Remarks by Bill Gates
Government Leaders Conference
Seattle, Wash., April 4, 2000

BILL GATES: Good morning. As Jeff said, I get the opportunity to be early in the conference instead of towards the end of the conference. And so hopefully I’ll stimulate some of your thinking about the incredible opportunities that are out there for government to work in a completely new way.

What creates this opportunity? And why do we think the time is now for all of us to seize this?

Well, partly because of the revolutionary advances in the technology. The technology behind all of this is really miracle technology. First and foremost are the incredible advances that are made at the chip level. But going along with that we have the advances that are made in the communications networks themselves. If you combine the fact that the end devices and the networks are going to have really unbelievable capacity, that your imagination is really the limit there, it really is a breakthrough in terms of how people communicate and how business is done.

And we’re starting to see companies of all sizes revolutionize all their business processes, how they track their products, how they close their sales, how they purchase and how they make decisions internally using the technology.

I’d have to say that in the government area, the move towards digital approaches has been slower than in the business sector. And that’s understandable. In the business sector, companies are faced with lower profits or even being put out of business if they don’t rise to the standards that are being set by the very best companies, including in many cases new companies, companies that are started up with the digital approach just being how they do things from the very beginning, and so they have no legacy approach. A lot of these newer companies are staffed with very young people, who have grown up on the Internet and so they’re using it in a very, very profound way.

So the goal of this conference is to share best ideas about what all of you are doing, talk about some of the challenges and all of this, and really stimulate government moving even faster, because we think the opportunity to both save money and do a far better job in all the key government functions is really, really very exciting.

What is it that makes this such a key time? Well, when you give people new tools, breakthrough communication tools, it has a transformational effect. The last time anything this dramatic happened you’d have to go back to really the beginning of the Industrial Age, when mass production with uniform and repetitious methods led to a different way of thinking about products. And, of course, there was a huge increase in the standard of living that was brought about by the Industrial Age. But there was a lot of turmoil that was created as well. In the early stages some of the things that went on in terms of working practices, some of the needs, new commercial codes -- these were a big challenge to the governments of that era.

Well, today in the same way we’ve got a challenge of shaping government around this digital environment. National boundaries in some ways are less of a block to things than they used to be, and so a need for cooperation between governments is very, very important.

So seizing the opportunities to do a better job, and also thinking about the new policies that are implied, is critical.

I often point out that the period of time that this is happening in is far more compressed than anything in the past. The Industrial Age was on the order of 80 years; that is several generations of people going from the beginning to when it was really a mainstream change in how things were done.

With the digital age, it’s all happening in a period of about 20 years, so less than one generation between the start and between the point where all business will be done this way and modern education will be redefined.

Now, the defining product of the information age to date has been the personal computer. Microsoft was started 25 years ago based on providing software for the very first personal computers. That was an incredibly limited device, the kit computer that you bought for $300 and it only sold about 10,000 units. But within six years of that, which takes us to 1981, IBM entered the personal computer market. And based on a standard that Microsoft created, IBM and hundreds of other companies, made compatible machines.

And so those machines were perfectly interchangeable with each other, allowing the software industry to target that one uniform standard, running the Microsoft MS DOS operating system and therefore create a much wider variety of software than had ever been available before.

There was an explosion in the software industry. Today we think of the software industry as quite big. In fact, every day there are dozens of new startups doing very exciting things. Before the PC came along, the software industry was tiny. There were only 40 companies in the software products business, and it was mostly about very expensive products sold in very low volume onto IBM mainframes.

The PC came along and completely rewrote the rules. It rewrote the rules of how you bought computers. It rewrote the rules of how you thought about a computer from being a tool of the central organization to being something that was there for individuals to get their job done in a more empowered, more efficient way.

And so the PC spread in the world of business and government really in a sort of bottom up fashion. There was no top-down decision to say, "Yes, everyone should have this tool." It was just workers deciding that in their departments or their job they thought it would be helpful.

The price of the PC, even though it wasn’t as low as it is today, was low enough that it could be handled on this bottom-up basis.

And so corporations and governments woke up to the fact that they had lots of these machines and they needed to come in and set some standards about the networks and how information could be exchanged in a standard way.

