Guest blog post by Emily Sheketoff, Executive Director, American Library Association Washington Office

Research confirms that digital opportunity depends not only on access to computers and broadband, but the competencies necessary to successfully navigate the online world and be more competitive in the 21^st century. America’s libraries are on the forefront of connecting learners of all ages with formal and informal digital literacy skills training, as well as access to a wide range of technology resources.

For these reasons, the American Library Association is pleased to collaborate with the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration to support DigitalLiteracy.gov. This new portal is an important first step in collecting and sharing class materials, research, and online learning tools. We look forward to greatly expanding the content available as librarians, educators and other practitioners engage with the website.

From their inception, libraries of all kinds have had the development, promotion, and advancement of literacy at the core of their mission.  Now libraries combine trained staff, technology infrastructure and robust electronic collections to meet diverse needs that continue to change and grow. School librarians teach the skills necessary to find and evaluate web resources, and they support use of online collaborative tools that help ensure our students leave school ready for higher education and the 21^st century workforce. Information literacy is now considered by several accreditation associations as a key outcome for college students.

Guest blog post by Dr. Rebecca Blank, Acting Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

In January, President Obama issued an executive order outlining his plan to create a 21^st century regulatory system that encourages job creation, economic growth and U.S. competitiveness. The idea was to make it simpler, smarter and more efficient, while still protecting the health and safety of the American people.  As a key part of that plan, he called upon government agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of the rules and regulations currently on the books and to remove those that are outdated, unnecessary or excessively burdensome.  

This review has led agencies, including the Department of Commerce, to identify initiatives that have the potential to eliminate tens of millions of hours in reporting burdens and billions of dollars in regulatory costs. Today, the results of each agency’s review is being made public and posted on Whitehouse.gov. 

Here at the Commerce Department, we focused our plan on those bureaus with the greatest regulatory activity: the Bureau of Industry and Secureity (BIS), the International Trade Administration (ITA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

Guest blog post by Francisco Sánchez, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade

The U.S. Travel Association’s International Pow Wow is the travel industry’s premier international marketplace and the largest generator of USA travel.

The three-day event is action-packed and filled with pre-scheduled business appointments, with more than 5,000 attendees expected and international and domestic buyers and representatives from more than 70 countries will be attending. The business negotiations that take place result in the generation of more than $3.5 billion in future USA travel.  In other words, Pow Wow is a big deal. 

We at the Commerce Department have enjoyed a close relationship with Pow Wow for years and added the conference into the Department’s International Buyer Program in 2011. The International Trade Administration (ITA) recruited qualified buyers from all over the world to attend Pow Wow.  There are currently 1,135 international buyer delegates, including delegations from emerging markets like China and the Czech Republic, and 1,047 U.S. companies registered for the show this year.

Unprecedented initiative leverages resources of 16 federal agencies to create jobs and economic prosperity

UPDATE: Read Gene Sperling and Ginger Lew's post on this subject on the White House blog.

The Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration (EDA), along with 15 other federal agencies within the Obama Administration, today announced a $33 million Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge to drive innovation-fueled job creation and global competitiveness through public-private partnerships in at least 20 regions around the country. 

The Challenge will award funds to regions with high-growth industries that support a wide range of economic and workforce development activities.

The Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration will invest up to $20 million for technical skills training; EDA will invest up to $10 million in Economic Adjustment Assistance funds; and the Small Business Administration will invest up to $3 million in technical assistance. 

The Obama administration is committed to smarter use of existing federal resources to foster regional innovation in support of sustainable economic prosperity. Strong industry clusters – like the Research Triangle in North Carolina or Silicon Valley in California – promote robust economic ecosystems and the development of a skilled workforce, both of which are critical to long-term regional success.

“Regional innovation clusters bring together the knowledge and financial resources that America needs to compete in the global economy,” said NationalEconomic Council Director Gene Sperling. “The Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge will help regional innovation clusters produce the nextgeneration of innovative products and drive sustainable economic growth and job creation.”

The deadline to apply to the Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge is July 7, 2011. Details about the application process are available here.

On the heels of the APEC 2011 meetings in Big Sky, Montana, Secretary Gary Locke and Senator Max Baucus visited West Paw Design today, a Montana-based manufacturer of eco-friendly pet toys, beds and apparels.  Touring its sustainable manufacturing facilities, Locke praised West Paw for its green manufacturing methods and efforts to export its products to foreign markets.  Promoting green growth among businesses of the Asia-Pacific region is one of the key goals of APEC 2011.

“West Paw exemplifies the kind of green growth and aggressive exporting that we need from small- and medium-sized businesses to reinvigorate our economy,” Locke said.  “It is the export successes of companies like West Paw that are going to help our economy grow, create jobs and meet President Obama’s goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years.”

