withstanding. But I now want to suggest to you that that role is relatively trivial, given the more significant problems which cities face, and the potential of the computer to assist in finding solutions to those problems.

I had occasion to address the Urban Regional Information Systems Association 4 years ago and I used that opportunity to argue that Federal priorities in providing urban assistance were misplaced, that the cart was before the horse. I stated that we were trying to solve problems at a point in time where we were insufficiently informed as to the nature of the problems, possible solutions, and a means for testing any solutions we might attempt. I argued that the greatest usable measure of support should go to the development of computer-based, comprehensive, integrated municipalwide information systems.

I believe it would be useful to quote the conclusion of that argument because it seems to me that it also applies today equally with yesterday. I quote:

It is from the perspective of urban data collection that we are in the most grave difficulty of all. Computer technology, both with respect to hardware and software, has far outstripped our organizational ability to employ it for public purposes. There are many reasons advanced for this; problems of resources, legal jurisdictional problems, concerns for privacy, and so on. But the fact of the matter is that we still do not value urban information sufficiently. We persist in giving lip service to its value, but when the time comes to allocate the substantial funds that are required, or to make the organizational, jurisdictional, political, legal, and privacy compromises which are a part of the cost of information system development, we not only falter, we fall flat on our face.

I want to suggest to you that we have not even scratched the surface of the magnitude of the effort which ultimately will of necessity be made. The piecemeal efforts going on around the country are a gain, to be sure, but they fall so far short of what is needed that it is almost laughable were it not so serious. It is not so bad that we parade the list of reasons why it cannot be otherwise; what is disastrous is that some of us boast a merit in the approach. We say, for example, we are learning to crawl before we learn to walk; we are learning the nature of these smaller systems which eventually will become the subsystems of larger systems. This is absolute nonsense.

Mr. MOORHEAD. Professor Dial, and other witnesses, this is Congressman James V. Stanton of Ohio. We have heard from two New York witnesses. The next witness will be from Ohio.

Mr. DIAL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. STANTON. I think with Bella, that is a fair exchange.

Mr. MOORHEAD. Excuse me. Please proceed, Professor Dial.

Mr. DIAL [continues reading]:

The eventual system will not be made of the systems with which we are presently gaining experience. The difference is systematic integration of information flow at the municipal level. There is a wide gulf between a data processing system on the one hand, and a comprehensive, integrated municipal information system on the other. It is this latter to which we must strive at this time. It is this latter that we do not now have.

Data is captured most naturally in the ongoing operations and administration of the affairs of a municipality. We therefore see municipalities as the basic units, the building blocks, from which the information systems of larger units of government and quasi-government can be structured. If we speak of incremental development, the first increment should be the municipality. Succeeding vertical and horizontal development of the system beyond the jurisdiction of the municipality would form later increments for development. This approach requires that we shake up conventional views of the value of urban information. While it seems expensive in terms of immediate outlay, it is cheap when laid beside the record of Federal expenditures for urban programs of doubtful effectiveness. In all of this, I have argued that we are in trouble. We are not only in trouble

in the cities, but we are in trouble with respect to knowing what to do about it. But we are in the most serious trouble if we don't stop deluding ourselves with the idea that we can solve these problems without the scale of data that a comprehensive, integrated municipal information system would provide.

In a cost/benefit analysis of all of the urban programs considered for funding, that of a comprehensive, integrated municipal information system (the keystone of all public information systems) must be elevated to a position of substantially increased prominence. Data yields information, and information yields power over the environment. With this power, government at all levels would have the chance, in time, to program more certain steps toward the definition and achievement of our public goals.

In that same year-as you will recall, this was 4 years ago-the Federal Government's Urban Information Systems Inter-Agency Committee, to be known as USAC, was organized under the leadership of Roderick Symmes and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Subsequently, the committee was chaired by William Mitchel, and today by Robert Knisely. The committee was made up of representatives from each of the Federal agencies having programs which impacted upon urban jurisdictions. Its members had witnessed the problems of local governments in responding to Federal requests for information, as for example, in connection with qualifying for grants of various kinds. They had witnessed, too, the varieties of approaches which cities took in order to generate the required datasurveys, the data bank, and so on. But such methods were expensive one-time efforts, were often inaccurate, yielded gaps in the data and data which had a short half-life, and, too, the data was often ambiguity-ridden. Finally, these members had witnessed the reinvention of the wheel by city after city as each invested in research and development of segments of systems which might solve the data gathering problem.