And so today we think of the PC as a standard tool on every desktop. For what we call a knowledge worker, somebody who’s working with information, this is really an effective device. Now, they’re getting a lot of value out of that device in the way they’re using it today. In fact, people looking at the economy, particularly the US economy, which has been the most impacted by this because of the early embrace, the only explanation that people have for the great productivity and the great things that have taken place in terms of job creation and economic strength, is that these digital approaches, using the PC, have really created a new level of efficiency.

And this is a huge impact that was unexpected. If you go back five or six years ago, you even had people saying, "Well, where’s the payoff? Why are we spending all this money, buying these PCs and connecting things together?"

Well, there was certainly a lag before it showed up in the economic figures, but now that it’s showed up, it’s showed up in a more powerful way than was expected. And it certainly justifies all of that investment.

But what we’re saying at this conference is that was just the beginning. Even in the United States what’s been done with personal computers is just scratching the surface of what’s possible. The personal computer today is primarily used to create and exchange documents within a small group of people, but now that we’re talking about all of commerce being unleashed across the Internet and buyers and sellers being able to find each other on a global basis, with the matching capability that only rich software can provide, it really is a whole new level of impact.

At the same time as this Internet commerce reaches out to every activity, the devices themselves that are connected up to the network will show greater variety. The most important device will continue to be the personal computer. That’s the device that you stick close to. It’s got a full-size screen. If you want to fill in a report, if you want to create a document, if you want to analyze some decision that has to be made, you will use the full-screened PC to do that. It’s the device where you get to fresher creativity and you have the full set of tools available there.

But you’ll also have other screen devices that let you get at the Internet. You’ll have the device in your pocket, which you can call a PDA, personal digital assistant. You can call it an advanced cell phone. But it will be a device where your calendar, your messages, the latest news items, all the things that you're interested in that make sense on that small screen device will be automatically available and up-to-date, and the software technologies that let you personalize that information are now being developed by Microsoft and many other companies.

In fact, that whole area of the small device is a really explosive area. The volume of those devices today is quite small. Personal computer sales are over $100 million a year, and these devices sell, at most, four or five million units a year. But over time, even as PC sales continue to grow, these smaller devices will actually gain in volume to get to the same or an even higher level since they're lower cost, and some people will end up with multiple of these devices, the same way that cells phones without screens are so popular today.

So you'll have the device in the pocket, you'll have the wireless connections both to this small screen device and the PC itself. You'll have connections through the TV set. You'll have connections in the cars. Again, that will be a wireless type of connection. And all of these devices need to work together so the user doesn't have to think about moving their information back and forth.

For example, do you add something to your calendar? Today you have to go through a process of saying, okay, move it from this device onto this other device. It's a lot of work. So most people, even the most committed to using these devices, most of them don't have their calendars for themselves, their family, their workgroup fully coordinated on a digital basis. But with the advances in the software, that will be common place. That will be an expected use in the years ahead.

I'm showing here pictures of all these different devices, and the form factors will be pretty incredible. There's a lot of experimentation going on which is very healthy about what these devices will look like. For Microsoft, it's all fine because they all need software, and they need software that coordinates their capabilities.

For governments, I think the key message is that thinking about how your information gets out and is available to all citizens in digital form is even more exciting as these devices, very low cost devices, are going to be in a very high percentage of homes. There won't be a TV set ten years from now in developed countries that doesn't connect up to the Internet and let you browse this kind of information. And, so that just means that accessibility will be far broader than it is today.

Now, this explosion in Internet use can be seen even just taking a one-year time frame. And think about the time period between when we do these conferences, 12 months, how much can really happen in that time period? Well, if you look at Internet usage during this 12 month period, calendar '99 in this case, the change has been very, very dramatic. If you looked at North America, now over 37 percent of the population says that they use the Internet in some way on a regular basis. Now, the numbers aren't quite as high in other areas, but the growth rate is equally stunning. Europe up at 14 percent. Asia-Pacific, of course, quite a mix of levels of use within the different countries there, now over 2 percent. And smaller numbers elsewhere, but also explosive growth.

This just gives us one way of looking at the phenomena. If we look at the startup companies, if we look at the advertisements that have Internet addresses in them. If we even look at politicians who are sort of saying as part of their election campaigns, hey, I understand the Internet, I'll help our country do the right thing, I'll make sure that our regulations, our approaches are modern enough that we can seize this opportunity. That's a really good thing.

