Evaluation of the NCIH Initial Deployment

The Value of the NCIH to the North Carolina Public Health System

Economic Development Applications

Background

Several factors affect the economic development future of North Carolina but the base upon which all success is supported is a skilled workforce. The "Information Era" will not change the fact that we will continue to market, design, manufacture, transport, distribute, and support products. As frequently pointed out the service sector will continue to increase, however North Carolina has established a strong position nationally in the manufacturing sector and we must ensure that we do not lose focus on this strength for the future. It is important to understand that the "Information Era" will provide new alternatives to do the things that have always been required in business and industry. Technology opens up new and more effective methods to meet market opportunities and serve the citizens of North Carolina. Business, industry, and state government all benefit from the appropriately selected and properly implemented technology.

Over the last two decades technology

implementation into manufacturing has been a key factor in the success and survival of companies across the manufacturing spectrum. As international trade barriers are lowered and eliminated the effective implementation of technology is seen as the primary defense against the loss of jobs to foreign competitors. The benefits have been documented in manufacturing business success rates, increased wages, and employment growth. With this reality, it is essential that North Carolina take the steps to enable existing and new companies to meet the challenges they will face in the next decade.

Medium and large size companies can amortize the investments necessary to meet these challenges over their enterprises. Small companies do not have this alternative and North Carolina is home to a large population of companies that employ less than 100 people.

Small firms are increasingly recognized as key job creators and innovators in the economy. Small firms generated virtually all of the new jobs between 1988 and 1990 in the United States, and they helped mitigate the effects of the recent recession by continuing to create jobs. Small firms are expected to contribute about 70 percent of the new jobs in the nation’s fastest growing industries between 1990 and 2005, and about 66 percent of the 23.3 million jobs projected to be created between 1990 and 2005.

Workforce Requirements

Success in business, industry, and government increasingly depends on two factors:

1) Accurate, timely information on the market (conditions, competitors, customers, solution alternatives)

and

2) Workforce knowledge

The phrase "knowledge is power" has great significance for our North Carolina companies, education institutions, and government agencies and departments. Characteristics of this knowledge are:

The rate of knowledge generation and the demand for access is exponentially greater than in the Industrial Age.
The life cycle of information will continue to shrink.
Demand for effective, efficiently delivered learning opportunities will increase dramatically.
The average employee will go through three to five career learning cycles in their working years.

Increasingly, academic and industry experts have expressed concern that in the next two decades we will experience a geometric increase in the demand for learning. They also point out that our resources under the existing model for education delivery are expected to remain fairly static. As Dolence and Norris (1) point out," currently there are 3,613 institutions of higher education in the United States. Together they enroll 15.1 million students - equivalent to approximately 12 million full-time enrollments - and spend $156 billion per year in operations . . .yet as the Information Era develops, substantially greater numbers of workers will require types of learning opportunities not currently available. The potential magnitude of this demand may be overwhelming.

Looking to the year 2000, the estimates are that just to keep even each worker will need to accumulate the learning equivalent of 30 credit hours every seven years." If these estimates are correct, then up to one-seventh of the workforce will be a full time equivalent learner at any point in time.

The resources necessary to satisfy this FTE requirement under existing methods of delivery are beyond the operational and physical capabilities of the education system. Regardless of the magnitude of the numbers the message is clear - workforce education will be a critical factor in the growth and maintenance of business and industry in North Carolina.

In May of 1995 the Commission for a Competitive North Carolina outlined the challenge for the state by the year 2015. In their report they stated "North Carolina can expect technology to

transform what we know and what we do - as it has in the last 20 years." To compete, employees will need a strong scholastic background, up-to-date computing skills, and continuing training and retraining. Preparing the workforce for the changing requirements ahead will involve:

Increasing the number of students that participate in post-secondary education and training.
Assuring computer literacy and technical proficiency.
Providing more training and retraining to help employees adjust to changes in the workplace and maintain employment resilient careers.
Helping displaced workers find new employment in a reasonable amount of time.

The Governor’s Commission on Workforce Preparedness notes,

"Without extensive training and upgrading of current adult workers, and more effective preparation of young people coming out of school, the capacity of our workforce will set a cruel limit on our ability to develop, attract and retain the high-technology, high-performance enterprises that will be the hallmark of North Carolina’s economy in the years ahead".

With the interactive video capabilities of the NCIH, it will be possible for public and private education organizations to provide workforce training at statewide locations (public schools, community colleges, libraries, etc.).

When the growth of North Carolina industry and business is reviewed it becomes clear that just as in education the subject of equity must be considered if we are to experience balanced development across the state.

North Carolina has taken a proactive role over the last two decades in attracting and fostering growth in companies that serve the communications and computation industry. Growth in these industry sectors has been and will continue to be among the highest across all sectors. In particular:

Communications and electronics will be one of the highest growth industries in the world in the next two decades.
Electronics is the largest manufacturing employer in the US, both in economics and people, providing 2.3 million direct jobs.
Communications and electronics employ more people than the automotive, steel, and aerospace industries combined.
Communications and electronics provide the basis for a broad range of service industry jobs as we evolve into the information era.

Electronics forms the basis for growth across the industrial, consumer, medical, communications, computer, and engineered products industries.

In many cases these companies are small companies that need not be located in urban and metropolitan areas. The key requirement for this is however that there be readily available communications links that can support the full range of business needs to interact regionally, nationally, and internationally.


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