IASPS
Quarterly Report
Fall 1999
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IASPS Leaps Into the Information Age
Information and the communication of that information to the right people in a timely fashion is the heart and soul of the policy business, whether here at the Institute in Jerusalem or Washington, D.C., or for that matter, by any other policy think tank around the world. The information age, and notably the world wide web and email, have allowed institutions like IASPS access to millions of readers, politicians, policy makers, academics, students and other opinion makers with literally a flick of a switch. Over the past year, IASPS has been working diligently to upgrade all of its operations to the communication standards of the Internet and
e-communication.
What this means in practice is getting information from the source, analyzing it, making policy recommendations, and disseminating that information around the world literally in hours. The difference between the Institute today and the Institute of yesterday is nothing less than phenomenal. Much of this is due in large part to IASPS's drive to take
advantage of the "Information Technologies" (IT) now being used by many sophisticated organizations, be they in a
for-profit business or academia. This effort has been led by IASPS's director of the Economics Division, Alvin Rabushka, IASPS's Web Master, Yuval Levin, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, and IASPS's president, Robert Loewenberg.
On a recent trip to Israel, Professor Rabushka made the following point to IASPS staff: "We should strive to move all of our information through our website, which has now been upgraded by our Web Master Yuval Levin to
world-class standards. The IASPS site should be the portal for economic and strategic information about Israel." Indeed, the results of IASPS's upgraded website
(www.iasps.org), now with a mirrored Hebrew site, are impressive. Over 5000 "surfers" visit the site every month, reading 4 pages deep. For a policy think tank anywhere in the world of any size, those are impressive numbers, and "it is only the beginning," added Professor Rabushka.
"The practical implications of these changes are enormous," Rabushka explains. "Instead of taking research through the formal printing process and mail distribution, the majority of those interested in IASPS studies now receive an email notice with a `hot link' embedded right in the email which takes them directly to the IASPS website and the study at issue." While IASPS continues to distribute its research "the
old-fashioned way," the new email technology allows IASPS to reach out to tens of thousands for the cost of pennies compared to hundreds at the cost of thousands of dollars.
"The Institute has always prided itself on providing the `biggest bang for the buck' of any policy think tank in the world," remarked Robert Loewenberg. "Over the years, our work product and the tangible results of our work product have grown exponentially but our budget has grown only incrementally. We've remained, as they say, `lean and mean.' Now, with the Internet, we are able to leverage our position here in Jerusalem and in DC to achieve what other think tanks do requiring millions of dollars." Professor Loewenberg concluded, "Anyone who has visited our website cannot help but be impressed."
The website itself has had a major facelift since Yuval Levin joined the IASPS team as the official Web Master. The site now includes a
scroll-down window which provides immediate access to each and every Policy Studies produced by IASPS. It also incorporates a "News Behind the News" section that allows visitors to see the hottest story in the economic or strategic news of the day as reported by the local newspapers with a hot link to an IASPS analysis that brings a clarity and factual assessment not otherwise available either to the foreign reader or, interestingly enough, to the Hebrew reader. In addition to the upgraded English web site, with the help of Ariel Marks,
IASPS-Jerusalem's first Strategic Fellow, the Hebrew mirror site has all of the `bells and whistles' of the English site.
"The goal of these applications of IT to IASPS research is to drive home to policy makers, especially in Israel, that they now live in a fish bowl," Rabushka said. "In the past, Israeli politicians and bureaucrats acted as if they could do and say what they wanted in the Hebrew press and hallways of the Knesset and only later travel to New York or DC and put the American spin on everything. Now, they are on notice that IASPS and its research are available to the world instantaneously. Indeed, we are already planning a
real-time news broadcast by our Koret Fellows that can be watched and heard through our website. It doesn't get any better than that.
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