Government Technology

Against the tug of today’s digital economy, New York and Chicago public libraries are experimenting with two projects to take the Internet to the people by loaning Wi-Fi hot spots like books.

The Knight Foundation, a journalism and civic technology philanthropy, has awarded $500,000 to the New York Public Library system and $400,000 to the Chicago Public Library system to accomplish the task. New York and Chicago libraries, which represent two of Knight’s 19 winners, will attempt to bridge their city's Internet access gap with the hot spots in different ways.

Starting in New York, a pilot called “Check Out the Internet” will start in September to offer Wi-Fi hot spots to the public on an annual basis. It’s hoped that 10,000 low-income households will take advantage of the free service, thereby improving New York broadband statistics that report 27 percent of households are without access, according to a Knight release.

In Chicago, the hot spots are to be distributed under the “Internet to Go” project, which, instead of basing distribution primarily on income level, will make hot spots available based on neighborhood Internet usage stats -- areas with low Internet adoption will take precedence.

Technology is becoming the new religion, and the dogma is just as impenetrable. Issues of personal privacy, social equality, and economic policy are each day bound tighter to outcomes in the digital world.

As technology becomes a progressively more integral part of daily life, the stakes are raised in equal measure.

The broadband market is changing quickly, and America’s emotional investment in tomorrow’s winners and losers grows ever more entrenched. Google is disrupting the increasingly concentrated broadband market with Fiber, a brand of gigabit networks being built in Kansas City; Austin, Texas; and Provo, Utah.

Being an innovative tech giant, flush with cash, and also a newcomer to the broadband market is allowing Google to play by a different set of rules, and the existing providers are paying close attention. Fiber offers customers connection speeds sometimes 150 times faster than what they were getting, and at just $70 a month. The idea of being freed from the incumbent providers has captured the attention of the public at large, as thousands beg for Google to build in their cities.

In February, Google announced 34 cities where Fiber may build next, but experts are unsure of Google’s commitment to becoming a force that does more than just agitate the market. In the few areas Google does operate, though, they are forcing competition where previously there was none, and that was probably Google’s intention from the start, Mastrangelo said.

“That’s why Google excites people -- it gives them a choice and a really fantastic service,” she said. “It’s something that isn’t available from the competition, so they have a tremendous competitive advantage in the markets that they’ve entered.”

Town officials of Oyster Bay (NY) likely aren’t scoring points with transparency advocates after clamping down on how the town’s information is released through social networks.

But legal experts believe the more cautious approach is a good one for many local governments.

The Long Island town revised its information technology policy to prohibit employees from communicating official documents through social media applications without prior authorization, according to Newsday.

Although the move may slow interaction between residents and the town, Chuck Thompson, general counsel and executive director of the International Municipal Lawyers Association, felt the decision might help address one of the biggest issues local governments are currently struggling with -- disclosure requirements. For example, if a local government has a bond issue outstanding and sends information out in a way that might get to one investor before another, Thompson believes the US Securities and Exchange Commission may view that as a violation.

That's just one concern in a litany of other privacy laws and limitations a municipality may be subject to on both the state and federal levels. “There is good reason for a local government to control release of its information,” Thompson said. “Not so much to restrict the dissemination of the information, but to insure that it is disseminated properly.”

Residents of the Big Apple will have an easier time finding New York City’s laws online, under new legislation proposed by a handful of city council members.

Int. 149 requires New York City to post a complete copy of its city charter, administrative code and official rules on NYC.gov, Gotham’s official website. The data must be presented in a searchable format and updated regularly.

Sponsored by Council Member Brad Lander, who represents the 39th Council District in Brooklyn, the bill is a response to concerns that finding municipal laws are some of the most difficult civic information to find online.

For years state governments have partnered with publishers to update and sift through their jumble of constantly changing legal codes, charging fees for any annotations, section titles, chapter summaries -- and almost every alteration to make the texts coherent and digestible. But activists and civic hackers have argued that citizens are entitled to all law -- however it’s packaged.

For the state of Wyoming, high-speed broadband Internet access is more than a matter of convenience.

“This is part of the governor’s initiative to increase quality of life,” said the state’s CIO, Flint Waters. “We want to diversify our economy. In order to continue to expand the workforce and keep Wyoming students in the state, we have to increase broadband capacity.”

With access points located in eight communities and anchored at schools or state offices, the network will create more redundancy and reliability. Gov Mead’s (R-WY) proposal is intended to enhance private investment in broadband infrastructure without fear of the state as competition.

The state signed master service agreements with all statewide Internet Service Providers (ISP) interested in being a part of the network. Advanced Communications Technology (ACT), a company based in the state, was awarded two of the 100-gigabit backbone links.

CenturyLink, a national ISP, was awarded six of the 100-gigabit backbone lines. The $15.8 million initiative, projected to finish by Aug 30, 2015, is mostly backed by the state’s general fund with some education funding where the network is linked to school traffic.

