Continuing Innovation in Information Technology.

摘要

Information technology (IT) is widely understood to be the enabling technology of the 21st century. IT has transformed, and continues to transform, all aspects of our lives: commerce and finance, education, employment, energy, health care, manufacturing, government, national security, transportation, communications, entertainment, science, and engineering. IT and its impact on the U.S. economyboth directly (the IT sector itself) and indirectly (other sectors that are powered by advances in IT) continue to grow in size and importance. In total, according to estimates for 2010 by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the IT-intensive information-communications- technology-producing industries grew by 16.3 percent and contributed nearly 5 percent to the overall U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). A 2011 study by the McKinsey Global Institute found that in 2009 Internet-related activities alone contributed an average of 3.8 percent to the U.S. GDP. (By contrast, thetotal federal funding in fiscal year 2010 for the networking and IT research and development (R&D) program, which includes most federal support for IT R&D, was approximately $4.3 billion, just under 0.03 percent of GDP). These substantial contributions to the economy reflect only the direct economic benefits of the IT sector and do not capture the full benefits realized from the application of IT throughout the economy.