Our objective is that you write a report that reviews the trade-offs between policy and architecture, addressing salient issues within your topic area. The model for such a report is a "White Paper."
To see an example of a white paper, skim the 1995 report of the Commerce Deparment's Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure. This is much longer than the piece you should write (it runs 250 pages plus appendices and over 500 footnotes), but it will give you a sense of what we are looking for. Note that there is a background section that presents the issues, a section giving a detailed legal background and analysis, a technology section, and a section on recommendations that is informed by the tradeoffs among the legal and architectural issues. The technology section is this paper is rather superficial -- you should aim for something at a more substantial technical level.
In some cases, you might think there is a better project that would achieve the same end. If that's true, then please send us your alternative proposal by October 16, and we will try to respond within a day.
We'd like you to give us an outline of your project by October 27. The outline should present the basic theme of the paper, the main legal and technical issues you plan to survey, and the general kinds of recommendations you hope to make. After we receive your outline, we will schedule meetings with each of the groups to discuss your approach in more detail.
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Last modified: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 23:46:17 -0400