And, the pace of this change is being driven by the commercial marketplace, not by carefully modulated Government needs, as was the case previously. I testified that I received my first clearance 31 years ago. In 1966 information was typed on manual typewriters. Reproduction technology was in its infancy. There was not even a vision of a desktop computer, let alone of one that could be carried and used anywhere in the world.
Networked systems are a product of only the last decade or so.
Simply stated, information was easier to protect. And, in our efforts to provide a secure information environment, those of us in defense have been forced to operate with technology 5 to 8 years behind that available in the commercial world, and have incurred reduced efficiency and additional cost as a result, while technology which we spawned bloomed around us. Fortunately, there has been recent progress on this front. Now there is the Internet with all of its ramifications. And as prevalent as Internet technology is, only three percent of our population has access to it today.