The committee commissioned myself and two colleagues, Kenneth Kraimer and Myron Weiner, to prepare a research design for an integrated municipal information system consistent with the concepts and principles we each had expounded, and as augmented by those specified by the committee. This was done, and in time was embodied in what became known as Request for Proposal (RFP) H 2-70. I mention that because it is somewhat startling to learn that there have been over 10.000 requests for copies of that RFP in the last 3 years, beginning with the point in time after contracts had been made. In other words, these copies were desired for informational purposes. It went to cities, to various systems, and consulting firms around the country, educational institutions, and so on. I was very much surprised and gratified to learn of this demand.

By the following year, 1971, contracts were made with six cities for the conduct of this R. & D. We are speaking of an effort which is on the order of $30 million over, say, 5 years. Two of the cities, Charlotte, N.C., and Wichita Falls, Tex., contracted to build comprehensive, integrated municipal information systems. The remaining four were for functional subsystems, specifically; Reading, Pa.-physical and economic development; Dayton, Ohio-finance; Long Beach, Calif.-public safety; and St. Paul, Minn.-human resource development. Five of the six cities are continuing their efforts at this time and give convincing evidence that the research objectives will be validated with the completion of their work. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would like to append materials which describe their progress.

[The text of the presentations provided to the subcommittee by the city of Charlotte and the city of Wichita Falls, Tex., will appear hereafter in the appendix of part 2.]

Mr. MOORHEAD. Without objection, so ordered. Professor Dial, this is Congressman Gude of Maryland.

Mr. DIAL. Good morning, Congressman.

Mr. MOORHEAD. Professor Dial is proceeding with his testimony

now.

Mr. DIAL. Of the many concepts, principles, and stipulated requirements contained in the RFP and subsequently incorporated into the contracts, several need to be mentioned here. Each is, in a sense, born of reaction to past efforts to research and develop information systems. Briefly, they are as follows:

Fundamental analysis of municipal operations. Management and planning must precede the conceptualization of the ways in which the computer can be exploited for municipal purposes. In the past this analysis extended only to the application being automated.

The systems approach must be employed. That is to say there must be a comprehensive analysis of all the elements and processes, and their direct and indirect relationships. This analysis will reveal that payroll accounting, for example, is just one of several highly interrelated municipal processes focused on the management of municipal personnel.

The automation of municipal processes. Computerization alone merely implies the mechanization of segments or particular sequences in a series of steps which range from the first input to the final output. By emphasizing automation, each of the bridges between computerized sequences is examined critically to determine whether or not that segment too can be computerized.

The conceptualized system must exploit the full range of computer technology. For example, it is not enough to automate a process which begins with expensive manual conversion of hardcopy data into a machine readable medium. The analysis must also evaluate the potential of source data automation.

The municipality should be perceived as a basic building block for intergovernmental information systems. It is from this basic system that information is generated for ultimate use in wider jurisdictions. This principle recognizes the fact that the actions of a majority of our population, from birth to death, have their initial impacts in a local government jurisdiction and these impacts require action by local government.

The information systems design must be operations-based. The primary thrust in municipal information systems development must be the meeting of the operational needs of municipal government. The main impact of this is to create a system that is built into the mainstreams of information flow.

The system must be designed for transferability. The common thrust throughout the research design is the theme of transferability, that is to say, the ease with which solutions developed in the prototype may be transferred and implemented in other municipalities and jurisdictions. A primary benefit of transferability is the avoidance by other municipalities of the major investment required for research and development. A key to transferability is detailed and complete documentation.

Incremental installation of systems within an overall plan is required because to do otherwise would create such confusion and difficulty that installation would be politically unacceptable and managerially impossible.

The data base must be managed. This is to ensure data standardization, data compatability, data access control, and the protection of privacy.

The system must include a geocoding system to at least the block face level. These may constitute the building blocks of aggregating data for each of the many non-coterminous jurisdictions within a municipality, for example, school districts, police precincts, fire precincts, and so on, and also for managers and planners who may wish to let the data define the area, for example, areas in which there is a high or low incidence of particular kinds of attributes.

Mr. STANTON. I am sorry, Professor, I have to go to Ways and Means.

Mr. DIAL. Thank you.

Needless to say, the satisfaction of all these requirements has required something more than dedication and competency on the part of the city personnel, the systems consultants and the university consultants, who together form the consortia working together in the USAC cities. But it is working. Volumes of documentation which will be, and even now have been, of great benefit to other cities. Generally, the systems analysis and systems conceptualization phases have been completed in each project. Most are now at work on systems design and systems development. However, in some, portions of the system have been implemented.

