City of Seattle Citizens Telecommunications and Technology Advisory Board (CTTAB) May 13th meeting minutes . Topics covered include: Public Comment, Interim Director report, Vote on Technology Matching Fund project recommendations, Vote to endorse Seattle Privacy Council concept of City strengthening privacy oversight, Response from WAVE Broadband on low-income service options, wireless/ last mile options.
This meeting was held:
May 13th, 2014, 6–8 PM, Seattle Municipal Tower: 700 – Fifth Avenue
Attending:
Board Members: Ben Krokower, Dana Lewis, Nourisha Wells, Brian Hsi, Phillip Duggan, Beryl Fernandes, Rob Dolin, Stacey Wedlake
Public: Dean McBee (Jefferson Terrace), Joneil Custodio (Central District resident), Sarah Trowbridge (Genelex), Webster Olson (Spectrum Networks/Condo Internet), Joan, Greg Harmon, Lee Colleton (Seattle Privacy Coalition), Inye Wokoma (IJO Arts Media Group, Central District resident), Karen Toering, Matt McCoy, Jon Madamba (Filipino Community Center), Ann Summy
Staff: Sabra Schneider, David Keyes
Introductions by all participants.
The agenda and the April 8 minutes were approved.
Public Comments:
Are there any updates about net neutrality?
Answer: There has been quite a bit of news coverage and events coming up. Tony Perez could speak best to FCC action status, but is not at the meeting.
Phil Mozek: For CTTAB podcasting he encourages the Board and City to do that in an open format that works in any format vs just in VLC.
Ben Krokower concurred that this would enabling the most open compatible format makes sense and referred to Public Engagement Committee work.
Dana Lewis: Public engagement committee decided to wait until city has infrastructure to do this.
Sabra Schneider: The City is moving to Office365. She has offered CTTAB as a pilot to the project team, but does not have a time frame yet.
We have about 200 in an initial internal pilot. When we roll out Lync, then it may be ready to do more. May be late summer early fall.
Joneil Custodio: Are there criteria to help guide use of tools for public engagement and remote participation tools?
Sabra: We talked about it in the Public Engagement Committee:
1) Want it to tie into city technology
2) What we do at CTTAB, we want it to be repeatable to other Boards and Commissions.
3) We want to ensure staff are trained to use any streaming, conferencing, or engagement tools
3) We want to use it consistently over at least 3-6 months so that we can fairly test and evaluate. Will want to get the word out when we do it.
* ACTION: request from Beryl to Dana to send out the notes about this to the public list.
[ See follow-up post to this and comments ]
Acting Chief Technology Officer (CTO) report – Sabra Schneider
Appointing a permanent director: She doesn’t know what the Mayor’s process is for the appointment. Believes the interim position is supposed to be fairly short term.
- While interim director, she is working collaboratively with the directors on Office365, Data Center, budget and other projects, which are moving ahead well.
- The Technology Access & Adoption report will be out on the 22nd, released at the public forum. See Seattle.gov/tech/indicators
- Hack for Change day will be at City Hall on May 31st. See http://www.meetup.com/Code-for-Seattle/events/175917132/ This is part of National Day of Civic Hacking
Rob Dolin: Would DoIT or others want to come up challenges?
Sabra: Great idea. We could reach out to the City tech board to see if they have ideas. She’ll connect with Bruce and Seth Vincent to make sure they have time on the agenda for this.
The hack event could be a good use of indicators data too.
Rob – Send this to e-gov committee.
- Sabra: The Seattle Channel and DoIT did a Race & Social Justice event screening the Honor Totem video about the totem pole made following the death of John Williams.
Joneil : Sol Villareal did a great job helping to facilitate the hackathon.
- Sabra: Tina Podlodowski has been hired by the Office of Policy and Innovation working for Robert Feldstein, to work on broadband and other digital access issues. She is interested in working with CTTAB.
CTTAB role in CTO selection process – Ben Krokower
Ben drafted a letter to the Mayor that asking that CTTAB be informed if there is an external search for CTO outside of DOIT staff and asked that CTTAB be involved if there is an external search. Asked for the process to be opened up.
Mayor appoints and the position needs to be approved by Council.
Could add what could be important to the CTO.
Beryl: Input from variety of people would be useful.
Phillip: Main point of letter is to open it up
Ben: Our offer is to be a conduit through which the public process occurs.
David Keyes also suggested looking at the legislated description of the Chief Technology Officer position.
The Board voted to approve Ben sending a letter with the suggested changes.
