Guest viewpoint by Charles Benton, The Benton Foundation

The Benton Foundation is rooted in the notion that communications technology is essential to addressing social issues and challenges. This ideal dates back to our founding by my father, William Benton, a public servant who championed free speech and civil liberties.

Like the Knight Center of Digital Excellence, the Benton Foundation believes that all communities in this nation will benefit greatly when everyone has universal, affordable and robust Internet access. We are gratified to see that our vision is embraced by President Obama and his administration. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provides significant funds to start the journey toward universal broadband for all Americans.

The ARRA’s Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP) builds on the first major federal investments specifically for the application of communications technology to addressing community needs. During the Clinton Administration, the National Telecommunications and Information Applications (NTIA) in the U.S. Department of Commerce, administered the Technology Opportunities Program (TOP) to use the newly-accessible Information Highway to, in the words of former Vice President Al Gore, “pave over the digital divide.”

From 1994 to 2005 TOP awarded grants to 606 projects nationwide. Dr. Kate Williams, Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science, began a serious analysis of the TOP projects in collaboration with NTIA in 2004. She focuses on local communities in the information revolution: how people and organizations adopt and use digital tools, and what sustains that use. Theories of “social capital” are central to Kate’s research. She defines social capital as those resources that are available through social networks.

In my discussions with Kate, I realized that her approach to researching the TOP projects, let alone her findings on what worked and what didn’t, would be invaluable to BTOP. How then, could NTIA benefit from this work?

In comments jointly filed by Benton and the University of Illinois in response to NTIA’s request for information on ARRA’s Broadband Initiatives, we noted the following from Kate’s TOP findings:

1. A digital repository should be established at the onset to enable useful, timely research to inform practice and help guarantee success.

2. The sustainability of broadband use in unserved, underserved, and vulnerable populations depends on mobilizing local social capital (which includes local leaders, local networks, and community members trained in the technology).

We also noted that BTOP research would be enriched if NTIA requires applicants to answer the right questions. We suggested the following:

1. What are the critical resources for sustainability of broadband use in unserved, underserved, and vulnerable communities? What social capital is involved? Is the social capital internal or external to the community?

• Does the project rely on social ties within a community to accomplish its goals rather than ties between communities?

• Does the project identify and train local leaders who can then reach and teach others?

• Does the project provide technology directly to community members themselves rather than to people who serve the community?

2. How will NTIA and BTOP grantees measure how the population is advancing in the use of broadband? The Current Population Survey measures individual and household IT use. Other surveys measure institutional IT use. But to regain international leadership as a digital society, we need community-level IT use data. To start such trend data collection, we need a set of community-level metrics.

• Does the project involve social places to use broadband and related technologies?

• Does the project focus on training and/or applications, or just on building broadband infrastructure? TOP findings indicate that just providing infrastructure or equipment is insufficient for use. It’s important also to know how many subscribers in a given location are signed up for broadband service.

• What are the outcomes for broadband use in communities? BTOP data should be combined with other data sets in order to assess the impact of broadband access on such things as the labor markets, eGovernment, quality of life issues, etc.

As we navigate this exciting and essential journey, we must rely on the best, most nuanced community-level data to help determine the next step in transforming our communications, our work places, our communities and ourselves.