IFLA

As of 22 April 2009 this website is 'frozen' in time — see the current IFLA websites

This old website and all of its content will stay on as archive – http://archive.ifla.org

IFLANET home - International Federation of Library Associations and InstitutionsAnnual ConferenceSearchContacts

62nd IFLA General Conference - Conference Proceedings - August 25-31, 1996

The Impact of National Policy on Developing Information Infrastructure Nationwide Issues in P.R. China and the U.S.

Yan Quan Liu
Doctoral Student
University of Wisconsin Madison

and

Librarian
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
P.O Box 604, Milwaukee, WI 53201, U.S.A.
Fax: 414-229-6791,
E-mail: yanliu@csd.uwm.edu


ABSTRACT

Information policy in the past decade has become an integral part in today's national public policy and legislative system. How should a political mechanism be used to develop a national information infrastructure (NII)? What are the best countermeasures to maintain leadership or to promote competitive capability for national socio-economic growth with the information technology and services' pow er? With these questions as probes this paper explores what are current national policies dealing with the information societal issues in the U.S. and P.R. China. Similarities and differences in roles and impact of national information policy between the two countries are addressed. Current conditions and related background in the two countries in developing information industry and national info rmation policy (NIP) are primarily discussed. The discussion includes three parts: countermeasures for developing a nation's information activity power, background and development of NIP in the U.S. and in China, and trends and issues of China's information activity. The similarities show how the same world climate has made both countries face the same challenges and opportunities, and how nation al information policy are playing more important functions than ever in developing nationwide economics. The differences are seen from many aspects of building and achieving the national goals in terms of enhancing country information industry power.


PAPER

Introduction

In the past decade, information policy has become an integral part of today's national public policy and legislation system. To cope with issues and problems in information needs and information flow, many nations face challenges in the national policy making. How should a political mechanism be used to handle and develop information activities in its own nations as well as international relation s? What are the best countermeasures to maintain leadership or to promote competitive capability for national socio economic growth with the information technology and services' power? This paper will have these questions as probes to explore what are current national policies dealing with the information social issues in the U.S. and P.R. China. The discussion is based on the literature in both English and Chinese. Similarities and differences in roles and impact of national information policy (NIP) between the two countries are addressed, but current conditions and related background in the two countries in the development of information industry and development of national information infrastructure (NII) are primarily discussed in this paper.

Countermeasures for Developing A Nation's Information Activity Power

Entering the 1980s, many countries realized the importance of national information policy (NIP) in developing a nation's information industry and national productivity and competitiveness. The level of information technology and services has been a significant measure of a country's comprehensive power. Developing and possessing a high level of information technology and information services in a nation have become a core concern and issue for national information policy makers.

In the U.S., increasingly, the executive leadership and parliamentary bodies are called upon to establish new guidelines, standards and mechanism for coping with the advent of the astonishing technological systems. National Research and Education Network (NREN) was introduced by Congress in the late 1980s. As the single most important information policy and management issue, the NREN "aims to a chieve national goals by improving the nation's electronic communication infrastructure and encouraging the development of more electronic information services and resources". Its fundamental goal is to establish an 'around the clock', high capacity and fiber optic network that will link and broaden access to supercomputer centers throughout the Unites States (McClure, 1991).

To maintain leadership in information industry, the Bush administration listed the High Performance Computing and Communication (HPCC) program as one of the three major research and development (R&D) programs and invested $638 million in it in 1992. The Clinton administration put forward a so called 'Super High Speed Information Highway" program to further the work in the high performance compu ting and communication program. In 1993, $802 million had been put aside for it in the federal budget. In the president's vision of a vastly broadened telecommunication network, government helps users online, and companies build the rest (Mills, 1993).

To build up its own national information infrastructure, Chinese government started to pay attention to the development of information industry since the early 1980s. The implications of information industry for the four modernizations (**) and the boosting of the national economy were promoted into the important national strategic plan. Macroscopic policy environments for developing the info rmation infrastructure have been continuously improved. First leader Deng Xiaoping gave important instruction in 1984: "Tap information resources and serve the four modernizations." President Jiang Zemin emphasized repeatedly that "Each one of the four modernizations depends on informationization." These statements laid down bases for making countermeasures to responding to global information cha llenges.

