were formed to look at narrow and specific factors

involved in strengthening

the IT talent pool.

1. Basic math and science

competencies;

2. The image of the IT 

professions;

3. Quality and 

productivity issues;

4. Recruiting underrepresented groups;

5. Responsiveness of 

higher education and 

industry to each other’s

needs;

6. Skill upgrading of the 

current workforce.

These task force groups will be

meeting throughout the year to

explore the issues and develop

strategies to address them. On

January 12 and 13, 1998, there will

be a national convocation that is

open to the public, at the University

of California–Berkeley where the

task force groups will report their

findings; discuss strategies and talk

about next steps.

For more information please contact

the Office of Technology Policy at

202.482.8321.■

Office of Technology Policy ■ U.S. Department of Commerce

1

IN THIS ISSUE

Scientific American

Film Features

Technology Medalists

Page 2

OTP Biotech Report

is Released at Bio

Com ‘97 Conference

Page 4

Highlights of Acting

Under Secretary

Bachula’s trip to

Japan

Page 5

At the conference, Department of

Commerce General Counsel Andrew

Pincus, along with Secretary of

Education Richard W. Riley and

executives from technology companies discussed the difficulties in finding and retaining quality workers

and stressed the need for proper

training and educational programs

to help determine and alleviate the

underlying causes of the dilemma.

Senator Warner discussed his recently introduced legislation (an amendment to S1186, The Workforce

Investment Partnership Act) that

addresses the challenge.

The event signaled the beginning of

a long-term commitment to stimulate interest in technology and to

encourage students and workers to

enter the field. Six task force groups,

which bring together leaders in

industry, government and academia,

Building a High Tech Work Force 

for the 21st Century

News From the Office of Technology Policy ■ Fall 1997

▲▲

▲▲

▲▲

PACESETTER

On September 29, the

Department of Commerce’s

Office of Technology Policy

held a press conference to

release its new report,

America’s New Deficit: The

Shortage of Information

Technology Workers.

According to the study,

evidence is mounting that

job growth in information

technology fields now

exceeds the production of

talent. America’s fastest

growing companies are

finding inadequate numbers of information technology workers to staff

their operations.

The findings are supported by a

report issued last year by the

Information Technology Association

of America (ITAA) called, “Help

Wanted.” The report drew attention

to the fact that American businesses

and industry is facing a shortage of

skilled IT professionals and that this

shortage could have a serious impact

on our competitiveness and growth.

“Since information technologies

affect every sector and industry in

the U.S. — from simple office tasks

such as retrieving lost documents

on personal computers to creating

secure information networks for

electronic commerce — severe

shortages of workers who can apply

and use information technologies

could undermine U.S. innovation,

productivity and competitiveness in

the global market,” said Commerce

Secretary William M. Daley.

■ Commerce officials with business and industry leaders answer 

questions during the press conference releasing a new OTP report.
2

PACESETTER ■ Office of Technology Policy Fall 1997

1997 MEDAL

LAUREATES

Technology Medalists Featured 

in Scientific American Film 

The National Medal of Technology is

reaching a much broader audience

this year, thanks to the enthusiastic

support of Scientific American.

Founded in 1845 as “The Advocate

of Industry and Enterprise, and

Journal of Mechanical and Other

Improvements,” Scientific American

has documented the rich history of

American innovation longer than

any other journal. In keeping with

the spirit of the magazine’s original

mission, Scientific American is producing a documentary on the 1997

National Medal of Technology winners.

On September 17, Scientific American

publisher Joachim Rosler and associate publisher Kate Dobson hosted the

Medal winners at WETA studios to

film interviews that will make up the

basis for the documentary. (WETA is

a Public Broadcasting System (PBS)

affiliate located in Arlington, Virginia.)

Alan Alda, narrator for Scientific

American‘s popular FRONTIERS PBS

series, conducted the interviews.

