Headfirst into high tech

To encourage high-tech job growth, Leavitt also aimed an arrow at rural Utah, designating a $750,000 infusion of money to establish jobs beyond the Wasatch Front.

Leavitt says he wasn't looking to replace agriculture or manufacturing jobs but to augment them.

"We have to find a way for rural Utah to become part of the new economy," Leavitt said at the time. "We're plowing new ground."

Called the Utah Smart Site Program, the effort encourages information technology companies to create jobs in rural Utah, jobs that require midlevel technical skills and typically pay higher wages, diversifying the area's economy.

By September of this year, Leavitt could point to nearly 700 new jobs across 20 rural counties as the result of more than "40" Smart Site enterprises, which can conquer the challenge of geographical distance with the click of a mouse.

The program's associate director, Ed Meyer, calls it an effort to cross the "digital divide," to close the chasm that keeps small-town Utah people from being technologically connected.

Story continues below Deseret Morning News graphic High-tech Utah, rankings Requires Adobe Acrobat.

There was, he concedes, skepticism at first.

"You are talking to people who are not information technology practitioners," he said. "But the bottom line is to introduce computer literacy into communities where it has not been a priority in the past."

In Moab, for example, the company Footprints has contracts with Boeing Airplanes in Seattle, North Shore Animal League in Manhattan and Response Oncology in Tennessee.

"We were drawn by the beauty and lifestyle in Moab," co-founder John Andrews said. "The Internet makes it possible to operate anywhere you can get a T1 connection."

Technology, Meyer said, bridges that divide for rural Utah, allowing it to be more competitive in the marketplace.