One important government strategy deserves higher visibility at the state and
metropolitan-area levels and the encouragement of USDOE: A more explicit
inclusion of telecommunications in planning processes for improving the overall
transportation system. Telecommuting and other NII applications, if considered
as part of a broad set of supply and demand determinants and solutions, could
assist state and metropolitan regions in meeting the air quality and mobility
goals mandated by federal legislation (the Clean Air Act Amendments and the
Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act). This new consideration would
fit well into a least-cost, integrated resource planning (IRP) framework.
Integrated resource planning would be a transfer to the transportation arena of
ideas and methods that are now successfully used in electric energy planning.
Also, government policy could focus on promoting and ensuring
telecommunications-based alternatives to travel for the inevitable future
periods when travel becomes difficult or expensive because of disruptions from
special events, weather, disasters, or oil supply interruptions. The USDOE
should have a special role in planning for this last eventuality.
Those in charge of coordinating transportation and telecommunications policy
need to work on developing more understanding about
telecommunications-transportation interactions and on disseminating this
understanding to professional and political leadership. Then, this knowledge
needs to be joined with politically acceptable public transportation goals in a
policy-making process aimed at specific transportation outcomes, such as
reducing peak-period traffic volumes.
Targeting of effort based upon a more thorough understanding of the
relationship between telecommunications and transportation is an important
requirement for decision makers in both the telecommunications and
transportation sectors. Without this understanding and focus, the deployment of
more capable NII is likely to exacerbate present trends of worsening traffic
congestion, even while other benefits occur.
Government policy intervention to accelerate the deployment of higher bandwidth
and other more powerful telecommunications capabilities cannot be justified by
the potential for travel savings alone. Still, there are many other government
roles in NII technology and applications that lead to productive uses of
limited resources. These include
- Development and deployment of government teleprocesses that deliver more
service for less money and make use of existing and pending NII capabilities.
- Support of infrastructure improvement in disadvantaged geographic areas
and for socially important applications that the market leaves behind despite
the economic cost to society at large.
- Legislative and rule-making action to eliminate barriers to the deployment
of teleservices for health care, education, and general government
teleservices.
Teleprocesses can be designed and implemented in effective
support of basic reform initiatives in each of the service areas named. These
reform efforts typically emphasize targeting and improving services that assist
and empower disadvantaged Americans. In this regard, teleservices can help, if
designed with equity in mind.
Specific follow-up recommendations of this study include
- Research on telecommunications-transportation interactions: The
USDOE and USDOT should support research that quantifies, through
statistical analysis of economic data, the impact of NII spending on
transportation consumption per unit of economic output. This research should be
designed to verify whether the relationship is one of net substitution of
telecommunications for transportation or one of net stimulation.
- Integrated resource planning demonstrations: The USDOE should take
action to initiate demonstration projects by state government planning agencies
and metropolitan planning organizations that translate existing, proven energy
planning techniques into an integrated resource planning (IRP) methodology
applicable to metropolitan area surface transportation.
- Federal data collection: Federal data collection should encompass
measurement of economic activity conducted in locations outside of traditional,
fixed employment locations reached by the traditional home-to-work commute.
These other locations include homes, vehicles, and variable customer locations.
Federal data collection also needs to focus on travel behavior outside of
commuting, which accounts for a majority of trips, energy consumption, and
emissions.
- Federal support of research and development: The Federal government
should support policy-focused research on the social and economic consequences,
opportunities, and costs resulting from NII-stimulated flexibility in the use
of time and space. The determinants and dynamics of patterns of activity, land
use, and travel are not well understood.
- Robustness of telecommunications: The Federal Communications
Commission and state regulators should continue to emphasize robust
telecommunications capabilities that can continue operations after major
natural disasters, accidents, system malfunctions, and acts of sabotage in
either telecommunications or transportation systems. Providing an alternative
to disruptions in transportation is a compelling government motivation for
pursuing telecommunications as a substitute for transportation.
- Telecommunications access to service: Federal, state, and local
government agencies should focus on investments in the design, development, and
implementation of those teleprocesses that reengineer service delivery for the
following benefits: agency cost savings and avoidance, customer and taxpayer
satisfaction, service delivery effectiveness and coverage, and reduced travel
generation for both customers and employees. An important source of funding for
teleprocess initiatives would be redirection from budgets that cover the
planning, design, development, and construction of government-owned and
-supported public works infrastructure and buildings.
- Health care policy: Federal health care program regulations that
require office visits as a condition of payment for a physician's services
should be reviewed in light of a new tele-health model that suggests that best
practice is achieved when appropriate care is provided at the appropriate
location.
- K-12 public education: The US Department of Labor and the US
Department of Education should work jointly to accelerate the financial
investments needed in K-12 public education to pay for the new technology,
instructional materials, and teacher preparation that allow schools to motivate
and enable children to learn skills that better prepare them for a lifetime in
an economy that is continually restructuring itself around the NII.
In
short, government leaders must shift their focus beyond telecommuting to a much
larger set of teleprocesses that are increasingly changing the patterns of
activity and location for both organizations and individuals. Only through a
growing understanding of the new information technologies and their patterns of
use will this nation discover ways to minimize the costs and increase the
benefits to our society and economy from the parallel growth of transportation
and telecommunications.
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