The Foreign Service Journal, September 2005

16 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 5 Former FSO Decries U.S. Loss of Lead in Internet Development The U.S. led the world in Internet innovation throughout the 1990s, writes former FSO Thomas Bleha in the May-June issue of Foreign Affairs , but no longer. In the first three years of the Bush administration, the U.S. dropped from fourth to 13th place in global rankings of broadband Internet usage. Today, Bleha says, most U.S. homes can access only “basic” broadband, among the slowest, most expensive and least reliable in the developed world, and the U.S. has fallen even further behind in mobile-phone- based Internet access. “The lag is arguably the result of the Bush administration’s failure to make a priority of developing these networks,” states Bleha. “In fact, the United States is the only industrial- ized state without an explicit national policy for promoting broadband.” When the U.S. dropped the baton, Bleha says, Japan picked it up. Now, Japan and its neighbors will be the first to reap the benefits of the broad- band era in terms of economic growth, increased productivity, tech- nological innovation and an improved quality of life. Bleha’s article, “Down to the Wire,” is available online at http:// www.foreignaffairs.org/20050501f aessay84311/thomas-bleha/down- to-the-wire.htm . Expanding Open Access for CRS Reports The decade-long fight between the Congressional Research Service and legislators and others over the latter’s demand that CRS make its research reports available to the public contin- ues. But those hard-to-find policy briefings for Congress are slowly emerging onto the World Wide Web anyway, thanks to the Center for Democracy and Technology, a tech- nology-policy organization based in Washington, D.C. CDT has compiled the most exten- sive online database of CRS reports available, where anyone with an Internet connection can search thou- sands of the documents ( http://www. opencrs.com ). Be cause OpenCRS is not sponsored by the government, CDT also depends on users to request documents from their Congressmen and submit them to the site. Although the Web site has been a huge success, CDT estimates that it has collected only half of the reports the agency has produced in the past five years. The Congressional Research Ser- vice, an arm of Congress, provides nonpartisan reports that members of Congress use to get up to speed on U.S. public policy. The reports include background research and pol- icy analyses, legislation passed and pending, and reference sources to clearly define an issue. CRS, which is funded with nearly $100 million in tax dollars, churns out about 1,000 new reports annually. Until now the reports have been avail- able only to members of Congress. To get one, one had to purchase it from a private vendor or request it from one’s representative or senator and then wait for it to arrive in the mail. Led by Senators John McCain, R- Ariz., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the campaign for public access to CRS documents began in 1991. To date, however, CRS is still balking. In this the U.S. trails behind the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada — all of which display their parliamentary research reports online. Though OpenCRS has the largest collection of CRS reports, it is not complete. For a comprehensive list of links to other sites that provide CRS reports, consult Stephen Young’s arti- cle on the Law Library Resource Xchange at http://www.llrx.com/ features/crsreports.html . — Brooke Deal, Editorial Intern Sudan: Peace Hangs in the Balance As we go to press, the fragile North-South peace agreement in Sudan that is looked to as a crucial step toward ending the genocidal fighting in the region of Darfur, faces yet another test. Southern rebel leader John Garang’s death in a helicopter crash Aug. 1, less than a month after his swearing-in as vice president in a new national unity government, could undermine the prospects for an end to more than two decades of civil war. Tensions were already high in Khartoum on July 21, when Secretary of State Rice landed for a round of talks with government leaders and the offi- cials and press accompanying her were subjected to mistreatment by Sudan- ese security guards. Rice offered an improvement of ties and possible eas- ing of U.S. sanctions on humanitarian grounds if Khartoum acts to end the bloodshed in Darfur, in particular by disarming the pro-government Janjaweed militia operating there. She also demanded and received an apolo- C YBERNOTES