Yesterday the Minnesota Broadband Task Force met in Sauk Rapids, Minnesota at Independent Lifestyles, a center for independent living and home to a new tech center sponsored by Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC). It was fun to hear about the MIRC project, to hear from a number of community members who spoke up about their experience with (and without) broadband and to get reports from the Task Force subcommittees about their various tasks.
Here are the full notes:
10:00- 10:15 Greetings and introductions; Approve minutes of February 14, 2012 meeting
20-25 people from the general public – some local folks involved with MIRC and other local programs; some from the telecommunications industry
We are gathering information to offer inform policy and find best practices.
10:15-10:20 Welcome by Independent Lifestyle
Independent Lifestyles http://www.independentlifestyles.org/ – serves anyone with any disability. We are consumer controlled – our government is 51 percent folks with disabilities. Staff members are on the road bringing services to a range of counties. So pleased to partner with MIRC/Blandin Foundation on our Tech Center: 10 stations, new equipment, adaptive solutions for folks with disabilities. Today you must be connected to the Internet – especially for folks with disabilities. For 22 years social isolation has been a top concern with constituents; broadband offers a route to reaching more people. It’s changing their world.
The center is also open to the public (8:30-4:30 M-F) and people are coming in. We’re very excited and find that the center is used. We have one-on-one support as well as scheduled classes.
Questions: Do you work with employers?
Yes – mostly vocab services and job skills training folks. We help with résumé writing. How to fill out a time card…
We serve 1,000-1200 clients per year. We have seen a new mix of people – and an increase of people since installing tech center.
Can people remotely access the system?
We have many people who can’t come in. We’re working on getting affordable access to folks at home. After expenses we have people living on $40/month so $25 for broadband is not accessible.
10:20-10:50 Public comments
PUBLIC COMMENT
10:50-12:05 Subgroup reports to full task force and feedback—15 minutes each:
Subgroup: Coordination Across Government Levels (Leader: Danna MacKenzie)
We weren’t as clear as we need to be on some charges.
- ID all level of government working on broadband (We have a starter list & context point)
- Create a public-facing knowledge base/primer of what’s going on (but thought there might have been overlap with other groups) with legislature
- Right of way
- Permitting
- Dig Once
- QUESTION – do these items still make sense?
- Our primary concern currently planning on next meeting
- Keeping congressional delegates in synch and informed
- Chair person is designated spokesperson – but maybe there are processes to keep each other informed – Diane can help with that.
- Keep task force informed on what else is happening in the state – make sure folks have comprehensive/timely list of events and happenings. Diane Wells will help with that.
QUESTIONS: Is there overlap with adoption and data gathering group?
Danna, Matt & Shirley should be in communication about potential overlap. That’s the reason for check-ins with monthly meetings.
Can task members look at the list provided to see if folks have contacts/names of potential key people/roles?
Subgroup: Best Practices/Incentives (Leader: Dick Sjoberg)
We’re collecting ideas for best practices and incentives. Last week Dick met with Dr. Greg Kline – we discussed best practices. He said MCTA is funding a study on that topic. Some professors will publish in 3 months a nation best practice for broadband report. MN has 96% coverage; in TX 72% have coverage.
Shirley sent in a starter file of best practices. We’ve talked with CenturyLink and the Cable industry too. If anyone else has an interest/knowledge on best practices, please let us know.
This group might come up with items that are actionable with legislature. The MHTA policy person will be helping as well.
Subgroup: Monitor/Understand Impact of FCC & PUC Decisions; Cost of Broadband (Leader: Gary Evans)
Primary charges are monitor/understand what’s happening with FCC & PUC and know how it might impact access in MN. We need to understand impact in detailed way – especially if we want to make recommendations. Also need to understand CAP funding.
Luckily we have some providers in the group that are helping. Our best approach is to reach out to folks who are already collecting this info and borrow from them to distill for the group.
All of us are members of associations; they have people who are monitoring this for us – so perhaps we can glean from our various associations to get a comprehensive view.
