Community Connection June 2009

Slow federal spending not very stimulating

By Scot Rourke, Knight Center of Digital Excellence

We’re supposed to have an economic “stimulus” plan to both stave off further economic decline and invest in key 21st century assets such as broadband and electronic medical records. In the 90-plus days since its approval, it is disarming how little of the stimulus money has been invested and how far the funding allocation dates have been pushed back.

In the case of broadband networks, the original stated goal was to have as much as half the stimulus funds committed or spent by Sept. 30. Now the federal government’s website, www.recovery.gov, lists the first award date as Dec. 31.

Projects that were shovel ready and on track to be done in 2009 now sit idle as their planners wait in the hopes of aligning with stimulus funding. This is exactly the opposite of what the stimulus was supposed to achieve - namely jobs in 2009.

The birth of a broadband coalition

Guest viewpoint by Jim Baller, U.S. Broadband Coalition

Broadband connectivity to the Internet is rapidly becoming as critical to all walks of life as electricity has been for the last century. With the world growing increasingly competitive and dependent on knowledge-based industries, the nations that do best in providing their residents, businesses, and institutions affordable access to the fastest possible broadband connections will be the ones that are most successful in the years ahead.

Over the last decade, the U.S. has not fared well in the race for national broadband leadership. Unlike other leading nations, the U.S. adopted a hands-off policy toward broadband deployment, betting on the flawed assumption that competition between the cable and telephone industries would be sufficient to drive broadband deployment to acceptable levels. As a result, the U.S., once the undisputed world leader in broadband availability and adoption, has sunk to a mediocre 15th in broadband adoption among the 30 top industrial economies, and it is also lagging behind the leading nations on most of the other internationally accepted criteria of broadband success.

Smart infrastructure starts with smart stimulus planning

By William “Garn” Anderson III, Knight Center of Digital Excellence

If you are trying to understand all of the possible program opportunities resulting from the ARRA and economic stimulus funds, you might feel overwhelmed. For example, how do you begin sorting through the complexities of the whole Smart Grid concept, and its potential benefits for U.S. communities and our energy utilization?

As in any building project, the first step is to settle on an overall strategic plan before you attempt to decide details. For communities, this means thinking hard about planning, so that Smart Grids and Smart Infrastructure can be a means of achieving goals and interoperability for hardwire or wireless applications. Smart investment means that smart planning drives decisions on new infrastructure.

Otherwise, in a few years from now, you might find yourself driving by a community college in town, or maybe a hospital, or even a high school or middle school, and kicking yourself for not thinking ahead.

A day in the broadband life

By Doug Adams, Knight Center of Digital Excellence

With the U.S. investing more than $7 billion in federal stimulus for broadband, imagine what life may be like in just five or 10 short years from now?

What might my life be like, say in 2019? Here is a scenario:

6 a.m.
The alarm goes off, saying I have 27 unread e-mails and 14 articles cued up in my browser ready to read on my Kindle 10.0.

7 a.m.
While driving to work, I listen to Dan Patrick via my in-dash computer’s WiFi connection. WiFi is everywhere now.

8:30 a.m.
My wife calls. She’s worried about her mother, Betty, who lives three states away. Betty’s health monitoring provider tracks her movement patterns. Today, the Web-enabled video monitor showed Betty hadn’t made it to the kitchen by the time she usually does. Given she’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, a nurse from the monitoring provider looks in and finds her on camera in the study.