Digital Communities Magazine June 2009PCIO_AugTemp.indd 8 7/21/08 12:49:03 PM DDCMag_Jun09.indd...

Reinventing Communities for Today’s Broadband Economy

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France’s Issy-les-Moulineaux Leads the World in Digital Innovation

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A supplement to

S T R A T E G I E S A N D S O L U T I O N S F O R C I T I E S , C O U N T I E S A N D R E G I O N S

communitiesdigital

JUNE 2009 | I SSUE 2 VOL 4Government Technology’s®

A publication of e.Republic

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Regaining competitiveness with a national broadband strategy

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DIGITAL COMMUNITIESEditorial Advisory Board

R A N D Y J O H N S O N Commissioner, Hennepin County, Minn.

K A R E N M I L L E R Commissioner, Boone County, Miss.

P H I L B E R T O L I N I Deputy County Executive/CIO, Oakland County, Mich.

G R E G L A R S O N City Manager, Los Gatos, Calif.

B R I A N M O U R A Assistant City Manager, San Carlos, Calif.

M E L V I N ( K I P ) H O L D E N Mayor, Baton Rouge, La.

N E A L P U F FCIO, Yuma County, Ariz.

B E R T J A R R E A U CIO, National Association of Counties

J I M K E E N E Dir. of Strategic Issues, International City/County Management Association

M A R K J O H N S O N Exec. Dir., North Dakota Association of Counties

C H R I S A . V E I N CIO, city and county of San Francisco

INTROBeyond Broadband “Dirt Roads”

B Y B L A K E H A R R I S

VIEWPOINTMoving Beyond the Illusion of Inclusion

B Y T O D D S A N D E R

4

38

on the cover

The Need for SpeedThe push for a real

national broadband strategy.

B Y I N D R A J I T B A S U

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10FeaturesReinventing Communities for the 21st CenturyEffective economic development requires an understanding of the broadband economy’s trajectory and an alignment of government’s priorities. B Y R O B E R T B E L L

Winning the Digital RevolutionFrance’s Issy-les-Moulineaux continues to lead in digital innovations.

B Y I N D R A J I T B A S U

june 2009V O L U M E 4 | I S S U E 2

contents34

28FeaturesDown Under at 100 MbpsAustralia’s national initiative is the biggest broadband-driven stimulus yet. B Y I N D R A J I T B A S U

Falling BehindExperts bemoan the state of broadband in the U.S. B Y I N D R A J I T B A S U

3DIGITAL COMMUNITIES JUNE 09

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IN THIS ISSUE, we focus on broad-band — the infrastructure of the

21st century. Under the $7.2 billion broadband stimulus plan, the FCC must develop a strategy to improve broad-band coverage and present it to Con-gress in 2010. This is amid increasing calls from different organizations for a national broadband strategy that would return America to a leadership position for Internet deployment and access.

Clearly past U.S. approaches to broadband haven’t met expectations.

“The policy of relying on ‘market forces’ that the Bush administration claimed for seven years would propel broadband access is irresponsible and insuffi cient,” noted Mark Lloyd, author of the Science Progress report, Ubiquity Requires Redundancy: The Case for Federal Investment in Broadband. “Without a robust broadband network connect-ing urban and rural America,” he said,

“the country is not only less competitive in the global economy, we will be ill-prepared to respond to national security threats and natural disasters.”

In Lloyd’s (and our) view, a national broadband infrastructure is analogous to the national interstate system spear-headed by President Dwight Eisenhower. That effort — the “National Defense Highway System” — built the network of roads connecting the country that promoted national unity and commerce, and supported defense by allowing

reliable, rapid interstate transport of military equipment.

There are economic and home-land security benefi ts to a world-class broadband system, which is defi ned by two things intrinsic to any broadband strategy. One: access — the reach of affordable broadband into all urban and rural communities. And two: broadband speed — the bandwidth needed for the future, something that’s easy to misjudge.

A 2009 study, The Need for Speed: The Importance of Next-Generation Broadband Networks, published by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, points out,

“There is no reason to believe that network transmission speeds of 5 Mbps will not seem every bit as antiquated to us in fi ve to 10 years as 56 Kbps

seems to us today.”Broadband is integral to reinventing

America and its communities for the 21st century. Imagine our country tied together with dirt or gravel roads. We couldn’t have become a great 20th-century nation with that infrastructure.

As we look toward the future, success will elude us as a nation linked together with the broadband equiva-lent of “dirt roads.” This is why any national broadband strategy must build not for a few short years, but for the coming decades.

Beyond Broadband “Dirt Roads”

Introduction

Government Technology’s Digital Communities is published by e.Republic Inc. Copyright 2009 by e.Republic Inc. All rights reserved. Government Technology is a registered trademark of e.Republic Inc. Opinions expressed by writers are not necessarily those of the publisher or editors.

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Printed in the USA4 DIGITAL COMMUNITIES JUNE 09

By Blake HarrisEDITOR

Group Publisher: DON PEARSON [email protected] Editor: STEVE TOWNS [email protected]

EDITORIALEditor: BLAKE HARRIS [email protected] Assoc. Editors: EMILY MONTANDON [email protected] CHAD VANDER VEEN [email protected] Copy Editor: MIRIAM JONES [email protected] Editor: KAREN STEWARTSON [email protected] and Public Safety Editor: JIM McKAY [email protected] Editor: ELAINE RUNDLE [email protected] Editor: ANDY OPSAHL [email protected] Editor: MATT WILLIAMS [email protected] Writer: HILTON COLLINS [email protected] Assistant: CORTNEY TOWNS [email protected] Editor: TOD NEWCOMBE [email protected] Contributing Writers: INDRAJIT BASU, ROBERT BELL, TODD SANDER

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Business Development Director: GLENN SWENSON [email protected]. Dev. Managers: LISA DOUGHTY [email protected] KEVIN MAY [email protected]. Coordinator to Publisher: JULIE MURPHY [email protected] Sales Admins: SABRINA SHEWMAKE [email protected] CHRISTINE CHILDS [email protected] Sales Admin: JENNIFER VALDEZ [email protected]. of Marketing: ANDREA KLEINBARDT [email protected]. of Custom Events: WHITNEY SWEET [email protected] Events Manager: LANA HERRERA [email protected] Events Coordinator: KARIN MORGAN [email protected]. of Custom Publications: STACEY TOLES [email protected] Custom Publications Writer: JIM MEYERS [email protected]. of Web Products and Services: VIKKI PALAZZARI [email protected] Manager, Web Services Manager: PETER SIMEK [email protected] Web Products Manager: MICHELLE MROTEK [email protected] Advertising Manager: JULIE DEDEAUX [email protected] Services/Proj. Coord: ADAM FOWLER [email protected] Coordinator: GOSIA COLOSIMO [email protected]

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The push for a real national broadband strategy.

SpeedNeedNeedTheThe forfor

BY INDRAJIT BASU

DIGITAL COMMUNITIES JUNE 096

World-class broadband speeds aren’t just some-thing leading-edge computer geeks dream about. Fast broadband interconnectivity lies at the heart

of American business and agricultural competitiveness. Fortunately the Obama administration clearly sees a com-prehensive U.S. national broadband strategy as a federal government priority.

President Barack Obama’s fi rst major push to build a high-speed Internet superhighway across America in the form of the $7.2 billion stimulus funding announced in February may be considered insuffi cient by many. But Michael Copps, acting chairman of the FCC, said whatever has been announced so far is just the beginning; Ameri-ca can expect more doses of impetus coming from the Obama administration that will ultimately connect every citizen to broadband.

Speaking at the International Telecommunication Union’s World Telecommunication Policy Forum — a high-level international meeting to exchange views on key policy issues held on April 21 in Lisbon, Portugal — Copps said the Obama administration is committed to every American citizen in the broadband plan that’s still under formulation.

Copps admitted that the government is fully aware that America is falling behind many developing countries in its broadband reach.



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“If you go back in the course of our his-tory, we have always managed to fi gure out that role with active participation of the public sector and private sector in the early days of building turnpikes, bridges and railroads, rural electric-ity and basic telecom. The government has always found a way to do all those things,” he said.

“Somehow over the course of several years, we got away from that, but we need to go back in the past, and that’s what we are doing now,” he added.

According to Copps, although the American government was involved in planning infrastructure for the last eight years, there was no conscious effort to provide a stimulus because

the general feeling was that somehow the magic of the marketplace would get everything done.

“But that did not really happen,” he said, “and that’s why we fi nd ourselves where we are in the present comparative broadband rankings among the nations of the world.”

However, he said, that state of affairs has changed. “We have a new government and we have an Ameri-can Recovery and Reinvestment Act that carves out a very active role for the government,” Copps said. “This administration is a believer that the government has a central role to play in promoting infrastructure.”

“Part of that is the stimulus of the $7.2 billion for broadband. But that is short-term stimulus. I call that the down pay-ment,” Copps said.

He emphasized the federal govern-ment’s resolve to roll out a broadband


Feedback to the FCC

Meanwhile, comments, suggestions and complaints have been pouring in every day since the FCC invited feed-back from citizens to help the commis-sion craft an inclusive broadband plan.

Some of these suggestions are eye openers about the poor state of Ameri-can broadband.

“The only broadband access avail-able to me is over a cell phone,” said Allen Cole, an Oklahoma City resident.