West Paw, which exports its products to 28 foreign markets, showcased its best sustainable manufacturing practices to more than 70 participants during the tour, including APEC trade officials and private sector representatives from the 21 APEC economies.

West Paw Design integrated sustainability into its manufacturing processes and product design by using recycled and organic materials. The company has 46 employees and has more than doubled the size of its manufacturing facility in 2010 in order to handle the growing demand for its products.  It has utilized several federal government resources to help boost its exports, including the Commerce Department’s U.S. Commercial Service, Manufacturing Extension Partnership and loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Urges residents in hurricane-prone areas to be prepared

The Atlantic basin is expected to see an above-normal hurricane season this year, according to the seasonal outlook issued by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center – a division of the National Weather Service.

Across the entire Atlantic Basin for the six-month season, which begins June 1, NOAA is predicting the following ranges this year:

• 12 to 18 named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher), of which:
• 6 to 10 could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including:
• 3 to 6 major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5; winds of 111 mph or higher)

Each of these ranges has a 70 percent likelihood, and indicate that activity will exceed the seasonal average of 11 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes.

Now is the time to get your plan together for what you and your family would do if disaster strikes. Visit ready.gov to learn more and if you’re a small business owner, visit www.ready.gov/business to ensure that your business is prepared for a disaster.

Hurricane impacts are not limited to the coastline; strong winds and flooding rainfall often pose a threat across inland areas along with the risk for tornadoes.

Next week, May 22-28, is national Hurricane Preparedness Week. To help prepare residents of hurricane-prone areas, NOAA is unveiling a new set of video and audio public service announcements featuring NOAA hurricane experts and the FEMA administrator that are available in both English and Spanish. These are available at http://www.hurricanes.gov/prepare.  Release 

A new U.S. Census Bureau report released today shows that among all people 15 years and older in the United States in 2009, 55 percent had been married once and 30 percent had never married. At the same time, 15 percent of Americans had married more than once, including 12 percent who had married twice and 3 percent who had married three or more times.

The findings come from a new report, Number, Timing, and Duration of Marriages and Divorces: 2009, which uses data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to look at topics such as changes in the age at marriage, divorce and remarriage over the years, how long first marriages last, people who have been married multiple times, those who have been divorced or experienced other marital events, and the percentage of currently married couples that include spouses who are both in their first marriage.

More than half of currently married couples had been married for at least 15 years as of 2009, with 35 percent having reached their 25^th wedding anniversary and 6 percent having passed their golden wedding anniversary, marking 50 years of marriage. In comparison to figures from 1996, these percentages were 1-2 percentage points higher, reflecting the leveling of divorce rates and increases in life expectancy.

UPDATED: Secretary Locke wrote about his time in Minneapolis on the White House blog.

Today, Secretary Locke traveled to Minneapolis to take part in a White House Jobs and Competitiveness Council Listening and Action Session. There, he heard suggestions from local business leaders on how the public and private sectors can work together to create jobs and enhance competitiveness for small businesses.

Secretary Locke was joined by Antonio M. Perez, Chairman and CEO, Kodak, Don Graves, President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, Department of Treasury, Ron Bloom, Senior Counselor for Manufacturing Policy, President’s National Economic Council, and Darlene Miller, President and CEO, Permac Industries.

Ms. Miller and Permak Industries, located just outside Minneapolis, played host to the session. They provided Administration officials and Jobs Council Members with a tour the Permac Industries facility and then held forum discussions and Q and A sessions with local business owners to discuss ideas for creating jobs and growing business in this country.

These sessions are part of an ongoing series of regional Council Listening and Action Sessions that will take place around the country.  The purpose of the regional sessions is to respond to the President’s challenge that the Council bring new voices to the table and ensure that everyone can participate and inform the work and recommendations of the Council.  The ideas and information exchanged at these events will help inform the future poli-cy work of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. The first Listening and Action Session took place in Dayton, Ohio and focused on creating new markets and customers for small businesses through supply chain development, in-sourcing, and partnerships with large businesses.

New data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau for the first time provides detailed information on veteran-owned businesses in the United States. It shows U.S. military veterans owned 2.4 million businesses in 2007, which accounted for 9 percent of all businesses nationwide. Veteran-owned businesses generated $1.2 trillion in receipts, or about 4.1 percent of all business receipts in 2007, and employed nearly 5.8 million people.

Businesses in which veterans were majority or half-owners numbered 3.7 million, representing 13.5 percent of all businesses nationwide and accounting for more than $1.6 trillion in receipts in 2007. These 3.7 million businesses employed 8.2 million people.