In the same year the USAC cities began their work, my colleagues and I began work on a task which served to deepen and extend our knowledge of the use of the computer by cities. We needed to test the notion of transferability, the range of information systems expertise available to cities, the range of budgets which municipalities were capable of or willing to spend on EDP-these among many other informational needs. Our data was gathered by site visits to some 79 cities. A report on our effort has subsequently been published and it is from that publication that I would like to draw extracts at this time. Although it is tempting to read the several pages of conclusions reached, I have limited myself to only a few paragraphs, as set forth here:

The market for EDP in municipalities is much in evidence. There is widespread interest, oftentime a blind faith in its ability to help city management, and a conviction that EDP has a potential for improving governmental service to its citizens. However, there is too little evidence of any understanding of the costs and techniques involved in the translation of the potential into reality. As such, EDP is seen by many as an unrealizable promise more than a here and now capability.

It is clearly apparent from the study that cities must necessarily depend upon external resources for much of the research and development required in all aspects of municipal information systems. These required resources are not limited to funding alone, but also include human talent. Furthermore, it is apparent that a successful prototype municipal information system cannot be transferred by a city except with a yet to be defined amount of systems analysis and prototype adaptation preceding implementation. While cities understand the benefits associated with prototype implementation and greatly desire it, it is doubtful that cities generally have the financial or technical resources to accomplish this task. It is evident, therefore, that some form of grant-in-aid will be needed to assist cities through the prototype modification and implementation phases.

This period of needed assistance fortuitously coincides with reduced requirements for persons with the needed skills by national defense industries and the resultant release to the market of a talented human resource which can and should be channeled to the service of urban governments. This underemployed and unemployed group of highly skilled EDP professionals can be profitably utilized in the prototype transfer process. However, mechanisms for achieving such a conversion do not seem to be readily available.

This marriage of national capability and local need should be pursued to insure the development of a more appropriate level of USAC assistance to the cities of this Nation in the satisfaction of their critical needs.

Now, to summarize, this discussion therefore suggests that the present approach to employing computers in cities yields relatively trivial results, and by no stretch of the imagination can yield an information system. Second, that there is a major research and development effort underway, the USAC IMIS (integrated municipal information system) program, which seeks to develop a prototype of an integrated

municipal information system, the building block of other governmental information systems. Third, that this effort is expensive and time-consuming, requiring yet another 2 years, given existing levels of resource support. Fourth, that transferability testing will be required so that we might be able to assess the extent to which the prototype will require modification for implementation in another municipality, and in this respect, we may be speaking of yet another year, perhaps 2 years from now. And finally, we must come face to face with the probability that few cities will be able to afford the adaptation and implementation cost of a prototype.

Clearly, it is in the national interest to create a program which subsidizes cities throughout this country, and we are only speaking of some 385 cities with populations over 50,000, in their efforts to come of technological age. The alternative is the continuation of the housekeeping applications approach and its limitations, the continuation of redundant efforts in city after city to experiment with expedients. which yield pieces of systems, or worse yet, data banks of one-time data collection efforts, but more significantly, the continuation of seatof-the-pants city management and city planning, wherein guesses and estimates are made to substitute for facts.

I close this presentation with some reluctance because I am aware in each line of its preparation of the numerous other facets of the subject which ought to come before you. I am hopeful that the question period may reveal some of this.

Thank you for your kind attention, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MOORHEAD. Thank you, Professor Dial.

Mr. DIAL. And for the opportunity to rehearse.

Mr. MOORHEAD. You do very well without rehearsal. You talk about cities' resources in this field or lack thereof, and you suggest Federal grants. When I looked into congressional capabilities in this area 6 or 7 years ago, we had only one computer on Capitol Hill. It handled payroll of the employees of the Library of Congress. We did not apply it to housekeeping operations. We have since begun but not completed the job of comprehensive computer applications up here. I would like to talk to you about that sometime, but that is out of the jurisdiction of this subcommittee.

Our next witness is Mr. Donald P. Buckelew, of the Communications Media Research Laboratory at the Battelle Memorial Institute, in Columbus, Ohio.

Mr. Buckelew's academic field is business administration, and he has been engaged in some research in the application of cable TV and cable communications.

Do you want to have any of your associates come forward to the table at this time?

STATEMENT OF DONALD P. BUCKELEW, COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH LABORATORY, BATTELLE MEMORIAL INSTITUTE, COLUMBUS, OHIO

Mr. BUCKELEW. Not at this time. Later perhaps.

Mr. MOORHEAD. You may proceed, sir.

Mr. BUCKELEW. I appreciate the opportunity to share with you our concept for rural telecommunications.