July 11, 2017 Meeting – Seattle Community Technology Advisory Board
Topics covered included: CTO Michael Mattmiller reports on the Surveillance Ordinance; CTAB comments on FCC Restoring Internet Freedom proceeding WC Docket No. 17-108; Tony Perez on the WAVE franchise; reports from the E-Government Committee, and the Digital Inclusion Committee.
This meeting was held: July 11, 2017; 6:00-8:00 p.m., Seattle Municipal Tower, 700 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2750
Podcasts available at: http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/CTTAB/podcast/cttab.xml
Attending:
Board Members: Jose Vasqez, Heather Lewis, Karia Wong, Chris Alejano, Eliab Sisay, John Krull, Amy Hirotaka, Mark DeLoura, Torgie Madison via phone
Public: Dorene Cornwell, Harte Daniels, Lloyd Douglas, Torgie Madison, Charlotte Lunday, Adam Owen (Century Link), Dan Stiefel, Joaquin Chapar, Lillian Ballesteros, Steve Cathersal, Smriti Chandrashekar, Greta Knappenberger
Staff: Michael Mattmiller, Tony Perez, David Doyle, Chance Hunt, David Keyes, Cass Magnuski
27 In Attendance
Jose Vasquez: Welcome, everybody, to July’s CTAB meeting. We’ll start with introductions.
INTRODUCTIONS
Jose Vasquez: And is Torgie here via Skype? Can you see us?
Torgie Madison: I didn’t do Skype, just the phone. I can hear you.
Jose Vasquez: Okay, welcome. So, real quick, did everybody get a chance to look at the agenda? If you need extra copies, I believe they’re out by the door. Also, if you are a guest, be sure to sign in so we can add you to our mailing list and send you lots of updates.
Cass Magnuski: Happy birthday!
Michael Mattmiller: Thank you! Twenty-one!
Jose Vasquez: Do we have a motion to approve the minutes?
Cass Magnuski: No. I’m sorry. Agenda. Do we have a motion to approve the agenda?
Amy Hirotaka: I move to approve the agenda.
Karia Wong: Second.
Jose Vasquez: All in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. We are going to defer voting on the minutes until next meeting. There was an issue with the recording device, so we’ll look at the minutes next time. So first we’ll start with the birthday boy.
CTO REPORT
Michael Mattmiller: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good evening. Thank you, everyone, for being with us tonight. Point of order: I think we need to remember to call FAS next month and make sure they keep the air conditioning on. Apologies for that. I just have a couple of updates to share with you, and then, as always, will answer questions.
Tomorrow, as of course you may have heard, is the Day of Action related to net neutrality. I am very thankful to CTAB leadership on this issue. As you know, this is an issue that is of very high importance to Mayor Murray. He has in the past spoken out around the needs that we have equal access to the internet for our start-ups and our tech industry to make Seattle great, as well as for all of our consumers and residents n the City who deserve the best internet connection, and not the best internet connection that the companies they choose to interact with can afford. Net neutrality, as wonky as it can be to talk about, the Telecommunications Act of 1934 of common carrier status versus information provider. Net neutrality is a pocketbook issue. If we have prioritized fast lanes, then we end up paying more for the internet, especially for that content that may not be provided by the largest companies out there. Those diverse companies, those companies that provide information to specific communities, and for the latest technology innovations. So, we are very focused on making sure that the FCC hears our voice. And around the country tomorrow, that we are part of the national dialog on why we need to maintain that neutrality. You will see our web site be updated tomorrow to be part of what is the trend of companies to be participating in. In addition, you will see Mayor Murray sign on to a letter, along with other large cities including Boston, New York, San Francisco. I believe D.C. will be signing on, and a handful of others. We’re really proud of Mayor Murray for being part of that effort. So that’s tomorrow.
Also happening tomorrow, I will be at the table at Council along with Shankar Narayan of the ACLU, Mary Perry from the Police Department, and David Mendoza from the Mayor’s Office to talk about a Surveillance Ordinance, that I know we’ve talked a little bit about in the past. Just to being everyone up to speed, it was in 2013 that the City Council passed the first Surveillance Ordinance SMC 14.18, which said ‘Before the City can procure surveillance equipment they must go to Council and receive approval.’ Now, the challenge with law and legislative bodies is when they try to regulate and legislate technology, definitions have a way of becoming outdated fairly quickly. So, in 2013, ‘surveillance equipment’ sounded like a fine definition. And then the Police Department bought a product called Geofeedia, which is actually a cloud-based subscription service that monitors tweets. You can nitpick about the definition of equipment is. I will tell you that as the person who is trying to interpret surveillance equipment, a cloud service does not rise to that definition, Part of the desire now is the pass a new surveillance ordinance, or I should say updates to the existing ordinance, that make more clear the intention of the Council and community so that we in the City can execute accordingly. There has been quite a bit of work on the ordinance since we started engaging with Councilmember Gonzalez and her staff in February of this year. The reason that it has taken so long to produce an ordinance is definitions, as I mentioned, get very, very tricky. We have had this back and forth with the ACLU and the Councilmember’s staff to figure out how we can codify what we think the community wants, which is to understand when their government procures technologies that really have a reasonable likelihood to impact civil liberties, and when there are technologies that are part of operating the government that have a much lower impact. So, for example, we had a very long working session both Saturday and Sunday of this week, making last minute changes where we wanted to make sure that should the Police Department want to procure some type of ALPR device–a license plate reading device–that that would be caught by the ordinance. Yet, if we want to, say, have publicly funded elections and implement a system to manage democracy vouchers, that system was not captured by the ordinance. Because, as you can imagine, across our 29 departments here in the City, we have 1,500 enterprise applications. Instead of subjecting every one of those to a Council vote, annual oversight and approval, it may be a little burdensome and obfuscate from the public what they actually do care about. So, I really appreciate the ACLU’s willingness to engage in these conversations. I appreciate the Council’s staff and Council’s central staff for what have been many, many conversations about how we get these definitions right, and get the process to be workable. I do not believe at this point that there will be a vote on the legislation on the table tomorrow because there are still some changes being made. If you do tune into the Seattle Channel, which, by the way, is the nation’s number one PEG television station, in case anyone forgot that–you will hear me talk about how we do need to stay really focused as we finalize the legislation on those definitions, particular that we understand that surveillance technology produces data and it’s that data that can be used to affect someone’s civil liberties. But it is very difficult to then divorce the technology from the data. One of the iterations of the legislation considered surveillance data independently of technology and required City employees to go out and search all of their data to see if any of it was generated by a surveillance device or was created as surveillance data. I realize that I have gone slightly wonky, but what that means is that, as someone who has been in the City three years, I have tens of thousands of emails and several thousand files on my City Share Drive. The legislation was going to give me and the other 13,000 City employees thirty days to go over each and every one of those emails and files and determine if any one of them contained data that came from surveillance, or could be considered surveillance. If that boggles your minds, it does mine as well. So, again, that’s the type of nuance that we want to make sure we get right in the legislation, and make sure the community gets exactly what they want, and that our City employees can comply with this ordinance.
