A Crowd-Sourced National Communications Census

My last tour of duty in DC was Chief Technology Officer at the Center for American Progress. One of the fun things I got to do was figure out what everybody else did, including my fellow Senior Fellows, the folks that generated most of the policy work, many of whom are now occupying senior posts in the new administration.

One of the most fascinating was Mark Lloyd. An experienced Emmy-winning television producer, communications lawyer, and community activist, Mark is the author of a well-regarded book about communications and democracy and numerous columns. He's currently at the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights.

The project Mark Lloyd was working on was a National Broadband Map to show our true communications capabilities. And, he wanted to crowd-source the map from community groups, supplementing that with census and other data from several different places to create a big mash-up. This was in 2005, around the same time Adrian Holovaty was thinking about chicagocrime.org.

I think the time is now ripe for this project, and when the new folks at the FCC asked me what I thought they should look at I pitched Mark's idea (they're reaching out to lots and lots of folks, which is a great sign). I asked for posting privileges here at Radar so I could pitch the idea to the Internet as well since I'm taking your name in vain as the folks that would make this happen.

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FCC discusses broadband: the job is a big one

Around the time I submitted a proposal on the White House's open government dialog site for local forums to implement high-speed networks, the FCC released a 77-page report (in PDF format) that casts some light on the proposal. Their report, titled "Bringing Broadband to Rural America: Report on a Rural Broadband Strategy," covers a huge range of ground (and retells a lot of standard stories, including the reasons for universal service in broadband and a history of public infrastructure efforts). Some of the impressions I got relevant to local forums are:

• Calls for cooperation between government and "community and local advocacy groups." These seemed to be defined as coalitions representing particular populations, such as minorities and the disabled. The report did not explicitly suggest, as my proposal does, that everyone within a relevant geographic area be invited to the table.
• A recognition that conditions in different areas vary widely. The FCC report mentions such conditions as population density, weather patterns, and income levels. Although fairly long, this section came nowhere near covering the complex collection of issues that communities have to take into account (my own proposal lists a few others). I believe that expert and local residents working together can iron out the needs of the community.
• An appeal for more information, particularly mapping. The report mentions a Congressional bill providing funding for that information. (This bill has been criticized, as mentioned in a comment to my previous posting on the local forum proposal.) But the task of accumulating the information needed to make cost-efficient network decisions is huge. To my mind, the task calls again for collaboration among residents.

  As an example of what residents could do, consider companies that provide data to web sites about response time and availability. To obtain this data, the companies have to visit the sites from many locations around the world; some companies have even contracted with ordinary Internet users to run these tests. Crowdsourcing can make everyone with an Internet connection a data provider.

The report suggests a number of policy changes that will facilitate network development. But it's clear that this country is very far from a plan that brings broadband to everyone. The job's too big; that's why I say communities have to take things into their own hands.

So check my proposal again. A few relevant paragraphs from the FCC report follow.

(pp. 29-31)

67 ...in order to be successful in coordinating existing federal programs concerning rural broadband or rural initiatives, it is critical that the federal government collaborate and coordinate with community and advocacy organizations in rural areas.

68 We know that community and local advocacy groups are an essential component to the success of deploying broadband in rural areas. Further, public-private partnerships can play a critical role in bringing broadband to rural areas. Community and advocacy groups and public-private partnerships can function as valuable information sources for local communities, businesses, and consumers in rural areas, and various groups have developed guidance on how to deploy broadband in those areas. For example, the Commonwealth of Virginia has produced an online "Community Broadband Tool-Kit" that provides step-by-step guidance on how a community can deploy broadband services. This tool-kit has information on broadband applications and case-studies from Virginia localities that have successfully deployed broadband facilities. Another group, called Connecting Rural Communities, publishes a guidebook that explains in detail how to bring broadband services to rural communities. The Michigan Department of Information Technology has released its own "Action Plan for Deploying Broadband Internet to Michigan Local Governments," which similarly details how developing goals is essential for building a broadband network.

69 The federal government should collaborate with these organizations and ones like them to fully understand the challenges in deploying broadband in rural areas and develop solutions that overcome those challenges. We suggest that the federal government continue to take a leadership role alongside individuals, groups, businesses and other governmental organizations seeking to fit together all the pieces needed to bring state-of-the-art broadband services to rural areas.