“This is too expensive and not much faster than dial-up. We need afford-able access out in the woods where no one will install telephone lines and dish is unavailable because of the trees. I cannot even get cable TV! I know as soon as the leaves come out in the trees, I will not have any TV service since all signals are digital now. We used to get fuzzy TV with analog but now when it rains our signal goes out. It is only a matter of time before the leaves block the digital picture.”

Russell Parks, a rural resident of Ravenna, Ky., thinks broadband is the only way Americans can lead the world.

plan. “In the long term, there is a com-mitment to formulating a strategy to get broadband to all of our citizens, and the FCC has been put at the center of this and instructed within the next 10 months to come up with a national broadband plan,” he said.

And that will lead to a new plan, said Copps, as well as a longer-term investment and investment stimulus. “So the role of the government is grow-ing, and it is not just on the economic side, but I think we will see a really pro-active effort here to make this process open and transparent,” Copps said.

Clarifying the doubts some have about whether the new broadband plan would include all sectors of American society, Copps said, “As we develop the national [broadband] plan we will be talking not only to the business and people, but also what I call nontraditional stakeholders of our country, which con-ceivably could be every citizen.

“We want to make sure we have a citi-zen-friendly Internet that is free, open, dynamic and does not allow unreason-able network management,” he said.

“We want to make sure we have

a citizen-friendly Internet that is

free, open, dynamic and does not

allow unreasonable network management.”

Michael Copps, acting chairman, FCC

“Increasingly my farm needs broadband for fi eld inventory, video conferencing, etc. However, there is no cable service, no asymmetric DSL.” Larry Rymal, farmer, Joaquin, Texas



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He insists that the government should build the information superhighway, and build it now.

“Rural Americans cannot wait for the market or competition to eventually build out high-speed networks to them,” he said. “It just wouldn’t happen in a rea-sonable time at all, as we are still waiting for cable TV after 30 years. Broadband is far more important to America’s abil-ity to lead the world than to allow the broadband gap to widen and deepen. The time is now to roll out broadband and make it available to anyone who

would want it. It makes no sense to let the market take care of itself while the rest of the world advances ahead, leaving the United States to catch up.”

Steven Barry of Arlington, Va., expressed concerns over the country’s regulatory and commercial environ-ment and said the very defi nition of broadband in the U.S. must change.

“Our regulatory and commercial environment encourages far less band-width per dollar delivered to the end-user than in many developed countries,” he said. “The economics of providing ubiquitous, high-bandwidth communi-cation is not different in the U.S. than elsewhere. Rather it is our regulatory position that encourages far too little to be delivered to the end-user per dollar paid than elsewhere. The very defi nition of broadband in the U.S. is woefully short of the speeds typical in other developed countries.”

Barry adds: “The FCC should trans-form our broadband policy and revise rules to restore a competitive environ-ment for delivery of high-speed Internet

access. A new defi nition of broadband, a minimum of 500 Kbps downstream and 256 Kbps upstream, must be part of the new rules to provide a useful Internet experience. Rule changes and redefi ni-tion of what broadband means is needed to naturally reduce the cost of broad-band and move our country into a much more competitive position.”

According to Steven A. Zecola of Hilton Head Island, S.C., while the $7.2 billion stimulus has rekindled hopes in America’s broadband communications, the FCC must ensure that the taxpay-ers’ money for broadband deployment is well spent and the objectives of the eco-nomic stimulus bill are achieved.

“[The FCC should] specify that broad-band, for purposes of maximizing con-sumer welfare, encompass Internet protocol communication services,” he said. Broadband should have several tiers starting from 200 Kbps to 8 Mbps, in accordance with the willingness of consumers to pay for Internet access, Zecola said.

Nevertheless, perhaps no one wants America to be wired as urgently as Larry Rymal, a farmer in Joaquin, Texas, who said he is suffering heavily due to lack of broadband availability in his hometown.

“I am a cattle farmer with a four-generation farm. Increasingly my farm needs broadband for fi eld inventory, video conferencing, etc. However, there is no cable service, no asymmetric DSL,” he said. “Microwave broadband is available. Satellite Internet is, of course available, and it is what I am now using. However, the latency is so terrible that I cannot video conference. Due to online requirements for feed monitoring and inventory, I am forced to rely on older techniques, which bite into my abilityto compete. Broadband is really needed for me.”

Indrajit Basu is the international corre-spondent for Government Technology’s Digital Communities.

President Barack Obama and the

U.S. Congressallotted $7.2

billion toward a high-speed Internet

superhighway.

Photo courtesy of Obama for America


My Message to the FCC:The Future Is Fiber By Bill Schrier, CIO, Seattle

The core of a national broadband strategy is fi ber-optic cable — fi ber running to almost every home and business in the United States.

Such a network would signifi cantly change America’s economy — it would affect our way of working and playing as profoundly as did the telegraph, telephone, railroad and original Internet.

A fi ber network is an investment that would last 50 years or more. The network would carry two-way high-defi nition video streams and convert every high-defi nition TV set into a video conferencing station. This addresses a fundamental human need — to actually see our co-workers and friends.

For the fi rst time, working at home — true telework — would be possible because workers would connect with and see each other in real time. Whole technology businesses would collaborate on developing 21st-century products. Students would be able to attend classes and interact with their classmates from home. Quality of life would improve as families scattered across a region would talk together, while seeing one another.

This fi ber network would also support high-speed wireless, because wireless access points can be added at any place the fi ber terminates — at every home and business.

The network would also signifi cantly reduce commute trips and travel. This, in turn, would reduce our dependence on imported oil and the production of greenhouse gases.

Fiber broadband with two-way video and similar applications are a fundamentally new economic network and engine for America.



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What is the bottom line for com-munities in this new century? It’s all about the children.

Societies serve many purposes, but one outweighs all others. Societies exist to protect children. Like crea-tures whose fi rst law is self-preservation, societies ensure their future by safe-guarding the children who will bring it into being.

Communities are societies writ small. Whether small villages or immense cities — in developing nations or the industrialized world — their fi rst pri-ority is to be places where families can raise children and where those children can build a future. That starts with access to the basics of human survival: clean water, food, shelter and safety. It

also takes what New York Times col-umnist and author Thomas Friedman has called the “software of society”

— the customs, laws and attitudes that give life meaning and the individual an understandable place in the culture. And it takes economic opportunity.Money may not buy you love, but eco-nomic opportunity makes possible everything else we value in a com-munity. Without it, communities can stagnate and die in a few generations.

Economic Trajectory

In 1900, the single largest source of employment in the United States was farming. By the end of the century, less than 3 percent of Americans were farmers. As a consequence, the vast middle portions of the country emptied out as children and their parents left rural homes and headed for the cities and then the suburbs and exurbs.

In the fi rst decade of the 21st cen-tury, the United Nations estimated that

DIGITAL COMMUNITIES JUNE 09 11

BY ROBERT BELL | CO-FOUNDER, INTELLIGENT COMMUNITY FORUM

Joel captured the spirit of the times in America’s Rust Belt:

Every child had a pretty good shot to get at least as far as their old man got. Something happened on the way to that place. They threw an American fl ag in our face.

While the Rust Belt rusted, develop-ing nations that escaped war and the extremes of bad governance started the long boom that continues today. Once mere assembly centers for components manufactured elsewhere, developing nations are striving with considerable success to become innovative producersof sophisticated equipment, systems and software. From 1990 to 2003, manufactured exports from develop-ing nations rose 11.5 percent compared with 5.1 percent from industrialized nations. This was enough to boost devel-oping nations’ share of global exports from 20 percent to nearly 35 percent. China is the overwhelming leader: Filter out China from the numbers,and the global share of manufactured exports from developing nations actu-ally fell from 28.0 percent in 2000 to 27.4 percent in 2003.

In the last decade of the 20th centuryand fi rst decade of the 21st, it began to seem that the industrialized world’s once unshakeable grip on high-tech-nology employment would go the same way as agriculture and manufactur-ing. Offshoring began to move call center, data entry, and programming and systems jobs to developing nations. Headlines blared about X-rays being transmitted overseas to be read by Indian doctors, and U.S. and Europeanmultinationals opening development centers in India, China, Vietnam and Malaysia.

It’s easy to make too much of this. Manufacturing will not vanish from industrialized nations — in fact, man-ufacturing that demands high skills continues healthy job growth — and rising living standards in developing countries will gradually erode their

more than half of the world’s people were living in cities — the fi rst time in history. Much of the transformation has come from the rural poor in develop-ing nations doing what Americans and Europeans did in earlier decades: fl ee-ing to the cities in search of economic opportunity. They have done it in such numbers as to create a rising group of “mega-cities” with populations exceeding 10 million people. Of the 25 largest mega-cities, 19 are in develop-ing nations. And they are not through yet. The United Nations forecasts that by 2030, three out of fi ve people — or 5 billion people — will live in cities worldwide.

In the last quarter of the 20th cen-tury, the same out-migration struck

the manufacturing centers of the world’s industrial nations. Decades of investment in automation raised productivity and reduced labor needs. At the same time, markets for most manufactured goods in rich nations matured: Consumers only need so many cars, refrigerators, washing machines and light bulbs in a lifetime. Adding to the impact — and making the most headlines — was “the rise of the rest,” a surge of economic growth and living standards in developing nations. Manufacturing moved to developing nations not only because they offered low-cost labor, but also because manufacturers expect them to be the next growth market for their products.

