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The U.S. government has revealed that it is looking into building its own Internet, dubbed GOVNET, to ensure the safe transmission of sensitive government communication.

The effort is one of the first acts of Richard Clarke, who was appointed to the newly created post of Special Advisor to the President for Cyberspace Security Tuesday. Just one day later, Clarke enlisted the help of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to gather information from the U.S. telecommunication industry about the development of a special telecom network.

GSA is a central management agency that provides equipment and services to the government.

The agency has posted a Request for Information on its site, saying it will hold information exchange meetings with potential respondents on the project. The deadline for responses to the information request is November 21.

The key feature of GOVNET, the agency said in a release, "is that it must be able to perform functions with no risk of penetration or disruption from users on other networks, such as the Internet."

No Public Access

The government wants GOVNET to be a private voice and data network based on Internet Protocol (IP), but with no connectivity with commercial or public networks, GSA said.

In the RFI, the government says that the network should have commercial-grade voice communication capabilities, and the potential for adding video, as well as the ability to support critical government functions.

Most importantly, the government Net should be "immune from malicious service and/or functional disruptions" and all computer viruses, the RFI states.

Cybersecurity has garnered greater attention since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. One result was the immediate appointment of a Special Advisor, Clarke. However, Clarke claims that planning for the network has been going on for several months.

A predecessor to the Internet itself is the ARPANet, which was originally used by armed forces for communications. It was designed to be a sprawling network so that it could remain accessible even if portions of it were disabled.

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