The other thing that will get mentioned at the table tomorrow is the role of the community and how we think about socializing and improving surveillance technology. The ACLU and the Council have been considering creating a new advisory body to advise the Council on surveillance technology. My position has been that the Community Technology Advisory Board (CTAB) as you exist is here to advise the Mayor and Council on technology. And so, what I think we will see come out in the legislation tomorrow is that the City’s executive and chief technology officer will be tasked with holding a working group to recommend or to define what type of advisory board should exist, as it relates to surveillance technology. And we will be, thankfully required by ordinance to include CTAB, which I think is number one, my strong preference, and two, something I look forward to engaging in as well. So those are a couple of things that are top of mind related to the ordinance. I will admit that the past two weeks has been pretty much surveillance nonstop for me, and there have been other great technology things going on in the City. If you didn’t see, KIRO had a great story about our Fire Department, their their implementation of the new electronic medical records system. That was a wonderful partnership. We worked on it with Microsoft. which donated the Surface tablets to make that happen. It’s a five-minute video. It’s really fantastic.
We also, just a couple of weeks ago, took that next step in our journey towards IT consolidation when we integrated our applications division. So, for the first time in our City’s history, we have an enterprise applications division. About 200 staff have come together under Tara Duckworth’s leadership. And we are beginning now to work through transition plans to get more logical organization of our teams that are working on certain types of applications in the City.
So I will stop there, with just a few of the things that have been top of mind for me recently. Mr. Chair, if you are amenable, I would love to take any questions.
Jose Vasquez: I have one quick one and one maybe longer. What time is the Council meeting tomorrow?
Michael Mattmiller: Tomorrow, we will be in front of Councilmember Gonzalez’ committee at 9:30 in the morning.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. And you can catch that on the Seattle Channel. The second question, regarding the community engagement piece, we have been following up with Councilmember Gonzalez’s office about this, and what that means. We put something out about this. The feeling from CTAB is if this Council does include CTAB as that community engagement process, are they going to be adding a seat to the board, and are they requiring that that board seat be specific to this type of engagement, in that that’s been done before with other commissions or boards. I’m not saying we’re not aligning as far as this — definitely, this is a place where community can engage with City staff, Council, and the Mayor’s office. But thank you for clarifying. There is going to be a work group to figure this out, and I look forward to engaging in that and working together with you and Council offices to figure out what that will look like. As we were learning about this, that was the first thing that popped up. Because also there is strategic planning where we were possibly requesting additional seats on the board. More things are coming on board, so this might fit really nicely into that conversation.
Michael Mattmiller: I think that those are great points to make. I would proffer that CTAB has the ability at this point to make sure the Council understands what role you want to have in the ordinance. The ordinance has us come together both over a long period of time. Since February, but also very quickly at certain points, like this weekend, where we had a marathon two days of work, to make sure that we were potentially ready for a vote on Wednesday. And it is very reasonable that CTAB, if you want to have a review period with the ordinance, to be able to offer your input to make sure that the Councilmember’s office is aware of that.
Jose Vasquez: We are following up with Councilmember Gonzalez, but we would also appreciate your eyes on that as well. Okay, I want to open it up to other board members and the general public. If you have any questions about any of the topics?
Harte Daniels: Can you repeat the name of the person that is starting to assess your 1,500 enterprise applications for integration?
Michael Mattmiller: Tara Duckworth is our director of applications.
Harte Daniels: She was here last month?
Michael Mattmiller: Yes. Tara was named to that position earlier in 2016, but now she has her full staff complement under her, and is beginning to take the steps to bring together staff and new team structures, as well as begin to plan for life cycle management across those enterprise applications.
Harte Daniels: Is there any particular methodology that she’s looking at in terms of process improvement?
Michael Mattmiller: In terms of process improvement, right now, she is still inventorying what exists in the team and the services and applications that have come to her. She will be forming that plan for going forward by the end of this year.
Harte Daniels: Thank you. I just wanted to give you a kudo for taking that on. It is the bane of almost every government body that I’ve seen, the handling and integrating between their own applications.
Michael Mattmiller: I appreciate that, and I do think, in terms of IT consolidation, we’re on the 15 month mark right now. And I will say that not everything is going as smoothly as we’d like, but on the other hand, this is the largest reorganization in the last 15 years over the City’s history. And I am pleasantly surprised about how many of our staff are still excited about the change. And that while we’ve seen some hiccups, our departments are understanding of where we are in our life cycle and our maturity. And I might point to our commitment to the Mayor and the Council that we would be in a good place and largely finish the consolidation by December of 2018. So we still have quite a ways to go.
Harte Daniels: Well, more than that, you will remember that integration was the problem with healthcare.gov, and etc., so whenever anybody starts or gets a brilliant idea about using an application, I tell them to look at the integration. The fact that you are integrating means that you are ahead of the game, and we should be ahead of any other municipality, state, or federal government agency that I work with.
Lloyd Douglas: Are there going to be any common data definitions? Common data formats? One version of date, one format for the name, if possible?
Michael Mattmiller: I love that you mention that. We’ve had a number of conversations within the department about an enterprise data management strategy. The truth is at the moment that the City has not had that kind of discipline at a City-wide level previously. And while we want to get there, it is not on our short-term road map at the broad enterprise scale. But you’re right. If we can get there, there can be huge benefit in getting to a single view of the customer or member of the public. We can get to a place where we have much more common data exchanges, and we don’t have weird situations where what one department calls a street address, another department calls lot number. Or at least where we have a Rosetta stone that helps us translate. And I think that what David Doyle is doing with the open data team is really getting us much closer because he is in a place where he actually has to work with departments to see the disparities in data. What I will say is we are investing in a platform strategy when it comes to applications. So, going forward, we have one permitting and regulatory platform for the City in the form of a salon. We’re beginning to develop line of business applications on Dynamics 365. And as we do these things, we’re making sure that we have common data structures and some level of data governance, so that we are getting better as we go. When we do get the space and the capacity to focus on data management, we will at least have a few components that we’ll be able to leverage. Kind of in the vein you describe.