As a result, once-proud manufactur-ing centers like Germany’s Ruhr Valley and the American Midwest suffered the same fate as agricultural regions had in the past. A 1982 pop music hit, Allentown, by singer-songwriter Billy

Succeeding in this new environment — which we call the broadband economy — takes conscious effort by government, business, institutions and individuals.



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cost advantage. A 2006 study from the Association for Computing Machinery noted that the job losses attributable to offshoring — estimated to be between 2 to 3 percent of the U.S. IT work force

— were dwarfed by the normal cycle of IT job creation and loss in the American economy.

Nevertheless, communities today are at an uncomfortable crossroads in both industrialized and develop-ing nations. The sources of economic opportunity are changing faster than communities can naturally adapt. Manufacturing is following the pat-tern of farming, in which increasing productivity drastically erodes the number of people it employs. IT jobs are still on the growth track but will eventually follow the same pattern, only to be replaced by a new growth sector, such as biotechnology, sustain-able energy or another candidate.

Communities must adapt continu-ously and at an ever-greater rate, or risk seeing cherished ways of life vanish because lack of opportunity bleeds them of the children who are their future. Succeeding in this new environment —

which we call the “broadband economy” — takes conscious effort by government, business, institutions and individuals. It’s not the product of the unfetteredfree market, nor of government poli-cymakers alone, but of imaginative collaboration between the two.

The “how” and the “what” of creat-ing an intelligent community make a long and complex story. But the “why?” That’s simple.

It’s all about the children.

The Broadband Economy

In his bestselling book The World Is Flat, Friedman reported on a conver-sation with Nanden Nilekani, CEO of

India’s Infosys. Nilekani had this to say on the topic of globalization:

“Outsourcing is just one dimension of a much more fundamental thing happening today in the world,” he explained. “What happened over the last [few] years is that there was a massive investment in technology, espe-cially in the bubble era when hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in putting broadband connectivity around the world, undersea cables, all those things.”

At the same time, he added, computers became cheaper and dispersed world-wide, and there was an explosion of software — e-mail; search engines like Google; and proprietary software that can chop up any piece of work and send one part to Boston, one to Bangalore,and one part to Beijing — making it easy for anyone to do remote devel-opment. When all of these things suddenly came together around 2000, added Nilekani, they “created a platform where intellectual work, intellectual capital, could be delivered from anywhere. It could be disaggre-gated, delivered, distributed, produced and put back together again — and

this gave a whole new degree of free-dom to the way we do work, especially work of an intellectual nature … And what you’re seeing in Bangalore today is really the culmination of all these things coming together.”

Beyond Globalization

At the Intelligent Community Forum, we don’t feel that the term “globalization” does justice to the scope of this trans-formation, and to the way it’s reshaping

the economic lives of people around the planet. The broadband economy is an economy in which, for all intents and purposes, the hard-working people of Bangalore and Beijing live right next door to the hard-working people of Boston, Brussels and Buenos Aires.

As Nilekani explained, the broad-band economy is the product of the build-out of low-cost, high-speed communications and information technology on both the global and local levels. It began in the 1970s, when the telecom carriers began link-ing the world’s economic centers with fi ber-optic networks. These made pos-sible collaboration and cooperation across time zones and cultures, which opened markets, boosted productivity, created employment and improved living standards.

From 1870 to 1970, the number of people living on more than $1 per day (adjusted for infl ation) grew by 157


The good news is that, while the broadband economy presents an epic challenge to communities, it also hands them a powerful new competitive tool.

The United States saw a drastic change in population from farming to manufacturing, which led to an exodus toward cities.



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9729 G_229A28_GovTechDigComm_6-1.indd 25 4/24/09 1:22:28 PMDCMag_Jun09.indd 5DCMag_Jun09.indd 5 4/29/09 8:33:02 AM4/29/09 8:33:02 AM


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million. At the same time, however, the number living on less than $1 a day also grew by 45 million. Still not bad: a net 112 million people moved out of abject poverty over a century. But com-pare that to the 10 years from 1990 to 2000. The number of people living on

more than $1 a day grew by 890 million, while the number living on less shrank by 139 million. That’s a net 1 billion people moving up in a single decade.

What made it happen? No single factor could account for such an enor-mous change. But in any comparison between the decade and the century, you would have to put the availability, from 1990 to 2000, of advanced digital communications at the top of a list.

Using the broadband infrastructure, companies began to look for opportuni-ties to locate their facilities where they could gain the greatest advantage in costs, skills and access to markets. The

deployment of global broadband also made capital investment highly mobile. Billions of U.S. dollars move daily around the globe in pursuit of a compet-itive return, and when trouble strikes a nation’s economy, that mobile capital can also fl ee at devastating speed.

For communities, local economic suc-cess has come to depend on the globaleconomy in ways never before imag-ined. But while global business may be mobile, communities are not. Commu-nities everywhere have the same goal: to be a place where people can raise their children and give those young people enough economic opportunity to allow them to stay and raise children of their own. In the broadband economy, that task is more challenging than ever.

The Broadband Paradox

Geographic location and natural resources were once the key determiners

of a community’s economic potential. In one person’s lifetime, they changed seldomly if at all. But in the broadband economy, it’s increasingly the skills of the labor force and the ability of busi-ness and government to adapt and innovate, that power job creation. And these are assets that must be continu-

ally replenished. Why has this change

occurred? As economic centers are connected, it becomes possible to manage distant facilities as though they were across the street. That means, in the broad-band economy, every worker is exposed to wage and skill competition from every other

worker in similar industries around the world. This has shifted demand for low-skilled labor — the kind used in extracting resources from the Earth and basic manufacturing — to low-cost countries in the developing world. When you visit those booming countries, how-ever, the business press is full of worry about lack of skills and innovation. Even countries in the early stages of industrialgrowth are feeling the same competi-tive pressures that have become acute in industrialized nations.

Intelligent communities have come to understand the enormous chal-lenges of the broadband economy, and have taken conscious steps to create an economy capable of prospering in it.

Employment insecurity has risen and will continue to increase worldwide as businesses face global competition and go global in search of talent. The only jobs that are immune to the pres-sures of the broadband economy — local retailing and services like plumbing and real estate — don’t bring new money into a community; they merely move it around from pocket to pocket within the community. A sustainable community must have inputs and outputs, which means external markets for the skills, services and products it provides.

Intelligent communities — whetherthrough crisis or foresight — have

CONTINUED ON PAGE 32


1870-1970 1990-2000

Century vs. Decade

157 million

45 million

890 million

-139 million

Living on LESS than $1 per day Living on MORE than $1 per day

Popu

latio

n (in

mill

ions

)

1 billion112 million

This diagram shows the disparity in economic growth and decline within a decade and a century. From 1870 to 1970, 112 million people moved out of poverty compared to 1 billion from 1990 to 2000. This change can be attributed to many factors, like broadband infrastructure build out and advanced digital communications.



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Bee Cave, Texas, is a small city with big plans. It has 2,200 residents, but its population is projected to grow by

more than 600 percent by 2030. It has a new City Hall, and numerous other big projects are under way. Many of them are IT projects, the kind that normally occur in much bigger cities.

“We want to ensure that investments in IT position Bee Cave as an ‘intelligent city’ of the future,” said Richard Reynolds, chief technology offi cer for the city. Reynolds and his team have been busy putting in all kinds of infrastructure, in addition to more advanced projects. These include sharing 911 services with a nearby city, unifi ed communications, voice over Internet proto-col (VoIP), in-car video for police vehicles and wireless access for the public.

Bee Cave is 14 miles west of Austin. It was incorporated as a city in 1987, but its rapid growth has come in recent years. That growth is due, in part, to an ambitious City Council, which encourages Reynolds to think creatively while planning for the future.

“We defi nitely try to provide a long-term, strategic view,” Reynolds said. “Capacity planning and extensibility are always factors.” Those are just a couple of reasons the small, growing community presents a unique opportunity. “That’s one of the things that per-sonally attracted me to Bee Cave,” observed Reynolds. “It’s not often you have an oppor-tunity to get in on the ground fl oor and design and build things from scratch from day one.”

Reynolds’ drive and vision — aided by support from government leaders

— resulted in him being named 2008 IT Executive of the Year for Public Sector by the Austin chapter of the Association of Information Technology Professionals.

Thriving on Challenge

Reynolds has worked with CDW Govern-ment, Inc. (CDW-G) on numerous projects. CDW-G has assisted Bee Cave with network routing and switching, backup, servers, fi re-walls and more. The company even worked

with the city to provide audio and video pro-duction equipment for the Council chambers.

Despite the challenges of working in a small city, Reynolds and his team have tackled many projects. The city recently fi nished deploying an improved public wire-less infrastructure in City Hall and the public library. The system allows people access to the city’s fi ber Internet line so they have much faster Internet connections. Citizens have already given city representatives posi-tive feedback on the expanded services.

Reynolds and his team installed extra security for the wireless infrastructure, revers-ing the intrusion prevention system to protect against attacks being launched against enti-ties outside the network. This way, no one can use the wireless access to launch cyber-attacks from the city’s IP addresses.

The city is also setting up private wireless infrastructure for employees in City Hall and the Police Department. It’s combining voice and data communications and allowing city employees to access network resources securely when away from the offi ce. “We’ve done our best to unify most of our commu-

nications, so city staff can work from just about anywhere,” Reynolds said.