Both the U.S. and China have established mainstay strategic plans for developing national information infrastructure. The strategies are strongly influenced by their own territorial situations and socio cultural environments. It is necessary to know the background and the development of national information policy in the U.S. and China before discussing those information policy issues and probl ems.

Background and Development of NIP in the U.S.

The U.S. has a mutual set of public laws for information, established as early as its constitution. During the past 200 years, Congress has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to use its legislative power in service to the information function (Forum, 1989). Horton's Understanding U.S. information policy, the infrastructure handbook introduced most major prime information policies up to 1982.

With the age of information emerging, information policy became an important part in Congressional public laws to control information flow. The committees and members performed more responsibly with each passing year regarding those issues which deal with information policy and the many applications of related technologies. Commencing with the 95th Congress (in 1977), for example, the number of public laws dealing with information policy and technology has exceeded 300 bills and resolutions (Chartrand, 1989). The breadth of coverage represented by this legislation was divided into an infrastructure of nine major national information issues (**). The following Congresses sample of public laws related to information policy included Telecommunications, Broadcasting and Satellite Transmiss ion (100 Congress), Library and Archives policy, Computer Security Act, Computer Matching and Privacy Act (101 Congress), and high computing communications (102, 103 Congresses).

The principal laws embodying federal information policy in the U.S. are the First Amendment to the Constitution, The Copyright Act, the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act and Title 44. The Title 44 contains the federal printing laws and the provisions concerning distribution and sale of public documents; federal records and archives management; and coordination of federal information p olicy.

The "Paperwork Reduction Act" of 1980 was seen as a way for the government to cut down on burdensome paperwork, improve efficiency, effectively use the information it generated and reduce the costs that the government encountered in managing its information related activities. In order to comply with the provisions of the Act, the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) newly created Office of I nformation and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), issued in 1985, Circular A 130, "Management of Federal Information Resources." This deals with: 1)information collection; 2) information sharing; 3) economic and cost considerations; and 4) information dissemination, distribution, and publication. This Act is for developing federal information resources dissemination (Morton, 1990).

"Principles of Public Information" was as a major federal policy document adopted by The U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) in 1990. The document was based on the concept that "public information is information owned by the people and held in trust by the government" and that the people must have "open and uninhibited access" to public information (NCLIS).

In 1992, a presidential initiative, entitled High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC), was launched, aimed at securing U.S. preeminence in high performance computing and related communication technologies. The initiative was one of five initiatives coordinated by the Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (FCCSET) with nine federal agencies. The goal of the initiatives is threefold: "extend U.S. technological leadership in high performance computing and computer communications; provide wide dissemination and application of the technologies; and spur gains in U.S. productivity and industrial competitiveness." Two objectives of the program are "to implement by 1995 a tera ops (10~12 operations per second) computer and a skeletal gigabit (10~9 bits per second) National Research and Education Network." Because of the importance of the HPCC program to the national well being, especially its potential implication for industrial competitiveness, the program has received wide attention in the nation even in the world. The HPCC program is believed to have significantly accelerated the advancement toward a digital information society (PCAST, 1992 ).

In early 1993, President Clinton formed the Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) to articulate and implement the Administrative's vision for the National Information Infrastructure (NII). The IITF was organized into three committees: the Telecommunications Policy Committee, which formulates Administration positions on key telecommunications issues; the Committee on Applications and Techn ology, which coordinates Administration efforts to develop, demonstrate and promote applications of information technologies in key areas; and the Information Policy Committee, which addresses critical information policy issues that must be dealt with if the NII is to be fully deployed and utilized. In addition, a Security Issues Forum assesses the security needs and concerns of users, service pr oviders, information providers, State governments and others. A Working Group of Intellectual Property Rights was established within the Information Policy Committee (Lehman, 1994).

Agenda for Action presented in the White House in 1993 was the first comprehensive statement of the Administration's visions and goals for the U.S. National Information Infrastructure. The purpose of the plan is to promote the use of networking and computing technologies to give Americans unprecedented access to information and communication services. Since then, the Clinton Administration has m ade the creation and development of a NII a top priority. This seamless web of communication networks including computers, televisions, telephones and satellites will forever change the way we live, learn, work and communicate with each other both here in the U.S. and around world (Brown, 1994).

