Becoming Digital: Investment Language Broadens to Include IT

President-elect Obama's most recent weekly address, as synonymous with YouTube as his predecessors' was with radio, coupled with an extensive interview on NBC News' Meet the Press, include hopefully inclusive language about information technology as part of the new administration's infrastructure investment plans.

Dating back to the 1920s, roads, bridges, dams and schools have been the pillars of infrastructure or public works projects.  Now, with an estimated $600-750 billion in new or refocused stimulas funding at stake, the working definition of public works is broadening to include things about which we care. 

Notice the use of technology-inclusive language in describing the Obama plan for a massive investment in national infrastructure, which the new president would try to pass immediately once in office:

• Improve the energy efficiency of government buildings;
• Rewire schools "to help our children compete in a 21st-century economy";
• Expand broadband capacity to all US communities, saying it "unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption"; and,
  
• Instituting electronic medical records and reducing the cost of health care delivery by millions of dollars through advanced technologies, because "That won't just save jobs, it will save lives."

Obama also noted that the governors with whom he met last week had a long list of infrastructure projects that were "shovel ready," that is, ready to go and able to get people back to work quickly.
 
Noting again that the US is "the country that invented the Internet," the incoming administration seems intent on paying for some overdue routine maintenance.  Yes, digital technologies will compete with roads and bridges for whatever pot of federal stimulus funding finally becomes available but at least they are in the mix.