Good evening.  I’d like to thank Dr. Holly Carter for inviting me here tonight.  I see so many friends and current and past TIIAP grantees in the audience that it feels almost like one of TIIAP’s orientation workshops. This morning, you heard from Andrew Cohill of Blacksburg Electronic Village and Steve Snow of Charlotte’s Web. Tomorrow, you’ll hear from David Geilhufe from the Eastmont Computing Center in Oakland, California and Terry Grundwald from the North Carolina Justice and Community Development Center’s NCexChange Project in Raleigh, North Carolina. Sylvia Rosenthal, Barry Forbes, and Frank Odasz, among others – all good friends of NTIA – are on the program . . . so I feel very much at home here.

I’m tempted to call my remarks “Preaching to the Faithful,” but I think “In Search of the Holy Grail” is a more appropriate title.  All of us here tonight have a clear vision of the world we’d like to see.  That is, a community that is cohesive and strong, where citizens can help themselves through information resources.  Information technology can help us attain this vision, and community technology centers (or CTCs) are a key part of that process.  CTCs are playing an ever-more-central role, not only in empowering citizens and local institutions, but in helping to redefine those institutions and the way they relate to each other.

1. The Goals of TIIAP
And that’s what we’re striving for with our TIIAP grant program.  For those of you not familiar with TIIAP, it is the Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program administered by NTIA.  This program has provided matching grants for five years to non-profits and public entities that are bringing the benefits of telecommunications and information technology to underserved areas.

Within the next 90 days, I will be announcing the names of the newest TIIAP awardees – the Class of 1999. As always, the list will include a number of highly innovative community networks. And like the community networking grantees of the past five grant rounds, the 1999 TIIAP community networking grantees will be widely dispersed, and will represent an intriguing mix of urban and rural, inner city and suburb, east and west.

 I think that what distinguishes this year’s group of community networks from those of years past is not who they are as much as it is what they propose to do, what services they will deliver, what level of engagement and participation that will offer end users . . . in short, the way they will help to advance TIIAP’s policy goal of helping communities to realize both immediate and long-term benefits from information technologies.

This is an important aspect of TIIAP’s mandate, which is part of the vision of President Clinton and Vice President Gore to ensure that all Americans are active participants in the Information Society. TIIAP supports innovative and exemplary projects that can serve as models for using information infrastructure and information technology in the public and nonprofit sectors.

And I think we’ve done pretty well. Of course, it helps that astonishing changes in telecommunications technologies over the past decade – the development of spread spectrum technologies, the emergence of thin client applications, WebTV, video and audio streaming, MP3 and now MP4, net telephony, and the marketing of personal computers that deliver more processing punch than the mainframes that helped launch the Space Program – have made it possible for even the most modestly funded community networks to deliver services that would have been inconceivable in the 1980s.  It also helps that every day more than 52,000 Americans log onto the Internet for the first time.

II The Digital Divide

But even with this exponential growth in Internet use, and the plethora of new technologies, many Americans today still have no access at all to these information resources.  Most of you will recall that, in 1995, NTIA released its first study on telephone, personal computer, and Internet penetration in the United States, called Falling through the Net.  That report found that the poor, minorities, the young, and those less-educated were significantly lagging behind in connectivity, particularly in rural areas and central cities.

Last year, NTIA followed up with Falling Through the Net II, which looked at October, 1997, Current Population Survey (CPS) data from the Census Bureau.  Our second report documented the rapid growth of PC penetration and online activity in American households, but found that – even though more and more Americans were going online –  the gap between those with access to information resources, and those without, was widening.

In a few weeks, we will be releasing our third report: Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide.  This report will update our prior findings, but it will also include new information on how people are gaining access to, and using, the Internet. The report will look at how Americans choose to spend their time online; add important insights on subscribership “churn” on the Internet; identify where people access the Internet outside the home (at work, in school, at the library, at community centers); whether and why some people fail to achieve access at or outside of the home; and identify concerns about confidentiality online.