The city also completed a migration to a new, in-car video-recording system for police department vehicles. “Offi cer safety is a primary concern for having video in the units,” said Reynolds. “So anytime an airbag deploys, it will capture the previous 30 seconds. If the vehicle exceeds a certain speed, it’ll automatically begin recording. Anytime the offi cer activates a horn, siren or light, it begins recording.”

In addition to creating a safer environ-ment for offi cers, the new system also increases public safety by giving com-manders better information when making decisions. “The system is capable of streaming that video, which would let the chief see in real time what’s going on in the units, from his desk,” said Reynolds.

“He would be able to see what’s happening and make a tactical decision on whether he needs to deploy additional assets.”

Previously offi cers had to drive their patrol cars to a docking station to upload video, essentially removing the cars from

Busy in Bee CaveSmall city makes a big difference with its ambitious IT projects.

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service for a while. With the new secure wireless infrastructure, offi cers can upload video while staying in service.

More New Projects

Bee Cave is partnering with Lakeway, a neighboring city a few miles away, for a new records management system (RMS) and computer-aided dispatch (CAD) for public safety. Lakeway’s public safety answering point (PSAP) serves as the 911 call center that dispatches for the Bee Cave Police Department. The new RMS/CAD system will leverage Lake-way’s PSAP and Bee Cave’s networks. It will allow Lakeway dispatchers to push maps and incident information out to the mobile data terminals in Bee Cave’s police cars, enabling quicker response times to citizens’ calls.

The two cities are also considering options for an automated vehicle locator system that would constantly display the location of police cars. This solution will provide additional safety for offi cers while giving commanders a clearer picture of available resources during an incident.

Bee Cave is also designing a tempo-rary command center that can be used to respond to a local event. The city doesn’t have an emergency operations center pres-ently, but the plan calls for using space within City Hall to accommodate the FBI, sheriffs’ departments, Austin Police Depart-ment and other agencies that would be involved in response to an incident. The plan would let various agencies communi-cate better, work together more closely and share data in the temporary space.

“We can deploy an additional switch, drop 30 phone lines in there and dedicate 800 numbers to start receiving tips and things along those lines,” Reynolds said. “That’s something we’re planning and designing right now.”

Technology for the Future

A microwave backhaul project provided a connection between municipal buildings, with numerous benefi ts. “That dramatically increased bandwidth for both voice and data,” Reynolds said. “And it also eliminated the need for leased lines. This means we’ll get about 100 percent return on our invest-

ment in a little less than three years. And we did a signifi cant portion of that project in-house, including the tower mounts and fi ber termination.” The new system also allows IT staff to take snapshots of backups for disaster recovery and send those across the network between buildings.

In the public library, Reynolds and his team set up new workstations for public use. While visitors previously had four sta-tions available to them, they now have 12. And by sharing resources among the 12, the city saves money on energy to power the computers.

With the help of CDW-G and others, Reynolds fi nds it very satisfying to provide services for the city’s residents, businesses and visitors. “It’s amazing,” he said, “the variety and fl avors of technology that we put our hands on, on a day-to-day basis here in Bee Cave, in working with our part-ners, such as Lakeway, and the vendors that work with us.”

It goes with the territory in a small city with leaders who think big. “I feel blessed and fortunate to have the support of our City Council,” said Reynolds. “They really are a forward-thinking body, and that makes it easier, when you’re in a growth organi-zation that’s smaller and more nimble, to effect meaningful change.”

CDW•GCDW•G offers information technology solutions from top manufacturers and service providers across all product categories.

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“It’s amazing, the variety and fl avors of technology that we put our hands on, on a day-to-day basis here in Bee Cave.”

— RICHARD REYNOLDS, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, BEE CAVE, TEXAS



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Hartford, Conn., encompasses some 18 square miles, approximately 18,000 buildings and a population of

124,000 — all protected by the Hartford Fire Department. Working out of 12 fi re houses, the department’s 350 members respond to more than 22,000 calls a year in the city and surrounding areas, including providing specialized support statewide for certain emergencies. The Department is one of only two fi re departments in all of New England to hold a Class 1 rating, a gauge of the Fire Department’s overall fi re protection capabili-ties as evaluated by insurance authorities.

The Department had long recognized that protecting public safety depends just as much on information and decision-making as it does on fi refi ghting equipment and tactics. When responding to an incident, whether an auto accident, residential fi re or major indus-trial fi re, the more commanders know about the situation — and the sooner — the more safely and effectively they can decide on a course of action at the scene. Everything from construction of the building and interior fl oor plan to the contents, location of water hydrants and mains, and access to the site will infl uence tactics as well as the deploy-ment of fi refi ghters and equipment.

To put more relevant intelligence into fi refi ghters’ hands, the Department was the fi rst department in the country to deploy an innovative geographic information system (GIS). Running over the AT&T 3G wireless network, the system allows commanders in the fi re vehicles to access global posi-tioning system (GPS)-enabled applications and databases that deliver an array of visual information about the building, its contents and inhabitants, the surroundings, and the location of other responding fi re vehicles. Even before arriving at the scene, fi refi ghting teams can make decisions about deploying equipment, attacking the fi re and securing the area around the fi re. This critical detail allows for a much faster response to emer-gencies, more effective management of the

scene, and improved safety for citizens and fi refi ghters.

Paper Binders to Touchscreens

Of the 37,000 fi re departments in the United States, slightly more than 30 — one in 1,000 — have earned a Class 1 Fire Sup-pression rating from the Insurance Services Offi ce, an industry group providing analyses for property insurance companies. This rating

— the highest of 10 — is based on detailed evaluations of a fi re department’s alarm and reporting systems, the quality of the depart-ment’s staff and fi refi ghting resources as well as hydrants and water supply. It is a measure of a department’s general ability to protect the lives and property of its residents.

The Hartford Fire Department is under-standably proud to be one of the two New England departments (the other is in Cam-bridge, Mass.) to carry a Class 1 rating. Though not among the largest departments, Hartford is one of the oldest in the country, and it’s well known for being an exceptionally capable and forward-thinking fi refi ghting organization.

Hartford, for example, was an early adopter of a GPS-based automatic vehicle location (AVL) system that allowed dispatch-ers and commanders to visually track their trucks and apparatus throughout the city on desktop computer displays. Based on the

system’s success and the burgeoning use of computer imagery elsewhere, former Deputy Chief Eugene Cieri saw the potential in deploy-ing laptops in the fi re vehicles to hold critical fi refi ghting information. At the time, Hartford fi re trucks carried thick binders packed with fold-out maps of streets, hydrants and water mains; any available building fl oor plans; along with data sheets detailing chemicals or materials that might be stored in various buildings. It might be far easier to store the data on mobile computers.

“We recognized that the idea made sense but weren’t sure how to implement it,” said the Department’s Chief Charles Teal. “Once we attended a seminar on GIS, we saw the potential for a much more comprehensive solution that could profoundly affect our overall command capabilities and our ability to make decisions at the scene. We were convinced right there.”

For Hartford, the appeal of the GIS technol-ogy was in being able to layer in real-time GPS mapping and tracking, aerial photography and detailed building information into a fully mobile solution that could be taken right out to the scene — where it was most needed.

“This mobile technology gives our fi re-fi ghters and commanders much more critical information, and delivers it far faster,” said Teal. “It’s the very information that can spell the difference between life and death for the people of Hartford and for our fi refi ghters.”

The system Hartford ultimately deployed — the fi rst of its kind in any U.S. fi re depart-ment — is based on integrated GIS technology provided by the Institute of Information Tech-nology Inc., and AT&T wireless packet data networking. Over wireless modems, specially outfi tted laptops in each fi re vehicle can access the GIS platform running on dedi-cated servers at a central Fire Department facility, as well as regional servers supporting statewide emergency response. The system is fully integrated with the Department’s computer-aided dispatch (CAD) capability, so as an incident is reported, the relevant

Hartford Fire Department:Fighting Fires With Wireless

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address and location is immediately cap-tured for use by the GIS solution.

In addition, the same system is available to commanders at headquarters and other facilities, and on the road.

Faster Incident Response

The Department recognized early on that its system could support not only the offi -cers on the scene, but also the Department’s entire command structure. “We designed the solution to provide multiple levels of access so it can benefi t everyone involved in man-aging an incident, whether on the scene or at a remote location,” said Leandro Cieri, fi re alarm communication technician. “That’s especially critical for larger fi res where several units must respond.”

When a 911 call comes in to a dispatcher, the CAD system captures the address of the incident and other relevant information and automatically relays it to the GIS server, which transmits in real time an incident alert to the mobile laptop in the units that will respond.

“As the offi cer gets into the truck, virtu-ally every bit of information he will need to handle that incident will be in his hands,” Cieri said. “The offi cer has the street address, cross streets, description of the call, the units responding, the radio channel assigned to the incident. It’s all right there.”

Via wireless, the offi cer can quickly tap into aerial photos of the location, showing the layout and surroundings, access to the site, and the location of every nearby hydrant and water main, allowing the offi cer to quickly determine the best way to deploy

at the scene — often before arriving. The offi cer can even track his own arrival on the GPS aerial map to quickly orient himself and the equipment. “In a snowstorm, when all the hydrants are covered with snow drifts, offi cers can tell exactly where the hydrants are in relation to the truck — so they can be located much more quickly,” said Cieri.

