SSTI Digest

Our Digest archives are back on-line! The Calendar of Events and S&T Resources have also been updated. We apologize for the problems many of you encountered trying to use the site during the past two weeks.

The Angel Capital Electronic Network (ACE-Net) will be privatized by September 1, 2000. The Internet-based listing service for growing companies and angel investors has been run by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Advocacy.

A privatization team representing ACE-Net regional partner organizations finalized plans in May for making the transition from the SBA. Job descriptions of future staff positions are being drafted. The privatized ACE-Net is expected to provide additional services to registered angel investors, such as educational tools, research, and training.

When launched in September 1995, ACE-Net was to be early entry into web-based investor-business matching for capital. Unfortunately, the effort was hampered by federal bureaucracy and regulations, according to ACE-Net supporters.

Collaboration and partnership among public, private, and non-profit entities have taken on a renewed urgency as states and localities seek quick and cost effective methods to cultivate the necessary environment to foster and support technology-based economies. SSTI’s latest publication focuses on two groups of technology-based economic development organizations that have grown in numbers alongside the New Economy: 1) regional technology councils, and 2) industry associations focused on information technology and life sciences, the industrial sectors most associated with the New Economy. As these groups have become larger and more numerous, their strength as allies in S&T policy has emerged.

We try hard to be objective in the SSTI Weekly Digest and to present information without editorializing. This is one of the rare instances that we will not even attempt to be objective. We have several items involving SSTI to report:

According to a new report by a public-private collaborative project called Ecom-Ohio, Ohio lags many others in the “Net” Economy. The group draws attention to the state’s digital divide among certain population groups and laments slow Internet adoption in small and medium-sized businesses and a lack of public incentives and investment to help correct the situation.

Anna Darin has been named the executive director of the Council of Development Finance Agencies (www.cdfa.org) 

Digest readers may have noticed in our headlines over the past few months that state efforts to improve their economic standing through science and technology are undergoing a tremendous period of growth and expansion. While state S&T programs have been in existence since the 1950s, most activity occurred in the early 1980s and early 1990s during severe economic downturns. The activity of the last 15 months rivals that of the early 1980s and will in all likelihood ultimately surpass it.

New Developments in State Science and Technology Policy compiles the key state S&T initiatives covered in the SSTI Weekly Digest since late 1998. The 20-page publication serves as a convenient snapshot of current directions in state S&T policy and is an accessible way for state program officials, legislators, and others to learn easily about the most recent developments in the states.

SSTI bids a warm farewell to Deb Tharp, who has accepted a full-time position with Battelle Memorial Institute in the Technology Partnership Practice group.