Background and Development of NIP in China

Unlike the U.S., legislative system in China is relatively young and continue to be improved. The first national information policy as known in China was issued by the State Council in May 1958, "The Scheme for Carrying Out Sci Tech Information Work." This scheme set up the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC) as a national sci tech information center, together with information institutes under government ministries as national special information centers. It also decided to establish seven local sci tech information centers to form a national sci tech information network. Following the scheme, a national conference on sci tech information held in 1958 proposed the guiding principle of information service to be the four Chinese characters meaning extensive, fast, picked, and accurate (Wang, 1986). The National Working Conference on Sci tech Information, which is held every three to four years by the State Science and Technology Commission (SSTC), is a major national information policy sector. Many important provisions, standards, and guidelines, as well as decisions regarding the national information technology and services were decided and launche d from the conference.

Systematic investigation of national sci tech information policies in China started in 1985. Based on a number of investigations and referring to UNESCO Guidelines on Information Policy, and on a serial meeting of experts who were from inside and outside countries, the National Sci Tech Information Policy in China was drawn up and issued by SSTC. The document concluded both the development of t he nationwide sci tech information system and establishment of the document support system. In order to make the information policy more practical, the contents of the document were categories into these subjects: compilation of information retrieval tools, information technology, information transfer and circulation, increasing the marketing role and expanding information services. Other aspect s covered by this document included user studies and training, international exchange and cooperation in information profession, research on information theory and methods, growth in the numbers of sci tech information personnel, and sci tech information administration (Chen, 1993).

Patent Law, one of principal public laws for information in China, became effective on 1 April 1985. It protects three kinds of patents: patent for invention, utility model and design. By the end of 1991, the China patent Office had accepted more than 210,000 applications and granted over 86,000 patents. The Chinese patent information system includes the Patent Documentation Service Center which functions as a depositing, copying and service center providing services for the general public apart from patent examiners, 20 patent information divisions in provincial institutes of sci tech information and 64 Chinese patent document depository libraries (Qi, 1994).

In the eighth Five Year Plan (1991 95) the Development of Sci Tech Information was put into effect. The general goal of the plan is basically to meet information needs of the development of economic construction and science and technology up to 1995. The objectives include furnishing the sci tech information system, establishing an information research and decision making consultation system, an d monitoring key technology and developing strategies according to the needs of society (Chen, 1993).

The Sino US agreement on the protection of intellectual property rights has been established and will provide strong protection for all the intellectual products of both U.S. and Chinese companies.

Trends and Issues of China's Information Activity

Compared with the U.S., the major problems impeding the development of Chinese information industry and services, according to Liu Zhaodong, Director of the Institute of S&T Information of China (ISTIC), and other researchers, may be summarized as the following:

  1. Information processing has poor foundation and stays in a small scale. China has not invested a great deal in the infrastructure of information systems. "The newest giant computer, for instance, the Galaxy II emulating computer, now reaches 1bn operations per second," while in the U.S. super gigantic computers with a capacity as powerful as 1 trillion operations per second are under design. While China had about 800 databases that were relatively viable up to 1992, the U.S. had about 3900 databases and 575 online services nationwide up to 1990 (Campbell, 1993; Wu, 1993). The development of software is far behind development of hardware in China. Because of "the lack of balance between the investment in hardware and that in software, a lot of important computers stay idle." (Liu, 19 94) The major part of China's information processing is still manual. 90% of information sources have not been processed electronically. New communication techniques and technologies, such as the online public access catalog (OPAC), electronic mail, electronic data interchange and CD ROM database are still at the first stage of development or in a very limited scope.

  2. Information sources are inadequate and low utilization of them. The utilization rate of information sources on a per capita basis is two to three orders of magnitude lower than developed nations. Lack of sufficient funding for collection development is a common problem for most libraries and information centers. China only imported $5.57m worth of books and journals. This amount is even less than that of Singapore ($10.68m) and India ($9.91m). The total number of databases in all of China is less that 1% of the world total.