Lloyd Douglas: Good to know that you’ll have a job for a few years.
Michael Mattmiller: Just a few. [laughs]
Jose Vasquez: Anybody else?
Michael Mattmiller: Mr. Chair, if I might make one more plug: I forgot to mention perhaps the most exciting news of the week, which is, for those who Ginger Armbruster, who was in the City about two years ago, we are so thrilled that we can announce that she is our new chief privacy officer. She has rejoined us here in the City of Seattle. I am thrilled by that. I can’t think of another better person to help move our privacy program forward. And I trust that you will be spending some time with Ginger. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t forget that.
Jose Vasquez: Anything else? One last comment while we’re talking about this. As we think of community engagement, we also shouldn’t forget about our TMF grantees. I think they’re the experts for this particular community. Moving forward, I suggest we consider community engagement, not only continuous support, but those groups and organizations do amazing work in the community, but also seeing them as partners. We can work with them to reach populations that normally don’t get reached. If there are no further questions, we can move on to public comment.
Further Introductions of New Arrivals
PUBLIC COMMENT
David Doyle: Within the last month, the open data portal got a redesign. If you haven’t seen it, go check it out. I showed everybody some of the mock-ups in advance with the committee, but it’s live and feedback has been pretty good so far. This is one of the first steps we’ve been taking in terms of making our open data more discoverable. We’ve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes also with data. But this is a very visible change, so please take a look, if you haven’t already. data.seattle.gov. If you have any feedback, please let us know. Thank you.
Harte Daniels: I have a note that I’ll send to David Keyes. Heather Lewis and Dorene Cornwell [unintelligible]…software for noise cancellation as created in May of 2017. Announcement of the Hear Together Project as well as a hearing bill of rights, which you might want to look at for either guidance for TMF participants or anybody that wants to look at writing e-government type applications. Again, I’ll send that to you, David.
Jose Vasquez: Any other public announcements or comments?
David Keyes: On August 17 at 1:00, the Urban League is holding their celebration of their Summer University, at City Hall in the Bertha Knight Landis room. All the youth that have been participating will be here doing some presentations of their work. They’re doing a STEM project, and mentioned that they are coming to Facebook as part of the program. It will be great. This is the almost end of summer wrap up for them. So, come on along.
Jose Vasquez: Great. If there are no other public comments, I guess we can move forward to our CTAB comments on FCC on restoring internet freedom, including net neutrality and Lifeline.
CTAB COMMENTS ON FCC RESTORING INTERNET FREED PROCEEDING WC DOCKET NO. 17-108
Heather Lewis: After the last meeting in June, there was a group of interested CTAB members who gathered to start a conversation about what a statement might look like to the FCC regarding net neutrality. Charlotte Lunday, our resident legal expert, was kind enough to lead that group on behalf of CTAB. Ten individuals through CTAB partnered on research and drafting in addition to three members of the City of Seattle team, who were kind enough to put their eyes on this work. That draft is available, and we can send it out to the broad CTAB community. It has at this point, I believe, been reviewed by all of the CTAB board and relevant Seattle staff. Because Charlotte led this work, I asked her to come up here and speak to the draft and the strategy that went into putting it together.
Charlotte Lunday: Thank you! First off, I really want to thank those who worked on the team with me. Dorene Cornwell and Harte Daniels and I brought up part of the citizen engagement part, which I thought, personally, not being a member of the board, was a pretty exciting and humbling thing to do. Mark DeLoura, Torgie Madison, and Heather Lewis, and Karia Wong all brought in different ideas of expertise in technology and public relations. Karia’s work with folks from Lifeline. I think we represented three committees in CTAB. For me, it was some of the most fun that I’ve had working on CTAB things. So, I’m really appreciative of everyone’s work, especially when we were working just with timelines of about a couple of weeks. We met, and people had to turn around research within a couple of days. As Michael Mattmiller said, this is a pretty wonky topic. So, the amount of work that everybody just blitzed through was really incredible on my end. I am extraordinarily appreciative. We’ve been calling it the FCC Taskforce. It kind of makes me feel a little bit Ghostbusters-ish. I enjoyed that.
I thought I could give a brief overview of what this comment is really about. The ‘Restoring Internet Freedom’ notice of proposed rule making, which is what we’re commenting on. It’s a mouthful. I’ll go through a little bit of background, and I have a couple of thoughts about some next steps and then will open the floor for questions.
There are two things that make net neutrality a difficult subject to talk about. One, it doesn’t really relay itself well to sound bites. Two, the issue that we’re commenting on is not net neutrality itself. I think of net neutrality as referring to a set of principles of fairness, and broadly, internet freedom that I think most people on both sides of the spectrum agree on. But what this particular issue is is really just how do we regulate broadband internet access and broadband providers. What regulatory scheme do we use for net neutrality principles–that kind of openness. I think we think about the internet as being a little bit of a wild west. It’s exciting and almost a free for all in a sense. Everybody can stake their own claim to it. And that’s what we’re really trying to protect in a lot of ways. the threshold question in determining which regulatory scheme to apply is whether broadband internet access is thought of as an information service or a telecommunications service. This matters because an information service has a much weaker regulatory scheme that, in some ways, makes it difficult to enforce principles of net neutrality because it relies on a lot of self-regulation, versus a telecommunications service, which is robust. I usually think of this as a robust regulatory scheme, but then that makes me kind of giggle about ‘Veep.’ So, if you’re not a fan, I encourage you to watch at least the first season.
Telecommunications service opens up a very strong regulatory scheme treating broadband providers as common carriers. Common carriers historically across our government has a much stronger customer service types of requirements than other types of businesses. And to really understand more of the issue–again, this is wonky, so thank you for going a little bit deeper with me–to understand a bit more about how the FCC is thinking about this at this moment. We have to step back in time to the Communications Act of 1934. the FCC is charged with administering this statue. They enforce a lot of the provisions; they interpret it. And that statute gives them a lot of authority to do a great deal of regulatory work. Back in 1934, you had large telephone monopolies. I believe the big one was AT&T. Congress at the time was really concerned with anti-competitive behavior from entities like AT&T. They were trying to curb that behavior and make the system fairer to consumers. Now we go forward to 1996, and we get the Telecommunications Act of 1996. And this is where we get some murky details. Because at this time, we have internet being dial-up internet service. So we all received internet through telephone wires. So, when Congress made the Telecommunications Act–Michael Mattmiller talked about the importance of definitions–the big internet provider at that time was AOL, and AOL had a lot of services that they offered people–portals. That was delivered over telephone wires. So the way that Congress thought of this was that AOL did not produce the same kinds of concerns that a telephone company would because AOL didn’t need to invest in infrastructure like a telephone company would. There weren’t high barriers to enter that market. Instead, they provided a lot of additional services. The monopolistic concerns that existed for telephone companies originally weren’t really there. So, we went for several years until about 2015 treating internet service providers–later broadband cable modem providers–we treated them all as information services with the same kind of idea that they functioned similarly to AOL back in 1996. In 2015, that changed.