Acting Under Secretary of

Technology Gary Bachula and

Deputy Assistant Secretary for

Technology Policy Kelly Carnes visited WETA during the filming to recognize Scientific American for outstanding support of the Medals and

congratulate the 1997 Medal winners. The documentary will serve as

an invaluable tool for promoting the

accomplishments of these great

American innovators and the important contributions they have made to

strengthening the national economy

and improving our quality of life.

“We are very proud to be associated

with the Department of Commerce

to raise awareness of the Medal,” said

Rosler. “Our magazine wants to help

inspire tomorrow’s technology innovators, and we think that saluting the

Medal winners and their accomplishments in this film is one of the best

ways to reach out to them.”

Featuring Medal winners Norman

Augustine (CEO of LockheedMartin), Ray Dolby (President of

Dolby Laboratories), Robert Ledley

(inventor of the first whole body CT

scanner), and the team of Vinton

Cerf and Robert Kahn (the “fathers

of the Internet”), the film will debut

at the National Medal of Technology

Issues Forum. The Forum will be

one of the celebratory events held in

concert with the Presidential Awards

ceremony scheduled for this

December. Hosted by Scientific

American this year, the Forum provides a venue for the Medal recipients to share their own experiences

as innovators and discuss the future

of American technology.

During the interviews, Alda queried

the Medalists on topics ranging

from childhood influences to predictions for technology’s future.

“I simply fell in love with the computer,” Robert Ledley told Alda,

recalling his first encounter with

one in 1950. From that initial

encounter emerged a wealth of

broad-ranging computer applications. Beginning with Ledley’s early

efforts to develop better dentures

(he was initially trained as a denNorman R. Augustine

Ray M. Dolby

National Medal of Technology 

Monograph Project in Full Swing

When George Farris, Professor of Management at Rutgers University, first

volunteered to conduct interviews with 25 Medal of Technology recipients for the Office of Technology Policy, the focus was on individual

monograph papers to document the winners’ accomplishments and

thoughts on innovation. Two years later, a team of two writers has just

been selected to take the monograph interviews to the next level, publishing a series of book-length collections that explore the makings of

America’s leading innovators.

The team of John Adams and Julie Wakefield was selected this October

as the writers for the National Medal of Technology monograph project.

With the writers set to begin work immediately, the Office of Technology

Policy plans to publish the first volume in the summer of 1998.

Both Adams and Wakefield have solid portfolios showcasing their knowledge of and strong interests in science, technology, innovators and ideas.

The Washingtonian recently featured Wakefield’s cover story on health

hazards in the D.C. area and Adams’ profile of Robert Kahn and Vinton

Cerf, two of this year’s Medalists. Adams also recently wrote a special section published in the New York Times Magazine and Discover Magazine

for National Science and Technology Week.

Expressing his anticipation regarding the project, Adams said, “I hope to

not just explain but to vivify technology and innovation in this series of

personal portraits.”

For Wakefield part of the challenge of the project is making genius accessible to young people. “Too many students take a pass at science and technology,” she explained. “They think it’s too hard or boring or both. I think

meeting these remarkably creative people, the Medalists, through these

books will give young people a different perspective and encourage more

of them to follow suit.”■
3

Fall 1997 PACESETTER ■ Office of Technology Policy

tist), to computer chromosome

analysis and the invention of the

first whole body CT scanner, the

astonishing versatility of his work

amazed Alda. When asked if there

was a central focus to his efforts,

Ledley replied, “Yes, the common

thread is the application of computers and mathematical algorithms to

medicine.” As simple as that.

The discussion with Vinton Cerf and

Robert Kahn was particularly intriguing for its display of the unique partnership the two have forged over the

years as “the fathers of the Internet.”

Despite the fact that Cerf was in

London and participated in the interview via satellite, the discussion was

obviously one among intimates as

the two men prompted each other,

and even at times, to Alda’s delight,

finished each other’s sentences.