For many commercial buildings, the offi cer can also access street-level photos of all sides of the structure, as well as any avail-able fl oor plans. “Our system can also alert us to the contents of the building,” Teal said.

“We don’t want our fi refi ghters deploying downwind of toxic smoke or walking through a cloud of explosive fumes. And if we have to evacuate the area, we need to know that right away. It’s all information we need to ensure the safety of the community.”

On larger incidents that involve two or more different fi re companies, the district chief can use the mobile system to coordi-nate the joint efforts. In addition to the same building and site information, the district chief can track the location of all vehicles and units responding in real time to better organize the deployment. The same infor-mation is available at headquarters — even across multiple incidents at the same time.

“We have a much more integrated view of our incidents now,” said Teal. “We’ve eliminated a lot of the uncertainty and miscommunication. We notice there is actually much less back-and-forth radio chatter now, in that everyone is always working with the same information, and good information.”

Building on the Mobility

Perhaps the ultimate proof of the value of the Department’s solution is the acceptance from the fi refi ghters. “As a rule, fi refi ghters generally don’t like change and are sometimes reluctant to give up old ways of doing things,” said Michael Natale, supervisor of fi re alarm communication technology. “Now that they have experienced the mobile solution, they can’t imagine going back to old paper maps and binders again. To them, responding to a fi re without the computer is like showing up without your fi re truck.”

The offi cers and fi refi ghters also help keep the systems and information accurate.

“If they notice a discrepancy between the screen and the actual site, they let us know immediately, and we correct it. And they often suggest improvements and capabilities they feel would be helpful,” Natale said. In addition, the Department has also launched a program where residents can provide infor-mation about their own homes and families

— such as the location of children’s bed-rooms, or a resident who may have mobility or health issues.

The Department is further enhancing the overall solution by moving to 3G wireless capability to provide additional bandwidth. The Department is also looking into adding video capability to the units at the scene, to allow fi refi ghters to transmit live pictures of the incident back to headquarters or to chiefs at a remote location — over the wireless network.

“As valuable as this system is now,” Teal said, “I think we have only scratched the surface of what it can do.”

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Important Information: Coverage not available in all areas. Availability, security, speed, timeliness and uninterrupted use of service are not guaranteed. Eligible wireless rate plan with compatible device required. Not all features available on all devices. Additional hardware, software, services, Internet access and/or special network connection may be required. Additional terms, conditions and restrictions will apply — for complete solution details, see applicable service agreement, rate plan brochure(s), coverage maps and applicable third-party terms and conditions. Actual results may vary. Information and/or offers subject to change.

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Until December 2008, Marin County, Calif.’s property tax system was on a mainframe that was expensive

to maintain and diffi cult to integrate with other systems. But after migrating its exist-ing COBOL code to an environment running Microsoft Windows Server and .NET Frame-work, the county reduced costs by 91 percent by eliminating hardware, software and maintenance costs.

Marin County now uses Microsoft SQL Server for data management and in addi-tion to reducing costs, the county has a much more flexible environment. It has greater Web service capabilities and can integrate new services, such as GIS. The system can also integrate with other systems much more easily, enabling greater accuracy and efficiency since numerous agencies now work from a single database. The system can even connect with state and federal systems.

And the cost-savings and effi ciencies associated with the migration are extensive. The county no longer pays maintenance fees for the mainframe or licensing fees for the software that ran on it. The county has new software for scheduling and for printing, and both are much less expensive than their mainframe predecessors.

Marin County is also making greater use of virtual servers, so it spends less on hard-ware. And the county was able to redeploy people who’d previously worked on main-frame support, moving them to customer service and application development.

New World

Because the county chose to move its existing code rather than create new code, the migration went very smoothly. Testing was greatly simplifi ed because there was a clear baseline against which to measure per-formance. And there was no need to retrain employees, since processes remained the same. The entire project was completed quickly and cost-effectively, and the county

expects the new solution to meet its needs for many years to come.

“It’s an old-world/new-world concept,” said Dave Hill, Marin County CIO. “The old world is mainframe — data locked up, hard to see, green screens. The new world is a fl atter network, more access, more mallea-ble database, multiple tools you can use to access your database, a customer base that extends through fi rewalls or not, depending upon how you want to handle it. So it’s part of this whole revolution.”

Although the county set itself up with new tools and capabilities with the transition, the processes were retained because they were working well. “The thing we saved was the business logic,” Hill said. “That is a huge piece of the pie.”

Smooth Sailing

The impact to staff was so minimal, people wouldn’t have noticed the change at all if they hadn’t been told of it. “We didn’t do any training on this conversion because people already knew the system,” said Hill. “There was zero training on the implementation.”

The current environment also frees up staff time for other endeavors. “Our main-tenance is very low at this point,” Hill said.

“We’re starting to lean more toward adding new features, graphical interfaces and that sort of thing.”

Prior to the change, numerous processes were slower and more diffi cult. For example, it wasn’t easy to provide data to business analysts who needed to study the effects

Smart MoveMigrating from mainframe to .NET brings numerous improvements for California county.

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“It’s an old-world/new-world concept. … It’s part of this whole revolution.”

— DAVE HILL, CIO, MARIN COUNTY, CALIF.

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of changing real estate values on school funding. IT staff had to take data offl ine, convert it into a format that could be ana-lyzed, and then run the needed reports. Changing reporting requirements would add days or weeks to the process.

More agencies throughout the county were seeking access to property data — public safety, zoning, planning, permits and libraries, to name a few. But integrating the mainframe with all these different systems proved to be a cumbersome process. Inte-grating the system with Web services was also diffi cult.

Now with the mainframe out of the picture, it’s much easier to connect to other systems. One example is the county’s Electronic Justice Search (EJUS). “This is looking up criminal information, basically, by street address,” said Hill. “It’s a compo-nent of the application that we just didn’t have before.”

When it came to improving the system, the county looked at other options, but the .NET solution was the only one that made sense. And once it was in place, numerous agencies benefi ted. “One of the issues when you go from a mainframe to a network is that you need to bring the tools from the mainframe into the network, like schedulers and print managers,” Hill said. “So once we brought property tax into the network, other main-frame systems that are migrated can leverage that same scheduling and printing technol-ogy. You buy once so you can reuse it with as many different applications as you need.”

Spreading the Wealth

Thanks to the fl exibility of the .NET plat-form, it’s likely that many more agencies will be able to access the database in the future. “I can imagine that this database will be available to the cities and towns in real time, because we just completed building

a fi ber network, to all the cities and towns, all the police departments, and we’re fi nish-ing up the fi re departments,” said Hill. “So that network becomes enhanced by the fact that the data on it becomes available to them as well. The county as a whole can maintain the address information for the 11 cities inside the county. The cities, at some point, will be able to have access to that as well, natively, either through their permitting system, their GIS or whatever.”

So no matter what agency needs the data, it will be able to get it from the central data-base. It’s a very effi cient model. “Between law enforcement, health and human services, property and tax, general admin-istration — those are all people who use the database in different ways,” said Hill. “Then you have the cities, and they have their public works and planning, and then you have the libraries. All of those are related to an actual street address location.”

The property tax system is the offi cial record of street address, and now that all the county’s data is in SQL Server, it’s much easier to share that data with other agencies. That’s just one of the many benefi ts the county has seen from the migration to .NET, and it expects to see many more in the years to come.

MicrosoftFor further information on Microsoft please visit www.microsoft.com/government.

“This is looking up criminal information, basically, by street address. It’s a component of the application that we just didn’t have before.”

— DAVE HILL, CIO, MARIN COUNTY, CALIF.



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theWinning

Digital Re© i S T O C K P H O T O . C O M / M A L I K E T H



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ISSY-LES-MOULINEAUX,

FRANCE

France’s Issy-les-Moulineaux continues to lead in digital innovations.

WITH THOUSANDS OF JOBS LOSTalmost every day and everywhere in the current global economic tur-moil, wouldn’t it be utopia if a city could offer all the jobs its inhabitants wanted and still had plenty more to be fi lled? That would be even more amazing if the city was a densely populated municipality located in a country as much affected by the global turmoil as any other developed nation.

With almost 70,000 jobs on offer for a population of a little more than 60,000 inhabitants, that’s exactly the current economic situation in Issy-les-Moulineaux (Issy), a suburb about 4 miles from Paris. Using information and communication technology (ICT) as a tool to suc-cessfully move its economy away from an old manufacturing base to a tech-savvy intelligent community, Issy has lured some of the most recognized technology companies. It’s turning into the most techno-logically advanced city in France.

Since the mid-1990s, when the Internet was hardly prevalent across Europe, Issy successfully developed and implemented a proactive strat-egy of innovation to build a local information society that’s open to all.

RevolutionB Y I N D R A J I T B A S U



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DIGITAL COMMUNITIES MARCH 0824 DIGITAL COMMUNITIES JUNE 0924

To get a feeling of how forward-look-ing those initiatives were, consider that Netscape, the company that introduced the fi rst widely used Web browser, was founded in 1994 and there were only 10,000 Web sites worldwide, compared to 80.6 million in 2006. The fi rst e-com-merce sites were also just coming online.