Some of those people, I have to say, who are politicians who are talking about their Internet expertise don't have the world's most deep Internet expertise, but it's progress. They know that the voters are interested in this because this is the future. And so, if we look at these numbers a year from now, I think that rate of increase will have continued at absolutely the same pace. You might even say, what holds us back. And here it's really exposure, exposure through the educational system, or through work as key elements, and the cost of communications. The actual cost of the devices themselves is really not the issue. PC costs have come down very dramatically. A reasonable home PC being a $500-600 device, and a business PC often being only $1,000 or $1,200. And so the real expense is the communications, connecting these things up, particularly connecting them up at high speeds. And that's the arena where there's the most investment going on, and a lot of exciting breakthroughs that are taking place that will allow the communication cost to be less of a barrier. But if there's one thing that prevents this from jumping up even more, it's really that. And you do see differences where some countries have really done a good job encouraging competition in communications infrastructure, and that's driven usage in their country faster than countries that haven't done that.

Now, you might say, what is Microsoft's role? Why does Microsoft have a conference where the goal is really about better government? Well, the answer is pretty simple. We see ourselves focused on one thing, and that is providing software building blocks that run on the very low cost hardware that can make this all happen. Our software building blocks, whether it's Windows, or Office, or all the other things we do, played a central role in the PC revolution. And now, with the Internet revolution that's built on top of the PC revolution, we see and the opportunity is that we recreate that software, build it anew, to play that same kind of role.

So our vision is to empower people through great software, no matter where they are, anytime, anyplace, on any device. That vision as updated for the first time in 25 years just this year. And that was because the central role of the PC that our original vision talked about, everybody agreed with that, and we wanted to make sure that our vision statement really pushes the frontiers, really talked about what wasn't accepted wisdom, and really talked about what would take at least five years to make reality.

Now, one of the things we often talk about is, as you move to the digital approach, there is some types of paperwork that goes away. The forms that you fill in, which every government has lots and lots of forms, one of the clear milestones that we often talk about is saying, at least make sure that you have the digital equivalent of that form on the Internet. But, in the long run, have a plan that both for businesses and eventually individuals that the fill out of that form is done on a digital basis, and the paper form is no longer used at all.

I'm showing here an example of a tax form on the tablet type computer where you're simply writing in the answers as opposed to doing it on a piece of paper. And the advantages of having it in digital form, the ability to search and see what you filled in last year, the ability to have advice on anything, any field that is being filled in you can get a description, you can have the computer notice if there is any inconsistencies in the things that you're filling out. And, of course, as soon as you're done, it's transmitted without any transcription errors or manual overhead into the government agency that wants to receive it, and their ability to index it and track it and organize it with other related documents is perfect because, in digital form, you can have the documents very, very easy to call up.

So the impact of this is very clear, and it's very dramatic. And yet it takes a lot of time for these things to come together department by department. In fact, it often takes a government task force that cuts across the different departments. That's not very typical, but the digital revolution is one case where a number of governments have had some success with pooled expertise that really drives standards for the government as a whole.

Now, part of the motivation here is to do things in a lower cost way, and some of the anecdotes are pretty amazing in terms of the amount of saving that's possible. One example that comes to us from Finland is the fact that the drivers, truck drivers there, or drivers doing maintenance, had to fill out lots and lots of forms that were then sent through a paper process, and the information wasn't up-to-date, it was a lot of work, it was a lot of redundant information. Now this is being done purely using data collection devices, so that the information is there immediately. The paperwork is no longer necessary at all. And the savings in terms of people's time, in terms of jobs that have been redirected to more productive things is very substantial. And even though this is not a large project, it's often by having projects like this, with a clear immediate payoff, as the showcase that really gets people's mind around the possibilities. And so, picking some projects that are fairly specific and can be clear wins to drive the momentum forward is very worthwhile.

Certainly the politicians who are looking at saying, what can we do to prove we're serious about this want not only the road map, the nice white paper that says how great it's all going to be, but they want specific examples where they can show that the payoff really is there. And this is a great example of that.

