You are connected to event: WebJunction Themes: Custom High Contrast Terminal Notepad Green & Gold Sunrise Default Font Size: 14 18 24 30 36 42 48 54 60 72 84 96 Font Family: Arial Comic Courier New Helvetica Tahoma Trebuchet Verdana Background: Black Dark Blue Blue Green Dark Cyan Lime Aqua Olive Gray Dark Red Silver Red Fuchsia Yellow White Text Color: Black Dark Blue Blue Green Dark Cyan Lime Aqua Olive Gray Dark Red Silver Red Fuchsia Yellow White Scroll: . We also have with us Howard -- Howard Boksenbaum. He's going to give us his perspective on how the process works. Not as leading it, but as someone who was participating in it very intensely participating in it. Same with Pam Christman. She is now with the Rhode Island college, but she had been with ocean, and ocean is an organization that helps provide internet services to Universities, hospitals, government agencies, schools, etc., so because of her role with ocean, it made sense for her to be involved with the stakeholder engagement process around digital inclusion. And our last panelist is Anne Neville. I've known for Anne oh, my gosh, 10, 12 years, and Anne is now with NTiA, and she's running the state broad band initiative there, of which broad band Rhode Island is one of the projects. Anne is going to give us the national perspective on how it is that stakeholders are being engaged, and how Rhode Island compares and fits in to what others are doing. Jennifer, do you want me to continue on with the slides, or are you taking it back? >> You have the ball. >> OK. Super. So let me just give a quick overview of why we're doing this. The project that I lead with OCLC is building digital communities, and we have nine pilot communities around the country who are figuring out how do we end up with more of our community members who have access to information, communication technologies? Meaning, how do we make sure folks have low-cost access at home, how do we make sure we have public access, and how do we make sure they know how to use these tools? So this involves infrastructure, plus a lot of training, and personal one-on-one kind of assistance. As I've been working with these nine pilot communities, it has -- It became very clear that the first step in the building digital communities framework is the engaging stakeholders. And that's a challenge, because how does one even get started building -- Developing -- Figuring out who the stakeholders are? As I was working with the pilot communities and doing the research and found broad band Rhode Island, it made sense for us to learn from someone who has already done it. Because Rhode Island is a small state, they have about 1 million population, and as my son noted, that's smaller than Columbus, Ohio, where I live. So it makes sense for us to learn from them. BBRi, the broad band Rhode Island has many impressive qualities, but today we're going to focus on their stakeholder engagement. I encouraging you to ask a lot of questions in the chat, because Allison Walsh from BBRI is in the chat. The question she wants to hand off to Stu to answer verbally, she will, and those she wants to answer in the chat she will do so also. I would expect the chat is also going to be quite fabulous today. All right, Stu, I'm going to hand it over to you. >> Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to speak to everybody today. We are a small state, and -- But we have big ideas, and that's part of what we're going to talk about today. So I have a few slides, a few pieces of information that I'd like to pass across, but before I talk about our stakeholder process, specifically I just want to give you some context of how we got to this process. It's a very big picture, and we'll start to bring it down to a smaller picture. The biggest -- The best graphic that we could think of was these pathing converging, two paths converging. What were those paths? The first path was that I have the opportunity earlier in 2004-2007 to work on a specific project within Rhode Island regarding broad band. The reason I bring that up is because we had the opportunity at that point to engage stakeholders from across Rhode Island, and idea at that time was exploring the notion of, if we had a broad band statewide broad band wireless network, what kind of innovation could we spark having the first broad band wireless broad band network in the country? And it engaged a lot of stakeholders from across the same kind of sectors that will be -- We'll be talking about in the next few minutes. Fast forward from that point to the present, or to 2009, and the federal government essentially created an entire policy initiative about broad band, including the broad band data improvement act, help fund projects for the American recovery and reinvestment act, and published an incredible document called the national broad band plan, which if you haven't seen, I would encouraging you to look at. That gave us the opportunity again to go back to the broad band project and say, OK -- And the reason why I bring that up is just to acknowledge that if you're thinking about a broad band stakeholder engagement process, it's a very valid thing. There are a lot of organizations and governments and across the country that are looking at this. It's a very -- So it's very valid, and the fact is that we've done that over -- We've seen that and we've been participating in that process. So in terms of -- I just want to talk about the 2009 federal broad band initiatives. Here's what the federal government was looking at. There were four points. One was, building new broad band infrastructure in rural locations. The top projects, projects in your community to do just that. The second notion was to promote sustainable broadband adoption. That was the programs that we saw through the libraries and the community centers. Focused on digital literacy and getting new computers in. The third was the project that I'm on specifically, which was to collect broadband services data for the entire nation