[House Hearing, 106 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
=======================================================================
FIELD HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMPOWERMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
CARSON, CA
__________
APRIL 25, 2000
__________
Serial No. 106-54
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Small Business
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
67-350 WASHINGTON : 2001
_______________________________________________________________________
For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sale Office, Washington, DC
20402
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
JAMES M. TALENT, Missouri, Chairman
LARRY COMBEST, Texas NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ, New York
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD,
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois California
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey CAROLYN McCARTHY, New York
SUE W. KELLY, New York BILL PASCRELL, New Jersey
STEVEN J. CHABOT, Ohio RUBEN HINOJOSA, Texas
PHIL ENGLISH, Pennsylvania DONNA M. CHRISTIAN-CHRISTENSEN,
DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana Virgin Islands
RICK HILL, Montana ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania TOM UDALL, New Mexico
JOHN E. SWEENEY, New York DENNIS MOORE, Kansas
PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania STEPHANIE TUBBS JONES, Ohio
JIM DeMINT, South Carolina CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas
EDWARD PEASE, Indiana DAVID D. PHELPS, Illinois
JOHN THUNE, South Dakota GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California
MARY BONO, California BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
MARK UDALL, Colorado
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
Harry Katrichis, Chief Counsel
Michael Day, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Empowerment
JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania, Chairman
PHIL ENGLISH, Pennsylvania JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD,
JIM DeMINT, South Carolina California
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey DENNIS MOORE, Kansas
EDWARD PEASE, Indiana STEPHANIE TUBBS JONES, Ohio
TOM UDALL, New Mexico
Dwayne Andrews, Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
WITNESSES
Hearing held on April 25, 2000:
Page
Mora, Francisco, Co-Author, ``Online Content For Low-Income
and Underserved Americans''................................ 4
Ashley, Warren, Director, Distance Learning, California State
University, Dominguez Hills................................ 5
Sutton, Jack, Executive Officer, UCLA Outreach Steering
Committee, Office of the President......................... 7
Rogers, Lynnejoy, Director, Ron Brown Business Center, Urban
League..................................................... 26
Covington, Sam, Director, Information Vortex, Inc............ 29
Bryant, John, Founder and CEO, Operation Hope, Inc........... 31
Parks, Perry, Vice-President, Government and Public
Relations, Media One....................................... 33
Appendix
Prepared statements:
Mora, Francisco.............................................. 46
Ashley, Warren............................................... 97
Sutton, Jack................................................. 99
THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
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TUESDAY, APRIL 25, 2000
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Empowerment,
Committee on Small Business,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m., at the
Carson City Council Chambers, Carson City Hall, 701 East Carson
Street, Carson, CA, Hon. Bono, Chairwoman of the Subcommittee
presiding.
Ms. Bono. Good morning.
I'd like to begin and call this hearing to order. Today the
House Subcommittee on Empowerment is convening to discuss
issues surrounding ``The Digital Divide.''
We're in a very exciting time in our history where we can
move information faster than ever before, and buy and sell
products and services electronically saving time and creating
certain efficiencies.
Not only has the Internet provided new opportunities in
business, but the Internet has also allowed teachers and
students a whole new world of options in education. However,
there are sectors of our society that are not being given
access to this new economy and the information super highway.
A study that was released by the Commerce Department's
National Telecommunication and Information Administration finds
evidence of a widening digital divide. Data from the studies
show significant differences between those groups with access
to the basic components of e-commerce, personal computers,
telephones and Internet service providers.
Many solutions have been suggested to address the digital
divide and the possible socioeconomic repercussions. However, I
believe that we must encourage companies and nonprofits across
the country to bring digital opportunities to our communities.
Community and nonprofit groups are best equipped to address the
specific issues affecting our areas and play an integral in
partnering with computer and telecommunications firms.
While I believe that all Americans should benefit from the
progress being made in this new economy, we must look at non-
governmental ways to provide Internet access. As well as
looking at innovative access ideas for access, we also need to
provide these under served areas with training and education
into the possibilities that lie within this new economy. Not
only do careers in the growing field of information technology
pay significantly more than average private sector wages, but
distance learning and small business opportunities on the
Internet are growing at an exponential rate.
While we are seeing that Americans as a whole are advancing
with respect to Internet connectivity, problematic issues
remain. Some socioeconomic groups consistently fall below the
national average with respect to access to the tools of the
information age. The study reports that minority, low income,
rural, tribal and single parent households are less likely to
have access to electronic resources.
Every indication shows that we are moving from a paper-base
society to an electronic one where business-to-business and
government-to-business transactions occur over the Internet
with increased frequency.
As we head in this direction, the personal computer paired
with Internet access will be the most basic of tools for
tomorrow's business and families.
As opportunities in the high tech industries grow, the need
for access and education of the area's information technology
has become apparent, and therefore developing ways to bring
technology to under served communities will ensure that more
people have access to electronic resources and that every
American has the ability to prosper from the opportunities
associated with the future of technology.
Increased access to technology, coupled with proper
instruction, enhances the possibility that those who are
currently not computer and internet proficient will come to
embrace these resources.
On that note, I would like to recognize my distinguished
colleague, Ms. Millender-McDonald for her opening statement.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Thank you so much, Congresswoman
Mary Bono from the great area of Palm Springs in this great
state of California. She has really excelled in leadership on
the full Committee on Small Business, and I am happy to welcome
her here to the 37th Congressional District and to the city of
Carson, a city that was dubbed the most diverse city in the
nation by the ``Christian Monitor'' last year.
Let me welcome all of you. Now those who are participating
here today so that when you come to us, you will come and come
through the gate, sit here at the desk so that you can be
comfortable in presenting your particular issue of importance
and letting us know exactly your feelings about this digital
divide and e-commerce. We will begin talking about digital
divide the first part of the hearing and then e-commerce toward
the end.
All of these are important to small businesses, because
after all, you need to know what work force you have out there
available to job training and those who are in K through 12,
what type of training they are getting in order to close this
gap called digital divide.
I would like to also thank those of you who have come out
this morning. It is very difficult to readjust schedules in the
middle of the week, and so we appreciate your coming out
because it's indeed a digital world that we have out there and
it is moving very rapidly at a breathtaking pace. And, so it's
important that you also understand the importance of how this
digital world and digital knowledge will impact you.
I would like to thank the Chairman in his absence, Joe
Pitts, whom I work side-by-side with the House and on the
Subcommittee on Empowerment. It was he who was very sensitive
in bringing that the whole definition of digital divide to this
committee. And so, he is out of Pennsylvania. We would
recognize that Members are all over trying to do the work of
their districts, and so he's unable to come, but we appreciate
his sensitivity and his acceptance of our request, both Mary
and mine, upon our request to have these field hearings in our
districts.
I would like to thank the staff who is here today and has
traveled from Washington, as well as staff who is here with us
in the District.
We first have Harry Katrichis. He is counsel to us in the
House.
We also have Dwayne Andrews, who is staff counsel to us.
And, we have a Michael Day, who is the minority staff
resident counsel to us.
These three men are always on the dais with us when we are
holding hearings to ensure that what we have before us is
exactly what we need to have, and any comments that we need to
make, they're there to reply to those for us.
We have our local district office on the dais, Jennifer
Payne, who is legislative assistant to the Congresswoman Mary
Bono. And I have to my right Imani Brown, who is my chief
deputy here with me today.
So we welcome all of you're here to Carson, the city of
Carson. In the South Bay we have recognized the diversity in
this area. It is the most diverse area in the state of
California. All around us here we have, there's eighty-seven
languages that are spoken throughout the state of California;
we have about 80 of them right here in the South Bay area. And
so diversity is very keen, and key to us here.
As we look at diversity we find ourselves looking at this
so-called digital divide and how is it affecting those of us
who are down here in the southern California region, especially
the South Bay in dealing with that.
Today we will hear from experts who will tell us about this
digital divide and how it is really absolutely widening. Unless
we do something about it, it will absolutely create an impact
for the work force in the twenty-first century. The work force
in the twenty-first century will not look like the work force
of twentieth century; there will be more minorities, more women
making up this work force. Therefore, we must ensure that
minorities, women and others have access to this information
age, this internet, these myriad of programs that we have
already. We know them; America Online, Americorp, IBM, Netscape
and Microsoft, just to mention just a few of those companies
now that are looking at this whole digital and e-commerce era
and is trying to see how they can close this gap on digital
divide.
And so I'm very happy to have you come out today. And for
my colleague, Mary Bono, to come, traveling from Palm Springs
to come here, and I know how difficult it is. When we came back
to the districts a couple of weeks ago, or last week I should
say, we're here for 2 weeks but our schedules are really
loaded. And I'm just most appreciative to her coming this way
and then tomorrow I go her way. So I will be in the Palm
Springs area as she convenes her hearing.
So again, Madame Chair, thank you so much for being here,
and we will begin the hearing. Thank you.
Ms. Bono. I will thank the gentle lady for her kind
remarks. I am here and tomorrow you will be Mecca, not the Palm
Springs area.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. All right. It's Mecca that I'm
traveling to, all right.
Ms. Bono. But I also want to commend you. It has been a
pleasure working with you in my 2 years that I've been in
Washington, and I am proud of you and pleased to call you not
only my colleague, but my friend. So, I'm happy to be here.
If we could call upon the first panel to take their seats,
we'd like to begin with the testimony.
Given that this is a field hearing, it's not quite as
structured as it would be in Washington, and I think we enjoy
it this way a little bit more, but I don't have name tags in
front of you to identify which of you is who. So, as I call out
your names, if you could just raise your hand briefly, we'll
dispense with introductions that way. It's something my
children do in second and sixth grade. But I don't see any
better way.
Francisco Mora, co-author of ``Online Content for Low-
Income and Underserved Americans.'' Okay.
Dr. Warren Ashley, Director of Distance Learning, Cal State
University, Dominguez Hills.
And, Dr. Jack Sutton, Executive Officer, UCLA Outreach
Steering Committee.
All right. If we could remind you to keep your remarks
somewhere around 5 minutes, we would appreciate it.
We will begin with Francisco Mora.
STATEMENT OF FRANCISCO MORA, CO-AUTHOR ``ONLINE CONTENT FOR
LOW-INCOME AND UNDERSERVED AMERICANS''
Mr. Mora. I thank you for inviting me to this partnership
to present our findings on our report about on line content for
low income and underserved Americans.
We conducted this study because we have seen that as access
continues to grow and, that has not been resolved yet, but as
access continues to grow there is more need for online content
that meets the needs specifically of under served and low-
income Americans.
And, so, we conducted a year long study about this kind of
content. We spoke to focus groups, hundreds of focus groups, we
interviewed hundreds of experts and we also conducted a web
analysis of over a thousand sites targeted to this audience.
And out of those sites we found major, major gaps in the kind
of information that users said they want.
Now, the kind of information that they said they want; they
want local jobs that are applicable to them. They also want
literacy improvement tools on the Internet. They want
information at basic literacy levels; there are 44 million
Americans who are functionally illiterate in the United States
today. And they also want content for non-English speakers. And
in addition, they want content geared more to their culture and
appropriate to their cultural practices and needs.
And out of this analysis we found that less than 1 percent
of the information that we looked at meets these needs in terms
of local jobs, local housing, limited literacy content,
multilingual content and cultural content. Less than 1 percent
of the Internet serves these needs.
And this has a huge implication, because without content
there is no real access. There is no value on the Internet for
these populations to go online.
And we've also learned from--these figures come from the
U.S. Department of the Commerce study ``Falling Through the
Net,'' that 25 percent of Americans who earn between $10,000
and $14,000 are more likely to use the Internet for job
searching in comparison to 12 percent of Americans earning
$75,000 or more.
In terms of online courses and online learning, 45 percent
of Americans earning between $10,000 and $15,000 are more
likely--will use the Internet to learn and study online,
whereas only about 35 percent of Americans earning $75,000 or
more will use it that way.
So, clearly if information is online under served Americans
will use it.
And in addition to identifying these major gaps in terms of
content, we provide some solutions in this report. Some of the
solutions recommend to empower the communities to use the
information that already exists by identifying and training how
to collect information and create information that is useful to
them.
We also recommend to provide information technology
training for low income users and community leaders so they can
develop content locally.
In addition, we recommend more research. Our study is
really the first ever looked at online content. And we
recommend to conduct more market research on low income users
and also to provide venture capital to create micro enterprises
in underserved communities. That's a recommendation to look at
money in a new way; to deploy money more for e-commerce
solutions in underserved communities and really look at it as
social venture capital.
Finally, we recommend to invest in a nationwide network of
community technology centers as hubs to help residents produce
and use relevant content. These community technology centers
are found in libraries, stand alone centers, schools and the
like.
And, that provides a review of the report. Thank you very
much.
[Mr. Mora's statement may be found in appendix.]
Ms. Bono. Thank you.
Next, we'll have Dr. Warren Ashley.
STATEMENT OF DR. WARREN ASHLEY, DIRECTOR, DISTANCE LEARNING,
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, DOMINGUEZ HILLS
Mr. Ashley. Good morning. My name is Warren Ashley, Dr.