One of the biggest issues will be filtering – maybe we want to get an overview in Oct/Nov on USF and learn about the impacts. Maybe this could be an additional meeting/briefing/webinar.
Connect Minnesota has DC staff that is also looking into this and we can arrange to have a conference call back with Connected Nation. This might also be a topic for the Fall Broadband Conference. It might be helpful to plan to bone up before the Fall Conference.
Subgroup: State of Broadband (Leader: Matt Grose)
We want to ID data sources to help get info. Helpful to have Connect MN as a resource. We want to know where the underserve areas are. Want to get data on what applications require what speeds.
One big challenge will be finding efforts in the works now. Communication among the groups will be essential as we all try to keep up on our focal areas.
ID of levels of broadband satisfaction may be tricky.
QUESTION: Does anyone else data that we might want to track? Maybe we want to track elderly waivers. The E-Health Initiative does a lot of data gathering & surveying.
We will have field surveys done later this year through Jack Geller.
We are thinking to measure happiness and utilization of broadband – which may be less number specific. We have a need for something better – that measures consumer and business satisfaction with connectivity.
Subgroup: Broadband) Adoption (Leader: Shirley Walz)
Broadband adoption goal – MN wants to be top 15 in broadband adoptions (Internationally). We have a lot of information, so that’s good – but it does means going through a lot.
- ID public-private orgs working on broadband adoption
- ID report on public-private partnerships – maybe new things
- Calculate economic impact of broadband
- Take Advantage of existing resources/efforts
- Where are we falling short
- Track/evaluate to expand broadband use
- Serve as repository/toolkit for adoption
- Suggest legislation to support advance applications
It would be nice to have statistics at county level. Connected Nation has good info. Jack Geller has good info. But much info is on state, not county level. Reliability might be an issue/.
Do the providers have access to that kind of info? The data is protected under mapping/477s efforts.
There won’t be a one-size-fits all solution.
What deliverables could we create? Adoption isn’t necessarily about the technology; it may be through the training. One good example is the Digital Inclusion training from DEED/MIRC.
It would make sense to see what different states are doing.
Benton County found that service areas do not necessarily gel with county boundaries.
We might want to have a broader conversation with Jack Geller about how we might use the data he’s collecting and how can we find a home for this data collection so that it’s able to move forward.
JoAnne Johnson thought it might be $30,000-40,000 per county to get adoption stats per county.
It might not be about location so much as about demographics. But there might be structural barriers that are keeping that going in certain areas. We could make changes based on the info we get.
We really need to look at the compared to what? Issue. We can see the changes in Minnesota – but what has happened outside Minnesota? We need to be able to compare apples with apples.
It might be possible to talk to academia that has student who might be interested in looking at this for a low cost. Maybe there’s a Humphrey Institute student who would be interested.
12:05-12:30 Lunch
12:30-1:10 Presentation – Benton County’s MIRC Story
1:10-1:30 Continuation of subgroup reports to full task force and feedback
Subgroup: Locations (Leader: Bernadine Joselyn)
The challenge was to suggest places to meet. We have created a Google map using the brainstorm of places that were listed at our last meeting. We also took logistics into account.
April 17 – Dakota County – hosted by Dakota Future. Unisys is a potential host; need to confirm.
November 13 – meet in Duluth to coincide with Fall Broadband Conference.
December – back in the Twin Cities
Other possible locations:
Arlington Community Center ??
North Mankato?
St. Peter?
Deer River/ Leech Lake
Mora/ Kanabec County
Rochester with possible “virtual tour” of Winona efforts
The Committee will work to figure out details and select locations. TRF would be great but it is a long way from the Twin Cities. Although perhaps we can charter a bus. Also it’s important to get the viewpoints from various areas.
1:30-1:55 Public comments – PUBLIC COMMENT
1:55-2:05 Other business/Upcoming meetings
2:05-2:10 Closing comments/adjourn meeting