The FCC’s recently-released Rural Broadband Strategy report covers a lot of ground and touches on many points we’ve been preaching at the Knight Center of Digital Excellence.

One of the big ones? The need for government agencies, communities and individuals to get coordinated.

In the report, a lack of interagency coordination was named as a significant challenge to the deployment of broadband in rural areas. Suggested efforts listed to overcome this challenge included:

• Streamlining and improving existing federal programs;
• Promoting efficient use of government funding and resources;
• Coordinating program criteria; and
• Expanding government websites and offering easy-to-access information on resources available for promoting broadband.

While these are good starting points, there’s still a need for specifics. It’s one thing to suggest collaboration, but quite another to target where the effort is needed most.

Here at KCoDE, we’ve been in the rural trenches and know that while larger government entities have plans, there’s a real need to get local communities coordinated. After all, it’s hard for individual towns and cities with populations of less than 1,000 people to put together economic development strategies and combat brain drain.

That’s where a hub city comes in. Let’s look at what’s going on in Aberdeen, S.D., a Knight community surrounded by numerous tiny towns.

The city has taken the lead in its area on broadband deployment with the launch of Absolutely! Aberdeen, an online economic development and marketing program designed to improve the quality of life and job creation in the Aberdeen area through promotion.

Absolutely! Aberdeen’s regional development plan, Prairie Vision, emphasizes this. The plan outlines an understanding – that by unifying shared concerns and pooling resources, the region strengthens its voice and effects positive change and development while building relationships and bringing about mutual opportunities.

Population decline due to both brain drain and an aging population is a primary concern across the Northern Plains. By unifying efforts, communities in northeastern South Dakota feel they’ll become stronger and better position themselves to succeed.

But Absolutely! Aberdeen is an example of a specific coordination solution for a specific rural community.

Specifics. While it’s good to see the FCC report emphasize the need for coordination at all levels, it’s important to realize that coordination efforts can’t be cookie cut. They need to be tailored to fit individual areas. The creation of hub cities is one way effective regional coordination can be achieved.

Work at the community level to increase regional coordination – and ensure that various programs are accomplished in an effective and efficient manner.

Tags: Aberdeen, Absolutely! Aberdeen, broadband, Broadband Expansion, community, digital, digital divide, economy, FCC, infrastructure, innovation, Internet, KCoDE, Knight, Knight Center of Digital Excellence, network, Prairie Vision, Rural Broadband Strategy, rural communities, South Dakota