and create the first broadband map, if you will, of the United States called the national broadband map. And then finally, the piece we'll talk about specifically is building the states' capacity to understand and deal with issues regarding broadband map adoption and digital literacy. It's a mouthful, but the point is that there are certain people in general people, they agree and they see the possibilities and this passion in this topic. They don't always understand it, and that's why the stakeholder engagement process is so important. The NTiA, the national telecommunications and information administration, basically put forth the -- As part of the grant one of the tenants was develop the state's capacity and capability to understand and address the needs of the internet, in the 21st century. Our response was essentially to create the project, one of the projects that we're going to talk about today. The thing I want to emphasize and what I wrote down here in our response is that it has to include all the sectors you're dealing with. In our case it was the state, so we're looking at the bigger picture of the whole state. But in your communities, trying to find all of the stakeholders and the people who have a stake in the idea that you want to get the community more broadband map and digitally literate and broadband map savvy, it goes down from statewide all the way down to community level. And so that's the background for our project. I would just indicate a few things before I jump in to what our process was. One, it was very important for us to implement the federal initiatives at a state level. It gave us basically a framework to work from. And that's -- The next point about the national broadband plan, it was an excellent road map for these issues. And I would encouraging you in your work, even at a community level, the national broadband map plan brings issues down to the community and the individual level. And I would highly recommend that. The third thing, which is very interesting because we started our process before we learned about this -- The IMLS, building digital communities project, and we started down that path, and then this document got published, building digital communities framework for action. And we found that it corroborated incredibly well with the work that we were doing. And actually became a framework in context for what it was that we were trying to accomplish and give us some graphics and ideas about how to put things together. So I would highly encouraging that. And finally, there's a lot of information out there, and the idea of you not reinventing the wheel is very important, because now there's many communities and states and other organizations who have come down -- Who have started down this path, and there's a lot of information that you could gain from that. So we'll talk about what our process was, and we'll jump to sort of the bigger picture. Very specifically, this was a statewide engagement, so we had to say, well, how do we get all of these various stakeholders from different parts of the state involved? And we went through a multistep process. First and foremost, for us was that we actually hired a consultant named new commons to actually work with us to conduct the project planning. In the case of new commons, they were experts at stakeholder engagement, in your case if you don't have the luxury of hiring a consultant, working with somebody who has -- Who understands how that communication process works is very helpful. I will just say first we got together 10 people, I would call these people the trusted -- The trusted folks, people you trust, people that understand the issues, people that understand about broadband map adoption and digital literacy. And the folks that represent our stakeholders here today were part of that group. We had 10 people that helped map the vision out in the initial policies. We went down to the next step, a larger public forum of -- It was almost 90 attendees that got together in a few hours session, very -- At a very high level, but got people engaged from across as far and wide of a community as possible, and gave them an opportunity to basically put some influence into the process or ideas in the process. We went back after that, took those notes and created a working group, so of the public forum of 90, it win 0ed down to about 25 people who really cared about what we were doing, and cared about these ideas, and they became the working group that got these ideas together into a more tangible for mat, which -- Format, which led to the production of a policy paper, which is available on our website. So if I take that long story and I shrink it down into the various steps we had, step one was really identifying who your stakeholders are. Initially it's like who do you know that could help move the needle, who cares about this, who are the evangelist and champions that are going to help you carry your message forward? Convene them, again, open facilitated process. One of the challenges in all of this is can they all agree, and what is it that they agree on? And that's part of the process. The third step is to basically keep them engaged. We sent out regular communications, emails, newsletters, Google ground troops, etc. You want to make sure people see that there's progress happening. And the last point I would make is the document, publish, and promote the agenda. Tell the story, take pictures, and one important point here is really share your successes. When you start down this path of a stakeholder process, you have very big ideas, and sometimes you don't hit the big ideas, but you hit smaller things that really show that you're making progress. Make sure you share those successes, because any step forward is an accomplishment that you want to promote. So thank you, and I'll turn it over back to Angela. >> Thank you, Stu. We're going to go now to the stakeholders perspective. Howard is going to start us off, and we'll swap over to