Early Outsourcer

Issy also did something that was hardly expected from a European com-munity, especially a French community that consists of largely a union-oriented labor force: The city outsourced its entire IT infrastructure to Euriware, a 10-year-old Paris company that was one of France’s fi rst outsourcing fi rms. The goal was to accelerate the pace of tech-nology innovation in the community, and Santini promoted it as the fi rst step in transforming Issy into a “digital city.”

“Looking back,” said Zacharilla, “to outsource ICT management and infra-structure functions of a municipality in a part of Europe that is largely consid-ered union-oriented was almost a dan-gerous thing to do.”

Clearly the impact of the almost two decades of transformation has been profound.

More than 80 percent of Issy’s house-holds are connected to broadband Inter-net (the average in France is 50 percent), while 98 percent of the city’s citizens declare that within the past 10 years, ICT has fundamentally changed their daily life.

A 2006 study showed that Issy’s pop-ulation is much more computer-savvy

committee to develop Issy’s Local Infor-mation Plan.

Issy also was the fi rst community in France to have Wi-Fi — there were hot-spots in all buildings — as well as the

fi rst to have well developed broadband infrastructure.

“All that seems part of the regular practice today in intelligent communi-ties, but it was very forward-looking back then,” Zacharilla said.

“What sets Issy apart from all other intelligent communities is the fact that the process of intelligent community development actually began as far back as the late 1980s.”Lou Zacharilla, co-founder, Intelligent Community Forum

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“[The strategy] was to follow the developments of new technologies benefi ting the population across the country, without any exception,” said Eric Legale, managing director of Issy Media, a public-private company in charge of communication and IT within Issy-les-Moulineaux.

The effort included launching a cam-paign to lure more communication and technology companies to the area and making high tech and innovation the backbone of Issy’s economy, thereby accelerating the city’s transformation.

A City Apart

There’s nothing new about that strat-egy. After all, isn’t that what all intel-ligent communities around the world have been doing for the past few years?

“What sets Issy apart from all other intelligent communities is the fact that the process of intelligent community development actually began as far back as the late 1980s, when [Issy’s] Mayor Andre Santini decided at the dawn of the digital age to begin to adapt the ICT

tools to both municipal IT management and also for economic development,” said Lou Zacharilla, co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum, the New York-based think tank that studies the economic and social development.

Under Santini’s administration, Issy was the fi rst French city to introduce outdoor electronic information displays and the fi rst to deploy a cable network. In 1993, while smart cards usually only meant SIM cards for mobile phones, schools in Issy introduced a smart card-based system that let students elec-tronically pay for lunch. And Issy’s City Council rebuilt its meeting room as a multimedia center the following year. In 1994, Santini asked city departments to study the development of the Inter-net in the U.S., and he created a steering

In This Story:

Issy was the fi rst city in France to have Wi-Fi in all buildings and use electronic information displays.The city outsources its IT infrastructure in an effort to transform into a digital city.Issy was named one of 2009’s top seven intelligent communities.Citizens will soon attend interactive City Hall meetings via Second Life.

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Issy is home to more than 60,000 inhabitants and 800 technology and service-oriented companies.



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than an average French citizen, with 89 percent of the locals logging on to the Internet daily, compared to a national average of 56 percent.

“ICT and innovation have contributed signifi cantly to building a new society where citizens are better informed and more involved in decision-making,” Legale said.

And there’s more. Issy is France’s most high-tech city and 57 percent of the companies are ICT-based, includ-ing marquee names like Cisco Systems Europe, France Telecom, Hewlett-Packard, Orange Internet, Sybase and Microsoft.

Issy is also the country’s media hub, with one-third of the land-based digi-tal TV channels — like the Marie Claire Group, Mondadori, Arte, BFM, Canal+, Eurosport, France 5, GlobeCast and France 24 — establishing their head-quarters there.

Issy Stays Afl oat

According to Legale, the effect of hav-ing that many technology and service-oriented companies — currently 843 companies — fl ocking to Issy has been energized in 2008 alone, while the world was in the midst of its worst recession in the past seven decades, 2,370 new jobs were created in Issy.

Besides, the city can boast of a new economy, where improved response

times and availability of services, infra-structure and manpower have enabled today’s start-up companies to hope to become the leaders of tomorrow, Legale said.

Small wonder then that Issy is the center of global attention. Since being recognized as France’s most advanced city a few years ago, Issy was chosen as one of the top seven intelligent commu-nities again in 2009 (the fi rst time was in 2006) by the Intelligent Community Forum. The city also was awarded the label of “living lab” by the European Network of Living Labs. A living lab is a new concept for research and devel-opment and innovation to advance the Lisbon strategy for jobs and growth in Europe, according to www.openlivinglabs.eu.

The city isn’t sitting on its laurels. After creating a sustainable digital community where its citizens were able to master the technology tools of

a nascent era, which allowed its people to be comfortable with the tools of the global economy, Issy is already moving toward what it calls Issy 2.0

According to Legale, Issy has begun transforming a 19th-century fortress into a digital fort. “Le Fort Numérique” will not only be a place to live, but will also have a laboratory for ideas and refl ections on the intelligent use of ICT within an environment of open innova-tion. By 2012, Legale said residents will enjoy living in intelligent and green (durable, healthy and environmentally friendly) homes.

“The digital fort will be exemplary in terms of high-tech, sustainable devel-opment and environmental protection, which will host 10,000 residences, a high school, businesses, a digital theater and much more,” Legale said.

Additionally Issy is working on build-ing an interactive 3-D user environ-ment that, using the virtual community Second Life, will enable its residents to see photography exhibitions and the latest Issy TV programs, download publications or attend interactive City Council meetings.

“Issy has successfully transformed its economic base from traditional manu-facturing to high value-added services,” Legale said. “Today the city has become a national reference in regards to economic dynamism and its exemplary use of ICT.”

Indrajit Basu is the international correspon-dent for Digital Communities.

Access GrantedIssy.com offers many services for residents, such as ordering city publications, updating personal information for school and making hotel reservations. The site also features a book delivery service for the elderly and those with physical disabilities who can’t make it to the library, courtesy of the Municipal Council of Elders.


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More than 80 percent of Issy’s households are connected to broadband Internet.



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Australia’s national initiative is the biggest broadband- driven stimulus yet.


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When Australia finally announced its long-awaited and much debated superfast National

Broadband Network (NBN) on April 7, it wasn’t really big news. Neither was Prime Minister Kevin Rudd describing it as the biggest infrastructure project in the country’s history. The big news was that Australia is the only government in the world that has a multibillion-dollar economic stimulus package centered on the creation of broadband infrastructure.

Rudd announced the establishment of the NBN, admitting that Australian broadband is lagging and that a super-fast national network is the only way to “turbo-charge Australia’s economic future.” The country will invest $30 billionUSD over the next eight years for broad-band infrastructure.

Broadband a High Priority

The network will connect 90 percent of homes, schools and businesses at 100 Mbps — 100 times faster than current speeds. It will be deployed using next-generation technologies, like optical fi ber for urban and regional towns, and wire-less and satellite technologies for remote and rural parts of the country. It will be Australia’s fi rst national, commercially built and operated, wholesale-only, open- access broadband network.

No other government has given so much attention to creating a broad-band infrastructure, though many have announced larger economic stimulus packages.

At $30 billion, Australia’s broadband stimulus package is actually greater than its nontechnology stimuli ($29.3 billon) that has been announced.

For example, of the $787 billion stimulus the United States announced, a little more than $7 billion has been allo-cated for broadband infrastructure. Out of Canada’s $43.6 billion stimulus pack-age, investments in broadband account for $225 million.


BY INDRAJIT BASU

AUSTRALIA

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Similarly, while China, Japan and the UK also announced large economic stimulus packages ($586 billion, $154 bil-lion and $47 billion, respectively), they haven’t allocated any investments solely for improving or creating broadband infrastructure.

“Expenditure on broadband infra-structure is either missing or inadequate on stimulus packages of all governments around the world,” said Leonard Waver-man, the author of the Connectivity Scorecard, who’s considered one of the most infl uential men in the global tele-com industry.

“I would spend more on communica-tions compared to highways and bridges. Broadband is also construction, but it is not a focus anywhere,” he said. “We need information highways, not just the auto-bahns. And now is the time to do it.”

Ilkka Lakaniemi, head of global polit-ical dialogue and initiatives at Nokia Siemens Networks, has similar ideas.

“All the economies are facing deep reces-sion, and governments across the world are adopting at least what seems like old-fashioned Keynesian policies of using government spending to kick-start econ-omies to get out of the recession,” he said.

“However,” he adds, “the message from the Australian government’s decision to roll out the National Broadband Network is crystal clear: We should be investing for the infrastructure of the 21st century and not the infrastructure of the 20th century. And that is ensuring that [infor-mation and communication technologies] is top of mind of governments when they roll out their economic support plan.”

Hotly Debated

The NBN’s course has hardly been smooth politically. It was fi rst mooted by the previous government in 2007, and since then suffered much debate and critical analysis.

The initial plan to fund the network — selling part of the government’s stake in the country’s largest telecom company, Telstra, and dipping into the govern-ment’s Future Fund — was termed by

critics a “smash-and-grab raid” on the savings of future generations. Doubts also circulated about whether the net-work as it was planned would reach the remote rural regions.

However, according to Sen. Stephen Conroy, minister for broadband, com-munications and the digital economy, the rural and regional parts of Australia will be big winners from the new broad-band network.