As all these different systems are working on a digital basis, how are they going to be able to exchange information, and here I talk about the need for standardizing communications. Now, industry brings to you most of the key standards that you need, the networking standards, the low level transport protocol that TCP/IP defines. Government and industry are going to use the same fabric there. All of the standards about how information is encrypted as it moves between these various systems, the way the information is presented through the browser on these systems, those standards exist, and there's no need for governments to go off in their own direction. In fact, those standards are evolving very, very rapidly.

The thing that it's necessary for government to do is to take the forms of information where the government is the key customer of that information, like tax returns, health records, government purchasing, and standardize those. And even here there's a lot of guidelines that can come from the commercial world. Things like procurement that changes from what's done for commercial procurement to government procurement are relatively modest in nature. Some of the other areas, like healthcare or education records, the government is enough of the key entity there that it has to make sure that the work gets done, it can't simply take what's being done out of the business sector.

Now, governments around the world are going to be able to benefit from each other's work in this area. In fact, as this conference moves forward we want to give you a regular report on the standards in these different areas, and how different governments have really seized those and are using them in the right way. The technical term for all of this is using XML. XML is, of course, another acronym that comes to us courtesy of the Internet and all those acronyms. But, this one is particularly important. Without understanding the details of it, it simply says that two computers or two entities agree on what a description is going to look like. So if it's a student record, or a healthcare, lab record, as it goes from one piece of software to another they will interpret it in the same way. And so XML is a wonderful opportunity to standardize all of these things and there's a lot of rich activity there that Microsoft is involved with to make sure that governments are seizing that opportunity.

When you get information in digital form, it's not just the simplicity of entering that information, but it's also the tracking, being able to say to somebody, are we doing a great job for you, and how would you like us to do things differently? If that requires a paper form to be sent out, it can't be done on a very regular basis. But, in the digital world, any interaction that there is you can say, are you willing to give us some feedback on how things could have been better. And so you get this closed loop feedback cycle, where you really understand exactly what changes might be necessary. Even things that are simple, like what was confusing on this form, or did we get back to you in a way that you understood?

Take an area like taxation, and the discussion that goes on between the taxpayer and the tax collection authority about: are the forms in order, is that all being handled properly? You can imagine electronic dialogue there, as long as electronic mail is available, that is both less expensive and more satisfying for everybody who is involved. In the United States, of course, like all countries, we have government at many different levels, city government, state government, the national government, and at each of these levels there is a little bit of a sense of competition to see who is going to move forward and do things in the best way. That's excellent, it's not competition in the normal commercial sense, but it is a rivalry that really can lead to best practices being spread around pretty quickly.

One of the innovative efforts of this last year in the United States was something that the Pennsylvania state government did. The governor there announced that this was a key priority, and talked about the Pennsylvania power port, which is the idea that based on anything you're interested in you connect up to the government, and irrespective of how the government is organized, just based on the task you want to get done, you have a portal there that leads you through the information. And really it's a drive to get all of those agencies online. There's some innovative approaches in this case of how they used private companies, like Microsoft, but also many others, to come in and help out with the project, where some parts of the project, if they're successful, will actually generate rewards for the private companies that have come in and helped make this possible up front. So it didn't require a huge allocation of government resources.

That's one point that I'd make about as you look at these different showcases. These showcases do not require huge, huge expenditures. The hardware involved here, which is all PC technology and hardware, is reasonably inexpensive hardware. The software packages, because they're high volume being used out of the commercial sector, are reasonably low cost packages. The expenses that are significant have to do with personnel costs, getting the people who use these systems moved over to the new approaches. And that is a challenge both on a cultural basis and an excitement basis, to really show the leadership to get people to feel like they are a part of this, and they're not being dragged into it.

I mentioned earlier the communications infrastructure is the only thing that really makes this a bit of a challenge. When you say, why not connect up every home, why not have everybody involved in this? Well, initially for a lot of citizens it's going to require a kiosk type approach, that is where you go somewhere else, perhaps to the post office in some countries, perhaps to a dedicated center that has a device there, because connecting up to each individual home will continue to be a substantial expense. Now, deregulation is moving things absolutely in the right direction. And there are so many technology approaches to this whole issue of high speed communication. You're going to be seeing more and more about two-way satellite connections, and the fact that those can be brought down in costs. And particularly for developing countries, reaching out to their rural areas, that is probably the only solution that is going to get there in the next five years.

