Government Technology

Mark Myers remembers his very first day on the job in January 2015 as the state of Arkansas’ CIO and director of the Department of Information Systems (DIS). “I was with Gov. [Asa] Hutchinson in the mansion, and he said, ‘Hey, Mark, you have got to get this K-12 broadband thing fixed,’” he recalled. Myers admits that at the time he knew very little about the Arkansas Public School Computer Network (APSCN), which provides connectivity to all of the state’s K-12 classrooms. He did some research and found that APSCN was averaging a pokey 5 kilobits per second (Kbps) per user. In contrast, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has set a K-12 Internet access target of 100 Kbps per student.

In 2014, the FCC made resources available to close the connectivity gap across the country by increasing its investment in K-12 broadband by $2.5 billion per year to a total of $3.9 billion annually. This should be sufficient funding to connect every public school classroom in America to high-speed broadband. With a goal of increasing the number of state school districts meeting the FCC Internet access target of 100 Kbps per student to 100 percent, Hutchinson directed DIS to upgrade APSCN to an all-fiber network.

The government organization charged with building the nation’s first high-speed data network for first responders says it will make its first contract award soon. It will likely happen in November, although no firm date is set. With an award on the $7 billion First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) program potentially just weeks away, first responders say that despite years of planning, they still have more questions than answers when it comes to the future LTE communications backbone. “How will this thing be deployed? What are the subscriber fees going to be? What will be the impact will be on the local budget? How will the network be controlled?” said Yucel Ors, federal advocacy program director for public safety at the National League of Cities. “There are a lot of unknowns still.”

Officially no one even knows who is in the running. FirstNet won’t release the names of bidders, under the rules of the federal procurement process. Unofficially, three groups say they have put their hat in the ring: AT&T, Rivada Mercury and pdvWireless. This alone is noteworthy. When the Federal Communications Commission auctioned public safety spectrum in 2008 it failed to receive a single viable proposal. Many wondered whether the 2016 procurement effort would draw credible attention from potential network builders. It has.

Before “open data” became a catchphrase for innovation, there was Data.gov, the first open data portal for federal agencies. Under the direction of President Barack Obama and the guiding hand of US CIO Vivek Kundra, the site went live in 2009. It was the first platform to deliver federal data to citizens, civic hackers, academics and anyone else seeking insights from government information.

In the beginning, it could arguably be described as an experiment. Yet its growth soon became an inevitability as the Obama Administration, along with bipartisan research and transparency groups, latched on to the site as a persuasive tool to drive policy with data. The site has gone on to publish more than 180,000 data sets from federal agencies, embracing a belief long held by successful companies like Google and Amazon that information supersedes the heated emotions and rhetoric of politics. It’s this idea that fueled the president’s 2013 executive order urging agencies to make open data a default practice. Since then, the White House has leveraged technology and data to find solutions to a host of pressing societal problems. Some of these prominent works have included the Police Data Initiative, which partners with police departments to publish crime data, the Opportunity Project, which publishes open data apps to assist citizens, and coordination of the National Day of Civic Hacking, an event that encourages data-driven hackathons in communities in all 50 states.

Change in government is slow. That didn’t stop a lot from happening in government during President Barack Obama’s two terms, including many technology firsts, but that’s to be expected, because the world changed a lot too. Chronicling President Obama’s tech legacy isn’t a matter of tallying everything he did, but isolating what he did differently from what another person in his position might have.

It was the impression left on the federal government’s culture that this president will be remembered for, said Jennifer Pahlka, Code for America’s executive director. “Ten years from now, I think the biggest impact...will be on leadership in government and how they think, more than anything else,” said Pahlka. “One thing that could have absolutely gone differently was the way in which he called on people from the outside to rescue HealthCare.gov. The fact that he so much stood behind that and was willing to back these outsiders, that I think was a turning point, and the fact that he learned the right lesson from it and decided to institutionalize it.” The president led on open data, cybersecurity and the creation of new government roles, but his greatest legacy lies in his constancy, said former Philadelphia Chief Innovation Officer Adel Ebeid. Backing programs he believed in and serving as a template that others could model themselves after, President Obama lived up to his charge as a spiritual leader.

The initial build-out of Kentucky’s broadband project, KentuckyWired, will take place soon in the eastern part of the state. This was welcome news to those who viewed the lack of broadband in the state as an inhibitor to businesses starting in or migrating to the area.