In 2015, the commission decided that the concerns that existed back in 1934 existed at least for some internet providers. By the FCC’s own data, three-fourths of the American population either live in a place where they have one provider that provides high speed broadband internet or none at all. So, that kind of monopolistic behavior they became concerned about. That led to producing the Title II Order. This classifies broadband internet access providers as common carriers. And it opened up a huge regulatory scheme, really strong enforcement. And the current FCC is looking at rolling that back, and going back to this weaker scheme that worked for a long time.
So, if everyone is following still, that gets us here where the FCC put out a notice of proposed rule making, saying, ‘We want to go back to classifying the internet as an information service. We are afraid that this is bad for consumers and has discouraged investment in internet networks and broadband development across the country.’ They have asked for comment on a number of issues. Their notice of proposal contained more than 100 paragraphs, and several of these paragraphs have specific asks in them. So we could only comment on a few. But that’s what they are wanting from the public–to tell them what they should do.
When the task force first met to discuss drafting a comment, one of the things I told them was something I pulled from the regulations.gov web site, which is, ‘A comment is not a vote.’ What the FCC is doing by asking for comments is asking us to help them inform the best policy they can. Just because the majority of people support a given principle or policy does not mean that that principle will win the day. What we’re really trying to do is put our best foot forward–these are the analyses that we think you should use. Here’s why. Or at least we’re trying to get them to question their own assumptions, their own data, enough to really support their own arguments. That’s important later on for litigation, but we’re not quite there yet.
With that in mind, we chose to focus the comment on three particular areas. We wanted to comment on the economic argument that was made in a section of the notice of proposed rule making. It was specifically related to investments mostly, and Title II, whether stronger enforcement discourages investment in broadband infrastructure. The second thing we wanted to comment on was Lifeline, because I think it is hugely important to this community. But Lifeline, other universal service fund features, and then some subsidies actually for rural development were all created under Title II authority. So they will be affected by this. And then, finally, we focused on that threshold question of legal authority, and technologically speaking, how should broadband internet access be classified, and why we think it should be classified as a telecommunications service.
So to dive in a little more deeply on each, this was just a first paragraph in a section where the FCC laid out their argument for rolling back. Their argument was mostly focused on discouraged investment. What we wanted to do was take a really balanced approach to this argument because the FCC didn’t offer up much data supporting their point of view. And I think that data could reasonably be challenged. Which we did. But at the same time, we looked into the data ourselves, and some of the economic research out there. The FCC has put this out there as an all or nothing game. If you have Title II, it’s bad for ISPs, which is bad for consumers. I think that there are a lot of commenters on this issue on the other side, who think without Title II, this will really hurt consumers. And I think that there is a middle ground. I think the research that we found supports that. So we walked through some of the practical issues affecting investment among ISPs. That’s what we focused our economic argument on. We also briefly touched on one of the ways that the FCC can balance concerns between consumers and ISPs, even under Title II. I think this is important for a couple of reasons. We have a pretty significant telecommunications industry in our region. We have folks from Century Link, who come pretty regularly and who are very involved in this community. But we also have incredible content creators. We thought that a balanced approach would be the best thing we could do to make sure we were aware of, and were thoughtful of, the different considerations all members of our community would have. The second reason why we wanted to be balanced is just strategically, we did not want our comment to be dismissed. If we’re too extreme in one direction, it’s a lot easier to poke holes. That’s why we looked to the research and try to have a data-driven approach.
Secondly, with Lifeline–I received some feedback on our section on Lifeline and I will revisit some of that, because there are a couple of different ways but I think the comment about Lifeline can be taken. Reading this and reading the notice of proposed rule making altogether, my understanding was that the FCC was taking comment on their legal authority to continue Lifeline. They want to support Lifeline. They want to have Lifeline exist even after a reclassification to the information services. But I think there’s some question about how that would work, and whether it would work. We touched on our concerns. If they reclassify Lifeline, whether it would exist, or be weakened. And I think we briefly talked about other ways outside of Title II, where they could keep a similar program. But interestingly, further down in the notice of proposed rule making, the FCC is wanting to weaken that other grant of authority as well. So, we wanted to strongly support Lifeline and call the FCC’s attention to — if they did what they propose to do, they would inadvertently weaken Lifeline and similar programs. So that’s what we focused on here. Finally, we went into some of the legal authority and the technical authority. Thanks to Mark DeLoura, he got us in touch with a technical expert who had worked in the telecommunications and internet service provider industry, as well as an attorney who has a deep history with the FCC. So we were able to check over some of our assumptions. And I think I personally really learned a lot. But this would be the last section of the document, and it was challenging. We dug into the definitions of information service and telecommunications service, and tried to look at what the definitions really meant, and how we see this in practice. What kinds of interpretations do these definitions fit our experiences with ISPs, and our own lives. What our expectations of internet service are.
That then brings us to the next steps. We have had input from the City on this from other members of different committees who were not on the task force, but joined us later to comment, as well as CTAB board members. We also had a great showing of people like Senator Cantwell’s town hall on net neutrality. And so, the feedback there leads me to think that in the next week before we submit this–I’ll start with the bottom one first: Personal stories are really effective, and given our short amount of time, we had difficulty collecting these at first. Heather Lewis has been working on gathering stories from contacts in business and elsewhere. I think we should have a statement coming from Starbucks as well as Providence on the effects of net neutrality on businesses. If we can get enough of them quickly, I would rather see them attached to the comment in an appendix or perhaps in a reply in August. I think replies are due August 16. We can reply back to our comment with additional information. That makes this personal, by the time we send out a draft to the board. Karia Wong and Dorene Cornwell had a lot of great feedback and some personal stories regarding Lifeline and other universal service fund features. I think including those would be very powerful statements. It would be great to see them either in an appendix or in a reply.