Pam. Howard? >> Thank you very much, Angela. I'm so happy to be able to participate in this. Almost as happy as I was to be able to participate in the project Stuart was doing in the first place. We were very pleased with first of all being identified as significant stakeholders right from the beginning, but also with the process, and now we're already beginning to be pleased with the outcome. Of course like most library organizations and agencies, broadband map was a big piece of our agenda when economic development began this project. We were struggling here at the state library agency with how we're going to not only enter the 21st century ourselves, but how we were going to help our libraries across the state do that. We were involved in a number of projects that were taking us in that direction as were our libraries. We were already doing what we now call ASCARi, which is making a range of resources available to people throughout the state. Our talking books program was moving from the old fashioned cassettes, I'm sure many of you are familiar with the green boxes, to the system that will let users download things. We operate a statewide library network that has about 200 libraries of all types in it. And all of them had broadband somewhere on their agenda. If not for in-house use, then for responding to the needs to -- Respond to the individuals who walked into the libraries wanting to do a resume or do some research or whatever. And one of the marvelous things about the BBRi project is that they were able to touch all of those bases in inviting us to be part of this. They did it in a way also that didn't waste our time. The consultants and Stuart were very good not only about designing meetings, but scheduling them, so they had maximum impact. We were also able to bring the projects, the BBRI project primarily through Stuart, to some of our library meetings. We do a quarterly meeting of library directors throughout the state. With had some presentations there that not only let everybody know what was going on and what the -- This development of creating public policy around broadband was all about, but what opportunities were likely to come out of it, which enhanced our value to both the libraries and also I hope to the project. So we were able to meet our goals through the BBRI project of emphasizing the importance of libraries and broadband, and also carrying the importance of broadband map back to the library. One thing I did want to comment on in Stuart's run-down, he talked about identifying the stakeholders. One of the things I think we learned through this process is that all of the stakeholders are people. That when you're dealing with your stakeholders, you're dealing with individuals and not with institutions. I think that the libraries began thinking we had all these library stakeholders, but it actually turned out to be the people who operate those libraries, rather than the libraries themselves that were the agents that we were looking to involve as stakeholder. As a result we've got some real exciting things going on in terms of digital literacy, in terms of libraries talking to their -- Public libraries talking to their municipalities, to grow their involvement in broadband map. The state library consortium which includes all of the public libraries was able to build up the infrastructure, but already we find that because of the projects like BBRI, all our librarieses are pushing at the edge of their infrastructure envelope already. That's about it, unless people have questions. >> That's great, thank you. Thank you, Howard. We're going to hold the questions until the end. Pam, can I have you comment about the stakeholders' perspective? >> Sure. I'm happy to be here. Thank you very much. I am actually coming from this from a standpoint of one, another BTAP recipient. We received a grant to create a broadband map infrastructure around the state, and so we are at that time I was with ocean, and we are a group that provides internet services and internet itself, and applications to K-12 schools, public libraries, hospitals, higher education. For us, I would think, why would I participate in this? I broke it down into two categories. One, it was important to us because we were representing a constituency. So we -- Obviously our constituents had a keen interest in policy making and direction setting, and we wanted to make sure that -- I know Howard says they were people, but we were also representing a large constituency. So, for instance, we saw our K-12 schools and public librarieses at the time reasonable levels of broadband map, and we wanted to see a commitment to such things as fostering digital literacy and digital inclusion for families and children, and disadvantaged youth, and English language learners. So those things were important to us. Additionally one of the things that BBRI did really well was create a buzz. So one of the things that we found was that it was very clear that something was going to happen. So the buzz really was important. We had our stakeholders in our company talking about, what's happening out there? So I think that was one of the great lessons learned, was to create that buzz. That was important. And let's see, I wanted to move on a little bit to talking about the relationships. One of the things that I found interesting was that in these meetings that Stuart described, we had everyone from educators, to students, to representatives from Latino, we had telecom lawyers, we had agency officials, and it was really interesting to see all those perspectives and start to understand what other people are looking for in policy. And it was one of those moments while we had some of the larger meetings where people were really starting to understand what the other person and what other constituents were looking for in terms of policy. And so one of the things that I really took away from this was that we were not coordinating, we were collaborating. And what I mean by that is that when you're