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Technology Stocks : COMS & the Ghost of USRX w/ other STUFF -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Ulrich who wrote (16709)	7/22/1998 12:50:00 PM
From: Moonray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22053

Bill would require census to ask about PC use, Net access San Jose Mercury - Posted at 9:49 p.m. PDT Monday, July 20, 1998 Saying they hope to avoid a missed opportunity, two congressional Republicans have introduced a bill requiring the Census Bureau to ask Americans whether they have access to the Internet at home. The proposal comes after several commentators and demographers criticized the government for failing to include any mention of the Internet on the year 2000 census questionnaire. ''Right now the census gives us information that's more relevant to planning the 1930s New Deal than preparing for the Information Age,'' one of the bill's sponsors, Rep. Rick White, said in a news release issued Monday. The Census Bureau's proposed survey for 2000 includes questions about such things as whether people have indoor plumbing and what kind of fuel they use to heat their homes, but nothing about computer or Internet use. ''We can't expect to find the right policies for the 21st century if we don't know how Americans really use computers and the Internet,'' added White, whose home district includes Microsoft Corp.'s headquarters in Redmond, Wash. White joined Rep. Dan Miller of Florida, who chairs the House Census Subcommittee, in introducing the bill Friday. Their measure would direct the Census Bureau to add two questions to the survey that will be mailed to every sixth household in 2000. The first question would ask whether the home has a personal computer; the second would ask whether the home has Internet access. Until last month, government officials said, there had been little if any consideration in Washington of using the census to determine who has access to the Internet, despite its emergence as a powerful new medium of mass communication. But after the issue was raised in a Mercury News article and subsequent column, the idea of adding one or more Internet questions was endorsed by a number of editorialists, commentators and people involved with technology policy. Peter Schalestock, a spokesman for White, said he wasn't sure where his boss got the idea, however. Prospects for the bill's passage are uncertain, although Schalestock said he's unaware of any opposition. Census officials couldn't be reached for comment late Monday, and Schalestock said he didn't know whether the Clinton administration was consulted before the bill was introduced. Although several federal officials agreed last month that the questions could yield valuable information, they cautioned that it was getting late to add to the already lengthy survey being planned by the Census Bureau. The bureau has been under pressure to shrink the questionnaire so people will be more willing to cooperate in filling it out. In recent months, congressional debate on the census has focused on a bitterly partisan dispute over plans to use statistical techniques known as ''sampling'' to estimate the number of people who are likely to be overlooked by traditional surveying methods. House Republicans have held up some funding for the 2000 census while the issue is decided in the courts. Schalestock, however, said his boss hopes to keep the Internet bill separate from the sampling dispute. Although Congress is trying to wind up other matters before its scheduled August recess, Schalestock said White hopes the bill can be rushed to the House floor as early as next week. o~~~ O