Going back to Lifeline: As I mentioned, there were a couple of ways to interpret the request for comments on Lifeline. I interpreted it one way, and I think our team interpreted one way. But our feedback suggests that there is more that we can say about the exact implementation of Lifeline broadband features, things like that. That’s another one that we could put into a reply, but I think it would also be important … i don’t know if it would disrupt the flow of the whole comment and maybe take a little too much time to fit into the broad one, but I think we should definitely, between now and the, drop a footnote. I don’t know if the City might have some language that we could use about specific ways to implement elements of Lifeline that we haven’t seen yet. If we can drop a footnote in there to make another argument. That’s included so it’s covered. But those were the things that I wanted to offer as potential next steps. And thank you for letting me take up your time. I’m happy to answer questions. I think members of the task force are also available for questions, as well.
Jose Vasquez: First of all, thank you for a very well researched and footnoted document. I actually enjoyed reading it. Thank you, especially to all community members at large who stepped up to help lead this effort, and to all the committees involved in this. I think this is a great showing of the community activating our mission that we’re all passionate about. I love seeing community members step up and take on issues like this. You said the deadline for comments on this is August 16?
Charlotte Lunday: The initial comment draft is due July 17. We can then reply to comments, ours or other ones, by August 16. We’ll talk about what the next steps are, but I did want to open it up to further discussion.
David Keyes: Just FYI, sometimes the FCC does take comments after that.
Tony Perez: That’s for extensions. I don’t know if they’ll do it this time.
Charlotte Lunday: This seems to be a pet issue for Ajit Pai, the new chair. He strongly dissented the Title II order back in 2015. From recent behavior, I know Commissioner Clyburn was here at the net neutrality meeting with Senator Cantwell. I think maybe most people have heard about the new Sinclair broadcast merger or acquisition of the Tribune. That actually was approved without notifying Commissioner Clyburn. She found out that it was passed via the news. If that tells you anything about the climate at the FCC….
Harte Daniels: That would be the administration in general. Some other rules propositions on education, etc. they have given a very short time for comment and no extensions.
Jose Vasquez: So let’s assume July 17 is the deadline.
Harte Daniels: In addition to switching back the definitions for Title II and Title I, underneath the economic aspects, what Pai is doing is preventing any kind of rogue practices on internet providers or news services or any new technology that hasn’t been dreamt up. He’s essentially cutting off innovation in that regard. I didn’t read that section through, the newest draft, to see whether that’s in there. But, in addition to switching, any rule making on any new services or new technology. Technology is always evolving, and to do that is only in service to support those that are already in the game, to raise the bar and not allow anybody else to enter. So, I don’t know if that is there. On the stories, etc., I’d like to ask–I saw you speaking with Cantwell and the FCC. Cantwell especially said what we need is to not put it in wonky, but make a short statement that the public could understand, because the public has not risen to the occasion like they did in 2015. There was somebody there that stepped up and said they would put up a web site for people to tell their stories. Has that site gone up? I saw you talking to that gentleman….
Heather Lewis: To our knowledge, no, the site has not gone up. However, Senator Cantwell and Commissioner Clyburn both said that stories from the public from nonprofits, from the business community, from community members would be very valuable. We have begun to reach out for those stories. I received six. But the hope was that those stories could be compiled and then added to a comment as a response to a comment by the August deadline.
Harte Daniels: Instead of one on one going out and getting that, if we had someone in the room that says they would be willing to help CTAB, if there was a web site that they could go to and say, “These are the suggestions.” I sent a [unintelligible] on how to make a comment and it mirrors what Cantwell and Clyburn were saying. And then you could gather more stories. If that site were up so that you’ve got a URL, you could get those stories more easily. Thank you for telling me about the nonprofits, because all I heard were the two large groups in the region. And I think there are a lot more. And one last thing. You mentioned getting recorders. I didn’t know how that could help people write their stories, and I also have a network of tech writers if you need wonky stuff like this. Simple, so people can understand. I’m still willing to connect with you or anybody else in community for a single-sourced base that will make it easier to gather these comments.
Jose Vasquez: Thanks, Dan. I also want to recognize tomorrow as the Day of Action on the FCC. Reclassification is specific to this?
Tony Perez: Yes. You’ll see it on our multiple City web sites.
Jose Vasquez: I would encourage all of us as community members in Seattle as leaders in tech across the country, it’s up to us to make those individual comments. How can we use the information that, for example, you have already thoroughly compiled, how can we take that and also give our own personal stories. How is this going to affect us as individuals, or through our agencies, if we’re able to. Did you have a comment?
Tony Perez: I was going to ask how they think the internet would have been developed without Title II. It’s all because of APRANET that we have open access to that network.
Dorene Cornwell: I assume there’s a desire to approve a basic document tonight. There is a section where we were talking about Lifeline where the word, ‘accessibility’ was stuck in in a way where I looked at it and thought we’re going to need more words. And then I thought it might need 100 words, and decided to write a statement saying, ‘This is all the stuff I know about access,’ which is how does net neutrality matter for accessibility when you have a bunch of different tools, a bunch of different things. And what I decided what I wanted to say is, over the last three to five years, there has been this huge bloom in accessibility technologies. And that’s all gone on under Title II. So if they’re not persuaded that taking away Title II will somehow do something that isn’t already happening. And then there is another legal framework piece about it. But what I wanted–would there be someone who could read back about two sentences where it says ‘accessibility’ and you’re talking about Lifeline? It’s toward the end.
Jose Vasquez: Thank you. That is a very important point to make sure that we do have ….
Dorene Cornwell: But it needs to be carefully worded. It’s funny because the two organizations are holding their national conventions, and I emailed some different people, several of the telecom companies are bit sponsors of the convention. And so there is nothing that I saw about net neutrality except this one really cool civil rights lawyer who said, “I don’t have time to work on it. My office is working on it, but we really need it. I’m going to say what I can say.” But it is this interesting dance, and I’m totally fine with it being a dance because I think Charlotte is right about the FCC asking for reasoning and asking what other laws apply in this picture. Is Title II really this oppressive burden that people are trying to say it is. I think the answer is, no, it’s not. And that’s what we’re trying to say. What I would say, versus what goes into this document, are two different things.
