PANEL ON EDUCATION/TRAINING RELATED TO NIT AND GII

ADDITONAL COMMENTS ON EDUCATIONAL COMPONENTS FOR THE GII

Robert M. Hayes

Professor and Dean Emeritus
Graduate School of Library & Information Science
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90024
IFX1RMH@mvs.oac.ucla.edu

Thank you, Ching-chih. Before I get started, there is another handout besides the paper in your package to which I will be referring. It shows that what I am going to talk about is not too unreal. It is a description of International Educational Programs of the U.S. Department of Education (see Figure 1 for the cover infor-mation).

I am not going to read the paper included in this information package; I am going to summarize it. However, there are additional comments which I would like to make which, I think, are relevant to my intent at least. I face a problem of terminology. The GII and the discussion today has been identified with something like WWW, and the whole level of high technology that represents. To me, that does not represent infrastructure. Infrastructure is something that allows you to build such an edifice. Infrastructure is the basic structure of the economy that permits you to do things. And, crucial in that in my view is manpower. Manpower is the most fundamental component in infrastructure.

Let me just mention one or two others that, I think, are also relevant. They are technology related, but they are at slightly a less advanced level. Obviously telecommunications is part of the infrastructure, and is absolutely essential to the
 

creation of the GII. Another thing though, such a simple thing, is logistical sup-port. I was in Yugoslavia running a conference about 15 years ago, and they had just installed a computer. I was going to use it for word processing, but the pro-blem was that the printer did not have a ribbon. And there was no means of getting a ribbon, at least during the time period involved. Without a ribbon, the printer was lost. Without a printer, the computer was lost. And for lack of a computer, I was lost. This suggests to me that there is something much more fundamental than the Internet and WWW. What I am going to try to present though are two fundamental things. One is a model, and I will present it very briefly. The intent of it is to provide me with a means of looking at national economies or, as it turns out, even local urban economies, identifying the infor-mation structure that underlies the economies. I will briefly summarize that model, since the details have already been published in the Proceedings of NIT '92 in Hong Kong and NIT '93 in Puerto Rico, as well as in the paper for this meeting. The second thing I will do is use that model as a means of assessing the magnitude of manpower development needs in terms of training programs. So, those would be the two major themes that I will be presenting.

The context then is the structure of information industry within the economy, particularly focusing on libraries as a component. I will focus on libraries and education of librarians as my ultimate objectives. In doing so, I am not trying to diminish the role, as Woody identified it, of library and information science as leaders, but I will, in fact, be dealing with librarians in terms of their professional capacities, in terms of the numbers represented, their current types of responsibi-lities. The model I will present shows some distributions related to the objectives of librarians as a component of the information society, and I will use it to show the magnitude in numbers of the librarians involved.

However, I do want to follow up on Woody Horton's wonderful paper by commenting on a particular business-oriented framework, one that I think is much easier to implement than the kind of national accounting structure that Woody identified. It is a recognition of the role of information in business planning, and I am speaking of business planning at the very level of attempting to get funding. A business plan is the foundation for capital input to a company, and it seems to me that the business plan ought now to include an explicit cognition of the role of information in market development, in product develop-ment, in management of the company, in manufacturing, in obtaining raw ma-terials going into creating the product, and so forth. Second, it is not only the role of information in business planning in general but the role of information in business planning for information industry in particular. It seems to me that one of the key elements of that is a recognition in the business plan of the capital investment represented by the information resource as the capital resource, the database, and the basis from which the products and services of the information company are produced. We need to get explicit recognition of this information capital investment, and frankly I think that it has to be at the level of national accounting practices and standards. Unfortunately, tax laws encourage the ex-pensing of that investment, so it never shows up in the books of these companies. As a result, these companies, at book value, are horribly undervalued.

I have taken long enough time on that, but I did want to follow up on Woody's very important comments.
 
 

Q & A_________________ DISCUSSIONS
 
 

[Ching-chih Chen]

Thank you very much. The more detailed discussion on Bob's model and also some of the figures which he has been able to derive are included in his paper. We can begin our discussion.

