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Mr. Chambers Comes To Washington
by Bara Vaida
At the request of FCC Chairman Michael Powell, Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers came to Washington last week as the inaugural speaker at the FCC speakers' series.
Chambers, whose company has long advocated the need for expanding high-speed Internet service, said government leaders need to set a goal to deliver broadband to all Americans in the next decade. "For productivity and national competitiveness reasons, the nation must make broadband rollout a national policy," Chambers said. "Just as putting a person on the moon was a national goal, getting broadband to all Americans and small businesses should have the same effort behind it."
In particular, Chambers said federal, state and local governments could help expand broadband to underserved areas. The private sector, he added, would be responsible for the vast majority of broadband expansion.
Later during his visit, Chambers had dinner with Tom Ridge, the new head of the White House Office of Homeland Security, The Washington Post reported.
In other Cisco news, Dan Scheinman, one of Cisco's first employees and the senior vice president for corporate affairs, has been promoted to senior vice president of corporate development. In that role, Scheinman will oversee business development, strategic alliances, strategic technology policy, government affairs, and legal and corporate public relations.
Laura Ipsen, Cisco's government affairs director, has been promoted to vice president for government affairs. She will continue to head the global public policy department and focus on broadband rollout, education and e-government policies.
Moving Off The Hill
After six years of working for Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich. -- first in his district office and then on the House Science Committee -- Peter Harsha has left to join the Computing Research Association as director of government affairs. At his new job, Harsha said he plans to focus on information technology research and development and raising congressional awareness about the need for R&D funding.
"We are working for the university and industrial labs that are at the cutting edge of IT research and we want to raise their prominence on the Hill," Harsha said. "If we are really looking to push the edge on IT research, these are the people that will be doing it."
Harsha noted that Congress has moved to provide more R&D funding than President Bush requested, much to the relief of many people in the R&D community. The House proposed an 8.3 percent increase for the National Science Foundation, while the Senate backed a smaller increase.
Andrew Semmel also has accepted a job off Capitol Hill. Most recently, Semmel was the foreign-policy adviser to Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., a job he held for 14 years. He is now executive director of the U.S.-China Commission, a congressionally chartered panel that explores the national security implications of trade and economic relationships between the two nations.
Bush's Other Brother
Bush's brother, Neil Bush, will chair an Education Technology Gala and policy conference in January on educational technology, according to the National Coalition for Technology in Education and Training (NCTET). Bush is the CEO of an online education organization called Ignite Learning.
NCTET is a nonprofit organization supported by AOL Time Warner, Turner Learning, AT&T, Educational Testing Service, NetSchools, Pearson Education, Riverdeep Interactive Learning, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments and Verizon Communications. The organization has organized two previous such conferences.
At The Agencies
Michael Gallagher, formerly of Verizon Wireless, will become the deputy assistant Commerce secretary for communications and information Nov. 2. Before joining Verizon, Gallagher was the administrative assistant to former Rep. Rick White, R-Wash., who is now president of the Silicon Valley lobbying group TechNet.
Gallagher will be working closely with Nancy Victory, who heads the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. NTIA also has two newcomers: senior adviser William Bailey, formerly of the Internet firm CoreExpress, and special assistant Stephen Madden, who moves over from the Agriculture Department.
In other agency news, Laura Unger said she plans to leave the Securities and Exchange Commission after almost four years as a commissioner for a job in the private sector. Unger was acting SEC chairwoman until current Chairman Harvey Pitt was confirmed in early August.
During her SEC tenure, Unger called for action to end potential conflicts of interest for stock analysts and ordered a review of Internet stock-picking sites that could be preying on unwary investors. Before joining the SEC, Unger worked for former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y.
At the Education Department, Secretary Roderick Paige has named Daniel Langan as the department's press secretary. A native of Pennsylvania, Langan joined the department in May as a special assistant to Undersecretary Eugene Hickok, the former education secretary of Pennsylvania. From 1995 until joining the federal Education Department, Langan worked in the press office for his home state's Education Department.
FCC's Ness Lands At Annenberg
The Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania has appointed former FCC Commissioner Susan Ness as a distinguished visiting professor of communication. She will teach a graduate seminar on communication, technology and public policy.
Ness also has been appointed director of the information society section of the Annenberg public policy center in Washington. She was FCC commissioner for seven years, beginning in 1994.
All Systems Secure, Sir
John Thomas, a retired Army colonel, has joined the Internet Security Alliance (ISA) as its director of strategic initiatives. Thomas will be responsible for promoting Internet security, representing the ISA in public-private partnerships, establishing strategic partnerships with other nonprofit organizations and serving as technical adviser.
Most recently, Thomas was president of Titan Vigil, a managed security-services company. Before that, he was the commander of the global network operations and security center at the Defense Information Systems Agency.
Another military alum also has landed a new private-sector job. Arthur Money, who has substantial experience in the defense and intelligence areas in both the private sector and government positions, has joined the board of SGI, the parent of Silicon Graphics. Most recently, Money was an assistant defense secretary and chief information officer for the Defense Department from 1998 through April 2001.
And the Winner Is ...
Eric Cornell, a scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), was one of three people awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics last week. The other two recipients were Wolfang Ketterle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carl Wieman of the University of Colorado.
They received the award for their work on atoms. The team created a new state of matter by cooling atoms to less that 170-billionths of a degree above absolute zero. The low temperature caused the individual atoms to behave as one "super atom," proving a theory by Albert Einstein regarding the behavior of atoms.
In other news, Mario Morino, chairman of the Morino Institute, will be named as one of the 2001 laureates for the Washington Business Hall of Fame at a Nov. 8 banquet, Potomac Tech Wire reported. The ceremony honors top business leaders from the Washington area.
Morino cofounded the software firm Morino Associates. The firm later became Legent, which was acquired by Computer Associates in 1995. Other laureates this year include: Roger Blunt, chairman of Blunt Enterprises; John Curley, former chairman and CEO of Gannett; and John Hazel of the law firm Reed Smith Hazel & Thomas.
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