Charlotte Lunday: Dorene, I don’t see the word, ‘accessibility.’ I know I said, ‘expanding broadband access. This is a step forward to improve access.’ I tried to make it sound like it’s not the end-all, be-all. As far as your personal stories and the individual impacts that you feel, I think that that is really powerful. That’s one of the things in the next steps, but in this next week, if we can incorporate that…? Because I know, Karia Wong, you and I on Friday or Saturday we said, “Oh my goodness, we already sent this out. But I think we were hoping to propose it to the board that if you approve this, I think it would be best to approve it with a caveat that we would add a little bit more of the real personal impacts–especially the Lifeline, the universal service fund provisions. We could do it. Instead of worrying about just a short blurb to squeeze in, we could put an actual story as an appendix. That mirrors what the FCC did in their notice of proposal, making it general. They put background and. I think, a statement from Pai, that was separate from the notice of proposal of rule making. They put it in the appendix. That is something I think we could do. And I think it is worthwhile to do. For one thing, because Lifeline cuts across all groups. On either side of the issue people want to see Lifeline and similar programs thrive. If we can put that in, I think that would only be a boon.
Karia Wong: I just have a quick comment. After going to the Townhall meeting the other day, I think we need to have some personal touch in the statement, like personal stories. Because right now, I think it’s really heavy on the technical argument, which I think they know about already. It’s the personal story part that needs to be pushed.
Dorene Cornwell: I really like the thing that you drafted, Karia. It exactly tells the story you’ve been telling us over and over.
Charlotte Lunday: I think a big reason why–we had talked about personal stories early on in the timeline. As far as the technical issues, we were concerned about whether you could prove an impact, especially given that some of the rules that came out of the classification under Title II didn’t actually exist until midway through 2016. So, I think Lifeline–stories about Lifeline, in particular–are really good stories with absolutely provable impact, I think we should include those. It’s just a matter of sourcing them.
Jose Vasquez: Could we possibly vote on this language as is with some bullets of agreed upon caveats for updates, but also if there are personal stories that we can attach as supporting documents to this official CTAB statement? It doesn’t mean that we need to vote on updating the CTAB statement. It’s more like we’re adding supporting statements. Would that work?
Charlotte Lunday: I think that would be great.
Jose Vasquez: Okay. I did want to highlight some language as it relates to what CTAB’s position is on this. You know, ‘strongly supports maintaining the classification of broadband internet access as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. CTAB emphatically supports these programs and implores the commission to retain the telecommunications service classification of broadband access that enables the creation of these programs under Title II.’ And then, ‘as mentioned above, Seattle is facing an affordability crisis that would increase costs passed to the customers by this policy will be felt for Seattleites relying on Lifeline’s broadband program. Reclassification may mean the loss of the ability to participate in Seattle’s increasingly digital economy, society and government. This would be a step backward when we should be seeking policies to continue to expand access to all.’
Did I miss any other CTAB position?
Charlotte Lunday: We’re going to format it to try to offset this, but…
Jose Vasquez: So the big one that was highlighted: ‘We ask the commission to retain the classification of broadband internet access as a telecommunications service, and to strongly support extended broadband access to low income, elderly, and disabled individuals under the Lifeline program and other universal service programs.’ Does anybody have any specific comments or questions about those statements?
Lloyd Douglas: I have an edit. David sent a copy around and I read it. On item four, it looks like the up and down speeds were reversed. So can we double check that? I think it was 25 up and four down.
Jose Vasquez: We’ll make sure to double check that and make sure it’s the correct speeds. Those who have reviewed it, how is everybody feeling about this statement as it stands?
Mark DeLoura: Lifeline versus Lifeline broadband: I’m trying to just verify….
Charlotte Lunday: The Lifeline modernization order, I believe, which was combined with a couple of other things all at once, that was in 2016. So, there was some expansion of broadband access specifically. Conflating the two here, I tried to distinguish it in the draft, but that came about in 2016. And specifically citing statutory authority provisions under Title II of the Communications Act. As the broadband program currently stands, in the FCC’s mind, it exists because of Title II. And the classification of broadband in internet access as a telecommunications service. There is some uncertainty. Whether you could have the Lifeline broadband program or a similar type of program even without that classification. If you can, it’s likely to be weaker. From what I’ve heard from reading some of the personal stories about the Lifeline broadband program, really that service needs to be improved, not weakened and stepped back.
David Keyes: Also, the Lifeline broadband program has started to move towards implementation. One of the things that happened under this administration, they held back what had been approval for new broadband providers. So there were some groups like Mobile Citizen, that sell internet for $10 a month, is a broadband only provider. For some of those, they stopped certification of them being able to be Lifeline broadband providers. Part of the urging from the digital inclusion community, like the National Consumer Law Center, was to move forward with this modernization of the implementation order. That’s a piece of it. Doing this whole thing also just puts a whole hold on all of these low income subsidies, and low income broadband options that were already moving forward.
Heather Lewis: I’m trying to capture the caveats, so that we can vote with a couple of additions that will be updated over the next few days. I want to make sure that I have those caveats so we can vote and understand what they are. There was a footnote on Lifeline. Am I missing others?
Charlotte Lunday: I think attached statements, if you have that. That was the big one.
Heather Lewis: Are there others? Or are those the two? Can we get a motion to approved with the two caveats?
Jose Vasquez: Yes.
John Krull: Maybe include the minor edits.
Amy Hirotaka: I only found a reference to the 25.
Jose Vasquez: Okay. Do we have a motion on the table?
Mark DeLoura: I move to approve.
Heather Lewis: I will second that motion.
Jose Vasquez: Can we check Torgie Madison on that one?
Heather Lewis: I actually have a conversation going with him.
Jose Vasquez: Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in favor?
Heather Lewis: Torgie says aye.
Jose Vasquez: All opposed? Abstentions? Motion passes. We have an official statement for the FCC comment period. I will follow up with you to officially submit it once we have those personal stories. But also I think the deadline of August 16 on a comment period on this comment gives us an additional opportunity to add more of those personal stories. I will work with City staff and City Council to see if they’re interested. I’m sure they will want to have a say on this, as well. We’ll work collectively to put pressure on the FCC to maintain Title II classification to be sure that there is fair access to internet for all, which I believe is what we are really supportive of.
David Keyes: Just another quick note: When you guys are ready for a public release of that, maybe something that you guys posting it ahead of the deadline or are willing to share it out because then others could draw from it.
Heather Lewis: Would it be worthwhile to include tonight’s version and maybe add it to the broader CTAB group? So they can review it in advance, with the understanding that we have these three caveats?
David Keyes: Sure. Yes. If you’re comfortable with it, we could also post it on the CTAB blog as a draft and share it out.