Warren Ashley. I am the Director of the Center for Mediated
Instruction and Distance Learning at California State
University Dominguez Hills.
Ten years ago our university made a major commitment to
distance learning. Five years we were the first university to
offer a complete graduate degree, a Master of Science in
Quality Assurance, over the Internet. Today we offer six
degrees programs and five certificate programs that can be
completed without ever coming to our campus. Three years ago
``Forbes'' magazine included Dominguez Hills in their list of
the top 20 cyber-universities. In January 1999 we were the
first university to begin broadcasting live, interactive
classes over the Internet.
Technology has developed so rapidly it is easy to forget
but for the general public, the Internet is only five years
old. Like all new technologies there is a lag between the early
adopters and those who are slower to use the Internet. Many
times this distinction between early adopters and later groups
has been economic.
Initially this was true for the Internet, but that may no
longer be the case. Last week an advertisement for a local
electronics store, which shall go nameless, offered consumers a
500 MHz PC with 32 MB RAM and a 17 inch monitor for $129.00.
This was after rebates. $49.00 if you were to get the color
printer to go with it. This is less than half what my parents
paid for the electric typewriter which they gave me as a high
school graduation present in 1960. Some companies are even
offering free computers to consumers to will sign a contract
for internet service.
Software used to be an expense but the computer that was
advertised for $129 comes with Windows 98 and Sun Star Office.
Internet service was also an additional cost, but now there are
a number of companies who provide free internet access. One of
the newest entries into the free Internet market is
bluelight.com from K-Mart. And, if you live close enough to
your phone company's switching office, you can even get free
broadband service from freedsl.com.
Free Internet services are underwritten by advertising, but
that's also true for commercial television and much of our
print media. Companies are willing to pay to have their
messages on your computer screen. They are also afraid that if
they don't provide the services, someone else will.
What then is holding people back from this technology? Why
have cell phones become commonplace in neighborhoods where few
homes have a computer? People get cell phones when they begin
to feel they needed a cell phone to do business and stay in
touch with their friends. Many of these people do not feel they
need the Internet to do business and stay in touch with their
friends.
And, to some extent this is true even at our university.
Most of our students cannot get through a day without using a
computer and going on the Internet, but there are some who do
not feel the need and have never logged on.
Over the years university communities were formed and
meetings were held to find a way that would ensure that no
student, graduated from Dominguez Hills without a basic
understanding of computer applications and Internet technology.
Suggestions ranged from a mandatory one-unit technology course
to an Internet component for every syllabus. Fortunately, none
of these solutions were ever implemented.
This summer, however, we are installing an application that
will automatically create websites for every student, twelve
thousand students, every faculty member and every course in the
class schedule. When a student or a faculty member goes to
their website they will find links to all of their classes.
They will also find news about campus events and links to
campus services. Now even if only a fraction of the faculty use
the class websites as part of their instruction in the fall, we
will have created a virtual community and all students will
feel the need to be online.
The same principles apply in business, government and
society. Businesses should be subsidizing online training for
their employees. We know from our experience that when
businesses do subsidize, employees will take the on-line
training. Municipal and county governments should be putting
all of their forms and as many of their activities as possible
online. Schools should begin using the Internet for
communicating with parents and the community.
Parents should be able to go a website and find out exactly
what the homework is that night. Civic organizations should be
encouraged to use the Internet for virtual meetings and online
events. Libraries should be given even more equipment and
greater bandwidth for public access to the Internet.
In Palm Springs, they--Palm Springs Library created a
virtual university. They will be listing courses from Cal State
Dominguez Hills, on-line courses from Cal State Dominguez
Hills. And finally, commerce on the Internet should be
encouraged to the fullest extent possible.
Because, when people feel they need that they need the
Internet to do business and stay in touch with their friends
they will get the equipment and they will get the access, and
they will get any help they need to use this technology.
[Dr. Ashley's statement may be found in appendix.]
Ms. Millender-McDonald. See Mary, we're already connected
here all the way from Palm Springs down to Cal State Dominguez.
Ms. Bono. That's right.
Dr. Sutton.
STATEMENT OF DR. JACK SUTTON, EXECUTIVE OFFICER, UCLA OUTREACH
STEERING COMMITTEE, OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
Mr. Sutton. Good morning. My name is Jack Sutton.
I'm part of the UCLA Outreach Steering Committee, and the
Outreach Steering Committee was formed as a result of
Proposition 409 and the regent's action on Affirmative Action.
So we've work with fifty-eight high schools and feeder schools
in our outreach programs so that this particular presentation
is going to be about the implications for education that we see
at those schools.
You can see on the overhead, Alvin Toffler has a very
interesting comment that ``No nation can operate a 21st century
economy without a 21st century electronic infrastructure
embracing computers, data communication and other new media.''
Then he goes onto say that * * * ``This requires a
population that's familiar with this information infrastructure
as it is with cars, roads, highways, and so on.'' And so the
question is how do we get there? And one comment when we feel
the need we will get there and the next transition period we
need to be able to fill that.
Looking at work in America over the last couple hundred
years, you will see that we've gone through the agricultural
age, we've gone through the industrial age and service, and we
now into an information age. Now over half of the jobs require
and work with information.
If you look at from 1950 to 2000, that the professional
jobs have stayed very much the same in terms of percentage.
Notice the big difference between skilled and unskilled, and in
many cases skilled means at work you have to be technology
literate. Ford Motor Company no longer has handles for their
cars. Everything's electronic. If you build in improvements to
the car, you now have to have the serial number and the date
that the car was built to know where you go to get the data to
get it fixed.
So the bottom line is welcome to the information age.
Emilio Gonzales says that ``60% of the new jobs in 2010 will
require jobs which--skills possessed by 22% of the workers
today.'' So the question is how do we get the workers--those
workers of today and workers of tomorrow, many of them are in
school right now. We all know that we will go through three or
four jobs, and so school is something like that is going to be
pretty critical.
If you take a look of the map of Los Angeles County in a
geographical sense, this is what it looks like. But if you look
at it from a population perspective, it's a little larger. And
it takes on a significant rate. So, the question is how are the
students in Los Angeles County doing schoolwise?
Seventy percent of the high school students in LA County
attend schools performing below state average on UCLA's
Academic Competitiveness Index. And that index is essentially
to look at how many--what's the percentage of applicants to the
school who are competitively eligible to UCLA or to Berkeley.
And if they're in the top half, we consider you to be
competitively eligible. The chance of getting in is good.
So it's a percentage of competitive applicants from a
school. We have academic competitiveness index calculated for
almost every school in the state.
If you look at the way that those schools lay out in the
state, this is what the distribution is. Notice that the
average is about 41. If you take a look at where LA County sits
in there, you will notice that the average drops to 30. If you
take a look at LA Unified, that's half the schools in the
county, then that drops to 20.
If you take a look at a map of distribution, the green dots
are the high schools that are above the state average. Anything
else is below the state average on an academic competitiveness
index. If an index is very high, you're looking at the
competitiveness.
Very quickly, we can look at a chart developed on schools
in districts. They have the API which is the state academic
performance index based on test scores, the academic
competitiveness index, which is UCLA's, the number of
computers, the computer to student ratio, and then the internet
connected rooms. You'll notice that along Los Angeles Jordan
and Long Beach Poly both were digital divide high schools the
first year so they have started to implement that particular
plan.
Recognize that--the quote by I think it was Louis Gerstner
puts it best when he looks at ``We need to recognize that our
public schools are low-tech institutions in a high-tech
society. The same changes that have brought cataclysmic change
to every facet of business can improve the way we teach
students and teachers.''
I think the next quote of probably is, maybe the most
important of the entire presentation. The real challenge we are
about is not challenge of technology, it's a challenge of
people. How do you work with teachers as there are a number of
teachers who have technology in their room and one of the
things that they generally do is take it out of the way.
Because when it comes to using it, the students pick up very
quick.
There's a couple of charts that I think illustrate--the
difference if you have a higher education you're going to make
more money. Great implications for that digital divide. If we
don't have access to the technology, if we don't have access to
the information, we won't develop the skills there's going to
be a broader divide.
If you take a look at changes from '69 to '89 if you're in
that bottom quintal, you're paid--how much you earn drops
almost 25%, but if you're in that top quintal you earn another
12% to 13%. And again, so what you earn and what you are
educated for makes a significant difference.
Now we talk about a digital divide. I think the next two
charts with the black really show where the digital really hits
them. The green bars are high income, the red bars are low
income. The bottom line is these are indications of using the
computer at home.
So regardless of what is available at school, what is
available at home is going to--those are first graders to sixth
graders. The next chart shows 7th to 12th graders. So you have
again, very much the same differentiation with your high
income. If you're using the computer at home where there's a
lot more time and a lot more things of interest to do, you're
going to end up with the higher income.
And finally, there were some recommendations made by the
President Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology,
Panel on Educational Technology.
Focus on the learning, not on the technology. Emphasize the
content, not just the hardware. You have to have the hardware,
but the other stuff is really important.
Give special attention to--to professional development. If
you don't--if the teachers don't feel comfortable, they're not
going to want to use it. You're not going to see it in
classrooms. The computers are there, but they won't use it.
Engage in realistic budgeting. That budget has to include a
cost range for maybe a third of that budget going into
professional development.
Ensure equitable, universal access. I think that's come
across the board and there are going to be lot of places where
that can occur. It's going to have to occur at schools if we
are going to teach people how to be information literate.
And finally, to really initiate a major program of
experimental research to find out what works and doesn't work.
Thank you.
[Dr. Sutton's statement may be found in appendix.]
Ms. Bono. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and defer to you
for questions.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Thank you Madame Chair.
Before I begin the questioning, I want to acknowledge two
persons who have come in. One of the great council members of
the City of Carson is with us, Councilman Darryl Sweeney at the
back. Good to see you here. Applaud. And we also have,
representing Congresswoman Grace Napolitano, Mr. Ray Cordova.
Ray, do you want to stand?
I'm not sure I see anyone else who's representing
Congresspersons but if I have ignored or--not ignored you but,
if I have not seen you please send a card to the front.
These were just telling presentations Madame Chair as we
have heard from these three outstanding presenters. The first
one, Mr. Mora you said that you had done a year long study on--
particularly--specifically I should say, on the web, was it the
web that you did this analysis? And if so, was this study done
for K-12 or was it done for K-12 and higher learning?
Mr. Mora. The analysis included educational information
for K-12 students. And in addition, we also focused on life
information, just general life information that people need to
go on beyond high school because many people will leave high
school, they don't have basic literacy, basic math skills. And
so we looked at the whole spectrum of basic information and in
addition--basic learning information in addition to living
information. The availability to hold jobs, availability to
available housing, affordable housing, and health and
government, et cetera, all kinds of information.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. It was quite interesting that you
said less than 1% meet the basic needs, meets just basic
literacy, and that is very telling. Would this be because a lot
of our citizens, certainly speaking from the California
perspective, are immigrants and therefore there is a language
barrier that circumvents this, or is it just simply the low
income and persons who just have been unskilled for years?
Mr. Mora. Well it's really a combination of all those.
Many people are illiterate just basically because of lack of
involvement with education in general. Then many people are
also in transition. They're immigrants and so they're in the
process of becoming more fluent in the language. So it's really
a combination of both.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Combination of both, but then
learning and education has been the main focus of this, would
you say, or is it half and half? Is it lack of really quality
education and job skills training or is it more or less the
literacy based on the immigrant issue?
Mr. Mora. No, it's really a huge problem with actually--
instruction in literacy and building fine--functional literacy
skills.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. So that's it. The knowledge that
you had and you compiled, who did you or have you imparted this
information to anyone or any of the companies that I outlined?
AOL, Netscape or Microsoft. Have you talked with a group of
high tech companies on this information that you--the analysis?
Mr. Mora. Yes, we're in the process--have been speaking
and are in the process of speaking with and talking about
interventions that they could implement, whether it's local
education, content, learning how to solve this whole dilemma.
We have also spoken with the Congress.
We've been working with the Congress to influence the next
study to follow and then we'll have follow through because this
data already is pretty much done, then the following one will
be on 2001. We're also involved with several foundations who
are partners such as the AT&T Foundation, the Pac Bell
Foundation, to look at the whole problem and come up with
different solutions because there are really various types of
solutions that would be required to address the problem of this
magnitude.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. This is very true. I had a
breakfast meeting, it was an informal meeting with some of the
companies that I've outlined to talk about who's doing what and
where and with whom.
And it was amazing that there are so many commutations of
companies doing things that I have started a steering committee
asking to look at what each company does, when they're doing
it, for whom they're doing it, what education levels are they
doing it, so that we can then start to see, you know, bring
together a compilation of all of this and try to synthesize it
wherein it will be maximum success in schools with low income
level kids.
And so I am very clear that what you have imparted today is
something that we need to have you come to the table with us on
to talk about as we hear the--
Mr. Mora. Excuse me, if I may say that in addition we're
complementing that kind of work because we're in the process of
building an on-line resource specifically so synthesize that
kind of information so we don't duplicate what another company
is already involved in.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I love it.