Kentucky has traditionally lagged on broadband availability with more than a third of rural residents lacking access to fixed advanced telecommunications. The network will consist of more than 3,000 miles of fiber-optic cable and more than 1,000 government and post-secondary education sites that will be connectivity points in communities for local Internet service providers to tap into for last-mile service to customers. They system is expected to be completed between March and June of 2019.

Just as a school teacher roots for his students, the Center for Digital Government is hopeful every two years that each respondent to its Digital States Survey will astound with reports of their technological feats. Though a competition of sorts, the Digital States Survey is more a showcase of state government's collective technology portfolio. And the outlook suggested by the 2016 survey is as strong as one would expect given the financial growth of the gov tech sector and the public's increasing interest in civic participation.

No states received a D or F, and just eight states landed in the C grade range. A growing number of states fill out the top of the curve compared to surveys past — 20 states earned a grade of B+ or higher, and a whopping 10 states earned an A or A-. States with a solid A grade are Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Utah and Virginia. Common trends among the A students were a strong focus on cybersecurity, shared services, cloud computing, IT staffing, budgeting and use of data.

In a move that will save Wisconsin taxpayers nearly $8 million annually, the state has renegotiated its contract with AT&T and its partners to provide higher broadband speeds at lower costs on the BadgerNet Converged Network (BCN), Gov Scott Walker (R-WI) announced on Sept 6. “The new broadband contract we’re announcing today dramatically improves the quality of service to users," Gov Walker said. “Schools and local governments throughout Wisconsin will have the ability to utilize this contract and potentially save money. Ultimately, this enhances the quality of education for our students, as well as the quality of local government services for our taxpayers."

BCN, which launched in 1995, is Wisconsin’s statewide network — it delivers Internet to all 72 counties by providing wide area network, Internet transport and video applications to state government and educational entities. Once all network upgrades and migrations are completed, capacity for BCN customers will exceed 400 gigabytes; currently installed bandwidth capacity is 90 gigabytes. The contract, effective Nov. 1, 2016, will offer current state agency subscribers and Technology for Educational Achievement educational agencies a 7 percent savings on their current service rates at 1.5 megabytes per second and above.

In Montgomery County (MD), public officials are assembling an arsenal of technology fixes to address the “homework gap,” the technology deficit that leaves some kids lacking the network access and devices they need to complete their schoolwork. “The Internet and broadband and cloud communications are integral to our society — our businesses, our neighborhoods, our personal lives," said Mitsuko R. Herrera, director of the ultraMontgomery Program in the county’s Department of Technology Services. "So the schools are developing curricula that are heavily Internet-based.” Citing research that shows some 70 percent of teachers assign homework that requires access to broadband, Herrera said not all students have an equal ability to tackle such assignments. “Some students have a robust Internet connection and a computer, but other students either have no connection at home, or they may be relying on a sibling’s smartphone, or they may do their homework at McDonald’s,” she said. “The county wants to ensure that all children have access to the Internet in order to further their education.”

The county is chasing that goal with a number of different means, forging partnerships with private industry while also leveraging its own existing fiber backbone. The county’s FiberNet infrastructure connects all public schools, libraries and government buildings — over 560 sites in all — making it the front line of broadband delivery for students who can’t access the Internet for schoolwork at home.

How is government enabling broadband? The state of Utah, the city of Austin, Texas, and Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida all offer compelling examples of the ways in which government at various levels is attempting to tackle the problem.

States, cities and school districts also are stepping up with a broad range of initiatives intended to make broadband more universally accessible. That’s appropriate, given the unique assets government can bring to the table. “They are working with the big picture, they can see all the players, and they may have monies they can leverage to support social and economic development through broadband investments,” said Colin Rhinesmith, senior lecturer at Simmons College and author of Digital Inclusion and Meaningful Broadband Adoption Initiatives.

Twitter unveiled a new feature to clean up the user experience Aug 18. But will the change mean more pressure for government social media managers, and what considerations does it raise for social media managers?

The newly released feature allows account-holders to activate a “quality filter” aimed at reducing post redundancy and providing more relevant and tailored content. Additionally users can now, or will soon be able to, change who they receive notifications from. Perhaps more important than how the public sector regards these tools, is the policies behind organizations' overall use of social platforms. Knowing when and how to disengage while allowing constituents to have a voice in the conversation is critical to an inclusive social campaign and something that should be outlined in an enterprise-wide policy.