October 13th, 2015 Seattle Community Technology Advisory Board Agenda
City of Seattle Community Technology Advisory Board
Draft Meeting Agenda for October 13th, 2015, 6-8 pm Room 2750 (27th floor), Seattle Municipal Tower: 700 – Fifth Avenue
You can follow or comment to the Board on Twitter: @SeaTechBoard.
Information for the Board can also be sent to CommunityTechnology@seattle.gov
October | time |
Intros, agenda approval, tweeting the meeting | 3 |
Minutes approval | 2 |
Chief Technology Officer Update – Michael Mattmiller | 15 |
Announcements | 5 |
Seattle Channel Diversity Report: John Giamberso | 15 |
Cable and Broadband Committee: Amy Hirotaka | 10 |
Digital Inclusion Committee: Jose Vasquez | 10 |
Networking Break | 5 |
Privacy Committee: Beryl Fernandes | 10 |
E-Gov Committee: Joneil Sampana | 10 |
Board development: member composition, needs, review of past recruitment announcement, ideas for publicizing. | 10 |
CTAB Administration: Nourisha (including Action items send-out, minutes, podcast, December meeting and elections, planning for remote participation). | 10 |
Additional Public Comment | 5 |
Summary of action, to do’s & next meeting items | 5 |
TIME subtotal | 115 |
Balance on time (120-subtotal) | 5 |
September 8, 2015 Seattle Technology Advisory Board Minutes
City of Seattle Citizens Technology Advisory Board (CTAB) – Sept. 8th minutes
(Draft minutes pending review by the Board at next month’s meeting)
Topics covered: The group heard updates from Chief Technology Officer Michael Mattmiller; a discussion on Pay By Phone Parking from Mary Catherine Snyder of SDOT; a discussion of Comcast Internet Essentials low income program from Kathy Putt of Comcast; reminder on the Comprehensive Plan; a Privacy Committee rAn eport from Beryl Fernandes; Amy Hirotaka on the Cable and Broadband Committee; Jose Vasquez on the Digital Inclusion Committee; and an E-Gov Committee report from Joneil Sampana.
This meeting was held: September 8, 2015; 6:00-8:05 p.m., Seattle Municipal Tower, 700 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2750
Audio recording of CTAB meetings are available at: http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/CTTAB/podcast/cttab.xml
Attending:
Board Members: Nourisha Wells, Jose Vasquez, Beryl Fernandes, Joneil Sampana, Karia Wong, Amy Hirotaka, Iga Fikayo Keme, Dana Lewis
Public: Christopher Sheats, Lee Colleton, Lloyd Douglas, Dorene Cornwell, Henok Kidane (Open Seattle), Joseph Williams (Seattle Seniors), Dan Moulton, Dan Stiefel, Sarah Trowbridge, Luke Swart (Open Seattle), Carlton Green (Open Seattle), Kathy Putt (Comcast), Annmarie, Darryl Banks
Staff: Michael Mattmiller, Bruce Blood, Vicky Yuki, Derrick Hall, Cass Magnuski, Mary Catherine Snyder (SDOT), Aurlee Gamboa (City Light)
30 In Attendance
Meeting was called to order by Nourisha Wells.
Introductions
Nourisha Wells: We’ll do introductions, then agenda approval.If you’ve had a chance to look over the agenda, and there are copies of the agenda at the front–make sure you sign in. We will move to approve the agenda or make any changes. Is there a motion to approve the agenda?
Amy Hirotaka: I move to approve the agenda.
Comment: Second.
Nourisha Wells: We will now open the floor to discussion.
Beryl Fernandes: I want to add a motion on the TMF criteria.
Nourisha Wells: Okay. Any other discussion?
Christopher Sheats: I need two or three minutes to voice concern over SDOT’s tracking technology.
Nourisha Wells: You can do that during public comment or announcements. Any other comments on the agenda? Can we have a motion to approve the agenda and to accept the amendment?
Jose Vasquez: I so move.
Comment: Second.
Nourisha Wells: The agenda has been approved. A reminder: When you have a comment, a question, or an announcement, make sure you state your name for the minutes and also for the podcasts. So be sure to speak up so we can hear you. First up on the agenda is our update from Michael Mattmiller.
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER MICHAEL MATTMILLER UPDATE
Michael Mattmiller: Good evening, everyone, and thanks for coming out this evening. I have a handful of updates for you, and I’m going to start off with some exciting news. A couple of weeks ago, the City of Seattle was awarded by Governing Institute their 2015 Citizen Engagement Award of the Year, specifically for our open data program. So thank you, not only to Bruce Blood for his efforts in that category, but I’m so thrilled that there is a number of folks here from Open Seattle this evening. When we think about recognition that we get for making data available. It’s only as good as those who actually use it to produce meaningful things that improve the quality of life for our Seattle residents. So, I really do applaud your commitment and dedication to leveraging that information, to helping give us feedback to make that program better, and for using your free time to help make Seattle a great place to use those specific technologies. Thank you very much.