coordinating, you have a number of stakeholder and people that are getting together, and they're headed somewhere, and they know where they're going. Collaboration is a messier than that. We didn't really know where there was. So our whole process was to define what our policies should look like statewide. And that really brings me to the point of emphasizing that a facilitator is critically important. They really, really need to -- You really need to have that facilitator there so you. >>> Drive the process. So that your participants will know what's being asked of them, they will know when various processes will begin and end, what are the expected outcomes. And also the facilitator will facilitate those events so everybody is heard, and all the time frames are met. So the buzz stays positive. Everyone is clear that there's a road map, you don't really know where the end point is, but you know you've got a road map, so you've got well-facilitated sessions, focused questions, and a fairly novel recording method, I think one of the last slides shows what some of the recording method looks like. And then I wanted to make one other point that I think that elected officials really should be involved elected and appointed, I should say, both should be involved early in the process. And again, that's going to be based on your state, where you are in an election cycle, what the political realities are. We brought our focus -- Folks in a little late in the process, and there were plenty of reasons for that. But what I would say is that even though we brought them in late, the process itself was valuable. It was critically valuable. And then what we have that came out the other end was our policy document, our white paper, and it was extremely successful because now at this point we have something to talk about. So I think I'll end there. >> Thank you, Pam. Howard, can I ask you a follow-up question? What of the communities out there are looking at a city or countywide level rather than a statewide level, what would you say if value to a library leading a communitywide effort rather than a library leading digital inclusion effort within the library, but looking at it as all these sectors, figuring out the stakeholders, the whole building digital communities process? >> One of the advantages -- One of the advantages of having libraries involved at all is that in the community they're going to have some of the deepest roots. They're going to have some connections that will bring the whole community in, and the library -- The public library in particular is already likely to have people coming in and demanding services that at least we would call digital inclusion, even if the user walking in the door doesn't necessarily call it that. There's a sense in which all of the action occurs at the local level. And I know what we're doing -- What we do at the state level is try to arm the folks who operate locally to respond to the local needs, but also to create that on the local level, that buzz that Pam was talking about. I think that's something we all want to keep in mind, because it's that buzz that not only helps create policy, but also puts the policy into action. So I do believe the libraries locally are probably in the best places to sell the need for broadband, the importance of digital inclusion, and not only sell it in the community and perform it in the community, but sell it back up that line to the larger entities, to the county, to the state, to make the -- To put some pressure on the folks that make the decisions, to make sure the policy goes in the direction the folks that need it. >> Great. Thank you. We're going to move on now to Anne Neville, and she's going to talk to us about the -- Putting this whole -- Our discussion into the national context. >> Thanks, Angela. I want to I think rip off a little bit about what has been said, because Rhode Island is a great example of what we've seen working around the country. And I saw one of the comments in the box, how do you get individuals involved when they may toned move around versus institutional representatives. And part of what Rhode Island did is a great example, is this value of ongoing meetings where you have people who can come to open meetings as individuals, and give their input as well as stakeholder building where you've got institutional representatives meeting on an ongoing basis. And that also speaks to being able to represent or being able to reflect what kind of time people may have to give to a local planning effort. And that also speaks to this idea that planning is ongoing. Stuart's first slide talked about when Rhode Island was looking at the wireless initiative back in 2007, and even though the initiative has moved on since then, and many of your communities may have been talking about something different in 2007, these kinds of conversations then impact the conversations you have today because of the trust building, the trust and the building of relationships that's been happening among constituent communities. But I think it's also part of thinking about the planning as an ongoing and a living process. So one of the pieces Rhode Island also did we've seen in a lot of our states, a lot of the state programs is using the data they collect around broadband map availability or subscriber information at libraries and schools to inform the conversations at the planning level, to give data, and using those conversations to inform the data feedback about things that may be incorrect, that may need to be changed, etc. So it creates a two-way street, but you do have a baseline of data that you can bring to the table to at least begin the conversation. You'll see we wrote top-down planning doesn't work. So there's an important piece around having state level planning, but what doesn't work is if at the top of a political unit, someone is saying, this is just how it has to be done. Because obviously every community is different. In New Hampshire, we're seeing