Mr. Mora. An extensive----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I love it. I just saw us all
running around trying to catch tails. And I thought wait, let's
stop and see if we can bridge this, bridge at that time the
information sharing.
I do want to say that we would like to see you in
Washington to help us. I'm speaking, and I hope I speak on
behalf of my colleague and friend, Congresswoman Bono. We're
all interested in--in closing that line so that once we get the
players, if you will, together and start synthesizing this,
we'll be able to see then how we have moved in to areas of
hopefully helping that new job--work force, I should say to
move into the realm of success and job skills.
Dr. Ashley, let me first commend this university that sits
right here in my district, Cal State Dominguez Hills, which I
knew--and which I have known for years has been just absolutely
the premier university that deals with innovative types of
things sometimes before any other university, albeit the ivy
leagues, the UC's or the CSU sisters.
And you do this because of the need and I'd like to think
your--your student population represents this whole area of
immigrants and this diversity that we speak of.
But let me just ask you a few questions here. One is
distance learning is something that we recognize now is just
phenomenal. We've got to make sure that we get this going
across the nation because the average student at Cal State
Dominguez Hills, last I heard was about twenty- eight to thirty
something, they're in that range. And so they're working folks
and they need to have something that's more applicable to that
working style.
But you're telling me that with rebates and all, we can get
computers and get the necessary equipment, if you will, to
become more knowledgeable and more skilled and more into the
internet for just a hundred and twenty-nine dollars ($129). You
said some color ones we can get are forty dollars ($40). Why
aren't we saying this to our students at Dominguez Hills who
perhaps are leaving, as you said in your statement, without at
least the understanding of computer application?
Mr. Ashley. Well I think for most of the students that go
through Dominguez Hills, I think they do have experience that
includes technology, and I think they leave with the skills to
deal with the demands of this--this century.
One of the things, and I think this is true not just for a
university, but for any institution is that there is a natural
lag for us in terms of information that we just go through a
purchasing cycle and make a decision about what we're going to
buy and then go ahead and issue the purchase order or the
requisition, and then process that order. And it can easily
take, it can take a year, it can take eighteen months, and many
times by the time you've bought it it's already obsolete. In
fact Dell is now running websites that you can have what they
believe--you can have what is available.
For instance you can no longer get a 500 MHZ Dell computer
because they no longer offer them, 600 is minimum, and they've
just started a whole series of new ones. So there's a lag in
terms of the speed of the technology, and the way that we can
respond.
The other thing is--is that we make plans based upon what
we know today rather than, perhaps, what we know tomorrow. It
remains a tremendous investment in many places and also in
school systems in hardwiring the schools, and we're finding
it's incredibly difficult because the schools are not designed
for this and they're running conduits on outside and over
roofs, and we're doing all kinds of things. And we know that
the future is going to be wireless. That my laptop is--today is
wireless laptop. I can get a wireless connection anywhere in
Los Angeles and most places in California without any phone
line, without any wire at all.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. So you are saying then that this e-
rate is not needed because some of us are trying to implement
e-rate to wire these schools.
Mr. Ashley. First of all, no one is suggesting that we
start tearing out wires and anybody who has good hardware
connection should use it and keep it. But the fact is--is that
when you look at the future, and the future now is about three
years, I mean when you look at the future it may be a better
use of money in some situations, for instance we're looking at
a housing complex on the Dominguez Hills campus, to create a
wireless environment than to try and wire that particular
building.
What I see within a very short time, twelve, eighteen
months, that a computer lab in an elementary school could be a
part of wireless computers. You take it into Mr. Jones' class
in the morning and you say you're the lab, you're the computer
lab.
And this afternoon this cart will move over to Mrs. Smith's
room and she will be the computer lab. It's a whole different
concept than what we've been doing in the past. We're just
creating rooms and looking and hardware and, you know,
basically creating a very static environment. You know it's
going to be much more dynamic.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. You know, it's amazing you would
say that because we had a hearing about two or three weeks ago
to talk about closing this divide, and one of the presenters
spoke about the distance learning and broadband and other new
technologies that are coming out. And so my question is to you
as it was to him, are you suggesting that our kids who have not
even gotten on the internet will already have lost a lot
because we are going along in a whole new concept of high tech?
Mr. Ashley. What's incredible about this technology is that
you could go from zero to full speed in three to six months.
This is the case, Dominguez Hills has ten years of experience
in distance learning. We would like to think that's what makes
us better and makes us more qualified than other universities.
But the reality is that a university or a college that has
never done any distance learning could today adopt a technology
and within six months, could be up and running and soon have
the infrastructure to do a very good job.
So I think it's mainly getting the computers and the access
into the hands of the students. Again then doing that in such a
way that there is a real need or at least experience a need----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Irrespective of the fact that
you're saying that you have computers that are old, that is
not--but again in my area of Watts, I go down and I see old
hardware and some of it you can't even get any software for it.
Now that is not--it's not cost effective. It's not
effective at all, and efficient for trying to train kids who
have not had any access. What do you say to that?
Mr. Ashley. There is--there is--it's true. There are some
schools--schools have a way of sort of hanging on to things
long after the----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. No, this is just given to these----
Mr. Ashley. The thing is it's a lot of what is old
computers--my four year old grandson has a 6200 power MAC. The
reason he has that is because when his parents did an upgrade,
and they felt they needed a more--a faster computer, there's no
market for used computers. What are you going to do with it?
They couldn't even sell it at a garage sale. So they gave it to
the child.
There--so there's--actually there's a lot of slightly older
computers out there that are serviceable, that are more than
sufficient for what people need, which frequently is just word
process and internet access. And you don't need 500 megahertz
to do that. You don't need 128 megs of ram to do that.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. So you're saying that I can go out
and ask agencies there in Washington if they have these
outdated computers, as they see it, please give them to me so
we can put them in community centers, put them in libraries,
put them in schools first and make sure that I can get some
kind of adaptable--or adapt to the internet.
Mr. Ashley. Anything from a Pentium 1 on now I would
certainly, you know, feel comfortable with them using. There
will come a time, and there is coming a time when you're going
to have full video coming over the internet and then you will,
perhaps, need a little more robust equipment. But that doesn't
mean that you have to just stop now. I mean, it basically
means--Hewlett Packard is actually--has a series of what are
sort of mini lap tops that they are discontinuing and they have
them out--you can get those for about three hundred and eighty-
five dollars. And these are like, little lap tops that they
would go on the internet and they would do word processing.
You know, but the thing is, nobody thinks in those terms. I
mean, they're thinking of, you know, we have to get the--you
know, it's almost a--we have to have the biggest and the best.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Are you saying that the--well it's
been stated that you have to first start here and then you
graduate to this. They don't know that you don't have to start
there. If you haven't started there, you can start some other
place along this continuum.
Mr. Ashley. Uh huh.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. If you don't say this, people don't
know that. I would like to suggest that I have talked to
parents so parents can understand the need to invest in these
less expensive computers. I would certainly like you to travel
with me around to my schools and talk to parents, have parent
nights, and let parents understand that it's more important to
get these computers than to get the Michael Jordan shoes.
I mean really, you've got to make sure that our kids get on
with the service of--what this whole notion of--getting back to
the 21st century, I tell students whom I talk with we were
excited when we knew that we could have a job outside of
California. Now you can have a job outside of the United
States. But you've got to get prepared and ready for that.
And in my last question to you, Dr. Ashley, you state here
that this--you subsidize on-line training for your employees.
Do you know how many businesses do that on-line training? Do
you have any idea?
Mr. Ashley. Yes. Some of the larger industries we work
with, you know, Raytheon and Boeing, and some of the really
large industries, but I think even the small industries if they
gave their employees a small subsidy, I'm not talking about
even necessarily the entire tuition, I think you would have
many more employees taking advantage of these opportunities,
because it--it somehow, if the employers were willing to pay a
part of it, it somehow it just makes--it makes sense to then
participate.
And I, you know, I really know nothing at all about the tax
structure, but it makes sense that if you could make that kind
of investment in your employees then it would then also improve
your business.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Well we're busy. We've have a
moratorium on the whole notion of taxes. So we won't even get
into that today. But have you asked technology companies what
are the skills needed upon graduation for those students whom
you are dealing with not to participate in the business
community?
Mr. Ashley. Basically, because things are moving so quickly
as long as the student has a familiarity and a comfort level
with the technology, then they're going to learn everything
when they go to the business.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Uh huh.
Mr. Ashley. There's no way that we can give them the
skills, the specific skills because by--even within two years
that will have changed.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I, indeed, will be telling and have
my chest out returning back to Washington to let them know
Forbes Foundation--Forbes Magazine stating you as one of the
top cyber universities. We knew that ten years ago, I can
reiterate that, I was not in congress ten years ago so I can go
back and tout that.
Dr. Sutton, I am absolutely, I suppose, very touched by
your presentation because it was visual. You see that gap, that
digital divide so clearly there. I have got to ask my staff
here to do what you've already done, so we'd ask that you have
these types of slides for us, and I'm sure that Congresswoman
Bono might want that too, but she's not L.A. County so she
might want to get hers in her area.
But I've been saying all along let's go to the teacher's
side of it. I am the only Congressperson who sits on the
National Commission on Teaching on America's Future of which I
am to do whole methodology change of teaching throughout this
country.
But professional development is so critical, and as I have
said to them, as a former teacher, this cannot be we can teach
professional development. It has to be ongoing. It's the same
thing with developing of skills, not only for students but for
the teachers and administration.
What are the fifty-eight feeder schools that you are
dealing now, and how can we get students, parents, teachers,
administration to fill the need that we are talking about so
that we can get this over 70% of the lowest percentile of the
lowest state average schools of students into a mode of high
technology?
Mr. Sutton. I think there's a couple of things in terms of
the professional development that are critical. My wife just
finished her doctorate in educational technology, and so I
lived through a second dissertation, which was a case study.
She was looking at elementary schools that had really
implemented technology in the curriculum so it was a seamless
tool. She could find three in the state, elementary that met
those criteria because she didn't want a very rich district,
and she didn't want a very poor----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. You are going to need the mic, turn
mic on at your desk. Now you're going to have repeat everything
you said.
Mr. Sutton. I think that professional development is the
key. I mentioned that my wife had just finished her doctorate,
did a case study and looked at elementary schools that had
implemented technology and made it a seamless part of the every
day life of students.
She could find three in the state that didn't come from
very affluent districts or very poor districts, and had a
racial diversity. One of those was in L.A. Unified, was the
only charter, one was down in San Diego, one was in Vista.
She is the outreach and the technology coordinator at the
University Elementary School which is the lab school and UCLA,
and they have two hundred and fifty or so computers. They
rotate. They buy new computers and the new ones go to the older
students, and the other ones go down. And so every year they
recycle on down.
But one of the things that has been very--very important in
the success that she's working with teachers and others that
have, is a concept called ``just in time learning.'' And it
really requires a coach. Both of our outreach programs have a
coach at a school site because one of the things that we have
found, if you want schools to make a change everybody that
works at school right now has more than a full time job. So
you're going to have to add resources for them to be able to do
that.
And so when a teacher starts to do something or wants to do
something, there is somebody that's there right away that can
work with that teacher, maybe come in and teach a lesson or two
with the idea that the teacher will take over. There's a
support system not only from that coach but from the other
teachers that are working on it.
So you have, not a technology committee, but a technology
integration into the curriculum committee because it's not a
separate issue. It is, how does this become a tool? You look at
the little kids who can use the computer just like they use a
pencil.
The story the other night, one of the professors has a six
year old who was on the web, got onto Amazon.com, called out
and said, is this your credit card number? Yeah. Well, the
kid's six years old, ordered the books that he wanted over the
internet on Amazon.com.
And so we talk about the very young ones not being able to
do it, not being able to read, that's not a problem. Even
though students who are second language students at the school,
when you have something that you want to learn how to do, and
if you have access to the tools and you have access to the
support system, whether you are a six year old or whether you
are a sixty year old, you'll be able to do it.
So your--our task in the professional development area is,
how do we provide people who know instruction, who know
curriculum and know technology, because it takes all three of
those not just somebody who knows the hardware to come in, not
that you can't have to keep hardware up to date, but it's all
those issues together. And so when we talked about that
budgeting issue, you have to budget for the human part of it if
you're going to be successful.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Excellent. Have you ever been in
any school districts to talk about the 70% below average, state
average with the students?
Mr. Sutton. That figure is--is a very high figure for us,
because you're looking at the two most selected university
campuses in the system. But it does show a difference between
the state and the county, and if you're looking at the number
of students coming in and out, I think we were going to write a
grant last year and several schools, elementary and middle
schools, the gear up grant, we calculated, I think that the
transiency rate was 47% in the participating schools. And if--
--
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I'm sorry, the transient rate was--
--
Mr. Sutton. 47% for students. So you're going to turn over.
