Dr. Darrene L. Hackler, an innovation economist, has joined the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation as a senior fellow.

Steve Norton joined ITIF in 2010 as communications director

On President Obama’s first day in office, he released a memo calling for “an unprecedented level of openness in Government” and increased “transparency, public participation, and collaboration.” After one year, has the impact of the use of technology for open government been substantive or inconsequential?

A new report by ITIF Research Fellow Richard Bennett explains how mobile networks are changing as they become part of the Internet, the implications mobile networking has for public policy, and how policymakers can facilitate the flowering of the mobile Internet.

In a new report, ITIF examines the international leaders in ITS and suggests steps the United States should take to close the gap.

In this series of reports, ITIF explores international IT application leadership in five fields: health IT, mobile payments, intelligent transportation systems, e-government and electronic IDs.

ITIF uses 16 indicators to assess the global innovation-based competitiveness of 36 countries and 4 regions. This report finds that while the U.S. still leads the EU in innovation-based competitiveness, it ranks sixth overall. Moreover, the U.S. ranks last in progress toward the new knowledge-based innovation economy over the last decade.

In a new report, “A Policymaker’s Guide to Network Management,” ITIF Senior Analyst George Ou explains how advanced networks actually work and documents how, if ISPs are to provide customers a good Internet service and operate their networks efficiently, they must be able to allocate bandwidth between users and apply network management tools to shape traffic from multiple applications. However, Ou argues that ISPs can and should do this in a fair and non-discriminatory manner.

In a report sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, ITIF employs 29 indicators to assess the extent to which the 50 state economies are structured according to the tenets of the New Economy. The changing economic landscape requires state economies to be innovative, globally-linked, entrepreneurial and dynamic, with an educated workforce and all sectors embracing the use of information technology. The report, which updates and expands on the 2002 and 2007 State New Economy Index reports, ranks the states accordingly. The five states ranking the highest in 2008 are, in order of rank, Massachusetts, Washington, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey. With these measures as a frame of reference, the report outlines the next generation of innovative state-level public policies needed to meet the challenges of the New Economy, improve state competitiveness and boost incomes of all Americans.

In our 2007 report Digital Prosperity: Understanding the Economic Benefits of the Information Technology Revolution ITIF documented how IT, since the mid-1990s, has been the principal driver of increased economic growth not only in the United States but also in many other nations. However, IT is also at the core of dramatic improvements in the quality of life for individuals around the world. In this new report, we show how IT is the key enabler of many, if not most, of today’s key innovations and improvements in our lives and society—from better education and health care, to a cleaner and more energy-efficient environment, to safer and more secure communities and nations.

A report examining broadband promotion policies in 9 nations finds that while we shouldn’t look to other nations for silver bullets or assume that practices in one nation will automatically work in another, U.S. policymakers can and should learn from broadband “best practices” in other nations. Emulating the right policies here will enable the U.S. to increase our broadband performance faster than in the absence of proactive policies. Based on the findings from other nations, the report proposes 11 policy recommendations to spur both deployment of more ubiquitous and faster networks and adoption of broadband by consumers.