We're also going to be seeing breakthroughs in wireless technology, and many, many types of wireless technology. The frequency spectrum offers a wide range of bandwidth that people can use, and there are people working on all those different ranges to come up with new lower cost approaches. Likewise, the people who run fiber, both phone companies, and cable companies, and in some countries even the power companies are now jumping in, as they see this as a big opportunity. So I'm really pleased at the pace of activity. Certainly, business connectivity is very, very competitive, and more and more connectivity out to the home is, as well.

If we look at where we are on this, in the United States we have about 2 million homes with high speed access. And that would be far and away more than any other country, both on a percentage and absolute basis. That's expected to grow to 10 million over the next three years. And so it's a huge rate of increase, but as a percentage of the homes it means we'll still only be at about 15 percent of homes with high speed, broadband access in three years time.

That’s not a necessary element for all the applications we’re talking about, but when you can bring in that video interaction, whether it’s looking at a course or talking to somebody about a problem you have, having that speed that allows for video is a wonderful thing.

Now, I mentioned wireless and these smaller devices are a big part of this vision. That’s part of why people are going to expect the digital information.

A part of this that I think is hard to really get across is that we will be able to make these devices far easier to use, that the complexity that you have today in working with a PC will be reduced very dramatically. In fact, that’s a key thing that Microsoft has got to do.

We’ll also be making these smaller devices easier to work with. And I wanted to show you some of the latest out of our Research Group, so I’m going to ask Steve Van Roekel to come out and show us what we call the MiPad. This is a product that won’t actually be on the market for several years, but I think you’ll see that it’s really a kind of natural interaction that people expect and will drive them to the Internet in a big way.

Morning, Steve.

STEVE VAN ROEKEL: Great, thanks, Bill. Well, let’s take a look at MiPad. MiPad is a research -- as Bill said, a research project we’re working on in Microsoft Research to add voice interaction to high-speed data. Where you’ve talked about infrastructure, there’s a great opportunity for government out there, because products like MiPad rely on a high-speed wireless network.

Now, the MiPad device will be something about this size. It’s going to be something like this, probably have a smart card reader that will have an antenna that I can hook up the wireless network.

And we’re also on the verge at Microsoft Research in breakthroughs on microphone technology. So today, you know, in the MiPad future I’ll be able to hold my device, talk to the device and have it interact with me.

Well, for today’s demo I’m actually going to use a headset microphone. So let’s go to that.

So you see MiPad on the screen. And MiPad looks a lot like a normal PDA. It’s got my Explorer, my mail, my calendar and my phone. Well, in the future we envision MiPad being a product for citizens to get seamless integration into government information and seamless integration into business information. It’s one seamless experience being able to browse Web pages, access those forms you talked about, get mail, et cetera.

Let me adjust my microphone and show you. With MiPad the technology we’re working on is something called "tap and talk". So I’ll tap in a certain area, say a command to MiPad and have it understand that.

"Show mail." It goes to my e-mail inbox. I can then simply click on a message. Here’s a message from Denny about taxation. And I’ve got a message from Denny saying, you know, we need to discuss how we’ll allocate taxes as we build our next year’s income statements.

"Schedule a meeting with him." "Talk about the income statements."

So you can see, as I do different things on MiPad -- "Discuss budgets" -- and I can do location specific things. "Your office." "Tomorrow."

So you’ll notice that MiPad actually senses where I’m tapping and then does things specific to that.

"Forget it." (Laughter.) I go back to where I was.

Now, MiPad is also intuitive, so I don’t have to actually go into my e-mail, look at e-mail and do things like that. I want to grab MiPad out of my pocket while I’m doing things and have access instantly, so I might do something like "Send e-mail to Bill Gates." "Discuss meeting." And I could go in here and say things like, "Bill, we need to discuss the meeting for next week, period." And see it picked up all of that. (Applause.) "Forget it."

Because we want to integrate anytime, anywhere access to information, My Pad will also be a wireless cellular phone, so it will have cell phone access, access to Web pages. So I might pick up MiPad and say something like, "Call Bill Gates at work." And you can see it pulls up your address with your phone number and in the MiPad future it will just dial that phone number and connect me up.