Charlotte Lunday: I think–Heather, correct me if I’m wrong–I think they were working on an abbreviated, more executive summary to be posted on the web site. We drafted this with the FCC commissioners and their staff in mind, and definitely tried to make it readable such that a lay person could follow it. But, it’s still folky. So I think that we might do more of a summary version, as well?
David Keyes: And you might just consider whether you want to add that in at the head of the submission. Because some people will open the filings and do the quick glance and that would be a way to get your main point across.
Jose Vasquez: Well, again, thank you everybody who was involved in this process. It’s a really well thought out document. We are going to have to cut our networking break short.
Heather Lewis: [unintelligible]
Jose Vasquez: Okay. We can get the full ten minutes. Take a little break. Stretch your legs. We’ll reconvene at 7:25.
BREAK
Jose Vasquez: All right. Let’s reconvene. Welcome back. Up next, in our agenda, we have the Cable Broadband Committee update, and in particular, the WAVE franchise.
WAVE FRANCHISE UPDATE
Tony Perez: Hi, I’m Tony. I think I know most of you. I’m Tony Perez of the Office of Cable Communications. I’m here today to give you an update on where we are with the negotiations with WAVE Broadband. As many of you know, their contract expires November 17 of this year. We’ve been actively working on renewal on a new ten-year franchise. I can’t get too much into the details of the specific commissions and benefits that we are negotiating, mainly because this will be a subject at the City Council briefing next Wednesday, the 19th. But I can say that I did read the letter submitted by CTAB to the Councilmembers. And I think it’s fair to say that you’re going to be pleased that we were able to utilize some of these benefits in the new franchise, particularly as they relate to discounts for low income people and expanded use of additional sites where we will have cable modem service. I’m not going to say too much more than that because I don’t want to steal Councilmember Bruce Harrell’s thunder. He will want to talk about this.
I want to talk a little bit about the schedule, and then another development with WAVE, which we’ll be talking more about. Maybe I can come back at the August meeting and talk about it a little more at length. I think the schedule is listed on your agenda. There is the briefing on the 19th, and then there is going to be a public hearing on August 2, also in Council chambers, at 2:00 p.m. This is the opportunity for the public to tell the Council in an open public setting whether or not there are additional benefits that should be included, or that Council should consider. Or that you think it’s a great deal, or that you think it can be improved in some way. Anyway, I encourage those of you who are interested to show–I know it’s a tough time at 2:00 p.m.–on August 2. After the public hearing, the final vote at committee is still scheduled to be September 6. So, from the time that it’s introduced at committee this July 19, through September 6, it’s an ample period of time where anyone here or CTAB members want to have additional conversations with the Council, the Council is never going to have more leverage than it does during that period. So enough said about that.
What I wanted to touch briefly on is that this whole renewal process is complicated a little bit by the fact that WAVE is for sale. It’s being bought. The ultimate parent company is called Radiate. And, currently, Radiate owns RCN Networks. Some of you may have heard of them. RCN is primarily on the east coast, Massachusetts, New York, the DC area, places like that. They also have a franchise in Chicago; and Grand Communications, which is mostly in Texas. So, Grand, RCN, and WAVE will all be subsidiaries of this company, Radiate. WAVE is going to keep the name. So, they will continue to do business as WAVE here, although part of the management team is going to stay on for a little bit, but there will be a different management under a company called — I forget right now. But, for the customer, they won’t see any difference. Currently, under the code we have to assess–and we’re doing this now–the legal, technical, and financial qualifications of the proposed new entity to assume the obligations in the franchise. We’re in the process of gathering that information, and we’ve hired some consultants to do a financial review of the company–look at the pro formas and so forth, going out to a number of years; looking at the legal structure to make sure we get some performance guarantees from the corporate entity where the money resides. There are a lot of different shell companies, and you have to find out who’s got the money and can guarantee the performance. Typically, we have to get all of this information together and summarize it in a report to Council. It is my hope that we can get Council to act on the transfer request at the September 6 committee meeting. That may or may not be possible. We received what is called the FCC form 394, on June 19. This is the form that they need to submit to the City with the information that they believe is pertinent for the Council to consider for the transfer. We have under federal law, 120 days to take action. So, if we don’t make it on September 6, we still have a little bit of time. But that’s the hope, that it will all be done at once. So, that’s what we’re up to. Any questions?
Lloyd Douglas: What is the number of connections provided to community groups?
David Keyes: Right now, the agreement was for 50 connections for WAVE, which we’ve used up.
Tony Perez: We’re going to get more.
Lloyd Douglas: The question I had is Comcast having the same numbers as WAVE.
Tony Perez: Comcast is a much bigger company than WAVE. WAVE has about 8,000 subscribers in Seattle. It probably has another 8,000 under subsidiary WAVE G, that provides fiber to the home for a number of high rise buildings in Seattle. Comcast has about 150,000 customers in Seattle.
Lloyd Douglas: My question is about the number of community group connections, because Comcast [unintelligible].
David Keyes: We had 350 connections for community organizations providing some access.
Tony Perez: And the other thing we were able to retain in this franchcise–Comcast and WAVE will continue to provide free cable service to all schools and City buildings in the City. And without deducting the cost of that benefit from franchise fees. They can, under another misguided FCC ruling. But we got them to agree not to do that. I have probably said a lot more than I should have.
Jose Vasquez: I think we have time for one or two more questions.
Karia Wong: I just need to have a quick update. On June 28, we went to meeting Councilmember Johnson to share the information in our statement, and also to give him more detail about our organizations, to get his support.
Tony Perez: How did he receive it?
Karia Wong: Actually, we took him our history and background information, to explain why we need a low income program for the WAVE service.
Tony Perez: I’m guessing you will be happy with the end result on that.
Tony Perez: Thank you, Karia and Tony for all your work on this. This board is very supportive of offering low income broadband opportunities. We’ll definitely continue pushing for that. With that, we’ll move on to–E-Gov is not giving any updates?
Heather Lewis: If I could say one thing quickly, earlier this month, E-Gov met as the FCC task force. Just because the E-Gov Committee has decided to break for the summer. If it makes sense to compile stories during our typical bloc this month, I’m happy to host something again. I’ll follow up with the group, and if others want to join the FCC task force, please feel free to follow up with me afterwards.
Jose Vasquez: Next up, Digital Inclusion Committee.