 Most importantly for CTCs, the new edition of Falling Through the Net will provide data, for the first time, on people who are using our community access centers.  It will examine what groups are using the public libraries, our schools, and our community centers.  This data should help us continue to target the neediest groups and provide access to those that are still unconnected.

A formidable amount of work remains to be done if we are to overcome the “digital divide” that still exists in America between the so-called information “haves” and the information “have nots.”  But CTCs are a critical component in breaching that gap.

III.   The Challenges Ahead

We have already seen how CTCs can breach the digital divide.  Some of TIIAP’s earliest grants were to visionary community technology centers: Plugged In introduced electronic networking into the troubled community of East Palo Alto, California, to address the needs of at-risk teens, adults in recovery from substance abuse, and community leaders, and stressed access, training, and support for individuals unfamiliar with information technologies. GrandNet in rural Northern Minnesota provided vital community connectivity to information resources for economic development, human services, and academic achievement. SEAkNet in Southeast Alaska provided residents of seven isolated communities with access to the Internet and many critical tools such as health information on Medline, information on obtaining permit and vessel files of the State Commercial Fisheries and Entry Commission, and an opportunity to overcome a bleak sense of geographic isolation.

The potential for community technologies is vast, and certainly eclipses any notions that we had in the early ‘90s about what people could do, or would do, with information tools.  Now, the challenge we face is defining community networks so that low-income and minority people will see these tools as essential to their participation in the community.

We know that economics, geography, linguistic and physical barriers are factors that perpetuate the digital divide.  But another key factor is that many Americans simply don’t yet see the online world as relevant to their day-to-day lives.  We need to assure them that information resources are key to their ability to engage with the community, to obtain services, and to find information.

Another challenge is using increasingly sophisticated technologies in ways that can clearly serve our communities. Providing a diverse array of information resources through the widest variety of access points (home computers, public access terminals, kiosks) is no longer a  goal for a successful and innovative community networking initiative, but rather a prerequisite.

 TIIAP proposals are becoming more sophisticated.  Increasingly, we are seeing proposals that use the terms like “standard” and “routine” to describe community networking initiatives that (1) reduce service access barriers through automated information and referral; (2) enhance service coordination and delivery through networked case management; (3) dramatically increase public safety agencies’ capacity to respond to local emergencies and save lives; and (4) creatively and seamlessly integrate health, public safety, lifelong learning, and cultural services.

More and more proposals now aggressively incorporate Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial data analysis to create robust networks that actually learn  – that allow service providers and public agencies to view maps of actual system usage and, in so doing, to “see” relationships among problems and groups in their communities that might otherwise remain obscure or hidden. This will help them adjust their modes of operation accordingly and provide more effective services in the future.

 TIIAP-supported community networks now put powerful and sophisticated tools into the hands of citizens.  Some examples include:

The State of Colorado’s Maps for People project, which puts GIS technology into the hands of planners so that they can more effectively help residents of rural Colorado by improving planning for transportation, outdoor recreation, weed management, tourism promotion, emergency service provision, and water management. This is a powerful, and replicable model of how GIS technology can be put to work in addressing a priority problem facing much of rural America: balancing economic development and population growth with preserving the rural quality of life and environment.

In Touch with Greater Lansing, a TIIAP project in the City of Lansing that created a seamless network among neighborhood Police Problem Solving Teams, providers of critical services, and low-income residents.  This project created a community-wide email system to link low-income residents to the police department and to service providers.  It also established an information referral database providing websites for each service provider, including the Lansing Police Problem Solving Teams.  Additionally, it used GIS Interactive Mapping technology to create monthly crime maps on the police department's website and give citizens access to the city's Building Safety and Code Compliance database to determine if their rental property is registered and to report unregistered or substandard housing.

Finally, the Neighborhood Knowledge Los Angeles (NKLA), a project of the University of California at Los Angeles, gives community residents the information tools they need to improve living conditions in low-income neighborhoods by allowing residents of rental housing to track neighborhood and property conditions and use this information to influence community development and housing policy. Users can view comprehensive information on a property at one time, rather than having to look at huge, multiple databases separately.