“Fathers of the Internet” is quite a

moniker, but both Cerf and Kahn

were quick to modestly point out

that at the time of their landmark

1974 work on computer protocols,

neither one quite imagined the revolution in communications their work

instigated. “We had no sense of the

scale that the Internet would take,”

Cerf said. Kahn noted that to do so

would have meant envisioning “the

breakup of the Bell system, the creation of the personal computer and

the local area network, and Congress

approving the use of all these federal

facilities for these kind of commercial

activities. I think that was a large

amount for us to have swallowed

back in 1973,” he added.

Although Norm Augustine was

recently heralded as one of the most

powerful men in the world and is a

leading visionary of the aerospace

industry — from the restructuring

of the industry in the wake of the

post cold war downsizing to the

development of hi-tech “smart”

weapons — he was quick to tell

Alda that he was only the second

person in his family to go to high

school and the first to go to college.

Augustine emphasized that this personal experience was precisely why

he feels so passionately about the

importance of education.

“The chance to get that education

made all the difference in the world

to me, and I think we owe it to

every young person in America to

have the opportunity to get a first

class education,” Augustine told

Alda. His commitment to education

was further accentuated by his

recent retirement as CEO of

Lockheed Martin to return to the

Princeton classroom as a teacher. “I

just gave my first lecture and it was

an awesome experience — the students finished listening about the

same time I finished talking, which

I think is a good omen,” he added.

Ray Dolby’s interview yielded two

gems of wisdom for the would-be

inventors and scientists of tomorrow. First, follow your natural interests. Dolby recalled that his own

interest in noise reduction grew out

of his desire to listen to recorded

classical music without the background hiss of “pre-Dolby sound”

days. “I think a lot of developments

start with the desire of the developer to get what he really wants so

that he can use it,” Dolby said. “It’s

not just the technical fascination or

the business opportunity.” Dolby’s

keen desire eventually resulted in

the Dolby noise reduction system.

His second bit of wisdom is don’t

give up. So many people had

attempted a workable noise reduction

system and failed that Dolby encountered tremendous skepticism when

he first presented his own. “They

thought it was black magic,” Dolby

remembers. It took considerable time

and energy to convince the skeptics

otherwise, but Dolby prevailed. The

rest is history, and Dolby’s name is in

nearly every household.■

Vinton Gray Cerf

Robert E. Kahn

Robert S. Ledley

1997 MEDAL

LAUREATES

■ Richard Elkus, Jr.

Committee Chair Co-Chairman of the Board, Voyan Technology

■ F. Peter Boer

Committee Vice Chair President and CEO of Tiger Scientific Inc.

■ Satya N. Atluri

Regents’ Professor of Engineering at Georgia Tech

■ Eleanor Baum

Dean of Engineering at The Cooper Union in New York City

■ Rose Ann Dabek

Associate General Counsel for Global Licensing, Procter and

Gamble Company

■ Sandra Donovan

President, Donovan Associates

■ Robert Hayes Philip Caldwell

Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

■ Esther Harrison Hopkins

Deputy General Counsel for the Massachusetts Department of

Environmental Protection

■ Albert Narath

President and Chief Operating Officer, Energy and Environmental

Sector, Lockheed Martin Corporation

■ Rochelle K. Seide

Partner, Brumbaugh, Graves, Donohue & Raymond

■ Julie Shimer, Vice President and General Manager, Flex(tm)

Architecture Solutions Division, Motorola

■ John Brooks Slaughter

President, Occidental College.

1997 National Medal of Technology Nomination Evaluation Committee
4

Fall 1997 PACESETTER ■ Office of Technology Policy

1997 MEDAL

LAUREATES

Before the

President of the

United States

or the Secretary

of Commerce

ever sees a

nomination for

the National

Medal of

Technology

cross his desk,

an independent

team of the nation’s top technology

experts-engineers, scientists,

entrepreneurs, patent lawyers, and

researchers-spend hours pouring over

boxes and boxes of carefully crafted

applications. The National Medal of

Technology Nomination Evaluation

Committee deserves tremendous

credit for establishing the impeccable

reputation of the selection process.