they've got different regions who are working on planning activities and engaging stakeholders at local levels, and they're going to be taking those plans and those plans are all just rolling off, and that's going to be New Hampshire's state plan. In other states, there's maybe a statewide effort that's going along, looking more institutionally, and there are very local efforts that are looking at very specific, how do we get digital literacy programs in our schools? How do we get more -- How do we get more training programs, how do we get more access at libraries? And so they're complementary efforts, but they may be different. When we funded regional and local planning across the country, we saw -- A variety of approaches that we saw. I think these can be boiled down to identifying stakeholders, which is obviously something that BBRI did really well. Assessing opportunities and assets as well as barriers, and I think this is where to Pam's point about the importance of a facilitator comes in. It doesn't need to be a high-priced consultant. It can be someone in the community who's been trained to do some basic facilitation. It can be -- It just -- It shouldn't be someone who is sitting at the table giving ideas at the same time as trying to mediate and foster discussion. Then there's a question of really envisioning what you want to -- What people want their community to look like, how they want -- How you want your community to use technology and prioritizing what's there. What's most important. And what order do you want to get things in. And I think this goes to this question, I know some people put in the chat box, engaging political and elected representatives, how do you -- If your group wasn't already sort of sanctioned or blessed by someone, how do you gain legitimacy? And part of that if you're starting as community planning group, is try to get one or two small wins, because obviously then more people come in and elected officials may say, oh, this is a group that's standing something I want to be involved in. An example might be getting the mayor's office or the county supervisor's office to agree to sort of a standing committee or an ad hoc committee, but something that allows a feel of the city or the county, or a different type of group that's on top of a letterhead, and that then says to people oh, there's this group, and they're engaging people and I want to be involved. And then we really rook at where to go, where to engage stakeholders. And one of the things that was really interesting for us, I remember when Stuart's organization when their application came in, I was looking at the different activities they were engaging in across the state, beyond the planning process, the other activities we funded them for, and I remember thinking, wow, this is a really diverse group of partners. And it's not necessarily the usual suspects. And they are -- So it's not the folks -- Same folks who have always been sitting at the table, it's those folks, but also bringing new people in, and looking at what capacity they had to add to the project. This I think also talks about what Rhode Island did that we really look at and have -- And have set as a great example, which is again, just like using their data -- The data collection, which was one part of their project to inform the planning and the stakeholder engagement piece, it was looking at the other pieces and how everything fit in. So everything was part of a larger vision of what Rhode Island wanted to do. And I think that that became -- That was very clear to us in their application and how they went about engaging people at the state level and at the local level, and I think that's definitely been part of the success that we've seen there. So I -- We've got some links that I think -- That I'll put out in the chat window, and I think are already posted on the website, but if you go on to our website, you can look at the -- There's one entity per state who was funded for the state broadband map initiative, and you can see if they were funded for local planning activities. And you can also take a look at some documentation that's been created by other states in terms of both what they're trying to do and comparisons between -- Or across different kinds of planning activities. So I guess the last thing I'd say is that I don't think that the stakeholder engagement process and broadband map and digital inclusion is all that much different than the stakeholder engagement process in community and economic development, whether we're talking about water, or we're talking about after-school, all of these other really critical issues that many of you are on the webinar have been engaged in for a long time. I think the question tends to be who are the -- Who are the folks who have -- Who know they have something to say who want to be at the table, and identifying those folks who may not think that they are part of the solution yet, and showing them -- Showing them why they want to be involved in this, and giving them some reasons why their organization or why they as individuals should participate and provide both time and ideas. With that I'll hand it back to Angela. >> Thank you, Anne. We're going to head now into the lessons learned. There have been a couple questions regarding elected officials. So Stu, if you wouldn't mind speaking to the issue of mid level participation, mid level management versus agency directors or elected officials, and the differences and the value. >> OK. Great. So one of the things that we didn't mention in any of these slides, and now that I've been listening to the conversation, and I remembered which was very important for us, and this is -- Will help answer that question, is this is -- This was not a top-down or bottom-up process. It needed to be both. And what I'm saying here is that when you talk to an elected official, there's a couple of things. One is, you need to know what you want to say to them. It needs to be very precise and short, and