These projects delineate a new level of mutual civic responsibility among public institutions and underserved and unserved citizens. They put the same powerful tools in everyone’s hands – and in so doing, they democratize the job of managing the community’s resources and building its future.

 Does all of this add up to the Holy Grail? Probably not. But if you live in a community beset by rising levels of unemployment, exponential increases in demand for vital social services, shrinking financial resources, a shifting tax base, and demographic upheaval, then you should be excited about what information technology can do.  IT can help facilitate referrals and implement sophisticated case management, but it can also improve community planning and public administration.  In short, IT helps communities get a firmer grip on their future.

IV Addressing the Local and Global Communities

Going forward, we need to translate this excitement into concrete strategies not only for maximizing citizen access to the information infrastructure, but also to encourage all citizens to explore the online world.  One strategy is to help local governments face new challenges.  Local governments will have to think very carefully about issues of sustainability.  No longer are up-front capital costs the only cost for new technologies.  Local governments need to realize that continued maintenance and improvement is a daily process and expense. They’ll also need to focus on innovation and about reducing the bureaucratic barriers to creativity.  Finally, they’ll need to create strategic partnerships between local government and business, between public and private, and between government agencies and CBOs.  Local governments, in short, will need to work more closely and creatively with the kinds of organizations you represent.

Strategic partnerships become even more important as more and more data-intensive technologies like streaming audio and video are incorporated into our telecommunications infrastructure. The Federal government, along with local governments, need to pursue policies that ensure the availability of high-speed, broadband networks to all Americans. You understand this, and you can play a crucial role in helping your local agencies understand it.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from local government, we also need to be thinking about the global community.  Community technologies are serving as models, not only for our local communities and governments, but also for the world.  Last fall, I attended the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Plenipotentiary Conference in Minneapolis, which involved 147 countries from all over the world.  A number of TIIAP projects were there to demonstrate to other nations what you are doing with new technologies.   We received an incredibly enthusiastic response, and a lot of questions about TIIAP projects. As a result, NTIA is partnering this month with the World Bank and the Benton Foundation to host a roundtable discussion on international development in order to create an action plan for American businesses and organizations.

And at this moment, one of our 1998 TIIAP grantees, Dr. Neal Richman, director of the Neighborhood Knowledge Los Angeles project I mentioned earlier, is briefing officials in Copenhagen, Brussels, and Hamburg on technology outreach, community networking, and citizen empowerment issues. Neal sent an email letting TIIAP know that NKLA, a TIIAP-supported community networking project is the centerpiece of his presentation.

 Our community technology centers are among the best in the world, and we owe it to other nations to share the lessons we learned.  But there are additional ways we must think globally, as well as locally.  There are a number of global policy issues that are central to the future of community networking – from international issues, privacy, intellectual property rights, domain names, copyright, electronic commerce, to safeguarding the integrity of the Internet, increasing its bandwidth, and protecting children online.  If most of these issues don't touch community networking or the projects you’re involved with today, they certainly will tomorrow. For example, many community networking projects create information resources on a shared network.  Protecting the privacy of the individuals served by such networks is of the highest importance.

Conclusion

CTCs have made great progress, and we will continue to make progress, in connecting communities and empowering them through information technology.  And because we’ve had some successes, we should be in a position more easily to understand, accept, and aggressively confront the challenges we still face in the new century.  If the existence of the digital divide continues to vex us, then we have to be even more assiduous in devising mechanisms for reducing disparities.  If a disproportionate number in our community don’t understand the power of technology, then we need to be even more creative in developing information tools to mitigate real-life problems.

Thirty years ago, someone made a prescient comment about the potential for information technologies.  He noted that:

“There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today . . . that is, a technological revolution, with the impact of automation and cybernation . . . .  Modern man through his scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. . . . Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood.  But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this.”

That was Rev. Martin Luther King, March 31, 1968.

All of you here tonight are making significant strides in fulfilling that vision of a neighborhood and a brotherhood connected through technological genius.  Perhaps we will find the Holy Grail after all.

Thank you.