Local CIOs Strategize on Broadband Use (Contributed)

Chattanooga, Tenn., is known as the first gig city in the United States, thanks to its 10 gigabit speed Internet infrastructure, which is readily accessible to all city residents and businesses. It’s also where the Metropolitan Information Exchange (MIX) held its annual conference this year.

MIX is a close-knit association of CIOs from U.S. cities and counties with populations over 100,000. Gathering annually for over 51 years, members focus on sharing insights and cases from their own communities in order to build their collective knowledge and capabilities as leaders. Topics each year include: building robust data environments, operationalizing emerging technologies, modernizing core service areas, recruiting and retaining workforce, preventing and mitigating cybersecurity incidents and much more. 

This year, issues around broadband took center stage. Chattanooga’s public leaders described the journey to becoming and maintaining America’s first gig city. The keynote panel, with Mayor Andy Berke; James Ingraham, vice president of Strategic Research at EPB (one of the nation’s largest publicly owned electric power companies); Deb Socia, president and CEO of the Enterprise Center; Corinne Hill, executive director of the Chattanooga Public Library; and Dr. Mina Sartipi, director of the Center for Urban Informatics and Progress at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, discussed the challenges and benefits of having a city-owned broadband infrastructure. 

A key takeaway was the fact that fast, cheap and ubiquitous Internet for government, businesses and citizens in any community requires a shared development, deployment and operational strategy among public, private and nonprofit organizations. Another critical ingredient for success: shared cross-sector leadership is a must-have, not a nice-to-have, if local governments want to achieve their goals.   

In a plenary workshop, run by the Center for Technology in Government at the University of Albany, MIX CIOs discussed progress with broadband and wireless efforts across their respective communities, identified current thinking on the types of connectivity (i.e., fiber, wireless, 5G) and shared stories on how to navigate (or not) connectivity efforts across differing financial, organizational, geographic and political contexts. 

CIOs decided that discussing how broadband was used would be one of the primary objectives of the workshop, taking into consideration four categories of use: 

1. Organizational uses (i.e., internal department, agency, city, and county connectivity) 
2. Economic development uses (i.e., business, nonprofit, and special event connectivity)
3. Inclusion uses (i.e., government-operated public spaces, residential, and school-based connectivity)
4. Digital divide and underserved uses (i.e., connectivity in any locations where there are at-risk populations) 

For each of these categories, six maturity indicators along a continuum were assessed, ranging from not interested in addressing, to beginning phases of planning, to planning and executing broadband efforts, securing funding, developing policies and long-term financial and adoption models, and technical implementation.  

About three quarters of MIX members agreed that there was a high level of maturity and progress in organizational uses, with a 50 percent maturity level when it came to economic uses and a little more than half of a high level of progress and maturity for inclusion uses. Almost all the workshop CIOs agreed that addressing digital divide problems remained an ongoing challenge. More specifically, they identified infrastructure and adoption as issues, citing that provider business models did not support build-out in locations with larger underserved populations. Another problem: limited services that promote broadband adoption, such as digital literacy.  

MIX members noted that most broadband efforts do not originate from the CIO's office but are typically larger initiatives spearheaded by the mayor, manager or administrator. While these officials are the right champions, sometimes they focus more attention on the solution instead of the problem, strategy and approach.  

Workshop CIOs also identified the most important questions that should be addressed by a leadership team, before embarking on any broadband initiative:  

1. What is the problem we are trying to solve? 
2. What is the demand for connectivity? 
3. What is the type or category of the demand? (Uses)  
4. Who are the main stakeholders? 
5. Who should lead the effort and is this formal or informal leadership? 
6. What are the laws and regulations that prohibit and support a connectivity effort? 
7. What are existing assets or infrastructure that can be leveraged (and how)? 
8. What is the deployment funding model? 
9. What is the long-term sustainability model? 
10. What is the plan to make partners and stakeholders part of the deployment and operations? 
11. What is the plan for filling the need of the other necessary component (devices, building digital literacy)? 
12. What is the plan for the future, including obsolescence? 

Finally, what resonated from conference discussions was that any connectivity effort starts with the relationships that exist across sectors — it is the people, not the technology. In order to realize fast, cheap and ubiquitous Internet for government, businesses and citizens, there must be a strong team made up of public, private, and nonprofit leaders who have all committed to working in concert on this high-priority focus.  

About the author: Meghan Cook is the program director at CTG UAlbany, a research institute at the State University of New York at Albany that works with governments throughout the world to transform public services through innovations in management, policy and technology.