  3. The information market is still young. The value of information has yet to be fully appreciated, and a reasonably fee charge system for information has yet placed. China's information market is still under developed. There has not been an effective market management mechanism to handle information products. In addition, quantities of information agencies and qualities of information professi onals are still low. As a result information services and productions are rather slow.

  4. National information policy needs to be adjusted and intensified. There is a negative tendency in national information policy making in China. As Liu remarks, "that is to get satisfaction from those general, macroscopic policies while neglecting to formulate definite and forceful policies and measures to deal with concrete problems in practice." The issues which need to be identified and res ponded to by the national information policy include: how should the state provide reasonable support to non profit, social benefit oriented information services? What policy should be taken by the State Planning Commission, Ministry of Finance, and SSTC towards building, developing and utilizing national information sources? What is the appropriate relationship between government agencies respo nsible for telecommunication networks? Should substantial support be given to the database industry at the initial stage by the state or not? In a word, government decision makers have not sufficiently estimated the difficulties and problems in the infrastructure of information industry in general, and of information services industry in particular.

To catch up with advanced world levels and learn from the U.S. and other developed countries' experiences, experts in China suggested to the government that the central government should formulate development plans and strategies for information industry, to set goals to be accomplished by the year 2000, and to establish a series of related regulations and policies. They called government to pay attention to these aspects:

  1. Minicomputers and microcomputers should be given priority, and software industry should be expanding, so as to match China's intellectual resources with the maximum demand in China's market.

  2. Building national communication, public data transmission and multimedia information networks.

  3. Developing database industry and information services to meet user needs both at home and abroad.

  4. Constructing and consummating a number of major information delivery and consulting service centers, and training high quality staff to serve economic construction and other social activities.

  5. Increasing capital investment in information industry, especially in the information service industry.

  6. Intensifying the planning and the control over the infrastructure of the information services. Information legislation, standardization and normalization should be given more attentions.

  7. Improving intellectual property environment and international cooperation and exchange.

Differences and Similarities

While the U.S. continues national information infrastructure development efforts to build up the information super highway, China concentrates on its information industry's construction and development to extend and expand information service frameworks. Both countries confront challenges and opportunities in the development of electronic technologies and global information relationships. Both c ountries have set forth their strategic goals and plans for the new global competition in the information age. These similarities reflect the needs of new global economic development, the pressure of new information and communication technologies, and the demands of national information control and information activity.

With a high level of computer technology and information service systems, Americans are looking for a communication revolution with digital electronic power. Since the information industry really started after China's Open door policy, China is boosting its information service system with the power of science and technology to continuously pursue its high economic growth and realize its four mo dernizations aiming at the year of 2000. Therefore, although each country has the same concerns about information infrastructure development, the background and circumstances are different, the efforts to build up powerful information systems are different, and the issues, problems and difficulties that have perplexed policy makers are different.

A major issue for developing the National Information Infrastructure in the US is "how government should work with the private sector to ensure that all Americans benefit from the communication revolution" (Gore, 1994). Bringing both government and private positive factors into play and getting the best cooperation among information policy sectors are critical in achieving the goals of the NII. Another problem associated with the issue is, as the Clinton Administration's program for the NII rolls rapidly forward, the Clinton policy's impact on the public sector is far less clear than it is for the private sector: "How will the NII be organized on behalf of the public service enterprise, which depends totally on information processes to fulfill its obligations and as a result: How will A merican democratic processes be affected and sustained if the institutions that embody them are changed in substantial ways?" (Walsh, 1994).

Is it necessary for the U.S. to build a completely new NII? Would the public phone network, which includes both local and long distance services and is available to all U.S. households and business, be eminently suitable as of the NII backbone (Gilder, 1991)? The questions on identifying and framing the NII are still waiting for a response. The federal government has been asked to take responsib ility for the NII by enlisting appropriate agencies plus experts from various industries to begin the preliminary work in setting up such an infrastructure (Dertouzos, 1991; Hawkins, 1991). Key ingredients for NII suggested by these authors include: flexible transport capabilities, common communications, common servers, and common user interface or interface translation capability. The other is sues related to building the information superhighway are intellectual property, computer security, and information resource management.