“The NBN will deliver on our com-mitment to provide broadband speeds of 12 Mbps to all Australians, no mat-ter where they choose to live or work,” Conroy said. “Under this plan, the NBN will provide next-generation wireless and launch next-generation satellites to link all premises in regional, rural and remote Australia. This level of service is above and beyond our com-mitment and a vast improvement on the services left behind by the previous government.”

Building the Network

The new network will be built and operated by an ad hoc company estab-lished by the Australian government to carry out the project, and the govern-ment will be the company’s majority shareholder. Rollout will start next year and will be funded initially with $3.4 billion from the government, the Build-

ing Australia Fund and Aussie Infra-structure Bonds.

The rest of the fund will come from private-sector investment in the com-pany and additional government money. The government will sell down its inter-est in the company within fi ve years after the network is built and fully operational, consistent with market conditions, and national and identity security considerations.

Instead of the free-market, private-enterprise approach initially envisaged, the Rudd government has decided on a public-private partnership model.

Telstra Corp. also would be allowed to take part in the NBN, said Conroy.Telstra, an erstwhile government-controlled company that was privatized fully by the previous government in 2006, had failed to meet the new government’s criteria, and was excluded from the broadband project when it was in its ini-tial planning stages.

The most tangible benefi t of the network, Conroy said, is that it will on average support 25,000 jobs annu-ally, over the life of the project and 37,000 jobs after it has been rolled out in eight years.

Besides, the NBN’s investment also is the biggest reform in telecommunica-tions in two decades because it delivers separation between the infrastructure provider and retail service providers. This means better and fairer infra-structure access for service providers, greater retail competition and, above all, better services.

Indrajit Basu is the International Correspondent for Digital Communities.


“The message from the Australian government’s decision to roll out the National Broadband Network is crystal clear: We should be investing for the infrastructure of the 21st century and not the infrastructure of the 20th century.”Ilkka Lakaniemi, head of global political dialogue and initiatives, Nokia Siemens Networks

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Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced

the development of a national, multi-billion-dollar broad-

band infrastructure, which he said would

turbo-charge the economic future.

Development of the infrastructure will begin in July and

will provide rural and remote areas with

high-speed Internet.



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Join the discussion at digitalcommunities.com/blogs!

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In the Trenches:Carl DrescherIT AdministratorCity of Tucson

blogs on technology trends and their impacts on the provision of government services.

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MuniGov2.0:Bill GreevesDirector of Information Technology County of Roanoke

blogs on pushing the Web 2.0 envelope through the exploration of its concepts and technologies to improve local government collaboration and communication.


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come to understand the challenges of the broadband economy and are taking conscious steps to create an economy capable of prospering in it. They are not necessarily big cities or famous technology hubs. They are located in developing nations and industrialized ones, suburbs and cities, the hinterland and coast.

The good news is that, while the broadband economy presents an epic challenge to communities, it also hands them a powerful new competitive tool. Beginning in the 1990s, carriers deployed the local networks that most of us think of as “broadband” — DSL, cable, satellite and wireless — within neighborhoods, towns and cities. At the same time, the costs of computer software and hardware — especially data storage — plummeted in obedi-ence to Gordon Moore’s famous law that microchip storage capacity dou-bles every 18 months. Through local broadband, individuals, small busi-nesses, institutions and local govern-ments have gained access to worldwide information resources and a broad range of tools to connect both globally and locally. In the 1970s, these were the exclusive province of multinational corporations and major institutions. Today they are as close as the computer on your desk or the mobile device in your pocket.

Today broadband offers every com-munity the opportunity to move from the periphery to the center in economic terms. It creates new kinds of companies like Yahoo and Google — even whole new industries. It enables local compa-nies to be global exporters — including the export of skills and knowledge that were never before transportable across time zones or national borders.

It can ensure schools in remote regions and inner cities have access to the latest

information tools and reference sources. It can link local health-care providers to leading medical centers and local law enforcement to national information grids. Individuals and businesses can go global in search of low-cost, qual-ity vendors, and Web-based tools can increase community involvement.

By boosting the economic and social well-being of commu-nities, broadband can reduce the incentives for young people to move away in search

of opportunity and a better quality of life. Paradoxically it can play a key role in giving commu-nities a sustainable future in our ever-more connected world.

But broadband is no magic bullet. Technology alone will not create a pros-perous and inclusive economy, which is the foundation for everything else that makes a community healthy and vital. Intelligent communities work long and

hard, in many different ways, to adapt to the challenges of the broadband economy. Some are recovering from economic crisis and have more plans and hopes than tangible results to show.

Others are well on the way toward ambitious goals and have a record of achievement to display. And some far-sighted communities never let crisis overtake them in the fi rst place, and made the right choices and investments in time to ben-efi t from the emergence of the broadband economy.

Robert Bell is a co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum,

www.intelligentcommunity.org. This article is excerpted from the

book, Broadband Economies: Creat-ing the Community of the 21st Centuryby Robert Bell, with contributions from John Jung and Louis Zacharilla, available on Amazon.com.

Today broadband offers every community the opportunity to move from the periphery to the center in economic terms.


CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14

Broadband in the Local EconomyThe following are some of the benefi ts communities can reap in the broadband economy.

• Create new companies and industries.• Empower local companies to be global exporters.

• Enable export of skills and knowledge. • Provide schools with access to the latest information.

• Link local health care to leading medical centers.

• Connect local law enforcement to national data grids.

• Allow local businesses and individuals to go global in search of low-cost, high-quality vendors.

• Strengthen community involvement with Web-based tools.



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CONSIDER THEBUCK PASSED.

Government & Education Solutions

Copyright © 2009 Qwest. All Rights Reserved.

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Other than his resolve to usher in a new era, a signifi cant contribu-tor to Barack Obama’s sweeping

victory in the presidential election was his ability to effectively use technol-ogy to reach out to voters. Harnessing the power of digital technologies, par-ticularly the Internet, Obama garnered unprecedented support for himself in the election. But he continues to seize the medium to make his government more accessible and transparent, and thus, sweeping the current popularity charts.

Yet as Obama delivers his weekly video addresses to the nation via White House.gov or third-party sites like You-Tube, an uncomfortable fact is that nearly half of all Americans can’t watch his speeches on the Internet. Not that they don’t want to, but because they lack Internet connectivity.

According to several recent sur-veys, the U.S. is falling behind in the global broadband penetration race. Far too many Americans lack broadband access, depriving them of the resources

they need to compete in today’s global economy.

The average broadband speed for American residents, for instance, is 5 Mbps, compared with 63 Mbps in Japan and 49 Mbps in South Korea. And according to the Information Technol-ogy and Innovation Foundation’s 2008 ITIF Broadband Rankings, 43 out of every 100 American households lack high-speed Internet connectivity.

Consequently, regardless of claims to the contrary by the FCC and many others, the digital divide in America is widening and will continue to grow unless some real changes are made.

But in some areas, the picture looks rosy. Take the Connectivity Score-card 2009 that measures the extent to which governments, businesses and consumers use connectivity technolo-gies to enhance social and economic prosperity. According to this report on information and communication tech-nologies (ICT) penetration and usage in the business arena, the U.S. leads in

business excellence connectivity. “The strong performance of the U.S. in the Connectivity Scorecard is a surprise,” the report said.

The U.S. lags behind many coun-tries in residential PC penetration and has lower mobile penetration than Europe (although actual mobile usage as measured in “outgoing minutes” is very high).

“Even as the U.S. scored consistently well across the board, especially in the business domain, where the weighting is heavy, the country is considerably weak in consumer infrastructure, falling a long way behind other lead-ers,” said the Connectivity Scorecard’s author Leonard Waverman, fellow of the London Business School and Dean of the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary.

“Besides, 3G penetration and broad-band penetration is particularly mod-erate by standards of other industrial nations,” he said, adding, “If the U.S. scored as high as Korea on 3G and

Experts bemoan the state of broadband in the U.S.

BY INDRAJIT BASU

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broadband penetration, its overall score would have been far higher.”

Connectivity Scorecard 2009 found some bright spots in the U.S.’s con-nectivity scenario, but the Interna-tional Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) Measuring the Information Soci-ety — ICT Development Index for 2009, released in February, showed disap-pointing results. Though all but one country improved their scores over the fi ve-year period (2002-2007), a notable absence in the top 10 is the U.S., which ranked 17th in 2007, according to the study.

“Although gaining on both access and usage, the United States has not yet reached the same high ICT penetration levels as several European countries,” according to the ITU’s report. “In the United States, for example, 62 percent of households had Internet access in 2007, compared to 79 percent in Sweden.”

Particularly disturbing is that the U.S., which was once at the forefront of broadband penetration and ICT-related advancements, is far behind Europe and even still-developing Korea, all of which started their journeys down the ICT highway much later.

With the exception of China, all top 10 countries in the ICT Development Index are European.

Within Europe, too, there were a few surprises as Nordic countries emerged as the most advanced in ICT use. Swe-den, for instance, topped the ICT


Similarly Denmark and Norway gained on almost all facets of ICT

— such as fi xed broadband, household Internet access, mobile penetration, etc. Even Iceland, with no mobile broad-band availability, managed to stay on the top 10 list.

In terms of ICT advancements, par-ticularly notable is Korea, which was second in the ICT Development Index, gaining the most among all countries. According to Susan Teltscher, head of the ITU’s Market Information and Statistics Division, Korea reached that position mainly by improving its intensity of broadband use. During the past few years, Korea has increased its broadband penetration signifi cantly and comes in second globally, after Japan, in mobile broadband penetra-tion, according to the ICT Develop-ment Index.