DIGITAL INCLUSION COMMITTEE UPDATE
Chris Alejano: For the past few committee meetings, we’ve been batting back and forth a document that would help shape a purpose/goals/work areas for what we’ve talked about in past board meetings with the digital literacy network We feel like we’re in a pretty good place with that document. In getting into the logistics of actually activating and operationalizing, it occurred to us that we should probably figure out some of those questions like who is going to staff and support this work, whether that’s from the CTAB side of things in terms of community members or board members to even Seattle IT staff. In talking with David Keyes, recently–and I think even Jose Vasquez had a conversation with David, as well–it made a lot of sense to us as a board, for committee leadership and board leadership, to have a conversation with Chance Hunt and Jim Loter and others at Seattle IT to really hash out what is actually feasible and realistic to be able to support this digital literacy network effort before we start going down the line of reaching out to community members or nonprofit organizations that are actually doing this, inviting them into this conversation and actually launching the overall effort. Other than that, I think at some point in time it would be great to be able to get the full feedback of the board and others on what we pull together. Again, just for an initial stab at what this effort might look like and what it might be about. Until then, we plan on meeting with Seattle IT leadership to hatch out some of those logistical pieces. We thought because we need to manage through some of those things, we will forgo this month’s Digital Inclusion Committee, so that we can start up again in August with a clear purpose and drive. David Keyes jotted down in the agenda, as well, that on the TMF side, there is a tentative date set for formal approval of TMF grantees and awardees for September 6, so some of those logistical pieces around what sort of celebration event of otherwise afterwards that typically happens, still needs to be hammered out.
Jose Vasquez: Anybody who wants to work on that and volunteer, we’re always open to new committee members, for any activities. Thank you, Chris, for that update. In lieu of this month’s Digital Inclusion Committee, you’re saying you’re proposing having a meeting with City staff to figure out that end. Do we have a meeting date scheduled for August?
Chris Alejano: It will probably be the same, the Wednesday after the usual board meeting in August. It’s usually at The Porch when there is no Sounders or Mariners game. It will be August 16.
Jose Vasquez: And then, for the Broadband Committee, do we have a tentative date?
Karia Wong: Yes. We are meeting on the last Monday of July, which is the 31st. Tentatively, it will be at the Municipal Towers sixth floor open area.
Jose Vasquez: We haven’t had a Privacy Committee update in a while. Have we heard from Christopher Sheats?
Heather Lewis: My understanding is that Christopher is involved in the Surveillance Ordinance work. Michael Mattmiller’s update today probably covers that.
Jose Vasquez: Especially with the new staff member, Ginger Armbruster. What is her title?
David Keyes: Privacy officer.
Jose Vasquez: Privacy officer. It might dovetail nicely with our work streams. Stay tuned. For the next board meeting, tentatively we will do a lighter agenda next month and do one hour of CTAB business, but then the last hour, either leave that for a next step strategic planning conversation or possibly having a longer, retreat style conversation, depending on the feedback we get from City staff on how much we can push for. Also, quick updates. We did make an official request to Councilmember Gonzalez. It came out of the conversation about the Surveillance Ordinance, but we did make an official request or pre-request for five additional seats to the CTAB board. I know that’s a big ask. We’ll see how many we can get. So, I just wanted to put that out there are inform you all about that. with that, we have wrap up summary and decisions, and next steps.
WRAP UP SUMMARY, DECISIONS, NEXT STEPS
David Keyes: I have one update. The process is underway on recruiting a new Get Engaged person. Amazingly, Eliab Sisay’s term for the Get Engaged will soon end.
Jose Vasquez: You should re-apply for a regular seat, once we expand.
David Keyes: I just got a note from the YMCA, that facilitates that process, and they’re just setting up to interview. They’re setting them up for 25 boards and commissions. Do you know how many you get?
Eliab Sisay: Yes. Twenty or 25. I don’t know what the final number is.
Jose Vasquez: Can you talk a little bit about the Get Engaged program?
Eliab Sisay: Yes. The Get Engaged program is geared to community members under 30, to get them involved in City government. It’s a year-long program where they place on Get Engaged member on 20 to 25 boards in the City. Along with that, we meet once a month with our cohort to learn about different topics around the City. So, with everyone being on a different board or commission, it’s actually really helpful for me to see what else is going on in the City and what other boards are working on. And so, if there is anyone here under 30, I would highly recommend it.
Jose Vasquez: I hate to put you on the spot, but is there any valuable feedback on your involvement with CTAB, so far?
Eliab Sisay: This has been great. When I joined a year ago, it was right after we had given out the last round of funding, I think that was kind of a transition period for the board and for executing plans and stuff, so it took us a little bit to get going. I feel like we’re starting to find our feet now, so I’m excited [unintelligible].
Jose Vasquez: I will also open it up to everyone here. If you are interested in serving on the board, every year, we do have seats that open, especially if we get the additional seats we’re requesting. There will be plenty of opportunities to get involved. Or even join as volunteers.
David Keyes: Yes, the four terms run to the end of this year. In terms of trying to fill any slots, that really won’t happen until the fall. We have the interest of a couple of folks. You’re here actually tonight coming through the Mayor’s office. It’s actually the City Clerk who does boards and commissions. The clerk has open applications.
Jose Vasquez: I just wanted to plant that seed for anybody who is thinking about it. I think any board member is willing to talk with you about our experiences–the advantages and disadvantages of serving on the board.
David Keyes: I’m looking, because I can’t remember off-hand, who is in their second term right now, that will be ending.
Jose Vasquez: We had a question over here, while David Keyes ….
Steve Cathersall: I just wanted to saying right now. I actually applied. The site said there were two current openings. I can find out where the site is. Speaking for myself in my first time here, I’m not as interested in being on a board. I just want to assist in whatever way. I heard a couple of things that you guys might need help with. The FCC task force, the digital Literacy program, or whatever. For me, I just want to offer assistance. I’ve done IT work for 25 years. I currently work at Amazon, so I’ve got a lot of experience. But I would rather ask you what you need help with, so I’m open. If anyone wants my information or assistance, then they can talk to me after the meeting.
Jose Vasquez: Great. Thank you. And I did see that when we send out the agenda, we also send out job postings. And I think we should do more of that, for workforce activities.
David Keyes: I can try to send them out or forward the City IT job postings when we get them in a format that’s easy; or I can do them through a link.
Jose Vasquez: Do sign up for our mailing list. When you see opportunities like this, feel free to share them out with community. Or anything we discuss here. It is an open, public meeting. So, the minutes are recorded as best as we can, and we try to post those online. Definitely, let’s try to get more people engaged as we can, because we do dive into a lot of really technical stuff, but I feel like the more engagement we have with community, the better we are at advising the City on matters related to technology. With that, I believe that’s a wrap.
MEETING ADJOURNED