The Chinese government has realized the importance of responding to the needs of information control and availability. Government is making great efforts to attempt to complete its legislation system. Because there is too much to be done, public laws have yet to cover major issues in information control and flow. The issues have uncovered include information confidentiality and right of privacy, censorship, ethics, central government information dissemination and public access government information. Publication Depository Law and Library Law which have been called for years by the public, are still under preparation (Shao, 1995).

Computer and national security have not been placed on the national public policy agenda since computer networks have not fully built up nationwide. Although Copyright Law has passed for several years, because of poor public information awareness, intellectual property has not been respected as expected. Most of the time information services could not charge reasonably for what they delivered.

Coordination between Government agencies and professional associations have the same conditional problems and issues as those in the United States. National information systems, information resource sharing and management, and information and communication technology development have not been under the control of unified programs or agencies. Similar conferences like the White House Library confe rence to discuss library service policies in U.S. cannot be found in China. Libraries as a whole have played a little role in national information policy making. The role of the Chinese Society of Library Science (established in 1978) is much less than the U.S. ALA. Also, similar funding like Title II d, Higher Education Act to support research projects in library and information services cannot be found in china either. The online information retrieval system including OPACs has not popular as U.S. for the public in most libraries and information centers. Major information processes are manual (Guo, 1994).

As the largest country the P.R. China (1090 million) has a large number of national institutions and a complex structure of information services on which national policy has be placed. In the country's policy problems, much in common with developed countries, access to foreign information is even more restricted. Only a small proportion of the world's primary publications are held within larger i nstitutions and libraries (Gray, 1988, 85). The libraries create satisfactory co operative arrangements for interlibrary document supply, but are often limited in volume by serious gaps in library holdings. Sometimes shortage of funds can stop or severely curtail the import of foreign literature for some years, and the resulting gaps can be difficult to fill of a later date. Literature from abroa d is expensive, in relation to available funds, and moreover in must be paid for in foreign currencies, which are much scarce. Hard (foreign) currencies in the principal document supply centers are particular scarce.

Conclusion

The national information policy are playing more important functions than ever in developing nationwide economics and convert the sense of politics. The same world climate has made both countries, the U.S. and China, face the same challenges and opportunities. With strong information marketplaces the U.S. national information policy aims at an information superhighway and new information infrastr ucture. China's national information policy is forming and aiming at the development of information technology and service industries. Both countries have distinct issues and problems. China has more difficulty from achieving its goal in terms of catching up with the developed country information industry level.

Findings regarding to the comparison of national information infrastructure may be included as follows.

  1. Since two countries have very different socio cultural systems, as part of the political mechanism, information policy at the national level should differ in the two countries. However,

  2. information policy at the national level is much influenced by international environments and circumstances of technology and political systems. Therefore, the development, concerns and issues of the policy should have some commonalties between the two countries.

  3. Because of different socio cultural backgrounds and political and economic systems, information policies in both countries may not be comparable in some aspects.

It would be worthwhile if the similarities and differences were introduced into an understanding of the role and impact of information policy in the countries' NII developments.

Sources and References

American Library Association (ALA) Publications (1996) "Library Policy Statement", HTTP://WWW.ALA.ORG.

Brown, R. H. (1994). National Information Infrastructure: progress report, September 1993 1994. U.S. Information Infrastructure Task Force. Washington, DC : [Office of the Vice President]: the U.S. G.P.O., Supt. of Docs.

Campbell, H. C. (1993). Progress in scientific and technical information services in China. Information Development 9, 222 7.

Cassel, J. F. (1994). Little, Sherry K. The National Research and Education Network: the early evolution of NREN. Reference Services Review 22(2), 63 78.

Chartrand, R. L. (1989, February/March). The imprint of legislation on information policies. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science, 14 19.

Chen, J. (1993). The development of general sci tech information policies in China: a chronology. International Information & Library Review 2, 11 28.

Cisler, S. (1994). Watching the information policy process. Library Journal 119(15), 26.

Dertouzos, M. L. (1991). Building the information marketplace. Technology Review 94(1), 29 40.