So this is really fits into Microsoft’s vision of anytime, anywhere access to information, for taking that government information in web pages, presenting it to me in a handheld device, letting me interact with business information, call people and really access all of those things online.

BILL GATES: It looks great. Thanks, Steve.

STEVE VAN ROEKEL: Thank you.

(Applause.)

BILL GATES: So MiPad, to be clear, is a device that’s a complement to your PC desktop. Your PC desktop is where you’ll organize your schedule, create documents, but all that information will be available through the small device, including being able to take notes and add updates. In fact, it will be very typical to take voice notes using the MiPad. While you’re in a meeting you can simply point at something and record voice notes, and then when you go back to your larger screen PC you can either do voice recognition or simply type out the comments that you thought were most interesting.

So it’s a world of many devices, where the information moves automatically between those devices through the magic of software.

When we talk about government and the Internet opportunity, there are many, many things that come up here; not just the internal workings of the government, not just the regulations relative to communications and business activities, but perhaps high on the list of things that governments really can get involved with is use of these tools in education. The PC connected to the Internet is sort of the ultimate educational tool. I’m not saying by itself it’s a teaching device. The role of the teacher in creating the framework, the motivation is still really quite crucial. But the idea that any student can reach out and find the latest information and find other students who have a similar interest and collaborate with them no matter where they are in the world, that’s something completely new and different.

And at this early stage a lot of schools are doing experimental work around this, and having really wonderful results as they draw all their students in to these activities.

Now this has gone through a lot of evolution. Back in the 1980s the computer was used as sort of a drilling device, where it would ask questions and look at the answers. That had some benefits, but modest.

By the early 1990s the price of the computer had come down enough that kids would go to a special room and use the computer there and some of the software was very good at simulating why the material was interesting and finding out where people’s knowledge needed to be added to.

Well, by the mid-1990s the idea of moving the computer out of just that computer room and having it in the classroom at large started to be practical in many different schools.

Now, this has reached a whole new level with the price of the portable computers coming down. The most advanced classrooms have gone to what we call anytime, anywhere learning, where every student has a portable computer. And the effect there is fairly dramatic, because you have a sense of personal ownership. It’s not just that you wait in line to get on a computer and you have your limited amount of time to get something done. You can take the computer home with you. You know, those tools are your tools and you use them exactly the way you want, as much as you want.

Now, it’s not practical to implement anywhere, anytime learning in every classroom around the world today. The cost and the infrastructure, the training that would have to be done for that is still prohibitive. And yet the results out of the classrooms that have done this, which on a worldwide basis would be over 1,000 schools now, the results are exciting enough that we ought to look at, you know, how can we roll that out to more and more people.

There is a stage of this that comes within the next four years, where the portable machine will be so much improved in terms of the readability of the screen that instead of having to have textbooks at all in paper form, you’ll simply have that tablet type PC and you’ll have your curriculum there, you’ll take your notes on it. Of course, the impact is not just in education here, but the ability to take that textbook budget and move it into investments in this infrastructure, the tablets themselves, the wireless networks, the training of the teachers, that’s a big boost in this effort to get this rolled out.

And so over the next decade the opportunities for what you can do in schools will be changing quite substantially.

Most countries now have made sure that at the university level at least the use of the PC, use of the Internet is sort of commonplace for all the students. The challenge now is to move that down into every level of education and to create what we call connected learning communities, where all the different material is up there. Teachers are sharing with each other. There’s awards for teachers who come up with the best things and put them up on the network. The parents at home can see what’s going on with their student, what they’re learning. They can go off and find additional materials, send electronic mail to the teacher if they have ideas about things that might be brought into the classroom.

And you get a level of collaboration that was not possible before. Before, the teacher was pretty much on their own in terms of the ideas, the creativity they had and not being able to share that with other teachers or get input and help from the parents or the material that’s out there on the Internet.

So this vision is something that is now being realized in many, many countries.

The goal here is to take what Secretary Daly referred to as the Digital Divide and address it before it becomes a crisis. Even in the United States this is a major issue. The access to PCs varies quite dramatically based on level of income. And the thing, the great leveler here, as it was for literacy and so many other things is the educational system. You know, the idea of having every library in the country have a PC, that’s something I was very pleased to have my foundation take on as a goal and now we’re within two years of having achieved that for all 18,000 libraries in this country.