If it were equal we would have ended up starting out with over
three thousand kids. We would have ended up with two hundred
and some kids who would have been there at the beginning over a
six year period. Well it's not an even transiency rate, but all
of those factors go together, and so the task is how do we move
to that next step?
If you want teaching behavior to change, if you want
teaching to become more in line with how we know we learn in
terms of inquiry, technology is an excellent way to do it
because if you have technology in a classroom, if you are
hooked up to the internet or an intranet where you build the
curriculum resource and kept it current, the teacher no longer
has to be the source of information.
If the teacher is no longer the source of information, the
teacher's role has just changed dramatically because now that
teacher can be a facilitator. Now that teacher can work
literally with small groups and not have to worry about our
students--other students accessing their information. You don't
have to worry anymore because, how out of date is this science
textbook? I mean, given the fact that a science book is
probably out of date as soon as it's published now anyway. This
way, if you're running your intranet or intranet site, you can
keep it up to date.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. See, this is why we're trying to
change the whole teaching methodology in our country because
right now we're not there yet. I'm hoping that we're gradually
going there and we having different projects around the country
trying to see what we can add to the process.
But the teacher is absolutely leader in her classroom in
that she has that timing to develop and move a curriculum that
will adjust to the students in her classroom and on a much more
individualized basis than just this one size fit all textbook
that really aren't interesting for kids, books that aren't
interesting to kids anyway. These kids look at these books and
find they're not interested. So we need to bring something in
that will help to enhance that.
The last thing that I want to say, the last question that I
have Dr. Sutton, is that education and job training needs are
very quickly becoming the top issue for the business community.
Recently a business survey by American Express showed job
training is now the number one business issue, ahead of other
items like regulations, reductions, and tax breaks.
Have you, or any of the panel members, started to talk with
the business industry, or business community I should say, to
look at ways to change and begin to solve this problem? Job
training, as I said when the welfare bill came before us in
Congress, if you don't have enough money for job training,
you're not going to move people from welfare to work in a
constant basis and sustain a sustainable position because you
just haven't put the money in there, and you're talking about
unskilled from the beginning. So that's a question to Dr.
Sutton, and then we'll let the other panel get on the bench.
Mr. Sutton. I'd like to refocus it a little bit to say,
almost career training. One of the things that we noticed in
our lowest performing school, the high schools, is there is no
sense of future.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I'm sorry, there's no what?
Mr. Sutton. There is no sense of future as far as the kids.
If you look at your lock cluster, and you're talking to the
cluster administrator, there is no business with whom they can
establish a business relationship. If that's the case, then
students have no sense of career to look forward to. It's
unlikely that they have a sense of even maybe job as they grow
up.
So that part of what we are looking at is, and it's--I
think that the focus on school as the only sources, is probably
misplaced in the sense that this is really a community issue,
community in the largest sense and the smallest sense, that
we're looking at the career awareness. We're looking at the
fact that I have a future. That means that everybody has to
learn. We have to add in working with schools.
We don't have--we as a university don't have the resources,
the state doesn't have the resources, the local school district
doesn't have the resources. It is that combination of how do
you leverage, how do you build that synergistic move? How do
you get teachers from a variety of schools to work together to
become a very large team to share? It is a problem that--the
coordination issue is a problem by itself and if I were looking
at ways of spending funds, looking at how you allocate, is that
you allocate toward partnerships, and give those partnerships a
chance to develop and mature before you've asked them to come
up with a product or present a grant.
Because in many cases you're asked to do a grant, you have
a six month planning time which is great except the grant is
due half way through the planning time. Not a federal but a
state grant. You don't have the time to establish those
personal relationships and those business relationships and
those school relationship that are going to allow this to
continue on.
And meanwhile we lose teachers because they're looking
someplace else because they don't see the support coming that
they need. And so, if we can build a community, that learning
community around the school and around the career issues, and
the issues that are important to people, then we'll be
successful. If we don't do that, we'll either divide--we'll
become a chasm or more of a chasm, and then we will have even
more problems than ever.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I see. Mr. Mora, you wanted to say
something?
Mr. Mora. Yeah, we're working with a group of
superintendents and cluster leaders in the Watts area, and to
really build a strong----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. You're working with schools around
the Watts area?
Mr. Mora. With the superintendents and cluster leaders.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I'll need to know who they are
within the district. Let my staff know who those people are.
Mr. Mora. Absolutely. And we are working to build their
school to work force, because funding for these programs and
support for high schools programs, for high school programs or
these partnership type programs and other school to work
position jobs, is diminishing, is decreasing.
And another problem is that students don't even know about
these programs. They don't take advantage of them, and don't
have the skills that are needed to take advantage of them, the
soft skills. How to relate on a job, how to hold a job, things
like that. So there are many areas to address this problem.
Another group we're working with is the Candle Corporation,
and they have a very interesting internship program with Foshay
Learning Center where they have taken forty-five interns and
have integrated--integrated them into the corporation, and have
shown them all facets of the company. And these students work,
you know, in advanced communications careers, in marketing, and
human resources, and build job skills which led them--which
give them skills to obtain jobs after graduation.
Many of them even take part time jobs there at Candle
Corporation while they're attending colleges. And Candle
Corporation has built the knowledge base for this. So they have
this information ready for other corporations. Last week, they
had an open house with different companies in the area
encouraging them to start these programs.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Cannel Corporation?
Mr. Mora. Candle, Candle Corporation. They're right here in
El Segundo. And so they have the knowledge of how to bring and
integrate a small group of young teenagers into the
corporation. And these are types of interventions that I think
go a long way to building a stronger workforce.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Thank you so much, Mr. Mora. Dr.
Ashley, you wanted to add something?
Mr. Ashley. Well I think just in conclusion, I would say my
experience is that the tools are there. It's really now a
matter of raising our expectations and letting not just every--
every school, but every group within the community, letting
them know that we expect more than business as usual. And that
it can be done. There's nothing, certainly nothing that the
Dominguez Hills has done, there's nothing that other schools
haven't done that others can't do.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Who should say that we expect more
than business as usual?
Mr. Ashley. I think it's across the board.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Absolutely.
Mr. Ashley. I think it goes from, it goes from the
superintendent of schools to the mayor in the community to the
Congress people. I----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I hear that all the time.
Mr. Ashley. And I think it's--I think there's too often,
what we see is people----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. And parents.
Mr. Ashley. And parents. But too often, we see people
saying well we're just doing the best we can. And I'm not sure
that that's good enough.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I know that's right. Let me thank
this chairwoman. I think I will ask speaker to remove Chairman
Pitts and put her there because she certainly has allowed me
more time than what typically would have been if it had been
the regular committee. So we thank you so much Madame Chair. I
know you're doing this because I'm in my district and I would
like to just state it for the record as well.
Ms. Bono. Without objection. I also have found your
questions very informative and enlightening. So I have enjoyed
the dialogue that has occurred here. But I too have some
questions. I don't know if they're going to be as extensive as
my colleague's, but I want to begin by thanking all of you for
being here today, and your input and your insight into this.
You know, not too long ago I had the pleasure of having
dinner with the head imagineers from Disney. And I, first of
all, I don't know if you know these guys. They're all, you
know, physicists from MIT and Cal Tech and I don't even think
they spoke English. It sounded like English, but I couldn't
understand what they were saying. They were so intelligent. And
they talked about the future and where we were going, and I was
very, very dismayed when I heard them say that they believe, in
the next twenty or thirty years, that the written will be no
longer.
And I, as a parent, am bothered by this. Meanwhile my
twelve year old son just competed and came in sixth in a
Shakespeare contest; he recited a soliloquy from Julius Caesar.
So I hope that they were wrong actually.
My point here is that people out there with brilliant minds
are thinking thirty years down the road, and I am not quite
capable, and I get a chuckle out of you talking about
antiquated computer systems and people donating them to people,
and companies donating those antiquated systems. I would like
to see us begin with Congress because we do not have state of
the art computers and I believe it hurts us. And with all due
respect to all of my colleagues, there are a number of members
of Congress who, I don't believe, have ever actually touched a
computer keyboard. And it's hard to believe.
I'm sort of rolling into my questions here, and my first
one is to explain to you all that I have two children as I
said, and I have parents who are in their late seventies, and
there's a part of the digital divide that I don't think we've
talked about here. I honestly believe that many, many senior
citizens are afraid of touching the computer keyboard. My
children have never felt that way. Are you kidding? They
started pounding on that keyboard as soon as they could. I
don't know if my father, who is a retired surgeon at USC LA
County Medical Center, has ever touched a keyboard.
He has a fear of computers. But my mother is a wiz. She's
educated herself and she's taken it upon herself to educate
herself. So I'm afraid that seniors are being left out here,
and we've talked a great deal about K through twelve and higher
education. But my question to all three of you is, do you have
any programs or have you worked with or thought about this
segment of our society that is being left out, our seniors?
Mr. Ashley. I have two aunts, both in their eighties who
recently went on line. One of them is [email protected].
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Go granny, I love it.
Mr. Ashley. But both--and both of them are using the
internet in order to maintain the relationship with family at a
time when they're not as mobile as they used to be. And both of
them were basically brought on line by their families. And I
just feel that that's the way it's going to happen. I have
spoken to senior groups and I have talked to different people,
but I really think it's going to be through the family that
they're going to get that access. But once they get the access
and once they can get the pictures of the grandchildren showing
up on the computer screen, and once they can send a message to
a hundred and fifty family members all at once, or a greeting
card. I get greeting cards for holidays I didn't even know
existed. I think it is going to be for--particularly for
seniors, it's going to be a tremendous boon.
Mr. Mora. In our of our focus groups we spoke to about
twenty-five seniors, and it was amazing to see how eager these
seniors were to go on line, because they wanted to talk to
their grandkids, they wanted to see their grandkids pictures,
or put their own pictures. And they generally are
communicating, and they were also interested in finding
resources to help them as they, you know, lose some of their
mobility and can depend on some of the services that will be
facilitated as the on line realm makes it easier for them. So
the want to, you know, shop for groceries on line and fill
their medications.
And we have a few programs that are excellent. One is
called ``surfing seniors'' back on the east coast which is
basically a community of seniors where they teach each other,
that is seniors teaching seniors, how to use the internet, how
to even build stuff, how to create digital stories and things
like that.
Another really active community, incredibly active
community and very inspirational, is the--happens in the
Boulder, Colorado community network where you have seniors who
are some of the most active members of the community in terms
of teaching other people how to use the resources, how to be on
the internet and how to gain access and things like that.
So we're seeing an emergence of these community centers and
community type of networks, and some of the on line spaces
targeted for seniors will continue to grow as the population
becomes huge, as the senior population grows.
Ms. Bono. Thank you.
Mr. Sutton. I can't speak to specific programs, but one of
the things that we are looking at in terms of the outreach
program is a resource of seniors to work with students online.
The concept of virtual community is a very powerful one. You
can talk to somebody next door with a computer.
You can talk to somebody half way around the world via the
computer. As we go on, we'll be talking about the broader the
bandwidth, the more the video, we're going to be able to hold
virtual classroom between a grandparent and anybody.
So that the concept of looking at seniors, for example, we
have a significant number of emeritus professors who have
volunteered to be able to work with teachers on content. They
have not gone so far as to say we want to go work in
classrooms, but they do want to work with teachers on content.
And that is their expertise. In some cases, we will get them
together face to face, but to a large degree we're going to
have to build that electronic community that is going to allow
everybody to benefit so that we are taking advantage of all the
resources that we have.
You have a former surgeon. If he had--if he saw the need,
he would be on. In talking to my eighty-five year old father--
--
Ms. Bono. You tell him that.
Mr. Sutton. Well sometimes----
Mr. Ashley. He has someone else--he has someone else that's
doing it for him.
Mr. Sutton. Somebody else. But when you get to the point
where it becomes a need, you will do it. Part of it is to be
able to tap those resources so that we continue to take
advantage back to that larger community we talked about.
Ms. Bono. You know, two things have sort of spun off from
your comments. And first of all, I also believe that as
technology has grown, certainly the fear of touching the
keyboard has changed, and I remember ten years ago you needed
to know, you know, DOS to get anywhere. And now with touch
screen technology, I think seniors are a lot more likely to be
less afraid of this.
Dr. Sutton, you just mentioned content, and that leads me
to my next question. And it's something we haven't touched on
yet but I have huge concerns on. With the future of the
internet here and how--the explosion that's going to occur, how
are we going to protect people who have intellectual property
rights, copyright holders and people who write the textbooks or
write the songs? How are we going to protect them? And they do
have a right, certainly, to be compensated for the work that as
you put it on the internet, it knows no bounds or boundaries.
So how does UCLA address that?
Mr. Sutton. I have no idea how UCLA addresses that. I'm
sure that there are people that are working on it. I think
there's an interesting point about the content, and if we're
going to look at content and say K-12, or even K-14, one of the
bits of content that we're looking at that might be the most
critical is that content that the teachers themselves working
together, whether it's face to face or electronically build
themselves. We're looking at websites in terms of professional
development where teachers can work with each other.