A Q&A with Nebraska State Senator Dan Watermeier (R-Syracuse). State Sen. Dan Watermeier doesn’t have the kind of professional foundation most people would consider “technology-savvy.”

He’s a farmer by trade. But don’t let his background in agriculture fool you -- State Sen Watermeier is very much up on the latest tech trends and how they are going to impact the Cornhusker State’s future.

State Sen Watermeier explained his focus is on developing policy that enables Nebraska state departments to become more efficient through data-sharing and other high-tech amenities. And while he’s aware of some of the bigger national tech issues such as drone use and data privacy, he’s a firm believer in modernizing his state’s operations through technology before tackling other subjects.

Among other projects in innovation and data sharing between government agencies, the senator mentioned an upcoming next-generation 911 study that’s being done by the Nebraska Public Service Commission. He sees his biggest tech policy challenge in data security.

One of the central themes of the fifth annual Health Datapalooza conference in Washington, DC was how innovative approaches to data can help local public health agencies better target their limited resources.

Two panels of public health experts described some creative solutions they have developed to work around the fact that data coming from federal and state sources is often years old and not geographically meaningful enough.

Brian Castrucci, program director for the de Beaumont Foundation, which seeks to catalyze new thinking about public health innovation, said his organization has surveyed local public health officials in 18 cities and found a strong desire for more local data. “They need neighborhood-level data to inform policy,” he said. “It has to have the right level of geographic aggregation.” The data they get now to help target chronic conditions such as diabetes is not granular enough, he added. It doesn’t help them to have state-level data that is two years old.

Barbara Ferrer, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, said one of the biggest issues for her department right now is dealing with an opioid overdose epidemic. “The data we get from the state is three years old, and from the medical examiner confirming deaths is two years old,” she said. “I am looking for real-time data. We need it to influence programming dollars.” She added that there isn’t agreement on the need of public health departments at the local level having good access to data.

There is no reason those electronic media record feeds couldn’t happen simultaneously if there is agreement on which data should be sent where. “It is wasteful but better than no data access at all,” she said, “or waiting for others to decide when we are going to get access.”

[Commentary] Privacy isn’t dead, it’s just going through an identity crisis. As policymakers struggle to define a meaningful role for themselves in one of the most contentious areas of American politics, the advancement of digital technologies only makes the issue loom larger.

Each convenient new feature developed by Apple, Google or Facebook fuels a public conversation about the border between cutting-edge and creepy. Privacy is almost universally valued by humanity, but technology is advancing so quickly that people haven’t even had time to settle on a useful definition for the word, let alone a solution that everyone can live with.

One reason policymakers are struggling so much with emerging privacy issues is that the issues themselves are simply unprecedented. “It’s a huge challenge, because it becomes what lawyers call ‘a normative issue,’” Schwartz said. For practical purposes, Schwartz said, it is not wise to act as though privacy is dead, because the stakes are high. Vigilance is needed, he said, because the victim of ineffective privacy legislation is the public.

For the most part, policymakers don’t understand modern technology very well, Schwartz contends, and they’re not anticipating technological disruptions in society. There should be groups dedicated to imagining all the various scenarios that could arrive, he said, as is done in the intelligence community, because there will be disruptions and privacy is worth safeguarding.

As we become an increasingly data-based society, security breaches and the associated legal risks have escalated.

According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, 233 data breach incidents took place as of April 14, representing an increase of 18 percent over the same time period in 2013.

Companies like Target, Michaels and Neiman Marcus know firsthand the reputational and financial damage that occurs when customers’ private information is compromised. As a result, private-sector demand for data security and privacy professionals has grown exponentially. Today many large corporations employ a chief privacy officer (CPO) to manage data protection and privacy concerns.

In the public sector, however, only a handful of statewide CPOs exist. But as big data, Internet-based everything and mobile technology grow, the CPO role could become more commonplace in the public sector.

Instead of locking student data in the principal’s office, more school districts are moving it to cloud providers.

By sharing data with private companies, schools can improve student learning using data analysis tools. But on the flip side, privacy advocates worry that student data is not safe in the hands of schools or the third parties they contract with. “Across the board, students unfortunately don’t have the level of protection they need,” said Khaliah Barnes, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Student Privacy Project. Voices of concern seem to be getting louder.

A lawsuit filed in California accused Google of violating anti-wiretapping laws by scanning student email, a practice the company has since abandoned. At least 32 states have taken up student data privacy legislation this session. And policymakers throughout the nation had previously gathered in Washington, DC for a School Privacy Summit that addressed this matter. The issue of student data privacy has indeed sparked a national conversation.

Common Sense Media recommends three overarching principles for schools and policymakers to consider:

1. Students’ personal information should be used only for educational purposes.
2. Students’ personal information and online activity should not be used to target advertising to students or families.
3. Education technology providers in schools should have appropriate data security policies in place.