it needs to be something that appeals to their constituents in their -- In their local community or within their agenda and that type of thing. So there's sort of an opportunity and an issue, the opportunity is if you gain that kind of high-level support, that is very powerful, but you have to figure out how to win that -- Them over at that level in their -- In political terms and in their -- Within their agenda. But the important thing for us was that while we were having the conversations top-down, we also decided we have to work at the community level, because ultimately in terms of broadband map adoption and digital literacy, it happens in the communities. And the notion of small wins, gaining some -- Gaining some support, showing some small programs, getting people talking, getting the community talking, once you have that going, then that's something that you can go back to the elected officials with and say, well, see what's happening in this community, or see what's happening in your community. And so it's not an either/or, but in your process you will have a lot more success with elected officials if you have something to show them and something to say. And part of the stakeholder process, Frankly, is having those people help you figure out what it is that you want to say. And what the most important issues for your community are. And sticking to that. >> Fabulous. Thank you. Can you talk, Stuart, also about the process of defining who those stakeholders are? So you and Alison, you sit down, write up a list, how did you get from the initial list to a broader list, who is also helping you create the list, what were you thinking about when you created the stakeholder list? >> So in our case, you have said that Rhode Island is a small place. So when you're here, you kind of start to know what the landscape looks like. But as Anne said, the landscape doesn't always include the usual suspects. And part of what was important there, at least in the beginning was getting people who you believed understood what the mission was, didn't need a lot of convincing to say that, you know, broadband map is an important issue for my organization, or, it's important for my stakeholders, or in any -- One case -- I just understand what this broadband map issue is all about, and I want to contribute to that. And so thinking -- We went through -- It was a long process, and it was time consuming, the idea was, who are these people, and we kind of sat down and tried to figure out who the organizations were, who the people were, did we know those people, did we not know those people? If we didn't know those people, who knew those people? And who could we call to get an introduction, and that type of thing. And there was -- It -- There was a bit of a process there in order to figure out who those initial stakeholders would be. And then ultimately who would you invite to a public meeting? But once we got that done and started communicating with them, that really helped move the ball forward in a lot of different directions. >> Awesome. For your end goal, as your -- As Pam noted, it was fuzzy somewhat, but you knew that you wanted to be impacting policy, that you wanted to come out with policy recommendations, you just didn't know exactly what those recommendations were, and that was the value of involving a variety of stakeholders. So two questions for you -- Why did you choose policy as your end goal, and two, what are you seeing as the -- How is that working? Do you see the value of it now that you're actually -- You're into those recommendations? >> So, yes, that's -- That's a very interesting question. So this is part of the paths converging. And that is, we knew before the federal initiatives came out that there was -- There was an issue and an opportunity here, and the idea that broadband map is expanding so rapidly, and internet usage is expanding so rapidly that we need to start thinking about it from a bigger point of view. And so Anne mentioned water, and after-school care, and nowadays, just like water and electricity, everybody should have access to internet. But at least in Rhode Island, if you asked anybody, what is Rhode Island's policy toward broadband map, the answer was, we don't have a policy. What is that really mean? And so it was very clear to me, at least when the projects started, that one of the things that we could do is affect policy, and because if you're trying to move the needle on something that is a problem, you need some big ideas. And this is where you'll see in the written document that we prepared, that the idea that moving the needle requires some big ideas, and those big ideas sometimes lead to policy issues, which are usually big things. And so we decided to start high, if you will, but again, not ignoring the fact that small wins help you work your way toward that -- Toward the policy. In terms of what's working or not working, the one thing I would say is, we're still in the middle of this stakeholder engagement process. We have not finished it by any means. Some of the -- One of the things you have to think about is when you get politicians or elected officials involved, the question is, are you trying to get new laws passed or not, legislation passed? If you're not trying to get legislation passed, then it's a different type of conversation. If you're just trying to change behavior, or if you're trying to get individual organizations thinking about investments in certain communities. So, for example, one of the areas of progress that we have made is really working, say, with the governor's work force board and the Department of Labor and training to start to tie together the idea that the people who are still unemployed and all the tools that they're creating online, and -- There's a rich set of resources that are available to help those folks that are looking for new careers, or looking for work. But they have to do it online. And if part of your population is not online, how do those people get