February 2009

IBM plans to take advantage of the economic stimulus package by offering Internet services over power lines to more rural consumers. The economic stimulus law signed by President Barack Obama included $2.5 billion for the Agricultural Department to expand broadband service in rural America. IBM said its venture with International Broadband Electric Communications (IBEC), a company that provides broadband over power line (BPL) services, had begun to sign up Internet customers in rural parts of Alabama, Indiana, Michigan and Virginia and that it hoped to access more government funds. IBEC venture's service is aimed at remote and sparsely populated areas where advanced Internet services are not available, meaning the only competition would be traditional dial-up services which are even slower. IBM said it did not know how much government funds it could receive but that the venture would proceed regardless, and that it expects broader Internet use to stimulate the economy and help create more business opportunities in the long run.

The final $787 billion stimulus bill contains $105.9 billion for education, including $650 million for the federal Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program. Although encouraged by an increase of more than double its current funding level, ed-tech advocates said they were disappointed EETT did not receive the $1 billion it was slated to receive in earlier drafts of the package. In past years, EETT has been repeatedly targeted for cuts. "The funding provides a much-needed down payment toward meeting President Obama's vision that all students receive the benefits of 21st-century learning environments, but the final level of investment falls short of funding in the House and Senate bills, and far short of what is needed by our students to compete in today's digital age," read a statement from the International Society for Technology in Education and the Consortium for School Networking.

The primary goal of the EETT program is to improve student achievement through the use of technology in elementary and secondary schools. Additional goals include helping all students become technologically literate by the end of the eighth grade and, through the integration of technology with both teacher training and curriculum development, establishing research-based instructional methods that can be widely implemented.

Local activities include the support of continuing, sustained professional development programs and public-private partnerships. Activities also include: the use of new or existing technologies to improve academic achievement; the acquisition of curricula that integrate technology and are designed to meet challenging state academic standards; the use of technology to increase parent involvement in schools; and the use of technology to collect, manage, and analyze data to enhance teaching and school improvement.

The National Telecommunications Information Administration says consumers should be able to receive new coupons within weeks to help defray the cost of converter boxes for the nationwide switch to digital television signals. With President Barack Obama's signature on the economic stimulus bill, the government can clear its coupon waiting list of some 4 million households within 2 to 3 weeks. The stimulus bill contains tens of millions of dollars needed to restart the coupon program which was a major reason cited by lawmakers and Obama in backing the digital transition delay, which has been years in planning. At $40 apiece for those coupons, NTIA would need $168 million and several weeks to get all those folks off the list. But NTIA will not get access to the money immediately. It will have to wait as much as a week to start clearing the backlog, according to an NTIA spokesperson, because the money has to go through the appropriations process before NTIA can get access to it. "We still need to go through the regular process of going to OMB and getting an account number," said the spokesperson. "I believe it will take a week, or less, after the bill is signed if it goes through the regular process." That would make it mid-March before the list is tidied up, or just about the same time (March 14) that stations that did not pull the plug on or before Feb. 17--there are 641 of those--can start doing so if they have let the FCC and viewers know first.

On January 30, President Barack Obama revoked Executive Order 13258 of February 26, 2002, and Executive Order 13422 of January 18, 2007, concerning regulatory planning and review, which amended Executive Order 12866 of September 30, 1993. EO 13258 eliminated the vice president's formal role in reviewing agency regulations. EO 13422 amended the Clinton-era executive order (12866) on regulatory review that agencies relied on for the first six years of Bush's presidency. EO 13422 further politicized the regulatory process and threatened to prevent regulatory agencies from setting new standards that protect the public. EO 13422 has been criticized because it: 1) gave agency "regulatory policy officers" the ability to scuttle proposed regulations without the input of the public or agency experts and 2) granted the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) the power to review and edit agency guidance documents - a class which could include agency opinions, scientific documents, or memoranda and which, by definition, are nonbinding.