Include Evaluation in the National Broadband Plan: Benton Foundation, University of Illinois

The Administration and the nation's strongest, most motivated research units must join forces to conduct -- in a new way -- research on the impact of broadband combination of partners in Washington, DC and elsewhere.

The Federal Communications Commission's role, in part, must be to demonstrate the need for broadband deployment and adoption research, research that will be invested in:

• Identifying and collecting the right data on broadband, a
• Sharing data using the latest approaches and mechanisms from information science, and
• Depositing the data in a well-tailored data engine (data + analytical tools) for use by FCC staff, researchers, and various publics. This data engine will enable people to ask all kinds of questions of the same dataset.