"The Y2K project is the most expensive technology remediation project in the history of the world."

We approach the new millennium in a time of unprecedented economic prosperity coupled with the most intense regional and global competition the world has ever known. The prosperity presents us with the opportunity to imagine how we might redeploy the dollars and people we have been spending to remediate the Y2K problem. The competition creates the urgency to think strategically and focus on the economic health of the Commonwealth as we plan how we will redeploy the Y2K dividend. How this dividend is invested will make the difference as to which states and which nations assume economic leadership well into the next millennium.

Some of the millennium dividend, in my view, needs to be invested in Virginia’s universities in order to provide the elements needed for I-business growth in Virginia. By I-business, I mean business conducted over the Internet, whether that be commercial transactions with customers, business to business transactions, government serving its citizens, or K-12 and higher education serving their constituencies, including students and research partners. Virginia needs to be a leader in I-business in order to ensure the Commonwealth can continue to enjoy economic security and that this economic security can be extended through every region of Virginia.

I’d like to discuss the critical elements needed to make Virginia the epicenter of I-business and the role Virginia’s higher education community has been playing to ensure the critical I-business elements are in place. Each of the elements contributes to the development of a sophisticated technology workforce and to the overall economic health of the region. The critical elements for I-business are:

1. Computer and network security research and teaching
2. High speed, broadband networks to the home
3. Cutting edge research to generate the innovative ideas
4. A ubiquitous technology workforce

Francis Fukuyama, author of "The End of History" and George Mason distinguished professor, says that without trust on the Internet, I-business will never become the predominant method of doing business. But trust requires verification.

In Virginia’s universities today, we are doing the advanced research into electronic verification systems, including biometrics (like fingerprints and eyeprints), that will ensure the Commonwealth plays a leading role in building trust into I-business systems. Two of our universities, George Mason and James Madison, have been named by the Federal Government’s National Security Agency as two out of seven centers of academic excellence in the U.S. in computer security education. These two universities are educating the next generation of computer security researchers as well as thousands of computer security practitioners working in the private sector and Federal and state governments. I-business can not flourish without these educated computer security practitioners.

The current Internet is on occasion as jammed as I-66 at rush hour. And, it seems to have as many accidents (packet loss, latency between voice and video, etc.). Five Virginia universities (George Mason, ODU, UVa, VCU, and Va.Tech) have joined with 140 other top research universities to design and build Internet 2, a high speed, broadband network that will allow companies and institutions to reserve high quality bandwidth to deliver their services without having to pay for more capacity than is needed by the particular transaction. This will significantly lower the cost of doing I-business.

Each of these institutions is conducting specialized research to build the infrastructure needed by the new economy. Virginia Tech, for example, is world renown in research in wireless communication. George Mason’s new UUNet lab is a fine example of a public/private partnership to further research in the next generation of Internet protocol technology. UUNet, a global leader in the Internet market, has established at Mason an advanced Internet technology research laboratory dedicated to researching high-performance, large-bandwidth Internet core networks.

Each of the five Internet 2 Virginia institutions is training the highly technical workforce that is needed to maintain and enhance the new networked infrastructure.

A Virginia technology CEO told me once that it would no longer make sense for his company to be located in Virginia when the products his company makes are no longer cutting edge but have become commodities. "Companies that make commodities should locate in West Virginia or Tennessee;" he said, "it only makes sense to pay Virginia’s high salaries and high prices when you need to be here because your business depends on being on the cutting edge."

We in the universities believe it is our job to ensure Virginia technology companies remain on the cutting edge. We do this through our research partnerships with government and the private sector. Whether it be computer security, smart transportation systems, high bandwidth networking, digital video or wireless communications, we make sure the innovation pump does not run dry.

We are also making sure that there is a continuous stream of graduate students with skills honed in these research labs ready and able to assist Virginia’s technology companies with the creation of new products and I-business services.

"There are 58 openings every year in the NBA, but there are 680,000 openings in technology companies"

The I-business economy requires technology workers at all levels, not just in the computer center. I know that most of Virginia’s public and private universities are aware of this need and are working to fill it. I’ll focus most on George Mason’s efforts here because I know them so well, but be assured, other institutions are working just as hard to meet the challenge.

The George Mason faculty have specified a set of ten technology skills that every one of our 24,000 students needs to successfully carry out their academic work and, when they graduate, contribute to today’s economy. That’s almost 3000 undergraduates who will graduate from Mason each year with these technology skills.

Faculty have also identified clusters of more intensive skills and organized these into minors. So an English major can take a multimedia minor and, upon graduation, fill a web design position. Other minors are information security, computer science, telecommunications, electronic journalism, and geographic information systems. These minors have the potential to double the number of graduates we produce each year who can step right into high tech jobs.

Of course, Virginia universities also have major degree programs that are focussed on IT - programs like computer science, software systems engineering, and electrical engineering.

Perhaps the most exciting work, though, is in the professional education area.

Virginia’s higher education institutions offer many courses, workshops and certificate programs aimed at people who want to enter the technology world. Mason’s technology transition program, for example, has enabled hundreds of mid career professionals to enter the technology workforce.

I recently made a trip to Seattle and to the Silicon Valley to meet with George Mason alums who work in hi-tech firms on the West Coast. I wanted to know why they weren’t working in Northern Virginia and what kinds of IT education they wanted Mason to offer.

An IT executive I met with told me that the biggest roadblock to the growth of I-business is the thousands of executives out there who were educated in the pre-Internet era. They don’t have a clue as to how to use the Internet to transform their businesses.

A major focus at George Mason is to educate these folks and even assist them in the creation of their first web sites. The graduate students working in Mason’s Internet Multimedia Center learn as much from working with the business people as the business people are learning technology from the students.

Four Virginia institutions (Christopher Newport, George Mason, UVa., and Virginia Tech) are partnered in an Internet Technology Innovation Center. Together their students are helping Virginia businesses transition to the I-business stage.

I can’t leave the topic of developing a ubiquitous technology workforce without saying a few words about the use of technology in teaching. People often seem bewildered that a high-tech university like Mason has no plans to become Cyber-University. I’m going to quote from one of the most respected high tech visionaries I’ve ever had the fortune to meet. John Morgridge is the founder of Cisco systems and currently chairman of Cisco’s board. I spent about two hours with him last week chatting about education. John teaches at Stanford and is thinking of putting part of his course on the Internet, the part that deals with identifying facts and conducting financial analyses. The main reason he’s doing this is so that the students will come to class prepared. But, he’ll still hold classes "because," he says "that’s where the real learning takes place."

Students can learn many things through technology, but they can’t learn all things through technology. So let’s not use it when the nature of the learning requires the teacher and students, and students and students, to make human contact. But let’s be sure to use the technology when it helps to develop the students’ skills, particularly their technology skills. Use technology not for teaching, but for learning.

I’ve talked today about why we need to reinvest some of the millennium dividend into our universities so they can continue growing the elements that will fuel economic development in Virginia, most particularly I-business. We need not just educated people, but people who have been educated in the right areas. We need a continuous flow of innovative ideas. And, we need clear understandings of what technology we will focus on and how we will use it. The competition for economic leadership will only intensify as we enter the next millennium. Those that have the people, the ideas, and the understandings will succeed, while others fail.