Clinton's Latest Bridge
President Clinton said Thursday he wants to "slam shut the digital divide" and make access to computers and the Internet as common as the use of the telephone for all Americans.
"It's clear we need to keep working until we reach that goal," Mr. Clinton said.
He spoke in the Rose Garden after meeting with leaders of the communications industry and civil rights movement. The president was to have addressed a technology conference but abbreviated his remarks to fly to Massachusetts to deliver the eulogy for six firefighters killed in a blaze last Friday.
The conference, presided over by Commerce Secretary William Daley, continued without the president. Its aim was to push government agencies and private companies to do more to narrow the growing "digital divide" in which minorities are falling behind in their access to computers and the Internet.
"I believe that we should set a national goal of making computers and Internet access available for every American," the president said in a memorandum to executive agencies. He directed Daley to devise a national strategy to achieve that goal.
The president also said that federal agencies will expand a growing network of community technology centers primarily for use by low-income Americans.
He said the United States already has connected over 50 percent of schools and over 80 percent of classrooms to the Internet, and will have all schools wired by sometime next year.
President Clinton said he will devote his next "New Markets" poverty tour in the spring to highlighting the problem and plans to issue a number of directives aimed at increasing government efforts in this area.
Daley will follow up with his own schedule of 12 regional trips next year to highlight the need for action in different parts of the country.
"Closing the digital divide is an essential part of President Clinton's initiative...to bring America's prosperity to economically underserved areas," Daley said.
Thursday's conference was expected to attract more than 600 participants, ranging from some of America's biggest high-tech companies to state and local governments, education groups and civil rights organizations. Corporations participating include AT&T, BellSouth and America Online.
In a statement, American Online announced it was helping create the "Digital Opportunity Partnership" to provide online assistance to the nation's civil rights organizations.
The America Online partnership will be with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a coalition of 180 of the nation's largest civil rights organizations. The partnership will provide technical assistance, training seminars and establish a group of "circuit riders," teachers committed to promoting Internet use among their students.
In addition, the Benton Foundation of Washington will announce it is creating a clearing house for governments, foundations, nonprofit organizations and privae companies to get information on work being done in this effort.
The Commerce Department last summer issued a report, "Falling Through the Net," which showed dramatic gains in the number of Americans who own computers and use the Internet but a wide disparity between groups.
The report found that about 47 percent of all whites own computers, but fewer than half as many blacks do. The report said that a child in a low-income white family is three times more likely to have Internet access as a child in a comparable black family and four times more likely than a Hispanic child.
Written By Martin Crutsinger