The product they come up with would be powerful because it
would also be accessible to students. And there's no
intellectual property right there necessarily. At the same
time, the process will be even more powerful because they will
learn that much more in the process.
Ms. Bono. Wait a minute. So you're saying here that authors
and composers will be no longer be existent here? That this is
going to be a collaboration of teachers?
Mr. Sutton. No, no. I'm talking about the use of material
to put together for particular students. We talked about that
``just in time'' learning of how you meet the needs of all
those various students. Well for one teacher to do that is
difficult.
If you get twenty teachers working with their twenty
classrooms to build that curriculum along with others, then you
can--you don't have to put that particular content on the
internet. It can go on an intranet that is closed off. You take
care of a lot of problems of surfing where one ought not to be
surfing. You have some control over the content. It's a great
place to train before you turn somebody loose to the broader
range. If you want them to be successful early on, you can
control it.
To the broader reaches of new content and anything else,
that's beyond me at this particular point. But it is an issue
that I--that I know that fellow professors at UCLA have a great
interest in as they publish research and so on.
Ms. Bono. Thank you.
Mr. Mora. I have a comment about that. I think that it's
going to require much of the effort currently going on the
internet in terms of regulation, especially as it relates to
taxes, it's going to require joining forces with the computer
industry and the government sector to look at this issue and
the industry unfortunately is going to have to step up a little
bit and be a little more responsible.
If you look at the case of Napster.com and doubleclick who
are really in big trouble and have CEO's who are not really
being very direct about the situation and not very responsive
to the fact that people are, you know, infringing on
intellectual--intellectual content rights. So it's going to
require collaboration of the industry and the government to
really come to a solution and responsibly manage this.
Ms. Bono. Thank you.
Mr. Ashley. I don't know. I'm thinking of the cassette
recorders that came with the two different ones, and they said
this is going to ruin the music industry because now
everybody's going to make their own cassettes. I think what
we're seeing with the internet is the incredibly sophisticated
technology currently being used for marketing. Most of it is
covert rather than overt. But the fact that they cannot only
track who you are but where you're coming from and where you
were before you got to that site would seem to indicate that
they can also find out who is going to which sites and what
they're doing, what they're copying, what they're taking.
All of our sites, all of our class websites are password
protected. So any instructor who puts material on a class
website knows that the only people who can access it are their
students. But then, of course, students could copy that
material.
But I--I do think that what we're seeing right now, we have
done searches just to see how many different places our name is
on the internet, and there's--there's software that you can do
that, and you can go around and find out that your name is in
places where you never thought it would be. And sometimes you
want to have your name removed.
Ms. Millender-McDonald [continuing]. Survey material that
you're giving through this----
Mr. Ashley. No, it's actually by people just sort of just
listing the university as being part of something that we're
not part of. But the internet allows us to do that. We could
never do that through print. There would be no way we could
survey all print materials. But on the internet we can do a
search and find out all the places.
I understand the concern. I understand why--why authors and
people who create art are concerned. At the same time, I think
that the safeguards are going to be there, and if they don't
feel comfortable at this time perhaps they want to sort of hold
back and wait. But I think those safeguards are going to be in
place as much as we can ever have them.
Ms. Bono. Thank you. You mentioned again your--the virtual
university, and I did partake in one class at Palm Springs
Library. It was fun. The images were a bit slow in loading. I
guess as we progress with broadband, it will be a lot smoother.
But I have a question for you, and it's a great opportunity for
the lawyer joke, a bad lawyer joke, but will law schools ever
be on line? And then the question is what quality assurance are
included in your distance learning programs to assure that
students are honest?
Mr. Ashley. That's a very good question. Until we have the
face recognition software, which I understand is coming, it's
being developed for the ATM's, and we actually will be able to
tell who is sitting in front of that screen. But at this time,
all of the significant exams for any of the programs are
proctored.
And that means that every student, regardless of where they
are in the world must find, nominate and have a proctor
approved who will then be there when the exam is given. And
it's given under our conditions. So we are still using
proctors, a very, very old system because we don't--aren't able
to authenticate the person.
Ms. Bono. What about a stay at home mom?
Mr. Ashley. Stay at home--we have stay at home moms who are
enrolled in our programs. Usually our exams are on the weekend
or in the evening. We find that local librarians are more than
willing to be proctors, but sometimes it's a person from a
local church. Sometimes it's a--we have a whole variety of
people, a principal, a school principal is willing to stay late
and proctor an exam for someone. So our people have never had a
problem finding a proctor. It seems like in every community,
there's someone who's saying, sure I'll do that.
Ms. Bono. That's great. Shifting gears here a little bit.
No one's really talked about training or developing high
skilled information technology workers so we can avoid the H1B
visa extension that we've been voting on.
How do we encourage students at college age to begin to
become programmers and address this lack of skilled workers
that we need so desperately?
Mr. Ashley. We have to be careful because then they'll
leave the university which is what they're all doing. The
people who are very--really attracted to those--to those
industries. But there is a--that's a real question because the
thing is it's usually at the university we're teaching our
instructors, who probably received the Ph.D. ten years ago, are
teaching from material that they were taught frequently.
And so that there is a more or less of a historical quality
to much of what we teach at the university. And it's hard to
get the latest information into--into the classroom. But that's
a constant effort.
Ms. Bono. Thank you. Do you want to comment further?
Mr. Mora. I have a brief comment. I think you have to start
early, and really encourage technical fluency at a very early
age. And there are some programs that are beginning to do that,
that are doing that effectively. Programs called--a program
called Computer Clubhouse started at MIT with some--a local
museum where they have kids working with robotics at a very
early age, actually doing programming, building video games
early on.
We have a program also called Education Place out of New
York City in public libraries, where girls are partnered up
with mentors and do activities off line about actual designed
products. And then they go online into that online realm with a
huge number of pallets and develop and design tools and learn
the process of design and get that very, very early on. And I
think that builds the force and encourages that skill
development early on.
Ms. Bono. All right, I'm going to go ahead and wrap up this
panel. I know that we could continue all day long, and I
appreciate your time again. And I want to thank you for your
testimony and your answers. And at this time, we'll----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I just want to ask one question of
the chair. As you speak about the H1B, I'm concerned that the
audience is not aware of that. There's a piece of legislation
that we are now engaging in to bring over three hundred and
fifty thousand high tech personnel from overseas to come in
because of the silicon valley and other areas that are in need
of high tech workers and we do not have them here in the United
States.
My argument is that why is it that we did not forecast or
see that early on where we could have trained personnel in
these--various jobs or varied jobs so that we would not have to
go overseas to bring personnel here. And so Dr. Sutton or Dr.
Ashley, when you do all of this research and even Mr. Mora,
when you do this research for all other things, why is it that
we could not foresee this down the line?
When I was director of gender equity programs and we were
looking at jobs for the ten year out, fifteen year out, we did
those kinds of projections, and I'm just really curious why a
state like
California or a nation could not have projected that, those
needs for those jobs. I think three hundred and fifty
thousand----
Mr. Sutton. I think it's one thing--I think it's one thing
to be able to project what the needs would be. I think it is
another thing to be able to put programs together when you're
not sure down the road. Because you're looking at several years
down the road. You're looking, I guess Francisco said, you're
looking at starting this early. This is not something you turn
around and say gee, we need three hundred and fifty thousand
workers for tomorrow. Let's put a program together and we'll
whip them out. Part of the--part of----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. No that's right, you don't do
that----
Mr. Sutton. It goes back to the conversation we had earlier
with the career awareness. What are the--what are the options?
I'm not sure that five years ago say, how many high school
students would have looked at programming as a viable job or a
viable career.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. How many did you say, five years
ago?
Mr. Sutton. Say five years ago.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Microsoft was around, so we should
have.
Mr. Sutton. Looking at the typical student in schools and
go back to the map, that because of that lack of connection to
future and to career and to looking at what's possible. You
have to be able to play a little, because--one of the physics
teachers that I work with said that one of the biggest problems
he'd seen over twenty years of teaching was that kids today
haven't played with the hardware and the radio, the ham radio
kind of stuff and the crystal sets like they used to. They
don't have the background experience.
Being able to go into a community center or an after school
program and play with robotics, where you can write a program
and make this little machine do something is very powerful. One
of the hardest things to do with a computer is--you have to
realize, the computer does not control you. The computer will
only do what you tell it. And if you don't give it the right
instructions, it's going to sit there and wait for you to do it
right.
Well, there is a certain message and lesson to be learned
by going through the program. I'm not going to advocate
everybody should take a programming class, but understanding
the concept and having lived that and written a simple program
to make something happen is very powerful.
Some people, when they do that for the first time, that
will--that's their career. They will go that way. We have a lot
of kids who have never had that opportunity. If they do have
it, it is in a technology only class that doesn't build the
connection, and they would rather not be there because it's not
an exciting thing. It's a requirement that they have to take
and it's with old machines that have nothing to do with
current. It's not built around anything that is of interest to
get their interest to look at the potential of job or career.
One thing I think is interesting. There is a environmental
careers academy at Leuzinger High School and they have a
variety of experiences, and it is geared toward students being
able to get jobs in various careers. They can go through and
get a certificate and get a job right out of high school.
One of the kids, when he--when they were talking about
this, started to do this thing and he suddenly realized, he
said, you mean I can get a job that pays nine, ten dollars an
hour just by going to school for two weeks this summer? He
never thought of that. And there are a lot of those kinds of
opportunities that we don't take advantage of.
Ms. Millender-Mcdonald. Thank you all very much.
Ms. Bono. Thank you very much. Again, I thank the
panelists. You're dismissed, and if we could call the second
set of panelists up to the witness table.
We're going to take a five minute break at this time and
stretch our legs. Thank you.
[Recess.]
Ms. Bono. We will now begin the second panel which focuses
on e-commerce.
We're ready to begin with testimony, and I'd like to
welcome our panelists beginning with--actually I'll introduce
you as we go forward. We'll start with LynneJoy Rogers who's
the Director of the Los Angeles Urban League, Ron Brown
Business Center.
Lynne, you have roughly about five minutes if you could.
STATEMENT OF LYNNEJOY ROGERS, DIRECTOR, RON BROWN BUSINESS
CENTER, URBAN LEAGUE
Ms. Rogers. I'll try to stick as close as possible. Good
morning. Essentially we represent small business, and this is
pretty much dealing with business. The advancement of
technologies provided numerous opportunities for big business
to become more efficient and competitive in the global economy.
In fact, the primary focus for business today is to utilize
technological advancement to become bigger and better with less
overhead. Thus, we are seeing the evolution of multinational
companies who, through mergers, acquisitions, restructuring or
re-engineering are positioning themselves for these 21st
century global opportunities.
The key word here is global. As corporations become more
global in focus, they will become less supportive of urban
issues. This is a major question we must address. The quest for
efficiency and competitiveness using the advances of automation
has changed the nature of the job and work as we've known it.
These changes have had a direct impact on the inner or
urban centers of what used to be major industrial communities.
It is almost impossible for semi-skilled, low-skilled or
unskilled workers to find jobs in manufacturing. In the US
alone, ninety million jobs in the labor force of a hundred and
twenty-four million are potentially vulnerable to replacement
by machines. Scholars warn that with the introduction of more
sophisticated computers, the role of the human will be a less
significant factor in the area of production.
In fact, the role of the human is bound to diminish as did
the role of the horse in the agricultural age. As the--as
machines were introduced more readily, horses became less
necessary and, in fact, eliminated by machines. Right now, the
majority of manufacturers in the United States have increased
efficiency and competitiveness using automation for smart
machines.
According to Jeremy Rifkin, author of The End of Work, it
is automation and not offshore manufacturing which has impacted
American factory workers. Utilizing technology, companies have
become more productive, efficient and profitable with fewer
employees.
Additionally, smart machines don't take vacations, get
sick, file stress claims or talk back. Technology will continue
to help corporations to become more efficient, profitable and
productive.
However, the price to America will probably be the loss of
the middle class as we know it. No longer will there be high
paying jobs for low skilled workers. In fact, as machines
become more smart, there will be little need for blue collar
skilled--blue collar skilled workers or white collar
professionals unless they are technology workers.
Technological advancement is one reason we're beginning to
see the flattening of the organizational structure. No longer
is there a need for middle management. As we continue to
utilize the team approach to problem solving in innovation
process, there will be less need for a middle layer to
interpret or implement process from the top down or bottom up.
More and more, professional employees will find themselves
doing more general types of assignments, placing people with
only one specialty or profession in jeopardy. Advanced
technology coupled with global capitalism will be less inclined
to consider community issues as relevant. Thus, people who have
been historically disenfranchised from the economic process
which develops ownership and wealth, will continue to drift
towards an existence mirroring the survival of the fittest.
There is another very troubling possibility as we become
more technological, and that is ignoring the human potential,
and with it human needs. The new technology worker tends to be
younger and less apt to feel responsible for human needs. This
lack of social responsibility coupled with corporate
restructuring may explain the trend away from philanthropic
activities.