[Woody Horton]

Bob, I just have a comment. It was an excellent presentation, and I hope that one of these days you will move beyond your last works and honor us with a national information economy, a book of some kind. This kind of book is certainly need-ed, and we have not yet seen such a major publication written by a member of the LIS community, and I think that you are eminently qualified to do that. The second thought that occurs to me is that, I think, we desperately need a vocabu-lary, a conceptual framework in talking about information infrastructures. There are all kinds of infrastructures -- transportation infrastructures, energy infrastruc-tures, ecological infrastructures, etc. In thinking about it, I always thought that there may be six or seven major components of all infrastructures. What those components are, and how you would define them when you move over to the data, information, and knowledge infrastructure is critical. I think that we des-perately need that prescription right now or else we are going to be constantly stumbling around with everybody trying to define an information infrastructure in their own way. So, perhaps coming out from this meeting (I don't know how NIT '94 is going to be distributed or disseminated), I think, very modestly, we can contribute to the national debate by some kind of a primer to help explain and define the NII and GII. I have not seen such a publication out there yet, but maybe something is already out there and I don't know about it.

[Robert Hayes]

I really have no response. The Porat (Marc Uri Porat, "The Information Econo-my") paper was a very important landmark in identifying the needs. One of the needs is clearly for national accounts that will properly reflect the role of infor-mation, not only internally but also externally. We have the fact that the role of information in the import and export balance of the U.S. is not recognized, be-cause what we have seen are the service components, which incorporate much of the information sector, as a major source of income in balancing the outflow of resources in the industrial area. But information is buried in the services. So, to me, there is a serious lack of recognition of what is actually happening. And my view (and I wish that the representatives of the National Commission were here), I think, is that NCLIS can take a very strong role in urging the Congress and President to reorganize the national accounts, in a rational way, to better measure what is going on.

[Ching-chih Chen]

If I can follow up with the document which we have in terms of problems, issues, and concerns collected from this group; one of the real difficulties identified relates to the "definition." We really are seeing from the literature and conferen-ce publications mentionings of the infrastructure from the left and right, but there is no definition. Certainly we have the same problem, so tomorrow we have to address that in a more cohesive way.

[Mariano Maura]

I don't think that there is a lack of definition. There are lots of them, but there is no consensus. If we can get that, it will be a great contribution.

[Ching-chih Chen]

Yes, I agree. Because we have so many different and conflicting definitions, that means we don't have one.

[David Penniman]

Bob, that is a very powerful model and I am very impressed by it. There is ano-ther matrix, and I am wondering whether you are considering overlaying it. It is on top of the demand matrix that shows many professionals you think will be required in the future. This additional matrix would show the value that society will place on it. In other words, is there an economic motivation for individuals to go into that field because there is a perceived demand for it? Demand can be measured in a number of ways. A number of bodies are needed, and also the number of dollars that the society is willing to put into that particular area.

[Robert Hayes]

Yes, the model, however fundamentally, as currently set up, is person based -- numbers of people -- because those are the easiest data to obtain. I do have a counterpart for dollar values. But, I will tell you that the data say that as we move from noninformation functions into information functions, the dollar value per person dramatically increases. As we move from low technology to high technology and into the information industries, the value per person dramatically increases. So the row of the matrix for substantive workers in the information industries are high-paid positions. The obvious exceptions are the librarians and the teachers; those two categories of the information profession are not highly paid. What I have tried to do is recognize the information entrepreneurial oppor-tunities, in which by going to information industry work, by using the skills of librarians, you can significantly increase the potential income. But I have no real answer to the problem you posed nor does the model as it is currently constituted.

[Marjorie Hlava]

Bob, I am really intrigued by this model, and I have another model of which I have a couple of slides which I will talk about this afternoon. But, I have a model by unit, by number of users, and by revenue, and if we merge the data of the two we might actually be able to extrapolate some of the things which we are looking for. Then, I have a comment on top of that.

Information companies since 1992 were able to capitalize their data on the software loss, but they still cannot capitalize information as an asset; therefore, it is considered a semitangible asset of the corporation. That's why the values which we hear about from all these companies have all these multiples of earn-ings, because you can't evaluate what their real value is in the current capital financial structure of the nation.

I think that we have to give a little thought, though, to the implied suggestions of both you and David on the somewhat hierarchical strategy. We do have in the library lingo library clerks, we have paraprofessionals, then we have profes-sionals, we have faculty, and it is implied that the faculty is the pinnacle of that group. But, in fact, if you take the value of the earning potential of people of this pinnacle of that group, then it is actually the user. So, unless you can find a way to value the hierarchy of the industry, to value it from the user's perspective, we'll never be able to have those people reach the earning potential which clearly they should have.