access to those resources? And then how does the library work into that whole thing? So we've been able to move the dialogue in a big way around those ideas to the point where you have a group like the governor's work force board thinking that, you know, when somebody goes through this process of adult learning, for instance, it should be required that they have some digital literacy when they come out of the other side of that process. That's an example of a policy issue. It's something that takes time to get across, but they're starting to talk about that now. And that to me shows progress. >> Stu, one of the questions that was noted on the chat is asking which stakeholders are the most important as a group. Can you define a group of stakeholders that are more important than another group? >> That's -- You know, that's a very interesting question. One thing that I -- I'll go back to what Anne said, which was true about the Rhode Island projects in general, was that they were very broad, and there were a lot of different areas that we covered. And the easiest way to answer that question is to say that the most important stakeholders are the ones that come to the forefront and help you address one specific issue. So let's say you put five things out there, and stakeholders are excited about different things, but in our case in Rhode Island, one of the programs that is really gained a lot of momentum is digital literacy and working with the community development organization and libraries to get citizens trained. A number of entities have sort of come out of the woodwork in support of that, and they became our stakeholders in that area. And so, for instance, the example I gave with the governor's work force board and the Department of Labor and training, and in fact the Rhode Island department of educations involved in the discussion as well. They're now stakeholders in that particular issue. So it really depends on really depends on which issue you're addressing, and what aspect of digital literacy broadband map adoption or digital inclusion you're trying to address. I just saw the question about, aren't the most important stakeholders the ones that control the budgets? That -- That is -- That is a very interesting question. One of the things that -- What we have done -- Let's say in the case of the governor's work force board, for example, we've identified the fact that those folks are actually investing money in work force development. And so trying to help influence them that maybe it's a good idea to make some investment in digital literacy is a good thing. So yes, that's -- Money is always an important issue here, which we haven't really talked about a lot, but maybe is the elephant in the room, but is something that you want to think about. >> Stu, how would you balance, then, the need to have folks who have some control, or input over budgets, versus the need to hear from individuals who are on the ground, either providing services or receiving services? >> Could you say that again? >> How would you balance -- I think there's a need to have the representation from both sides, the folks who can provide access to resources in order for us to provide the training or the low-cost internet access, or even the infrastructure, but there's also a need to hear from individuals who are possibly receiving the training at the community center, or the library. How would you balance that? >> You know, it's an it raytive process -- It Tiff process. In order for me to demonstrate to an elected official that something is a valuable investment, or somebody who has a budget, I have to demonstrate that validity to that, and we've tried it, and here are the results. And so we -- In the case of our digital literacy program, for example, we ran pilots, small pilots. We worked with individual organizations, and single libraries, and such, and said, let's see what it takes to make this happen. Then we got a data point and then we added that data point to the argument. And so, yes, it's very hard to start with the big pot of money, and trying to influence somebody to -- Until you actually can show some progress or some success or some tangible result of what it is that you're doing. And that is one thing that we have learned over and over and over again, is that you put your head down, you work the pilot, you show some achievement, you get the data that you need, and then your argument becomes that much more useful or forceful or valuable, or influential. >> Excellent. Thank you. One of the other comments in the chat is about jargon. A comment that came up on twitter. As I talk to folks and do a lot of writing, I try to avoid digital inclusion, I use terms like access, I use internet rather than broadband map, what are some of the terminologies that you avoided or you did try to use when you were trying to engage? >> That's always -- Broadband map is a tough word, because people's eyes glaze over when they hear that word. Some people understand what it means, and some people don't. Internet access, even the words digital literacy, what does that mean? Does that mean learning how to use a computer, learning how to use the internet? How does -- So we've kind of always gone back and forth and up and down on those discussions. There's sort of a built-in -- Because of the policies and the programs and the -- The words broadband map and digital literacy and broadband map adoption have always kind of been there, and our sort of taking root, and so we just go along with that language. When we talk to -- At the community level, when we talk to the community Development organizations, or they talk to their users, it's really about learning how to use the internet. And the -- Basically that's it. It's like, how do you -- Learn how to use the internet. That is as simple as it gets. And then that sort of opens the door to these other discussions. >> One other stakeholder question for you, Stu. In some localities and states, there's strong effort for creating