biotechnology company's experiment to the station that will compare human liver-cell function in space with that on Earth. This research could aid in the development of treatments for people in need of liver transplants.

Feldbaum said at the signing, "This agreement underscores the existing convergence of space technology and biotechnology. We've already seen biotech research underway in space. This agreement will promote investment by the biotechnology industry in commercial space development for the benefit of patients, consumers and our economy."

The memorandum establishes three goals of collaboration:

NASA will utilize space as a laboratory to test the fundamental principles of chemistry and biology, and BIO will provide the industry support needed to maximize both the research and potential commercial opportunities. NASA also will be participating at BIO conferences and meetings.

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Lincoln Charts TBED Strategy; Calls for Business Leadership
A wake-up call. That's what the final report of the Lincoln Technology Council said the city received after learning one of its top employers was expanding its operations in a nearby city instead of Lincoln because of perceived weaknesses in Lincoln's telecommunications infrastructure. The result was Mayor Don Wesely creating the Mayor's Technology Council in February last year to "enhance the community's core technology strengths and infrastructure to achieve a competitive advantage for Lincoln as a leading city for technology-based businesses and to promote economic development."

Prepared by Kansas City-based HDR Management Consulting Group, Lincoln Technology Assessment provides an assessment of the city's telecommunications infrastructure and its usage by the Lincoln community. The report gives specific recommendations for how to make the community more competitive for technology related businesses and provides detailed comparisons of several benchmarks for Lincoln and other cities — Boise, ID; Boulder, CO; Des Moines, IA; Ft. Collins, CO; Kansas City, MO; Madison, WI; and Omaha, NE.

Citing the need for more public-private partnership and government-university-industry cooperation, the lead recommendation calls for more active engagement of local business in the future economic growth and development of the community through a permanent coordinating committee.

The report centers around three main themes:

More information on the council, including the full final report and larger, interim report is available at: http://www.ci.lincoln.ne.us/city/mayor/tech/

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Useful Stats: NSF Releases 1999-2000 State S&E Profiles
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has published the Science & Engineering State Profiles: 1999-2000, an online database. One-page statistical summaries are given for each state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, permitting calculation of per capita statistics and rankings.

The report is geared to allow easy reference across 30 science and engineering statistics, the distribution of federal R&D obligations by department and performer, and industrial and academic R&D expenditures. Additionally, it includes figures for population, per capita income, labor force, patents, small business innovation research awards, and gross state product.

SSTI has prepared the accompanying table presenting for comparison the number of patents issued to state residents in 2000, the average number of patents issued per member of the state’s civilian workforce, the average number of patents per doctoral scientists and doctoral engineers in the state, and the R&D dollars spent in the state per patent issued.

Science & Engineering State Profiles: 1999-2000 can be downloaded at: http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf02318/pdfstart.htm

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Useful Stats: Correction for the 5/10 SBIR Table
In the SBIR Phase I award/proposal table SSTI released with the May 10, 2002 issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest, the figures reported under "Health" inadvertently included both Phase I and Phase II proposals for the National Institutes of Health. As a result of the adjustment, the award-to-proposal ratio also has been corrected. The revised table has been republished at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/050302t.htm

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