[Robert Hayes]

I did not intend to imply that there is a hierarchy except as reflected in wage levels. That was the only degree. You complicated the problem by throwing the user in as a counterpart of the work force. So, it does not fit. It fits in the input-output matrix; because they are the ones providing the financial input for the output produced, but they are not part of the production work force except in the following respect.

If you look at particularly the management role, they are heavy users of infor-mation. They should be heavy users of information. And part of the problem is that the reduced productivity from the lack of use of information needs to be recognized. Or, put it the other way around, increased productivity of manage-ment of industry from the higher use of information needs to be recognized.

[Ching-chih Chen]

Bob, I have a simple question. Some of the transparencies which you have shown show that the number of faculty going to be needed for certain countries in the next decade is very small, for example, only two faculty members. Having been in some of the Eastern European countries recently, for even the very small countries, they probably will say that we definitely need more than two. Do you want to comment on that?

[Robert Hayes]

I am making no claims for the numbers produced, except to represent an approa-ch. I applied that approach to a variety of countries of different sizes. However, one has to realize that one may say that they need more faculty, but the needs of that country may not support that. That is to me what makes the regional effort so essential in serving the needs in these regions. If I look at Latin American, Africa, or Eastern Europe, the needs will have to be met by regional efforts, not just by each individual country. If nothing else, the magnitude of these numbers highlights that point. You may say, "Bob, you are wrong," and I would certainly say that I don't trust my model anymore than you do. But it does provide some insight. That is the intent.

[Neal Kaske]

I am wondering, Bob, about the assumptions which you make in the beginning of the model as far as technology changes the ways in which we work. When you look at it on a decade basis, does it influence your model as far as what we need to be doing in the educational side of it. I am thinking back to the concept of librarianship saving the time for the reader. If we take a certain product, like books or reference tools, as they change over time, does that influence the model?

[Robert Hayes]

I doubt it, but I have not looked at that. If you look at what I laid out over several time periods, the changes occurring simply reflect the underlying distributions of the work force, but not the changes in productivity as a result of having the tools. I am torn between two views. One view is that people will still function as peo-ple. And that means if you are talking about people entering data, the pace at which they enter data is not going to change. It is still going to be 10,000 key strokes per hour if you are lucky, and if you aren't, 3,000 key strokes per hour. That is not going to change, no matter how friendly the system may be. What is going to change is the growth in the amount of information. Technology is obviously, in a very positive way, increasing our ability to produce information, to produce interrelationships among larger data files; the result is that technology is not a solution to the information problem, but in fact it is going to exponential-ly increase the information problem. But that's great! That makes more work for us, if nothing else. But the effect of that, upon the productivity of the individual, I have at this stage no way to measure. We do have data, from King, for exam-ple, that shows that the amount of time in doing information work by profes-sionals is substantial, like 60% of the time. Is that going to change? Frankly I doubt it. But what may happen is that what one can do with that 60% is greater. That is not included in anything which I have done. It will be a very interesting addition. I don't know how to do it.

[Woody Horton]

Just a comment. One avenue that you may have already thought of and I would like to see you try your hand at is in the input-output production-consumption model. Use Bob Taylor's added value ideas and try to apply them, and just pick a horizontal band, don't try to do the whole thing, and see what is the result. May-be you can talk to Mike Rubin, who is still at NIST, to see if he can help with that.

[Robert Hayes]

Yes, Mike and I have had many discussions and tried once or twice to get toge-ther. At the time we last did, we could not get the data out of the federal govern-ment. But I'll try again. One of the interesting things that we looked at in the model is a departure from the Porat model. He defines the information economy as the primary information sector -- those in the business of producing and selling -- and the secondary as those who are from the same kind of functions within other companies. What this model does however is to break out of the primary information sector those that are not information workers (and there are still in the information sector a large number of noninformation workers), and the result is, I think, a clearer definition of who are the information workers across the primary and secondary sectors.

[Ching-chih Chen]

Thank you very much, Bob. I think that we will move on now to the next speaker. Professor Neelameghan is going to speak on the School of Information Studies for Africa: A different experience.