The schools are an even bigger challenge, because, as I said, it involves a lot of training, it involves rethinking the curriculum and most of the work is ahead of us here.

But if it’s done right, that digital divide won’t really ever emerge as a crisis. That is, everyone coming out of school will have the basic skill sets in using these tools that are so necessary for the jobs that are going to be coming up in the future.

Now, in this quest for governments to move into the digital world, it’s often great to set the ambitious milestones and to be very concrete about what you’re doing. Country by country I think these panels that have been pulled together and the white papers that have been written are really excellent. In fact, every time I look at one of those from a new government I see something that’s a little different and a little better that they’ve done. And I hope that through conferences like this there can be a lot of sharing of those best ideas.

One of the more recent ones that I think is notable is the document on an information society for all that is often called the Little "e" Europe Document that is developed by the European Union. It really encapsulates a lot of the high-reach goals that we all really believe in: getting everybody -- every citizen -- online, whether they’re at home or school or at work; creating a digitally literate society that’s taking advantage of what’s going on, so you get the kind of entrepreneurialism that really drives the economy to new things; and making sure that that’s all inclusive and making sure that some of the challenges like the privacy challenges are not forgotten as we move towards this.

Our role here is to take what we understand about the software tools and show how it can be turned into real government solutions. And that means sitting down with the various departments, talking about your goals, what your showcase is, what you’d like to see there. You know, every project is unique in some way.

We have created around the world what we call our electronic government framework, that is defining these XML standards and understanding how our tools can make working with those very, very easy. We call it software that speaks the language of government and we’re pretty far along with that, because for almost every type of government activity, somewhere in the world we’ve done a showcase project that’s gotten us to think about the particular needs for the framework for each of the different departments.

We’ve thought a lot about citizen access, creating this to get into a TV to navigate. Again, that has to be adopted for each government’s needs. But the tools to build that, you’d be stunned at how quickly something can be put together that makes it easy for people to navigate without knowing the idiosyncrasies of the different levels and different departments, simply talking about what they want to get done.

Another element of this is allowing there to be ongoing communications, what we call digital communities, where people share their opinions, other people can go in and see that and really making sure that the empowerment is there. This is a pretty broad idea. This encompasses the work in education and economic development as well.

So we’re willing to jump into these projects at an early stage, because we believe in the potential and because we know that now is the time, that the pieces are really there.

Again, we see this as something that’s very concrete. The steps that we’ve taken, you know, think in each area about those paper forms. Think about making sure that when people communicate with government they do it one time and they don’t have to duplicate that across the different levels of government or even across different countries. Getting your senior leaders actually involved hands-on in the technology is worth the effort. I’m talking about the politicians themselves, sitting down and using the Internet, sending electronic mail and understanding this phenomenon of instant messaging, where kids are staying in touch with each other. And that is so explosive, because we’re just adding now voice and video to that idea of instant messaging.

So the computer, which has been a lot about documents and creating documents, now as we bring this communication element in, not just e-mail but the real-time communications, it really is an explosive thing that everybody ought to sit down and get involved in using.

I think every government ought to have some metrics about the digital divide. And even though as you start out you’ll find it is the higher income groups, it is the more well-to-do, often private schools that are reaching out to this, you know, create a metric and commit yourself to closing the gap that could emerge here if we’re not serious about it, and then think about this as something that can really drive a whole new level of collaboration.

You know, the way that this is going to be used, I don’t think any of us are in a position to predict the simple things like, okay, there won’t be paper forms, but what will the dialogue between citizens and politicians look like when people can see the text of the debate, they can see the information, they can register for an area that they have particular interest in. If there’s some development there, they’ll be notified about it.

I think that whole dialogue of citizens’ involvement with government can be brought to a new level, which is beneficial to everyone.

So it’s exciting to be in on the ground floor of what it means to take government, all the governments around the world into the digital age.

We’re very committed to be part of this. We’re very excited to be working with you. We thank you all for coming here. I’m very impressed with the group we’ve got this year. And I hope you get an immense amount out of the conference.

Thank you.

(Applause.)

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