more advanced broadband map. So having the infrastructure side of it in some places is strong, there's multiple people who care about it and want to talk about it. How did you involve folks who are interested in the infrastructure side into conversations that focused on the digital literacy and the access? >> I think -- You're right, you're talking to two different sets of users. I think the idea -- The reason why Pam was -- Is involved in this call and was involved in the discussion is that here's an organization that's building out all of this new fiber in the state of Rhode Island to access for community anchor institutions. But there are a lot of people in Rhode Island that don't know about that, don't know what that means, don't know what the opportunities are, and so part of, say, working with a group like OSHEAN was to bring them to the table to be able to say, you know, not only is it so -- When you look at the landscape of broadband map issues, today we've been talking about digitally SiEFERs and broadband adoption, but infrastructure, and low-cost access, those are all absolutely on the table as well. And so when we went through the stakeholder process, it was important to us to actually have people from across all of those constituencies, if you will, because they all contributed to part of the equation. So, for instance, OSHEAN provides services to libraries. So in some sense, there's a connection there because OSHEAN -- East has their lines had the libraries. But the libraries are also teaching people about digital literacy and helping users get online, and so there's a connection there. And part of the stakeholder process as an example is how do you explore that connection? And what better thing can come out of having those two sets of people in the same room discussing their individual issues? Because that helps you get to, you know, a new idea that you hadn't thought about before. And that's really one of the beauties of the stakeholder process. And so again, it's an ITERATiVE thing, but bringing that sort of wide voice in helps to get away from conventional wisdom. >> Thank you. We have three minutes left. There was one question on here regarding how to fund projects at the community level. I think -- I'm not sure if the question is referring to projects, because Stu you were suggesting pilot projects, so it could be receiving to pilot projects or it could be referring to -- If you can answer this on the chat -- Or if you're referring to how to fund these stakeholder projects, I think funding the digital inclusion projects right now is more difficult than funding a stakeholder, because the stakeholder engagement is viewed as short-term, where as digital literacy and broadband map adoption projects -- Brond band adoption projects are -- We are having -- Stu, go ahead. >> So in the -- So if -- Yes, there are two levels here. If you're talking about, say, funding digital literacy projects, in communities, you have to show value. And that was -- We've worked very hard with community development organizations to just pilot small programs. And you'll see on our website there's -- We have a digital literacy portal that shows -- That has some framework for training and all that. We don't need to get into all of that right now, but the point is that we provide some of those resources, and believe me, there is a lot of this out there right now. Either at the state level, at the community level, at the national level. That you could take advantage of. And the idea would be pilot, show some result, and then have a platform for asking to fund larger efforts. And if people believe and the community development organizations believe that there's value in this, they'll find ways. It's amazing how, you know, creative people get in terms of how to get some of these things funded in this day and age. >> Stu, we have one minute left. To that topic, can you talk very quickly about the third party, or other projects that were a result of the stakeholder engagement, even though it ended up heading off in its own direction and had a life of its own? >> Do you mean where others are starting to make investments? >> Right. Yes. Completely outside of BBRI. That they saw the value during your process, and went off and did their own thing. >> I think that we're still in the middle of that right now. It's hard to say, well, here's one specific investment. I could say, though, that, for example, we engaged with a local school here in Providence, and worked with the principal and the PTA to bring a program of digital literacy to the adults in that school. So essentially we helped -- We called it our tech program, but it was basically a mini-connect to compete. I'll just say as a result of that project, that school was able to raise, get a grant for technology in that school, which was far greater than the investment that we made in it. And we've seen examples of that around. But also just -- We're in the middle of this process, for instance, about trying to move the needle on work force development, and getting digital literacy as part of the work force development investments that are getting made. So that would be an example at some point of a really big win, it hasn't happened yet, but we're on the path to that. >> Awesome. Thank you. I think we're out of time. It's 2:00. All right. >> Excellent. >> Thank you to you all, and thank you to all who joined us today. I will add all the other gems that were posted to chat to the archive and send you Alan email once that archive is posted. And we look forward to continuing the conversation. Be sure to explore all the other digital literacy -- Digital inclusion resources on WebJunction, and reminder to stay up to date on all the other upcoming events. I saw Angela posted the mention of the may 22nd broadband adoption tool kit webinar that will also be of great interest to you all. We look forward to seeing you on WebJunction, and at future events. Thank you.Copyright © 2013 Show/Hide Header