In terms of other things going on, it’s a busy time for us in DoIT. We are making great progress with our next generation data center. Since the last time we spoke, we have engaged the facility to use as our backup site in Eastern Washington to provide redundancy as we move into our new consolidated data center environment.
We’re also making progress with our 0365 migration and still look to be on track to complete email migration by the end of the year.
And then we have a few other projects that we haven’t much talked about, the first being IT consolidation. Last we spoke, the Mayor had just announced his intention to consolidate IT professionals working across fifteen different executive branch departments into a new Seattle Information Technology Department. And we’ve been having a number of meetings with staff that are in scope for consolidation. We’ve been having great conversations about what consolidation means, the benefits we expect to derive, and timelines and plans. One hallmark of the consolidation approach that’s very important to me is that we hadn’t come to the employees of the City with a fully baked plan of how exactly how we’re going to run consolidation. Instead, we made this a transparent initiative. We’ve made this an engaging process. And we have so far outlined six transition teams that will be engaging staff across the City to help plan out the new department. Those transition teams include, for example, the HR transition team that are helping to develop the approach to workplace practices and helping us to understand how to run the consolidation process. The finance transition team is help to find things like charge-backs and other administrative practices. The culture and values team is coming together to help think about what is it we need to instill in this department to make sure it’s a place where IT professionals want to work and stay and build out. Those efforts are moving forward and we expect to send the legislation to affect consolidation in the Mayor’s budget, which will be translated to Council on September 28. The effective date for the new department in that legislation will be April 6, 2016.
A few other things going on: The Digital Equity Initiative. Since the last time we spoke, we were pleased to release our page one report outlining the six goals that were important to the community as we think about how to make sure that everyone in Seattle is getting access to leveraging the benefits of technology in our high tech society. The Phase One report outlined a number of action strategies for how we can achieve our goals. And so our next step is to begin digging into those action strategies, identify what we can most affect, given the resources available to us. And then to hopefully advocate for some additional resources. And we look forward to kicking off that work soon.
Vicky Yuki: We do have only four copies of the report left. I know some of you got copies in the mail, but if you would like some, we can order some more. Also, you can still get it online [linked at Seattle.gov/digital-equity].
Michael Mattmiller: On the broadband front, since the last time we talked–in June, we talked about the results of the broadband study. As much as we would like to build out a municipal broadband system, we looked under the couch cushions and couldn’t find $360 million. But what we’ve been doing since the last time we spoke is we’ve had a number of conversations with our federal elected officials, our Members of Congress, and the delegation of our Senators to understand what their broadband priorities are and what types of funding opportunities might be available to us. We’ve also talked across the region with other cities about how they’re looking at the broadband challenge. And on Thursday of this week, I will be meeting with the Lake Washington Mayors Association. It’s all the mayors of the cities across the Sound area that touch Lake Washington, to talk about broadband and the challenges of how we might move forward. It is worth noting that in the year or so since the Mayor outlined his broadband strategy, we’ve gone from having about 20,000 homes with access to gigabit speed broadband to about 140,000 homes today. And on top of that, Century Link, on August 17, announced that they are starting to sell cable television service, in part because of building out to Seattle area homes. While 140,000 homes is not the full range of Seattle households–I think the number is 270,000–we are making progress towards competitive, affordable and equal gigabit broadband options.
And I’m very excited about a project Bruce Blood is going to be talking to you about a little bit later called our Interactive Broadband Map. One of the challenges we have with broadband right now is, while I think we can all agree that we’d like better service, faster service, cheaper service, we don’t have a lot of data specifically on what that looks like across Seattle neighborhoods. So, on Queen Anne, what is the current experience in terms of the cost, in terms of what our providers are delivering versus what they promise. And then how is it different in Rainier Beach and how is it different in Columbia City, and my new neighborhood, West Seattle. And so the Interactive Broadband Map that Bruce will talk to you about is going to hopefully give us some additional data to better target our efforts and understand our opportunities for success.