As corporations continue to merge and become more globally
competitive, there will continue to be less focus on local
needs unless they directly impact the bottom line. There is
certainly a trend to abandon any commitments to programs for
establishing inclusion in diversity and opportunity. We must
understand that this global technological revolution will tend
to make us less people conscious and more machine oriented.
This coupled with our increased capacity to connect with
worldwide networks of information will make us less local in
focus and more global in orientation. We may look to the world
before we look to our local community. We must understand that
the purpose for technology is to help all of us live a better
life; and the life is not just for a few who are privileged to
wealthy or have access to technology.
The challenge for those of us who are concerned with
serving the public interest is to ensure that human needs are
met and people are considered before profits. I'm especially
concerned that small business who is currently taxed with
employing 90% of the population is really less apt to be able
to enjoy some of the technological advances that we have today.
It's almost impossible for small business to afford the kind of
information infrastructure that is necessary to be competitive
in the global economy.
With some of the changes that are occurring in the global
economy today, when we think in terms of who small business
employs, because they cannot afford the high technology paid
workers, they must in fact, employ those who have the least
skills, those who have lower skills, and those who are less
technologically inclined, making small business less
competitive in this global economy and more dependent upon the
larger multi-national corporations to provide them with
contracts which then begins to control their ability to be
competitive.
Coupled with this is the growing increase on cost that the
distribution system behind this wonderful thing called the
internet. It's called the telephone companies. And when we
think in terms of telephone costs and we think in terms of how
those telephone costs have escalated as a result of
deregulation, we must concern ourselves with how a small
business who is taxed today with essentially being the one
provider of the majority of employment opportunities, how will
they begin to be and continue to be competitive in this global
economy.
Small business must be free to be enterprising and have the
ability to grow. It is small business which becomes the mega-
corporations. But without small business and without there
being the opportunity to be able to afford the infrastructure,
they will not be able to continue to employ the many people
that they employ today. Thank you.
Ms. Bono. Thank you.
Next, we have Sam Covington, the Director of Information,
Vortex, Incorporated.
STATEMENT OF SAM COVINGTON, DIRECTOR INFORMATION VORTEX, INC.
Mr. Covington. Thank you. And I want to thank Lynn for what
she just said because it echoes some of the things that I also
believe.
One of the interesting things is that the guys that were on
before us made some very interesting comments and illuminated a
subject that's really near and dear to my heart. But one of the
things that we noticed from what they talked about is they
talked more about the symptoms of the problem than the real
problem.
And we do have a serious problem in America today. Is there
a digital divide? Absolutely there's a digital divide. But that
divide really is only a reflection of the other divides that
exist in the economy. Right now there is no competitive economy
except among a certain group. In this moment in Washington,
Janet Reno is suing Microsoft as a monopoly. And there's almost
no question that Microsoft is, indeed, a monopoly.
But one of the characteristics of a monopoly are the things
that occur when a monopoly is in existence. The laws of physics
simply do not apply. Competition simply does not exist. That
situation exists in the small business market and in the
education market and it affects minorities the most.
Let me explain sort of what I'm talking about. Education,
if we really wanted competitive education, I mean in basketball
when somebody scores they give the other team the ball. If they
lose all of their games during the season, they get to pick the
best player from the draft. Our schools are pathetic, and yet
and still they don't get funded more, they get funded less.
This reduces competition. You failed to deliver and build
the next generation of competitors. In business, it's really
interesting that--that we say it's a competitive environment
when if you live in the real world out here in business, you
find that you go and talk to other businesses and you say, look
I can save you money. And the answer is, what do I need that
for? And why do they say that? They say it for real legitimate
business reasons.
They have relationships with other people. They'd rather
pay more and keep those relationships than compete anything.
Competition to business is evil. It's a very evil thing. No
business wants to compete unless they absolutely are forced to.
And so they don't typically compete. Most companies, and I
won't mention any names but most companies, and I think someone
on the panel mentioned one of them, will intentionally not
compete projects because it's more expensive to compete.
Competition is expensive. It requires that you look at all the
competitors, that you decide which one is the best.
If you already have someone you know can do the job, why
compete? Or only compete to get a price so that that competitor
can reduce his price, and you get the benefit of competition,
but not the cost of it.
So in the business world, we have this non-competitive
thing going on, and it's all because there is a monopoly. And
that monopoly forces the inability to compete for small
businesses. It doesn't just affect minority business. It
actually affects every business across the board.
So we have monopolies that don't allow the competition to
occur in the business world. we have this monopoly that doesn't
allow competition to occur in the education world, and we get
these results that these guys have basically talked about. And
it's sort of like my nose is running, but you know, I'm not
fighting the cold I'm just wiping my nose.
We can't change this, and the solution is really simple. We
can change this, if not overnight, over some period of time.
The way to change this is to really reinvigorate this country
and promote competition. People say, you know, why do African
Americans excel in sports so well? Well there's simple reasons
why. The reasons why is that there are defined set of rules.
Those rules are enforced. In the business economy, there is a
defined set of rules, but none of them are enforced.
And so you don't get the same result that you get in
sports. But if the competition fields are level and opened up,
you will get basically exact same result you get in the
sporting arena. You will get a healthy set of competitors
competing for contract and--and money, and lifestyles that
currently the majority enjoys.
In addition to that, all of a sudden these other problems
will somehow tend to go away. When people start to make money,
when people are building cities and environments and
communities, all of a sudden their kids do a lot better in
school. So these things are self defeating and self--how do you
say that? They defeat themselves.
So when things are bad, they will continue to feed on
themselves. And when things are good, they will also produce
continually good results. So my plea really, is that we open up
the doors for competition. That for people that are really
willing to look and open their eyes and see what the
competitive landscape looks like for small business, and see
the way the majority literally just cheats to get ahead and
stay ahead.
Monopolies can't help but abuse their monopoly power. And
it's not like they're either good, bad or evil. They just do
what's most important for their business model. And so you can
fault the result, but you can't fault--you really must fault
the system that makes the result come out the way it does. So,
thank you for your time.
Ms. Bono. Thank you.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Before we go on to the next panel,
I just wanted to acknowledge one of our principles here from
Carson High School, Mr. Douglas Wainright. Mr. Wainright, he's
one of the principals of the fine Carson High School. Good
seeing you here. Thank you.
Ms. Bono. Now we'll move on to John Bryant, founder and CEO
of Operation Hope, Incorporated.
Mr. Bryant. Good morning.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. You have five minutes.
STATEMENT OF JOHN BRYANT, FOUNDER AND CEO, OPERATION HOPE, INC.
Mr. Bryant. Before I read my formal remarks which will be
about five minutes in length, I do want to just lay a template
out by saying that there is a new economy that is before us is.
It is a reality. I would not be surprised if half of all
commerce in the next five to seven years is electronic
commerce. And as my friend Kevin Ross would say when you get in
front of the town--get in front crowd, they're going to parade.
We've got to find a way to make something positive out of
something which could be potentially damaging. The capitalist
market that we have in America today is a wonderful market, but
nothing in the absolute except God is good.
Those things kept in balance can be good. Alcohol in
balance reduces heart failure. Drugs on balance are prescribed.
All things in balance, including the information technology age
can be for good. So first and foremost before I give these
remarks I'd like to, of course, commend my friend and
Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald, to Congresswoman Bono
and the other distinguished members of the Empowerment
Subcommittee of the Small Business Committee of the U.S. House
of Representatives. I thank you, of course, for having me here
today.
Operation Hope, which I represent, is America's first
nonprofit investment bank serving the underserved communities
of America. I'm here to share with you my vision for a brick
and mortar information technology learning tool and a practical
means of bridging the digital divide.
It is called the Inner City Cyber Cafe, and it is sponsored
by Operation Hope.
I want to provide a subtext here. The portals that have
been created by many African American and Latinos to bridge
digital divide often times just enable more middle class black
folks to talk to more middle class black folks. Or more middle
class Latinos to communicate with more middle class Latinos.
We're not bridging the digital divide. We're just walking
across the street. We have to go to the people where they are.
Going to the market.
Since 1992, the year of the civil unrest here in Los
Angeles, Operation Hope has literally done this in the area of
economic education, economic literacy, banking and finance.
Meeting the people where they are and finding unique and
innovative ways to bridge the divide for them in economic
education and economic opportunity.
The operational strategy of going to the market has netted
results. We have invested some sixty million dollars ($60
million) into south central, east L.A. with some sixty
partners, bank partners in tow educating some fifteen thousand
adults and thirty-eight thousand youths in economic education
and economic literacy. Every loan before is paid as agreed.
Bridging the digital divide, a place to sit. Operation Hope
now seeks to utilize this same direct bottom up entrepreneurial
approach to bridging the digital divide in inner city and
underserved communities. The Inner City Cyber Cafe, now located
at 3721 South La Brea in Central L.A. is a bold, yet fairly
straightforward empowerment initiative of Operation Hope
joining other innovative initiative like the Urban League
Business Development Center designed to literally bridge the
technological and prospective gaps separating inner city and
mainstream communities. We're not dumb, or stupid, or
misinformed, or ill-informed at worse.
The Inner City Cafe,--Cyber Cafe, complete with gourmet
coffee kiosk will provide the local community with a
comfortable, relaxed and positive atmosphere in which to meet
to conduct e-commerce related business and research, to hold
one on one business meetings, and to unleash the enormous power
of the internet and world wide web.
The Cyber Cafe, has eighteen cutting edge technology
stations, and through a unique partnership with leading edge
high tech hardware and software providers, access to the most
cutting edge up to date pc tools and equipment available today.
Valuable market research. We're not asking for a hand out,
but a hand up. These cyber cafes which--with privacy
authorization by the clients will provide valuable research
back to the companies seeking to do business in these markets.
The growth--the area with the highest growth of internet use in
today's market irrespective of race are African Americans. That
is the highest number of increase of users of the internet.
Education. Working closely with software manufacturer
Intuit, the manufacturer of the immensely popular financial
software Quicken and Quickbooks, Operation Hope using the power
of technology also plans to teach the individual financial
responsibility ethic to low and moderate income individuals
with a genuine desire to learn and better themselves.
We are working closely with a full time information system
technician who will be there to help them operate the systems
and to provide education free of charge on our computers every
night of the week that the Cyber Cafe, is open and it will be
open from 9:00 in the morning until 9:00 at night.
Division. Inaugurated by Vice President Gore on April 15th,
the first Inner City Cyber Cafe, came on line with a mission no
only to provide learning, but to make learning cool.
Aesthetically pleasing to the eye, the Cyber Cafe, features a
twenty-five--twenty five hundred square foot footprint and an
attractive and easy to use gourmet coffee kiosk, DVD movies,
high speed internet connections, because we meet not only
information but entertainment; we call it infotainment, cutting
edge hardware and software, an Inner City Cyber Cafe, website
and web portal, and most importantly, technology education.
In closing, the partners. The private/public partners for
this innovative collaborative, an on the ground model for
bridging the divide includes the U.S. Economic Development
Administration, the U.S. Department of Commerce, Intuit, P.S.I.
Net, GTE, Unisys, E.D.P. Furniture and Turner Construction.
As a result of the Union Bank and Operation Hope
acquisition of a 45% interest in Next Check Cashing Network
recently, we hope to move folks from check cashing customers to
depository customers. We now have access to six hundred
thousand of their low income customers who we also hope to link
to the Inner City Cyber Cafe, network, and to give them a hand
up, then a hand over.
Yes, the Cyber Cafe, is now up and running. We also believe
it can be self sustainable. We believe that there's enough
revenue that can come from fifty cents per minute usage--I'm
sorry, yes fifty cents per minute usage, and if you buy a cup
of coffee, half off, to sustain the operation of this Cyber
Cafe. In that way, it's doing well by doing good.
And I close my comments by making a commitment. We commit
today to build an Inner City Cyber Cafe, in every one of our
existing operational banking centers. That means our
operational banking center in Watts/Willowbrook, the district
of Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald, within twelve
months we will build a Cyber Cafe, in your district.
Ms. Bono. Thank you.
And now we'll move on to Perry Parks for a technology
demonstration. Correct? Perry is the Vice-President of
Government and Public Relations with Media One.
STATEMENT OF PERRY PARKS, VICE-PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC
RELATIONS, MEDIA ONE
Mr. Parks. Perry Parks, Media One, Vice President,
Government and Public Affairs.
First of all, I want to thank the distinguished panel for
inviting me out today for this particular inquiry. And I want
to take the opportunity--the agenda said technical
demonstration. So we will have that done on CD Rom, but I want
to kind of set the context for the demonstration.
First of all, I think that as we start talking about the
digital divide, the agenda and material that we have seen so
far has billed infrastructure as a very important aspect of
that. It's not the total aspect, but it's a foundational piece,
and that Media One essentially is an infrastructure builder.
It's a cable network that has been investing and deploying high
speed internet cable plant nationally, but in California in
particular.
As we sit here today, Media One and the franchises that it
covers in its franchise then, has built 75% of all its
franchises to seven hundred and fifty mega hertz two way
capability, and we're deploying products in the market. In
California and in the 37th District in particular, by the end
of the year we will be 100% deployed here with that two way
capability in residential neighborhoods.