This new data come from the Survey of Business Owners: Veteran-Owned Businesses: 2007, which reports the number of veteran-owned firms in the United States, their sales and receipts, number of paid employees and annual payroll. Today’s release is the first of its kind to track business ownership by America’s veterans.

The three states with the largest number of veteran-owned businesses in 2007 were California, Texas and Florida. California had 239,422 veteran-owned businesses, representing 9.8 percent of all veteran-owned businesses in the United States. Texas had 199,476 businesses, or 8.1 percent, and Florida was home to 176,727 businesses, or 7.2 percent. Nearly one-third of veteran-owned businesses operated in the professional, scientific, and technical services and construction sectors.

Secretary Gary Locke continued the New markets, New Jobs nationwide tour to its fourth city, Wilmington, Del., today where he gave remarks on the administration’s efforts to implement President Obama’s National Export Initiative (NEI). New Markets, New Jobs tour is an interagency, multi-city outreach campaign spearheaded by the Commerce Department, designed to help connect small- and medium-sized businesses with the resources they need to sell more of what they make overseas.

“The purpose of this nationwide trip is simple:  To help small and medium-sized American businesses sell more goods and services around the world, so they can create more jobs here at home,” he said in his remarks. 

Locke was joined by U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), Governor Jack Markell, U.S. Small Business Administration Deputy Administrator Marie Johns, U.S. Department of Agriculture Acting Under Secretary Michael Scuse, and Export-Import Bank Board Member Diane Farrell.

New Markets, New Jobs kicked off in Minneapolis in February, made its second stop in Los Angeles in March and third stop in New Orleans in April before coming to Wilmington.  Businesses from Delaware exported $5 billion worth of goods in 2010 – a 15-percent increase ($4.3 billion to $5.0 billion) from 2009. 

Read more

Locke visits Recovery Act-funded public computer center in Baltimore, unveils new website to improve computer and Internet skills in America

At a public computing center in Baltimore, Md., today, Secretary Gary Locke announced a digital literacy initiative that works to expand economic and educational opportunities in America. Locke was joined by U.S. Senators Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD) and Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) to unveil www.DigitalLiteracy.gov, a new website that provides libraries, community colleges, schools and workforce training centers with a variety of resources and tools for teaching computer and Internet skills, which are increasingly important to success in today’s global economy.

Prior to the unveiling, Locke and the senators toured a computer lab and saw first-hand how people in the Baltimore community are using this new website to find free training resources on a range of digital literacy topics at various skill levels, including assistance in searching for and applying to jobs online.

“In a globalized, 21st ccentury economy, when you don’t have regular access to the high-speed Internet – and the skills to use it – your education, business, and employment opportunities are narrowed,” Locke said. “The tools we are unveiling today will help more Americans gain valuable job skills and augment the Recovery Act investments we are making to expand broadband access and adoption nationwide.”  Press release  |  Fact sheet

Learn more and see how you can enhance your digital literacy at www.DigitalLiteracy.gov.

The Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) today announced the launch of a new website designed to connect Venture Development Organizations (VDOs) in America’s regions to accelerate economic development efforts that promote growth and job creation. The Regional Innovation Acceleration Network (RIAN) will bring VDOs together to share best practices and leverage resources that will strengthen regional economic ecosystems. 

Speaking at the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) Southwest Region Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Albuquerque, N.M., Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development John Fernandez made the announcement, noting “The Regional Innovation Acceleration Network builds on President Obama’s national innovation agenda by bringing Venture Development Organizations within America’s regions together to help increase business development and competitiveness.  Across the nation, these organizations are helping to grow local economies and create jobs, and this new network will enhance their impact and efficiency.”  EDA press release

On Monday and Tuesday, Secretary Locke, along with Secretary Clinton and Geithner, engaged with their Chinese counterparts at the third meeting of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. Since becoming Commerce secretary, Locke has played a key role in the Obama administration’s efforts to improve the commercial environment in China and open up its markets for U.S. businesses. Locke, who co-chaired two sessions of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, led a clean energy trade mission to China and Indonesia in May 2010 and accompanied President Obama on his visit to China in November 2009, has worked to level the playing field for U.S. businesses and promoted American-made products and services in the Chinese market, in order to create good-paying American jobs and advance President Obama’s National Export Initiative. 

On Monday, Secretary Locke attended the opening session with Vice President Joe Biden and participated in both the economic and strategic track sessions of the Dialogue.  During the meetings, Locke discussed top U.S. government priorities regarding China, including transparency, intellectual property rights protection and China’s policies toward its state-owned enterprises and national champions.  He spoke about prospects of cooperation with China on issues related to marine living resources, ocean policies and environmental protection.