[See the letter sent to the Mayor]
Committee descriptions – David Keyes
David Keyes sent out proposed committee descriptions asking members for revisions. He hasn’t received any comments back and asked Board member to send him the revisions. See the descriptions (in some cases, committee member lists need to e updated.
Technology Matching Fund (TMF) project recommendations and vote – TMF Committee: Stacey Wedlake & Delia Burke w/Vicky Yuki, David Keyes, Committee members
Stacey presented the 23 proposed projects.
The recommended projects total $320,000. This year, sixty seven applications were received (a 26% increase over last year), requesting a total of $1,054,149. The average grant request was $15,734.
The recommended projects will assist a wide range of residents in need and help to further digital inclusion for all. This year:
- The City’s funds will be leveraged with a projected $685,711 in community matching resources, more than double the City’s investment.
- More than a third of this year’s projects are new grantee organizations. The other projects build on infrastructure and knowledge at prior grantee sites.
- Three projects are aimed specifically at using technology to increase electronic civic engagement opportunities.
- The projects will reach over 4,228 residents.
- The projects will serve over 1,295 immigrants and refugees.
- Three projects will provide technology training for people with disabilities; 4 will serve seniors and 5 will train youth.
- Nine projects are located in low-income and transitional housing facilities and will help residents gain life skills and self-sufficiency.
Stacey – thanks to staff and to Board members for their work on this.
Beryl requested in the next round that we put into the application and criteria that identifies and supports self-directed projects which have participants directly involved in guiding projects.
Stacey – Application does ask about community involvement and that is a criteria. Would have to look at this more
Delia: We also ask about staff size and budget to see if projects are more of a grass roots effort. Criteria points are also given for community engagement.
Beryl: Would like to pull it out expressly: that people who are served by projects actually manage the projects.
Delia: We have some projects in this group that have resident councils guiding the projects.
Phillip: Some organizations manage the projects, but they also do capacity building for participants.
Ben: This renews my faith in Seattle. The teaching, infrastructure and work that these groups are doing is special. He encourages people to get involved in the committee.
This money is a bit at risk as well with lowered reduction in cable franchise fees.
Stacey – She explained the criteria. See this in the grant guidelines: http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/Tech/TMF%20Guidelines.pdf
Joneil: He’s do many grant reviews before. This was a great process and the understanding of the organizations by staff and discussing this with the group with more context was very helpful.
Dean McBee: Best thing to do for applicants is to invite staff to come up and answer questions. Delia did that for us and it was very helpful. They spent 2 hours discussing the grant and our project.
Stacey: Great to hear. It is a fantastic part of TMF that you can connect with staff for assistance as you’re writing and that they have the workshops.
Delia: There are many great projects on the list that we won’t be able to fund this year. We work with groups to connect them to other resources and
The slate of projects recommended for funding was approved.
See the project recommendations
Response from Wave on low-income broadband services – Broadband & Cable Committee: Brian Hsi, Daniel Hoang
Daniel shared the response from WAVE. Jim Penney wrote that they do not have any low income reduced cost Internet offering now, though were interested in learning more about possible solutions they could roll out across all their franchises.
(See the original letter and response from WAVE)
Brian: Who takes it from here to contact WAVE and follow-up?
Beryl: Nancy Sherman in the room was part of the process.
Nancy: Suggest shooting them a link to the ConnectUp listing of programs. Solid Ground has this list of other low-income programs.
What also comes up is how do we ensure that people who really need it get this?
Best way is to ask for EBT (for food stamps) DSHS has already vetted this.
Beryl: Also speak to the issue of privacy. There is a way to this that respects dignity and privacy.
Nancy: You are supporting a number of computer labs. She knows a number who have some device, but can’t afford Internet. Wave could be reminded that they are already in a lot of low income buildings. Wave could be getting an extra $10/month from residents.
Joan from Ross Manor: They came to her with the same stance that they don’t know how to do a discounted program.
Dorene: At Center Park, a lot have dropped Wave because their rates have gone up so much. People also get overwhelmed by the marketing materials.
Lee: He pays for the best service that WAVE has and it’s still really bad. He pays for the best service he can and it still buffers.
Dean: They asked for Wave to come into their building but couldn’t get it.
Brian: that is a separate issue, the building lockouts. Cable office has some
*The BROADBAND COMMITTEE WILL TAKE ACTION TO Set up a meeting with Wave
Wireless/last mile options – Wireless subgroup – Beryl Fernandes
The Broadband committee had a lot on its plate. So the committee thought having some subgroups would be helpful. Wireless/last mile option was one of these; though we don’t have a committee yet.