The reason this is important is that this is the backbone
infrastructure that will provide high speed internet access to
these communities in the 37th Congressional District and all
districts that we provide service in.
We have invested over seven billion dollars ($7 billion)
starting in 1996 to upgrade our networks nationally, and over
five hundred sixty-nine million ($569 million) in California.
We have upgraded these networks and it pretty much positions us
to be in a very competitive positive posture with other
telecommunication providers like the Bell operating companies,
direct satellite and wireless.
On the previous panel, one of the speakers indicated that
it was all going to be wireless. I hope not, given that we have
five hundred and sixty-nine million dollars ($569 million)
invested here. To think I was going to be out of business in
five years.
But I think what it points to is the fact there are going
to be multiple platforms that are going to be available in
these communities, wire, hard wire, wireless satellite, that
are going to provide the foundation of competition for these
particular communities.
What we've seen since our deployment is we actually have
seen prices begin to come down. We are providing our high speed
internet access at thirty-nine ninety-five ($39.95) a month.
Prior to our deployment, it was a minimum eighty-four dollars
($84) or eighty-nine dollars ($89) a month and the speeds were
about half as fast. And there's discussion now that it's going
to drop another ten dollars ($10) to twenty-nine ninety-five
($29.95) a month. So as the competition begins to take hold
here, we'll be seeing prices come down and more access will be
made available to the people in this particular community.
We've launched three products. High speed internet access.
We've launched digital telephone in direct competition with the
telephone company, and we're launching digital satellite--
digital television now to compete with the direct satellite
companies offering two hundred, two hundred fifty channels of
product.
The map in your folder that I passed out and the one that
the audience can see on the wall depicts where Media One
properties are deployed in Southern California. And what you
can see that is that we have actually upgraded every community
that we're serving.
Now what we've done essentially is we've connected over
eight hundred thousand homes in California to a two way
network, and we've also connected over fourteen thousand
schools to the network using video product. Where we're
beginning to approach this notion of a digital divide isn't in
the hardware, it's more or less in what I'm going to call the
peopleware and informationware.
The schools that we've approached, we're actually offering
school connections at no cost. We'll provide that free, and
we've sent out letters to every school in our service area, and
we've gotten about two hundred and--two hundred and twenty-six
responses back that have indicated a desire to want more
information or to be installed, and we've installed eighteen of
those schools so far to date with a connection to the internet.
I think that what it points to is that this notion of build
it and they will come isn't necessarily going to hold true in
this particular market. I think that what it points to is that
where the digital divide exists, it exists in the literacy
levels that were pointed out earlier. It exists in the lack of
familiarity with the technology that maybe our school personnel
and other community people have. It exists in the lack of
wiring or the capability wire facilities.
So I think that the infrastructure is in place and that we
have been able to now identify where the digital divide is
actually existing, and I think it is existing in the area of
people, software, literacy, those particular kind of issues
where I guess the good new is is that we do know how to attack
those particular problems if we focus our attention on those
issues. The community and this country is pretty creative
enough to come up with those solutions.
At the local level, I think that it's important to us that
we recognize as a business given that we've wired communities
that are predominantly minority that we're looking for a return
on that investment. That the community isn't going to come
immediately to these particular products without some outreach
and education, and some solutions to this issue about the
digital divide.
We have been looking at solutions both internally and
externally and what we have been doing and experimenting with
these solutions, and I have some of the boards up here, is that
we have Culver City High School that we've developed a hundred
and thirty computer labs at that particular school to support
education in that particular community.
We have taken Challengers Boys Club as a community service
center in South Central L.A., coupled it with the Venice Dream
Team, which is a nonprofit organization which is training kids
in the use of photographic information.
We're marrying out network, the photographic capability and
the internet by hosting and putting on line these photographs
and digital stories that are going to be developed by kids in
the community for the community. We've billed it as--over here
I have behind me the broadband stories which is the theme, but
the website that it's hosted on is called Street Scenes. So
it's on line and hosted, and the kids are Street Scenes.
Street Scenes, Street Scenes; it's a website,
www.streetscenes.net. And these kids now from Venice are
teaching kids over at Challengers in South L.A. how to use the
camera, how to use the equipment, how to use their stories and
write for on-line applications. So those are some of the areas
that we're beginning to do the experimenting in.
We've looked at other models that begin to be a win/win,
and I think that's important given that we are business in
the--in the business of trying to make a return on profit. It's
important that in partnerships we look at win/win
opportunities.
I had the opportunity to visit a school district down in
San Diego exploring this opportunity--this notion, and it's
called Lemon Grove School District. The thing that's
interesting about that school district is they've made some
investments already in building servers at the school district
site, and they're putting what they're calling thin server
clients in student--in classrooms and in student's homes that
limit somewhat the capability that you can access on the
internet.
But at their server they host those programs and that
software that's used by teachers and give them some access to
on-line portals and websites that are appropriate for
education. And they're putting in the student's homes.
What this allows is that teachers and parents to
communicate, student to student communication, and what they
are finding is that there is an increase in the average daily
attendance which is bringing dollars to this poor school
district in San Diego.
Through the e-reg monies and through other subsidies, the
system down there is offering the service at a discount rate,
like nineteen dollars ($19) a month in a community that would
be historically under penetrated in San Diego. And they're
beginning to see a lift and rise in the penetration at nineteen
dollars ($19) a month. So nineteen dollars ($19) a month isn't
sixty dollars ($60) a month, but if you have the capital
investment in the ground, some money is better than no money.
So it begins to be a win/win for the company because
they're beginning to see growth and penetration. They're
educating a new generation of student who will be familiar with
the technology which will make them a more likely purchaser of
the technology in the future. The school district is getting
increased attendance and education is improving.
That seems to me to be the kind of models that we ought to
be searching for in terms of deployment in our schools to
support the closing of this particular gap.
So with that, what I'd like to do is bring Brian Thatcher
up so that we can give you a quick example of why we think high
speed internet access is important and one of the roles it
might play with the high speed applications in an e-commerce
world.
What we're going to attempt to do is show you first of all,
a demonstration or example of the download speeds compared to
the standard dial up modem. So as Brian begins to show that,
what you'll see is that the standard dial up modem moves
information very slowly.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. That screen right there is in the
way of our seeing it.
Ms. Bono. Can you move that visual?
Mr. Parks. Okay, so what was just demonstrated there is
that the picture of the balloon on my right is up, the dial up
modem is still trying to process the information. What this
means essentially is people will not have the patience in an
information age to sit there and wait for the information to
upload. They're going to want in instantly and they're going to
want it quickly. And so this--these are examples of the
comparative speeds in terms of audio, photograph and video. It
shows you the speed at which it can be accessed.
If we go to the video, video is a lot more intensive
application, so it downloads at a slower speed on the dial up
and a little bit slower on our Media One Roadrunner. But again,
it's quite dramatic in terms of the comparison.
One of the other applications that we can use is the
photographic scenes that will allow you to explore items,
locations, materials, in a hundred and sixty degree kind of
format. So if we can bring up, what it allows you to do from
your home is to go to a particular location. See if we can get
it up.
[Pause.]
Mr. Parks. Okay now, with your mouse then you can move that
scene three hundred and sixty degrees to different views,
perspectives on the location. Now where I think this begins to
have a tie-in to e-commerce is that if small businesses are
putting products on line, if you're selling a home, or whatever
the product might be, you could put in on line and people get
more than just a two dimensional view of that particular
product.
So with that particular capability you know, small
businesses that can develop their own websites, the Cyber Cafe,
is an example, could have both a camera internally so people
could check out who's in the caf, at home, and they could see
that Joe is down there and go down and say well I can meet Joe
at the caf, because I can see he's there.
Or, you might have some other product that you might want
to use that you want to make available to the entire community.
So what I'm saying I think here, is that the infrastructure,
the capability is there. The 37th Congressional District is,
from an infrastructure point of view, is up and ready to go.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Schools and all?
Mr. Parks. Well it passes the schools. Like I said before,
I think the issue here is being able to work through the
educational bureaucracy to make sure that we can get those
products into the schools, and we're working that every day.
Right now, our commitment this year is to wire at least sixty
schools in the southern California area so that they are high
speed internet capable. And we have a commitment to do 100%,
you know, over time.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Let me just ask you, I've got to
ask this question. Sixty schools you want to wire. How are you
going to do that? What technology are you going to use wire
those sixty schools? What would be the criteria?
Mr. Parks. I think that the criteria is first come, first
served. I mean, what we've done as I said before, is that we
have mailed out letters introducing and letting schools know
that we are--our plan is passing their school, that we have a
commitment to providing them the drop and the access at no
cost, and the cable modem at no cost, and we're waiting on
responses back. So it will be on a first come, first served
basis that we will do that.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. In the K-12 or the--colleges?
Mr. Parks. K through 12, and including private parochial
schools as well.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. So then you're talking about an
abundance of requests coming in for sixty schools.
Mr. Parks. Well you would think so. But what I have so far
out of the fourteen thousand--fourteen hundred that we've
mailed out so far we've had two hundred that have responded and
we started these--the mailing in October of 1997.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. So apparently you're saying
fourteen hundred that you've mailed out. So you've already
narrowed that universe. Fourteen hundred. Who are the fourteen
hundred?
Mr. Parks. The fourteen hundred schools are the schools
that are--I misspoke there. I said--there are fourteen hundred
schools that are in the Media One service area. Those are the
schools that we pass and that would be eligible for and have
access to the services that I'm talking about.
So we've mailed letters and made calls to the fourteen
hundred schools introducing and letting them know that this
service is available at no charge. We started that in October
of '97. To date, we've had two hundred and fifty that have
responded to the letters. And we have eighteen of those that
have been installed.
So part of that process is working through the school's
bureaucracy to get installed, and I think the other part of it
is that some schools, or a lot of schools aren't quite up to
speed on how to address it or what they need to do internally.
So I think that that's where the problem lies.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. So the more--their inability to
have the capability of knowing how to respond to you as opposed
to bureaucracy?
Mr. Parks. Yeah. I think it's a number of things. I think
that part of it is--is internal--it could be internal wiring
issues. The other factor is that some of the schools have
already been wired by Pac Bell on their service. So there's
that--so you eliminate some there. And then some of it, I
think, has to do with just a lack of familiarity with the
technology and how to address it and how to use it.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I would like to think it's the
latter as opposed to bureaucracy because that's when I would
have to come in and see what's going on, folks not wanting to
move an agenda of tomorrow for students today. And so with
that, that's why I wanted to know if it's more one thing than
the other.
Congresswoman, I just had to ask the question.
Ms. Bono. Well, if you'd like to go ahead and start your
formal questioning, perhaps you can do that. But just to remind
everybody, if we could try to wrap up by 12:45. The staff and
everybody has a long way to go to get to Mecca this afternoon
before traffic. So 12:45 is a realistic goal, I would
appreciate that. Thank you.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. And you have me traveling too,
Madame Chair.
Let me just continue with you then Mr. Parks, Perry. Let me
ask you a question. We're talking about e-commerce, and we're
talking about that being really the most--it's really an issue
that has not tapped into my community in a big way or in my
understanding of the businesses I've talked with.
They're not provided this or do not have the capabilities
of even running an e-commerce component, if you will. What
would you say, how many small businesses have you come across
who is using broadband capabilities, if any?
Mr. Parks. Well, speaking from the Media One experience
right now, we're primarily a residential service and we----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. You don't need to answer that.
Mr. Parks. Well I'm going to tell you, I think that--no, I
don't know of any at this juncture.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Okay LynneJoy, how many you come in
contact with your small business--position of serving small
businesses? How many have broadband capabilities?
Ms. Rogers. Very few have broadband. Very few.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. How many of them really have
internet capabilities?
Ms. Rogers. Very few.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. That's right.
Ms. Rogers. DSL has emerged, however the majority of the
businesses that we work with are still using dial up access
which is why become an e-commerce shop primarily.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Uh huh.
Ms. Rogers. Those that can afford DSL, they are using DSL
but it's a very small number of businesses.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. So there is a need, Lynne I'll
stick with you, business development centers is a critical need
for small businesses?
Ms. Rogers. It's a very critical need. We're one of, I
think it's sixty-five minority businesses funded by the
Minority Business Development Agency. We are the only minority
business development center in that network that has a focus on
information technology and e-commerce.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. The only one?
Ms. Rogers. Only one. We do training for entrepreneurs. We
had been doing that even before we had the minority business
development site.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Are you going to get any funding
from SBA?
Ms. Rogers. No. No, we seek no funding from SBA.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. All right, so you're the only one
who provides this technology?
Ms. Rogers. From the perspective of consultation and
training, yes. We're business consultants and we actually go
into the businesses and we look at the operations. We make
determinations of what they're software applications would be
based on their operations and their current infrastructure.
We look at their employees and make determinations as to
what their current skill levels are, and what training would be
necessary in order to bring those employees' skills up to par
in order to be able to operate some of the software
applications. But the reason we offer those services is that,
you know, our primary base of businesses are mostly African
American, primarily African American, but Latino and Asian as
well have the least access to technology infrastructure.