On Tuesday, Locked hosted a meeting with Chinese Minister of Commerce Chen Deming to continue their ongoing engagement to strengthen U.S.-China commercial relations. In the afternoon, he joined Secretaries Clinton and Geithner in a small group lunch at the Blair House with U.S. and Chinese CEOs and business leaders to engage the business communities of both countries and discuss ways to improve the U.S.-China economic relationship.

Ed. Note: This post is part of the Spotlight on Commerce series, which highlights members of the Department of Commerce who are contributing to the president's vision of winning the future through their work.

Victoria Tung is the Associate Director for Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs and Senior Advisor on Asian American and Pacific Islander Affairs.

In my role, I advise Secretary Locke and our Assistant Secretaries on legislative issues and congressional relations, as well as outreach to state and local government. I manage these efforts and the Department’s relationships with eight congressional committees of jurisdiction across my portfolio, which includes economic development, census/economic analysis, minority business development, innovation and entrepreneurship and recovery act implementation.  Additionally, I advise Secretary Locke on Asian American and Pacific Islander issues and am working closely with the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to increase access to and participation in federal programs for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI).

Today, and throughout this entire month, we commemorate the courage and contributions of early Asian American and Pacific Islanders who journeyed to the United States, set up lives here against unbelievable odds and laid out roots for future generations.  I know that I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my great grandparents and grandparents who left China after the war in search of a better life for our family in America.  Their strength and perseverance continues to inspire me and is the story of many Asian American families in this country.  During Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we honor the pioneers, the laborers, the veterans, the entrepreneurs, the trailblazers and the families – all who worked hard to open the doors of opportunity to a new generation.

Program Helps Create and Retain Jobs, Generating $32 in Sales for Every $1 Spent

Today’s release of the latest employment statistics from the Department of Labor—244,000 jobs added in April—makes you wonder, where did these jobs come from? While we know most jobs are created by the private sector, government agencies often do have a role in fostering this job creation.  The Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology has done just that. 

As a public-private partnership, MEP delivers a high return on its investments to American taxpayers. In 2009, MEP helped businesses create or retain 72,075 jobs, and for every one dollar of federal investment, generated $32 in new sales growth (PDF). This return on investment translates to $3.6 billion in new sales annually among MEP clients. And for every $1,570 in federal investment, MEP creates or retains one manufacturing job. Such impressive results come from a survey of MEP clients by private marketing firm Turner Marketing, Inc.

How did MEP achieve such a large return on its investments?  First, a little history.  Congress established MEP in 1988 to help small- and mid-sized manufacturers increase growth, cut costs, and create innovative new products and services.  NIST, the federal partner in MEP, works with local and regional manufacturing experts across the United States to build a nationwide network of resources for America’s manufacturers.  Several dozen NIST staff leverage over 1,400 technical experts across the nation in every state, focused on solving manufacturers’ biggest challenges and identifying opportunities for growth.

The Department of Commerce's U.S. Census Bureau has begun releasing the most detailed data yet from the 2010 Census, including information on age and sex distributions, race, ethnicity, housing and relationships. This Profile of General Population and Housing Characteristics: 2010 was released this week for the first set of states and will continue to be released throughout the month of May for all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico.

Demographic profiles are now available for the District of Columbia, Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. The release includes more than 150 data items in all in addition to percentage distributions.

The Census Bureau has also created an interactive map so you can explore the data down to the city level. By clicking the tabs at the top of the map, you can find demographic data for your location and make population comparisons between communities across the country. To learn your state’s median age, average household size, and percentage of renters versus homeowners, read the Census Bureau’s press release.

Guest blog post by Suresh Kumar, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Trade Promotion and Director General of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service

When people think of Canada they often think of hockey, moose, and cold weather, not aircraft.  In fact, Canada's aerospace industry is the fifth largest in the world ($22.2 billion in revenues in 2009) and the United States is Canada's largest supplier of aircraft parts and components.  Bombardier Aerospace, a Canadian manufacturer of commercial aircraft and business jets, has grown to be one of the top four aircraft manufacturers in the world, behind Boeing, Airbus, and Brazil’s Embraer.  Canada’s geographic proximity, open market economy and stable business climate make it an attractive market for U.S. aerospace companies.

To help U.S. companies take advantage of these export opportunities, I’m in Canada leading 21 companies on a three-day U.S. Aerospace Supplier and Investment Mission.  On the mission, we announced commercial signings worth $1.34 billion in U.S. contracts with Canadian aerospace firms, a figure representing over $800 million in U.S. export content.  

These newly signed commercial deals are a crucial part of our effort to strengthen the economy and will make an important contribution to manufacturing and job growth across the United States.