Headed by Richard Elkus, Jr. as

Chair and F. Peter Boer as Vice

Chair, the committee is responsible

for scrutinizing each nomination

received through a nationwide, 

competitive nomination process.

The 1997 National Medal of

Technology awards ceremony will

mark the end of service for three

highly valuable Committee members, Boer, President and CEO of

Tiger Scientific, Inc.;

Sandra Donovan,

President of Donovan

Associates; and Elkus,

Co-Chairman of the

Board of Voyan

Technology and a

member of the Board

of Directors for KLATencor Corporation

and Lam Research

Corporation. During

NOMINATION EVALUATION COMMITTEE MAKES 

EXTRAORDINARY CONTRIBUTION BEHIND THE SCENES

their tenures which have bridged

two Administrations, the Nation has

greatly benefited from the insight,

professionalism and continuity they

have individually brought to

their service on the Committee.

Commerce Secretary Daley will

honor the three departing

members with a special citation

for their distinguished service at

this year’s Medal awards ceremonies. The citation

commends the members for their commitment to “furthering recognition for

the important contributions America’s greatest

technological innovators

have made to strengthening

the American economy and

quality of life.”■

■ Richard J. Elkus, Jr.

1991-93, 1994-97

■ F. Peter Boer

1992-94, 1995-97

■ Sandra S. Donovan

1991-93, 1994-97

While in town for the conference,

Deputy Assistant Carnes and Joe

Raguso, Executive Director for the

San Diego Regional Technology

Alliance, were guest on KPSB talk

show “These Days with Gloria

Penner.” The discussion topic was

the importance of technology and

biotechnology to San Diego.

Deputy Assistant Secretary Carnes

also held a roundtable discussion

with area business leaders on a

wide range of topics including

international trade and technology.

A second roundtable was hosted by

Julie Meier Wright, President and

CEO of the San Diego Regional

Economic Development

Corporation with Acting Under

Secretary Gary Bachula on the

shortage of information technology

workers in the San Diego area.■

San Diego recently

hosted the Bio Com

‘97 conference

where Department

of Commerce

Deputy Assistant

Secretary Kelly

Carnes, joined San

Diego Mayor Susan

Golding who hosted a press conference to release the

new OTP report entitled Meeting the

Challenge: U.S. Industry Faces the

21st Century, The U.S. Biotechnology

Industry.

OTP BIOTECH REPORT IS RELEASED 

AT BIO COM ’97 CONFERENCE

■ Deputy Assistant

Secretary Kelly

Carnes with San

Diego Mayor Susan

Golding at a press

conference for an

OTP report on the

biotechnology industry, released in conjunction with the Cal

Bio ‘97 summit.

■ Acting Under Secretary

Gary Bachula with host Ann

Randolph, Managing Director

of BioCom, and Dr. Duane

Roth, Alliance Pharmaceuticals

CEO, at a reception of the

Cal Bio ‘97 summit where

Bachula addressed San

Diego’s biotech CEOs.

■ Deputy Assistant

Secretary Kelly Carnes with

KPSB talk show host, Gloria

Penner and Joe Raguso,

Executive Director for the

San Diego Regional

Technology Alliance.

1997 MEDAL

LAUREATES
5

Fall 1997 PACESETTER ■ Office of Technology Policy

Acting Under Secretary Gary

Bachula, along with Phyllis Genther

Yoshida and Patti O’Neill-Brown of

the ITP staff, had a successful trip

to Japan the week of October 19. In

addition to participating in the U.S.

–Japan Joint High Level Committee

meeting chaired by White House

Science Advisor, John M. Gibbons,

Bachula held talks with the head of

Ministry of International Trade and

Industry’s Agency of Industrial

Science and Technology to review

activities under the Civil Industrial

Technology (CIT) Arrangement,

and to engage in a policy dialogue

on the challenges facing both

nations in stimulating technology

and innovation.

The CIT Arrangement is a bilateral

agreement between the U.S.