And that's essentially what I was referring to in my
comments. Small business, and here in California you have a
disproportionate number of minority businesses. There are--in
fact, we have the largest population of minority businesses
located in California and more specifically----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. So if they're not internet capable,
how can they then do e-commerce?
Ms. Rogers. That's the issue. I mean, it's--when you talk
about being internet capable, you know, anybody can acquire it.
Sure, small business can be nineteen ninety five ($19.95) a
month. You get dial up access and you get on the internet. And
I think we need to be clear when we talk about a digital
divide. It's not just gaining access to the internet.
It's not just having the ability to be able to surf the
internet. That's why I made the comments that I made earlier.
It's the ability to be able to afford the technological
infrastructure that helps to really create the competitiveness
that is necessary in order to be efficient and effective in any
kind of business today. And that's what is difficult for small
business, and it's continuing to be difficult.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Let's see, here. We are running
on--the creation of manufacturing jobs in our urban communities
is still top priority, although trends show differently.
Manufacturing jobs, many of them are gone for the most part.
Ms. Rogers. I know. They are gone. But you'd be amazed at
the number of well meaning developers that still continue to
look at manufacturing even in the City of Los Angeles as
opportunities for neighborhoods and communities to be able to
participate in those--it's still labor, it's unrealistic, but
that's what's happening. There is less emphasis, if you will,
on technology training. There is not as much emphasis as there
needs to be in the world today. And it's not just for----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I just want to know, emphasis on
the what? On technology training? Just basic in your adult, job
training centers, or where?
Ms. Rogers. You have it in the adult schools. I think you
have some programs. The question becomes, once you go through
those programs do you have enough--do you have enough training
to be able to compete for the jobs that are available today? If
that were the case, then we certainly would not be importing as
many technologists as we are.
There's a reason why, you know, we're going through the
same thing right now that this country went through a hundred
years ago. When we were going from the agricultural society to
the industrial society, there was a great immigration, greater
immigration. And of course there was no need for people that
looked like us, because you know, slave labor was obsolete as a
result of automation. Now in Jeremy Rifkin's book, The End of
Work, it talks very much about the technological evolution and
the impact that it's had on African Americans.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Let me ask you this. I know that
time is low, but I'm going to throw a phrase out there and I
want you to end it. Small businesses need what to survive?
Ms. Rogers. Small businesses need information technology,
affordable information technology, infrastructure development.
Right now, for a small business to be able to do what most
businesses do very naturally, establishes networks, what they
call extranets and intranets, it would be almost very difficult
for small businesses to be able to afford that right now.
We're also talking about the distribution network. When I
talk about the phone systems, and it's not picking on one phone
system against the other, phone systems right now, I'm not
talking cable, but even any distribution system as it relates
to getting access to the internet or getting access to a direct
line of commerce, is becoming increasingly more expensive.
And that's an issue. Deregulation has made telephones more
expensive. I got a bill yesterday from AT&T saying we're
getting ready to change our calling card rates from twenty-five
cents ($.25) a minute to ninety-nine cents ($.99) a minute.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. And the deregulation was supposed
to bring about competition.
Ms. Rogers. Absolutely, and so the idea affordability is
really one of the issues that we really need to deal with when
we start talking about access to technology. What are we
talking about and what are the affordable aspects as it relates
to access. If it's not affordable, you're not going to be able
to access it.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. California has, or Los Angeles has
more small businesses than any other state, did you say? Or
what was that comment?
Ms. Rogers. We have more small businesses more specifically
in southern California as a whole. Small business plays more of
a role in the economy than anyplace else because southern
California as you know, there are very few corporations
headquartered here. You have a lot of corporations that have a
presence, but they are not headquartered here.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. That's correct.
Ms. Rogers. So small business is really the engine that is
driving our economy.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. There is no doubt about it, and
also has been and continues, I'm sure, to be the ones who
provide the job. We understand that.
Ms. Rogers. That's correct.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Mr.--okay, Mr. Covington, you said
competition to business is evil? Can you please explain, or as
my grandchildren would say, would you 'splain that to me?
Mr. Covington. Yes, it's really interesting. It's evil
because it costs a lot of money to compete, and then so
businesses don't want to compete. Let's say a company has a
bunch of sub-contracts and they want to find the best contract
for them. It's easier to go with the contract base you already
have than to go out and compete, you know, against several
other----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. You cannot sit on your laurels Mr.
Covington. You have got to be competitive in this world of
competition, for heaven's sake.
Mr. Covington. I would say----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. You cannot just continue to say, I
have this product. It's a good product. I have these few people
who are going to buy this product, so I am happy in my own
little place. Competition is real. Competition is growth, is it
not?
Mr. Covington. It absolutely is, and that's one of the
reasons why we really believe that more competition should be
instituted, especially in private business. I think the
government----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. So it's not evil then?
Mr. Covington. Oh no, it's not really evil.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Okay.
Mr. Covington. No, it's really good. But it's not practiced
in business, and you know, sometimes I sit back and I sort of
put myself in their position, and you wonder, you know, would I
do the same thing? And you know, it would be hard to put
another cost into your system when you have other competitors
out there that are doing the same thing you're doing. So it's
the system more than----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I suppose I agree with you to some
degree, but let's say this. You used the metaphor of the
basketball or some sports figure, but that sports person,
albeit basketball, baseball, or whatever, golf or whatever,
they come with their product. They come with a skill to sell
and so they do come with something that provides them the
opportunity to go into this arena of competitiveness.
Mr. Covington. Absolutely, but one of the things that I----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Is that not the same as business?
Mr. Covington. In a way, but not the same. I used to work
at a company called TRW. It's a great company.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I have it in my district.
Mr. Covington. Yes, and one of the things that you'll
notice, I mean, they went out and found all of us engineers
from all over the country. Their requirements are that you have
to have a 4.0 GPA. Well everybody walks in with a 4.0.
Everybody is capable. When it comes time to promote somebody,
they don't promote the best guy. You only have to be in the
average, somewhere in the middle somewhere. So it's sort of
nebulous. It's not like in sports where you can go out there
and slam dunk.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. We don't call that competitiveness,
we call that bias.
Mr. Covington. Well it's called----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Is that not true?
Mr. Covington. Well it's called grading on the curve. If
everybody is as good, then the curve is somewhere in the
middle. So, you know, you don't really always get the best guy.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. In politics we certainly understand
that. It's not always the best guy or girl that wins.
Mr. Covington. You guys have a more competitive environment
in that you have to go out and fight every four or six years,
and then they get you back here. But nobody else has to do
that, and in a lot of situations they typically pick--you know,
the easiest route is to find someone they're already working
with. Every--every large manufacturer today is reducing their
contractor role, not increasing them. They want to reduce them.
They want to go through--if they had their way, they really
want to go through one person and let them worry about all the
other ones.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. We understand that. We're looking
at contract bundling, and we're looking at all those things
that seem to be sometimes, seemingly adverse to small
businesses.
Mr. Covington. Well the real danger is that, you know, and
I know you guys are politicians, but I may be as crazy as a
road lizard when you take my taxes, but please give them back
to me when you start looking at these contracts. You know, a
lot of these companies that exist were funded by the
government, and as inept as people say the government is, I
mean it's producing----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Be careful young man.
Mr. Covington. It's producing all this economic growth. I
mean, there are two factors that produce everything we have----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. I hear what you're saying.
Mr. Covington. Semi conductors and the internet both
created by the government.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Yes, yes, yes. We hear you. So when
big businesses no longer need all the contracts. They should
provide the tax credits, is what you're saying.
Mr. Covington. Well let's be sure we can get our money
back. To the extent that they get their money back, we'd like
to get ours back too. I don't know how many seats in Congress
we paid for, but----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. You're wanting what, getting your
money back?
Mr. Covington. Exactly, our tax money.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Okay.
Mr. Covington. That percentage that everyone else gets, our
percentage goes----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Well we're working on that. This is
one democrat who has told the President himself and Gene
Sperling, his advisor, that we need to do tax credits. That we
need to do some, you know, tax credits, in other words. I did
tell him that. It may not be as onerous as my friend to my
left, oh to my left. Hey that's pretty good.
Ms. Bono. How did that happen?
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Anyway, I do feel that there should
be some tax credits, and so we're looking at that and I'm
trying to push that with the President. We need them.
Mr. Covington. I'm more referring to when you--when the
government lets contracts, that they're giving them all to
someone else. They aren't giving--I mean, I don't care if it's
a janitorial job. Give them all janitorial jobs. But just give
back the money so it comes back to the community. We don't get
back.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Let me ask you, both of you, what
would be most helpful for getting small businesses into the e-
commerce world. One liners, can't give you a lot of them
because I want to go to John for the Cyber Cafe. So what will
be most helpful to getting small business into the e-commerce?
Mr. Covington. I agree that, I really believe that LynneJoy
Rogers and people like her need to train them, because we build
them and we have more trouble when we build----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Build them. Build what?
Mr. Covington. Build corporate intranets and internets and
extranets. We build those sites for----
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Engineers and all?
Mr. Covington. Yeah, we build them so that people can--can
maximize the way they do business inside their business and
maximize the way they sell their products to the external
companies. And we build those things, but it's difficult when
you don't understand what's possible.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. As we look at people now on line
from using the internet for buying food, clothing, cars,
Christmas cards, other things, we had better look to see what
we need for small businesses----
Mr. Covington. Absolutely.
Ms. Millender-McDonald [continuing]. Because e-commerce is
real and people will find it will become a very biased system
in the long run because you have folks who don't surf that
internet who are going to your mainstream malls and all getting
these products.
And they're paying the taxes for the folks who are
internetting--internetting, oh good word, people on the
internet are not paying basically for those things that they're
buying. So you know, it becomes an issue of they have not been
having to pay for the haves who don't have to pay. So it's
indeed an issue.
John.
Mr. Bryant. Yes ma'am.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Cyber Cafe. I'm happy that you're
providing one in my district soon. Will it provide jobs in the
long run?
Mr. Bryant. I think that if it succeeds in its mission of
educating people, educating business entrepreneurs enough to
give them the kind of self esteem and what I call education
affluence, to go out and have--what Lynne referred to is an
integrated perspective. An integrated perspective mean they
will create small business and the will create jobs. If they
are not successful in doing that, they will not. And make it
clear, I want to be judged mostly based on results.
So you know, the jury is still out on that. I would like
the Congresswoman to answer very quickly the question of what's
that one thing you mentioned that is important. Federal Reserve
Chairman Greenspan said at the White House Conference on the
New Economy two weeks ago with the President, he said that
there are two irreversible assets in America and we all just
sat on the edge of our seats.
My God, everything's a reversible asset. You look at a dot
com today, they're a dot gone tomorrow. Everything a reversible
asset. And he said, no there are two irreversible assets, and
we were all waited for a moment and the pause came. He said
it's education or information and access. Once you got them,
you don't ever not have them.
And so I think that it really comes down to what I think
everybody saying is that education is liberation. No matter
what you're talking about. It first and foremost has to be
about education. That give you kind of comfort and self-esteem
to deal with the confidence, technology or anything else,
competition. Whatever else is out there. And then after I'd say
that small business ought to be savvy and partner.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Okay, I just want to introduce some
folks who are in the audience. We have board of trustee members
of Compton College. I see Mr. Carl Robinson and I see Mr.
Ignacio Pena. Those two are there. And then I see Councilwoman
Marcine Shaw from the City of Compton as well. We have with us
visiting from Ghana, Cape Coast of Ghana, Chief Nana Gyepi, the
III. So I'm so happy to have you travel so far.
Madam Chair, thank you so much.
Ms. Bono. Thank you. Actually, on that note I am going to
just let you all know that usually in Congress we as Members on
the dais are allowed five minutes to ask the whole collection
of panelists, but I note that this hearing was important to my
colleague and was happy to defer as much time as I possibly
could to her.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Thank you so much.
Ms. Bono. Oh, you're welcome.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Tomorrow, I will say nothing.
Ms. Bono. No, no, no. I will need your help equally
tomorrow. So thank you. But I do also--I will not bring
questions forward because I do have to be on the other side of
L.A. actually in forty-five minutes. So I'm going to run. So I
want to thank this group of panelists as well, and one thing
that was missing that I would have loved to have the
opportunity to have and it's just an informal request, is your
biographies because I'm very impressed with each and every one
of you, and I would love to know who you are and where you come
from other than what I see in my notes here.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. You cannot steal them. They belong
to me.
Ms. Bono. But I would like to, if that's possible, you know
not a formal request of the Committee, but just to my staff at
some point in time or my office. Because I will steal you at
some point in time. So I want to thank you all and thank those
of you who stayed with us through the morning for being here as
well. And that concludes the hearing.
Ms. Millender-McDonald. Madame Chair, I'm sure you want to
join me in thanking all of our staff who's been absolutely
brilliant helping us to this today.
Ms. Bono. Yes, thank you. I do thank the staff. Thank each
and every one of you as well.
[Whereupon, at 12:16 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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