Development Index. This technology-savvy country — the largest in the Nor-dic region in population — made strong gains in ICT adoption, particularly the Internet.

Sweden was ranked as the No. 1 global economy in 2002 and 2007, according to ICT’s development index.

Following the Leaders

The International Telecommunications Union’s 2009 ICT Development Index ranks countries based on fi ve criteria: fi xed line penetration, mobile cellular penetration, international Internet bandwidth per Internet user, the proportion of households with computers and the proportion of households with Internet access. Sweden leads its international counterparts with 8.67.

Rank Access Rank AccessEconomy 2007 2007 2002 2002

Sweden 1 8.67 1 7.68Luxembourg 2 8.60 11 6.68Hong Kong 3 8.53 7 6.86Iceland 4 8.48 3 7.40Netherlands 5 8.42 4 6.90Switzerland 6 8.39 12 7.27Germany 7 8.53 7 6.62Denmark 8 8.33 2 7.47Macao, China 9 8.21 21 5.86United Kingdom 10 8.16 8 6.82Singapore 11 8.06 13 6.54Norway 12 7.89 6 6.90Taiwan, China 13 7.63 10 6.73South Korea 14 7.48 9 6.82Canada 15 7.43 15 6.34Ireland 16 7.40 22 5.82Austria 17 7.35 18 5.97Italy 18 7.33 23 5.74Australia 19 7.24 19 5.97Finland 20 7.23 14 5.82Belgium 21 7.23 17 6.01United States 22 7.20 16 6.21

Source: International Telecommunications Union

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“Clearly western and northern Europe is going ahead of the U.S.,” said Teltscher. “And the U.S. is not among the top 10 partly because, in some areas such as broadband penetration and household Internet access, it hasn’t reached the same penetration rates as some of the European countries.”

The other reason the U.S. is lagging, according to ITIF’s latest report, The Need for Speed: The Importance of Next-Generation Broadband Networks, is that, notwithstanding the importance that has been given to boosting broad-band speeds, U.S. policymakers have largely focused on reducing the digital divide by increasing broadband avail-ability and adoption by most households and businesses. Although ensuring all Americans have access to the Internet, not enough importance has been given to making Americans capable of using the Internet effectively.

Ilkka Lakaniemi, head of global polit-ical dialogue and initiatives for Nokia Siemens Networks, the company that commissioned the Connectivity Score-card, agreed that more emphasis on technology skills is needed in the U.S.

“The main lesson that comes out of the Connectivity Scorecard 2009 is that the U.S., in order to get the most ben-efi t out of the ICT infrastructure, hasn’t focused enough on skill as well as on the technology side, and must do so now,” he said. “In the case of the U.S., the con-sumers do not have the same skills and assets that Japan or Korea have.”

In other words, even if U.S. technol-ogy usage is broad-based, it doesn’t have as good a consumer-facing infrastruc-ture, such as broadband and 3G net-works, as Japan and Korea.

That’s why “the $7.2 billion allot-ted to broadband in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is not enough,” said Waverman. “The U.S. needs to do much more. And now is the time to spend on improving ICT infra-structure because although the bang for each buck spent on non-ICT infrastruc-ture is greater, America needs to be investing for the infrastructure of the 21st century.”

However, ITIF said what’s been allo-cated should be spent judiciously. “Given the relatively limited funds allocated to broadband in the stimulus package, we believe that the most effective use of these funds is to support the deploy-ment of moderate-speed broadband to homes or businesses in the underserved areas, and not be used to subsidize higher speeds in areas where homes can already subscribe to broadband,” ITIF said in its report.

It added that deploying next-genera-tion broadband will not only have “pro-foundly positive benefi ts” for consumers, businesses, academic institutions, but also society in general.

Next-generation broadband can also solve one of the U.S.’s biggest problems

— unemployment — better than any other stimulus. “As other countries race toward average download speeds

in excess of 50 Mbps, the time has come to develop a comprehensive strategy for the deployment of a ubiquitous next-generation broadband network,” the report said. “Deploying next-gen-eration broadband to 80 percent of U.S. households that currently lack it would create approximately 2 million new or retained, direct and indirect jobs in the United States.”

Indrajit Basu is the international corre-spondent for Government Technology’s Digital Communities.


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I recently attended a national confer-ence of local government offi cials in which I heard a county manager talk

about how it’s time to move beyond the “illusion of inclusion.” Specifi cally he was alluding to the common practice of gov-ernment offi cials collecting public com-ment on various issues — like rezoning, budgeting and major policy initiatives

— all the while knowing the key decisions had already been made. It really struck a chord with me. During my time in state and local government, I too was guilty of propagating the charade, knowing all I really wanted was the political fi g leaf that came from saying I had run a “par-ticipatory” process.

It’s a dangerous and self-serving prac-tice that’s fortunately becoming more diffi cult to maintain as Web 2.0 and social networking technologies work their way into people’s day-to-day lives. The changes brought forth by these tools is the very point that county man-ager was making. As people take the opportunity to connect with one another, express their opinions and make them-selves heard well outside of offi cial pub-lic comment channels, the offi cials who routinely play the “expert card” and choose to ignore the voices of interested parties risk losing touch with those they are sworn and paid to serve.

Ignoring the general public is bad enough, but governments even ignore one another. The federal government ignores the states; in turn, states ignore their counties, cities and towns, who also ignore one another. That’s one of the reasons the Digital Com-munities Digital Infrastructure Task Force recently wrote a white paper

Viewpoint

Moving Beyond the Illusion of Inclusion

ited resources may not be a priority to a neighboring community. Confl icting pri-orities can make collaboration diffi cult. But if governments don’t accept the chal-lenge, they run the risk of being overtaken by citizen-driven self-help systems that make government less relevant. For many, it’s a case of “my system meets my needs and so it’s something for which I will pay.” The next town, adjacent county or neigh-boring state likely will have a slightly different view of priorities and will have established a different support system. The diffi cult question becomes, “Who is willing to change in order to share?” It’s

an important question, but only to those inside government.

For that singular group of taxpay-ers who are residents of the city, county and state, there’s a growing realization that often they are being asked to fund duplicative or unnecessarily redundant systems. Perhaps at one time they may have been necessary for individual governments to maintain control, but now many of them can and should be combined — if not done away with completely.

BY TODD SANDER | DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL COMMUNITIES

Viewpoint


titled Opportunity in Crisis: Consoli-dation, Collaboration & Cooperation in Local Government. It highlights a few examples of governments work-ing together to share their strengths and pool their resources to improve service delivery. And it covers some compelling reasons why a shift toward a collaboration or shared servicesmodel makes increasingly more sense.

To fully embrace a collaborative strat-egy, however, requires strong leadership, informed decision-making, a focus on execution and clear communication. The challenge doesn’t lie with technology, but rather with those who are worried about the implications of a shrink-ing work force, the need to develop new skill sets with new responsibilities and the potential impli-cations for traditional structures like employee union agreements.

The success or failureof any collaborative effort is largely deter-mined by whether pub-lic employees are willing to take up the challenge of change and break down historical barriers that support orga-nizational individuality at the expense of the common good. Ego and turf have simply become too expensive to protect and maintain.

This isn’t to suggest that collaborationor consolidation efforts aren’t without real challenges. Local government is about local control. Something that’s a priority in one community and deemed worthy of receiving a fair portion of lim-



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As governments accept the challenge of becoming more fl exible and provid-ing more affordable service, it’s possible

— at least in some areas — the days of big, single-purpose stand-alone systems may be over. Disk space, bandwidth and computing power are shifting from asset investments to commodity purchases.

“People both inside and outside gov-ernment — especially Generation X and Generation Y — are incredibly frus-trated by being able to use lightning-fast apps [at home] like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook that don’t even live on their hard drives, while the gov-ernment and other large organizations still operate clunky PCs, space-limited e-mail accounts and sluggish e-mail servers,” said Dan Munz, a project man-ager for the National Academy of Public Administration Collaboration Project.

As the public becomes more familiar with Web 2.0 technologies and their

The success or failure of any collaboration effort is largely determined by whether public employees are willing to take up the challenge of change and break down the historical barriers that have supported organizational individuality in favor of a greater common good.

effective deployment through popular social networking sites, expectations for electronic interaction continue to rise. This places a greater burden on government to create service delivery systems and interfaces that meet those expectations. Government will need to keep pace in order to satisfy constitu-ents and attract a new generation to public service. The historical approach to technology acquisition and imple-mentation is simply too complicated and expensive to continue. The answer for local government is further consol-idation, collaboration and cooperation.

However, perhaps the most impor-tant point made in the white paper is that any collaboration effort begins with the willingness to reach out to those around you and honestly listen to them. It takes time and, admittedly, sometimes you will hear some goofy stuff; but you also may fi nd kindred spirits who share the same goals and desires you do and who are willing and able to contribute to your success — if only you ask and are willing to listen. And maybe the biggest benefi t is that during these trying fi nancial times, it doesn’t even cost much.




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Invite the people back into government.microsoftgovready.com



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Digital Communities Magazine June 2009PCIO_AugTemp.indd 8 7/21/08 12:49:03 PM DDCMag_Jun09.indd...

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