March 2009

Does America Need Universal Broadband?

The biggest problem with broadband service in America is not a lack of availability, it's a lack of competition. Most users have only one or two options for service, and while prices have come down slightly, they are still relatively high for Americans who feel increasingly pinched. A Pew study found an average monthly broadband bill of $34.50, down 4 percent from the previous year, but it also showed a gradual migration away from cable service, which tends to be faster and more expensive, to cheaper and slower DSL service. So the broad language in the stimulus law could end up defining an "underserved" area as simply an area without enough competition to make service affordable. Granted, there's plenty of room for skepticism here. With ambiguously written legislation cramming billions of public dollars down the throats of multiple government agencies with a mandate to spend the money quickly, the potential for confusion, waste and abuse is high. Nevertheless Derene is still cautiously optimistic, since the need for universal broadband adoption is actually far more pressing than even most public policy wonks understand. Without widespread broadband adoption, many other federal technology projects cannot move forward efficiently.

Rural Broadband At A Glance

Depending on the ultimate goal of universal Internet access, the distinction between individual access and household access can be important. The gap in Internet use between rural and urban households (9.3 percentage points) is wider than the gap between all rural and urban individuals (6.5 percentage points). Policies encouraging broadband access generally adopt either an implicit individual or household approach, where the policy addresses one population directly with only secondary efforts directed at the other. If, for example, the policy goal is to improve educational opportunities for school-age children, a program that improves in-school broadband access may be more cost-effective than one designed to improve broadband access to households, although such a program may also spur household adoption.

One Step Off The Superhighway

President Obama made his first major push for the Web this month when he signed off on the stimulus bill, which includes $7.2 billion to bring high-speed Internet to rural America. But some critics say the administration's plan largely overlooks the biggest group of disconnected people: the urban poor. One provision in the stimulus plan could provide about $250 million for service and training in urban areas. Some of that money is likely to go toward boosting efforts at community centers, but interest groups say the amount is not enough to help an estimated 21 million low-income people get online. Access isn't the issue for them. In many of the nation's cities, residents have more than one option for service providers. What many do not have is the money to hop on the information superhighway.

Everybody Get Your DUNS! And Why Grants.Gov Needs An Extreme Makeover.

As the Washington Post recently observed, the Obama Team keep running into the unexpected brick wall of finding that the Bushies did little to upgrade the government technology they inherited from the Clintons. So they keep assuming they are going to be able to do all this stuff which is utterly routine these days, only to discover that before they can launch they must simultaneously invest in needed technology and decide whether or not to build on the primitive, dead-end stuff they inherited. And so it goes for Grants.gov. I have no doubt this was cutting edge back when they put it together in 1999. And I expect that it's mission is further complicated by the need to comply with a whole host of laws around giving out government grants and maintaining federal databases, each developed by its own separate agency and using its own quaint rules and definitions. Which is why I recommend that Team Obama ditch the existing package and start from scratch. Don't try to build on Grants.gov. Create an entirely separate system for ARRA designed to meet the statutory goals of making it easy to apply, easy to use, easy to track money, and easy to define and collect metrics that show whether this stuff actually accomplishes anything. Oh, and for bonus points, make it customizable in a way that will let people tag information so they can use it for data collection and research purposes we haven't even thought of yet. Happily, all of this stuff is off the shelf technology these days.

Industry coalition launches health IT security plan

A coalition of more than 50 healthcare companies and technology vendors on Monday unveiled a common security framework designed to be a benchmark for safeguarding the privacy of electronic medical records. The Obama administration is encouraging broader use of electronic records in the United States with the aim of reducing medical errors, eliminating redundant testing and saving money overall. But patient privacy concerns, a rise in security breaches in information technology and a lack of widely accepted security standards have been stumbling blocks. The coalition's plan creates guidelines for addressing the security and regulatory aspects of establishing a broad network for the exchange of electronic health records.

NTIA: Coupon Waiting List Shrinks, But Only Slightly

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association says that over a million households who say they rely on analog television remain on the waiting list for DTV-to-analog converter box coupons, with over 600 TV stations having already pulled the plug on analog. NTIA is still waiting for the Office of Management and Budget to free up $650 million in converter box coupon funding so it can get 2.3 million households off the waiting list.

New ITU ICT Development Index compares 154 countries

The International Telecommunication Union's new ICT Development Index (IDI) compares developments in information and communication technologies (ICT) in 154 countries over a five-year period from 2002 to 2007. The Index combines 11 indicators into a single measure that can be used as a benchmarking tool globally, regionally and at the country level. These are related to ICT access, use and skills, such as households with a computer the number of Internet users; and literacy levels. The most advanced countries in ICT are from Northern Europe. The exception is the Republic of Korea. Sweden tops the new ITU ICT Development Index, followed by the Republic of Korea, Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland and Norway. They are followed by other, mainly high-income countries from Europe, Asia and North America. Western and Northern Europe and North America are the regions with the highest IDI scores, and most countries from these regions are among the top twenty ICT economies. Poor countries, in particular the least developed countries, remain at the lower end of the index with limited access to ICT infrastructure, including fixed and mobile telephony, Internet and broadband.

The Brief but Glorious Life of Web 2.0, and What Comes After

Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an 'architecture of participation,' and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences. It's a network in permanent beta. Web 2.0 theory is a web. It's not philosophy, it's not ideology like a political platform, it's not even a set of esthetic tenets like an art movement. The diagram for Web 2.0 is a little model network. You can mash up all the bubbles to the other bubbles. They carry out subroutines on one another. You can flowchart it if you want. There's a native genius here. Like many important concepts, Web 2.0 doesn't have a hard boundary, but rather, a gravitational core. You can visualize Web 2.0 as a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles, at a varying distance from that core.

ICANN President Twomey Announces Departure at end of year

Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers President and CEO Paul Twomey will not seek renewal of his contract and will move on from ICANN at the end of 2009. Twomey was named CEO and President in 2003, after serving, for 4 years, as the Chairman of ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). He oversaw the growth of an organization that has become the primary coordinator of the Internet's global address system.

Cyber review underway

John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism: "National Security Council and Homeland Security Council are presently conducting a 60-day review of the plans, programs, and activities underway throughout the government that address our communications and information infrastructure (i.e., cyberspace). The purpose of the review is to develop a strategic framework to ensure that our initiatives in this area are appropriately integrated, resourced and coordinated both within the Executive Branch and with Congress and the private sector. The review will be completed by the end of April 2009. At that time, the review team will present its recommendations to the President regarding an optimal White House organizational construct to address issues related to U.S. and global information and communications infrastructure and capabilities. The recommendations also will include an action plan on identifying and prioritizing further work in this area."

Benton

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