There are pros and cons to fiber. How long are we going to keep people from getting access while we wait for fiber infrastructure. Bringing wireless into the discussion may be a temporary fix or hyper local solution.
Webster Olson from Condo Internet : they were doing point to point distribution. They offering fiber now in Ballard and Capitol Hill. Their group, Spectrum Networks, provides some backbone.
They’re also in the Bay Area, Tacoma, serving some schools. There are some creative project ideas, like turning old phone booths into hotspots.
First step is education.
Ben: Robert Feldstein said city approach is to look at all options. Ben would welcome alternate ideas.
Margie: What is the process to get input to Mayor? Need a formalized process to bring ideas forward.
Sabra: Mayor’s intent is to consider an All the Above approach. At DoIT we’re also looking at internal policies that could help and external ideas we hear of.
BREAK
May 22nd “Seattle: How Online Are We?” public forum – Public Engagement Committee: Dana Lewis/ Phillip Duggan; Indicators Committee – Brian His Staff: David Keyes
There was some discussion of the format for the forum and people signed up to lead discussion of sections.
Get Online: Jobs Campaign launch – Get Online Committee: Stacey Wedlake, Vicky Yuki
We’ve launched the Get Online for Jobs education campaign. See Seattle.gov/getonline
Please distribute and contact Vicky.Yuki@seattle.gov if you want more info, leaflets or posters.
The materials have 3 main job topics and pointers to info on low cost Internet and public computer sites.
Materials are being distributed to: Health clinics, low-income housing complexes, job training sites.
John: Are there jobs for youth links there.
Vicky: We can add Seattle Youth Employment Program link
Vicky: The links to job sites have Google click tracking so we can see what’s most useful to visitors.
Comment: Concern that people wouldn’t click if they see the tracking.
Lee (from Google): If the link has all the tracked elements, people may search to see where it actually goes and not use the site because of concern over tracking.
Vicky will look at that with the web staff and how to balance evaluation needs with links and notice of tracking.
The next Getonline campaign will be about learning and education. John Madamba has volunteered to help on that campaign.
Ben: It’s great that this is designed as a cumulative campaign and visitors are able to look back at past topic materials.
E-Gov Committee item on open broadband performance survey & customer service tracking was tabled to another meeting with Rob Dolin
Seattle Privacy Coalition (SPC) Proposal to City Council – Privacy committee: Beryl Fernandes
With Phil and Lee from the Seattle Privacy Council (SPC).
Privacy Council has submitted proposal to Council and Mayor. It is going to the Harrell’s Committee, See seattleprivacy.org,
They have asked for action and budget support from the City to help further protection for residents.
The privacy committee had its second meeting last week and reviewed the proposal and discussed first doing some activity to raise awareness and education of this issue. Thought about having a panel discussion at some point: (eg. Privacy: Why Should You Care?).
SPC has great group of knowledgeable people.
Phil: SPC initially came together over concern seeing surveillance/security camera deployment at Alki.
Their recommendations include that the City should appoint a Chief Privacy Officer and staff; They also have a proposed process for evaluating privacy in new services and processes.
Lee: City is currently looking at technology and there is currently no structure to evaluate with privacy criteria. When City put cameras in the Park, there had been money spent and City Auditor found that there was no added benefit from the cameras.
Also see European Union cam era rules.
Brian Hsi: Love what you’re doing. Is it part of budget proposal to do research on what other cities are doing.
Phil: The Chief Privacy Officer is becoming more common in private business, but not yet in government.
Nourisha: What is it that CTTAB can do on this?
Phil: Mainly just informing you, since privacy board usually involves technology.
Ben: What’s the reaction from city officials who have to do review.
David Keyes: You may want to refer to the state Supreme Court adopted Access to Justice Principles’ clause on privacy. (See atjweb.org). Also the Race and Social Justice Technology Project Management tool (See seattle.gov/tech, under Reports and Publications).
Phillip: Wonder if the solution of setting another chief position is the right approach vs a broader strategy directive that allows establishing a position within a department whose duties are to provide customer service privacy evaluation and oversight.
Beryl: Asking CTTAB to endorse the letter.
Dana: Interested in support the goal and concept, but there are too many details in the letter that we haven’t had time to fully evaluate..
Ben: We endorse the concept, but don’t know enough about the details.
Dana – Thanks, the Privacy Council has written a good clear letter.
ACTION TAKEN: A motion was made and approved to provide a letter to the Privacy Council that CTTAB has reviewed SPC’s proposal and supports the concept of having a formal privacy review process.
Beryl will write and send around.
Meeting summary: Nourisha will send out summary of action and steps.
Meeting adjourned.