ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 24, 1996 TAG: 9611250062
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALAN SORESEN
AMONG THE benefits of a cluttered desk are those happy occasions when you conduct an excavation and come up with interesting artifacts.
That happened last week, when I discovered notes I took more than a month ago during two separate discussions - one with the failed senatorial candidate Mark Warner; the other with Alan Merten, president of George Mason University.
Leave aside the shared history of outsiders moving to Northern Virginia to pursue imperial dreams: the former with a cellular-phone fortune, the latter with entrepreneurial higher education.
What struck me, as I sifted through these notes, was how passionately both men had spoken about the need to come to terms with the social impacts of changing technology.
It's not just the high-tech and telecommunications industry we're talking about, noted Warner. Computers and information technology are taking over virtually every work place, including manufacturing. Yet only about 25 percent to 30 percent of Virginians have computer skills.
The information revolution is happening anyway, he said - intensely, as I recall. The question is "whether people, including in places like Western Virginia, will be left behind."
The candidate didn't elaborate beyond this point. But it touches on a tricky challenge:
On one hand, we need to broaden education and access to customized support systems - child care, transportation, training, health care - that well-educated and well-off Americans practically take for granted as they connect into the information economy. On the other hand, centralized governments in the new economy aren't able to deliver these supports efficiently or effectively.
President Clinton framed this dilemma, on either side of a thankfully ended campaign season, by his call to build a bridge to the next century, and by his earlier announcement that the era of big government is over. So how is this bridge (that we've all grown sick of hearing about) going to get built?
The answer, it seems to me, is neither blind abandonment of public responsibilities nor mindless defense of industrial-era bureaucracy. Increasingly, the search for solutions goes on amid experiments in creative public-private partnerships.
Which is why I was interested to unearth, in my notes, Warner's description of a nonprofit health-care foundation that he had helped start. It was the sort of resume bragging-point you'd expect from a candidate lacking experience in public office. But he clearly saw in the initiative a new approach to public problem-solving.
Funded in part with state money, and partnering with both the nonprofit and business sectors, the foundation gives grants, Warner explained, to local projects trying to address public-health problems in innovative ways.
Among the quotes I wrote down: "Government is the spark plug, not the solution." "You have to be flexible." "Communities have to take ownership of a project for it to work." "There's a lot of creative energy in the nonprofit sector, but it's horribly disorganized and inefficient." "Every project has to be self-sufficient in three years. We don't want to foster dependency." "The projects have to measure results. How we measure bang for the buck is the key challenge."
This newspaper didn't end up endorsing Mark Warner for the Senate. But I expect in future election years we'll hear more of this sort of pitch as we cross that bridge to the ... well, you know what I mean.
Merten, who left as dean of Cornell's school of management to take the presidency of George Mason in July, also dropped by about a month ago. He talked about the university's plans to capitalize on partnerships with the business community, including Northern Virginia's booming technology industries.
According to my notes, Merten lamented a growing gap between demand for, and supply of, skilled workers in the commonwealth. "There are companies leaving Virginia because they can't find people for technology jobs," he said. "Large companies with unfilled positions are moving projects out of state." Where projects go, of course, operations, facilities and management may soon follow.
Just a Northern Virginia problem? Think again. Our region faces similar challenges, including the need to take fuller advantage of Virginia Tech's presence.
In addition (watch out, here comes another bridge), Merten talked about the stronger links some would like to build between Northern Virginia's economy and Western Virginia's labor force. "You have the work ethic here. How do we take advantage of that with technology? ... We need to spend more time on this bridge concept."
Meanwhile, the gap between (a) graduates' and workers' skills, and (b) the problem-solving, critical-thinking and computer skills that the emerging economy needs, is societywide. It needs to be, yes, bridged, here as much as anywhere.
In what I thought was an especially acute observation, Merten said: "We seem to have four conversations in Virginia. We have conversations about quality of life, higher education, economic development and K-12." The conversation we need to have, he suggested, is about all four of these together - how to integrate them to build regional advantage.
I take these notes as a reminder that any place aspiring to a niche more promising than, say, ditch diggers for the global economy, needs to get its education/quality of life/economic development act together.
This newspaper, of course, is more interested in Tech's ambitions than George Mason's. But I suspect in future digs into my desktop's contents, I may find more examples of the sort of friendly advice Merten was offering ... as we approach the 21st, you know. Whatever.
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