Gilder, G. (1991). Into the telecosm. Harvard Business Review 69(2), 150 161.

Gore, A. (1994). The statement on NII. National Information Infrastructure: progress report, September 1993 1994. United States Information Infrastructure Task Force. Washington, DC : [Office of the Vice President]: the U.S. G.P.O., Supt. of Docs.

Gray, J.(1988). National information policies, problems and progress, London: Mansell.

Griffith, J. B. and Smith, M.S. (1994). "Information policy: the information superhighway and the national information infrastructure (NII)". The Journal of Academic Librarianship 20, 93 5.

Guo, L. (1994). The management of the Chinese information market and the policy and legal warrant. The Journal of the Library Science in China 4, 77 79 [in Chinese].

Hawkins, D. T. (1991, September). Whither a national information infrastructure. Online, 84 86.

Horton, F. W. (1982). Understanding U.S. information policy, the infostructure handbook. Washington D.C.: Information Industry Assoc. [In 4 volumes].

Delhaye, J. L. (Ed.). (1989). International Symposium on High Performance Computing (1989: Montpellier, France). High performance computing : proceedings of the International Symposium on High Performance Computing, Montpellier, France, 22 24 March. Amsterdam ; New York : North Holland.

Lehman, B. (1994). A preliminary draft of the report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights. Washington D.C.

Li, K. (1994). Legislation, the essential guarantee for a prosperous library undertaking. The journal of the Library Science in China 5, 19 79. [in Chinese].

Liu, Z. (1994). Considerations on the development of China's information industry. ASLIB 46 (2), 49 54.

Loshin, D. S. (1994). High performance computing communications. Boston : AP Professional.

McClure, C. R. (1991). The National Research and Education Network (NREN): research and policy perspectives. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Mills, K. & Fox, G. (1994, Spring). InfoMall: an innovative strategy for high performance computing and communications applications development. Internet Research 4, 31 44.

Mills, M. (1993, April). Clinton's commuter 'highway'. Government & Commerce 3.

Morton, S. I. (1990). Federal information policy. Government Information Quarterly 7(1), 67 72.

Perritt, H. H. (1994). Public information in the national information infrastructure. Washington, D.C.: Office of Management and Budget.

Qi, Y. (1994). Chinese Patent Law and patent information service. International Information & Library Review 25, 11 28.

Ronald H. B. (1994). National Information Infrastructure : progress report, September 1993 1994. United States. Information Infrastructure Task Force. Washington, DC: Office of the Vice President: the U.S. G.P.O..

Shao, W. (1995). The legislation of publication depository system.The Journal of the Library Science in China 1, 8 14 [in Chinese].

U.S. Congressional Budget Office. (1993). Promoting high performance computing and communications. Washington, D.C.: Congress of the United States, Congressional Budget Office. GPO.

U.S. Executive Office of the President. (1993). The National information infrastructure : agenda for action. Washington, D.C.: Executive Office of the President, Information Infrastructure Task Force.

U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science Press (NCLIS). (1990). Information age 'Bill of Rights' approved, release from NCLIS.

U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy. (1989). The Federal High Performance Computing Program. Washington, D.C.: Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy.

U.S. Office of Technology Assessment. (1991). Seeking solutions: high performance computing for science. Washington, D.C.: Congress of the U.S., Office of Technology Assessment, G.P.O.

U.S. President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). (1992). High performance computing and communications panel report. prepared by the PCAST, Washington, D.C.: The Council.

Walsh, R. T. (1994). The national information infrastructure and the recommendations of the 1991. White House Conference on Library and Information Services, prepared for the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. Washington, D.C.: The Commission.

Wang, T. (1986). Report at the seventh National Working Conference in Sci Tech Information. The Report of NWCSTI. Beijing: Publishing House of Documentation for Science and Technology.

Weingarten, F. W. (1993, Fall). NREN and the national infrastructure: a personal vision. Internet Research 3, 2 7.

Wu, Y. (1993). The information service industry in China: present and future. Information and Libraries in the Developing World, 2.

Yang, X. (1994). The information expressway. The Journal of the Library Science in China 6, 44 48. [in Chinese].