Department of Commerce’s

Technology Administration and the

Agency of Industrial Science and

Technology (AIST) of the Ministry

of International Trade and Industry.

It facilitates mutually beneficial science and technology collaboration

by bringing together U.S. and

Japanese researchers to collaborate

in a number of areas of research, to

exchange information, and to

undertake other activities.

Acting Under Secretary Bachula

also held meetings with other

Japanese government officials from

MITI and the Science and

Technology Agency. He visited

research facilities in Kanagawa,

Tsukuba, and Tokyo and had an

opportunity to see how Japan’s stated policy to create an indigenous

base for technology development is

being played out.

The Japanese Government, through

heavy expenditures in basic scientific research and measures to

develop a “creative-thinking” society, is pursuing a policy which, it is

hoped, will lead to the homegrown

capacity for technology creation. It

is likely that such measures will

stimulate Japan’s technology development, since many of the elements in the environment which

allow creative thinking are already

in place.

Japan is well-known for its quick

pace from basic research to leading

edge products. The Japanese are

pursuing many areas of basic

research with an eye toward how

the results of such research can feed

into the development of applied

technologies that are foremost of

Japan’s agenda.

Software development is one of

Japan’s top priorities. It is no surprise that one of the target areas for

basic research is neuroscience.

Playing “catch-up” in software

development, Japan is well placed

to take the fruits gained from fundamental neuroscience research and

feed them into software development efforts. Furthermore, Japanese

software development can be aided

by an application of the advances

that have already made in complimentary fields to software, such as

robots. The U.S. group saw examples of cutting-edge developments

in robotics at the Electrical

Technical Laboratory in Tsukuba

Science City. The fundamental principles informing the behaviors and

operation of the robots could easily

be transported to inform the basis

for the behavior and operation of

software agents.

At NTT, the group saw developments in communications technologies, including those via satellite.

OTP is advocating inter-ministerial

cooperation on the U.S.-Japan Joint

Optoelectronics (JOP) Project

which is a project under the Real

World Computing Project (RWCP).

Currently, the Ministry of

International Trade and Industry is

the only Ministry on the Japanese

Highlights of Acting Under Secretary Bachula’s Trip to Japan

JAPANESE

S&T

side which participates in JOP,

while on the U.S. side, many agencies participate. Opening up participation to other ministries would be

beneficial to both the U.S. and

Japan, since this would allow for

expanding the activities pursued

under the project to other areas of

optoelectronics beyond computing.

If we are successful in working with

the Japanese to restructure the

agreement when its renewal time

rolls around, in addition to having

served the immediate need to

access broader elements of Japan’s

science and technology base, we

will have also created a new model

for interagency and interministerial

cooperation.

For information on the U.S.-Japan

Joint High Level Committee; the

U.S.-Japan Joint Optoelectronic

Project; the CIT Agreement or any

other questions concerning U.S.-

Japan S&T policies please contact

Patti O’Neill-Brown at 202.482.6805

or poneillbrown@doc.gov■

Japan is wellknown for its

quick pace from

basic research 

to leading edge

products.

■ Acting Under

Secretary Gary

Bachula compares notes with

Japanese scientists at Techno

Growth House in

Tsukuba Science

City, Japan.
United States Department of Commerce

Technology Administration

Office of Technology Policy

Room 4814C HCHB

Washington, DC 20230

Official Business

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The PACESETTER is a publication of the Office of Technology Policy, a division of the United States Department of Commerce Technology Administration.

Any mention of organizations, companies or products is for informational

purposes only; it does not imply any recommendation or endorsement.

■ Editors

Cheryl Mendonsa, Director, Public Affairs

Kathleen Sullivan, Public Affairs

■ Directors of the Office of Technology Policy 

Kelly H. Carnes

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy

■ Comments and Inquiries

Cheryl Mendonsa, OTP Public Affairs

Telephone 202.482.8321

■ World Wide Web Address

http://www.ta.doc.gov/otp

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