On the Privacy front, I’m very excited to see a lot of the work that we’ve been investing over the past few months come to fruition. And by that, I mean the Council passed by resolution a set of privacy principles back in March that give us an ethical framework to think about the public’s personal information and how we collect and use it here ion government. And since then, Ginger Armbruster, who many of you have met in her role as our privacy program manager, has been working with departments across the City with our external advisory group, on standing up a privacy program–designing a privacy program–that will help take those principles and turn them into something actionable, that we can educate City staff about how to think about data collection, how to think about data use, and how to think about getting ahead of projects before they are announced, to make sure that we have the right consideration around privacy, the right risk identification, and to put the right mitigation in place. For next steps on that account, we will be at a full Council briefing on October 5, to talk about the privacy program that we’ve developed and the timeline for implementation. I know a number of folks read the Crosscut article this morning on the e.cyclical system in SDOT and it’s a very interesting scenario for what we think about what we’re trying to affect with the privacy program, it’s exactly the type of thing where we would have liked to have been involved before the system was purchased. Not because it would have meant that we wouldn’t have purchased the system, but it would have been great to have had the conversation at that time about what the technology is, and what are the privacy risks and how do we mitigate it. SDOT didn’t do anything wrong in their procurement this cycle, they didn’t miss a step, it’s that when they procured it, we didn’t have a privacy program in place. We had developer privacy principles. But going forward, for example, one of the ways that we would make a purchase like this is we would have a gate as part of our technology procurement review process, something called MITI process here in the City, and there would have been questions about what are the potential privacy hacks, and this system would have triggered a more in depth review that Ginger Armbruster, or a member of her team, would have run to make sure that we properly considered the risks and mitigated any potential harms. In the case of the e.cyclical system, we learned about the system a couple of months ago and we immediately intervened, reached out to SDOT and said let’s have a conversation about what the system does, how it works, and make sure that we really thought about what information we’d collect, what privacy risks exist, and how do we mitigate them. Through a series of conversations with SDOT staff, through a series of conversations with the vendor, we identified a set of controls we would expect to be in place with a system like this to minimize the risks that the public’s information could be re-identified or used beyond simply understanding traffic flow. And we feel, based on the controls described to us by the vendor and the assurances we received, that there is minimal privacy risk to the public. Now, conversations are not sufficient and so we have talked to this vendor and we are requiring them to go out and get a third party audit to validate that the controls described to us are not only in place, but that they are operating effectively. And we are continuing to work with vendors to scope and perform that audit.
Beryl Fernandes: Just a story from the field: Somebody, I guess maybe ten years ago, had applied for SPU’s low income subsidy. Somebody came to their door wanting to install for them a free toilet. The plumber arrived with paperwork which showed this person’s very detailed financial information. That guy was horrified. This happened a couple of months ago. This was a person of color, lower income, and he said, “I couldn’t believe it! Why would the City give it to someone who was going to do the installation?” I don’t know if you are going to get to that granular level in your controls, but that would be something to consider.
Michael Mattmiller: It would be worth understanding more about it. To whatever extent that’s appropriate to share, I would love that scenario to work with.
Beryl Fernandes: Sure!
Michael Mattmiller: I would be happy to answer more questions in a minute. The one thing I will end with, is, for those at the table, I’ll pass them around the room here. I’m happy to share with you the City of Seattle Department of Information Technology 2014 Report. It took a little bit longer this year, as you might imagine with being new and getting used to the department. But also, it’s been a few years since we put out a report. But I want to make sure everyone here has a copy of the report so we can talk about what it is we’ve been doing within DoIT. As you can see, in the report, that a number of achievements that we’ve been talking about are really thanks in part to the great work that CTAB does, what you guided us to do, we do call that out here in several places. So thank you again for all of your efforts.
Jose Vasquez: Is there a section in here or online where we can see how the City of Seattle is doing as far as diversity in employment numbers? Because that’s something I personally would be interested in seeing in self-reflection of the City.
Michael Mattmiller: It is not in this report, but earlier this year, SDHR (Department of Human Resources) put out an equity study in terms of the City’s workforce. And the results were very interesting. The good news–and I don’t have the numbers in front of me, I’ll come back with them next month–is that DoIT is more diverse in it’s staffing than the technology industry here in Seattle. The downside to this is that the technology industry here in Seattle is not very diverse. So, while on one hand I can say it’s great that we’re better than the average, the average is really not sufficient. We recognize that as a lens we really need to look at, when we look at our staffing needs, we consider that through RSJI, and when we looked at the process of identifying who is in scope for IT consolidation in the City, we applied the RSJI lens to make sure that we created an organization not exclusionary based on race. We also found that within DoIT, there was pay equity across diversity lines in all areas except for IT professional CD band where we saw potential disparity that we need to spend more time on for diverse individuals. What that means is … well I’ll bring more information next month.
Chrisopher Sheats: Are you taking off soon? Will you not be here for the comments?
Michael Mattmiller: I do need to take off soon. I know, Christopher, that you mentioned concern with the E.Cyclical system. Would you like to share that?
Chrisopher Sheats: For those of you who don’t know me, I’m an unemployed masters student, studying information security. I intern with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). I’m on the board of directors of the Seattle Privacy Coalition, and I also educate lawyers, activists and journalists, so I’m a little knowledgeable about how serious this is. A few months ago, I raised concern at CTAB about the connected car seat technology and about technology’s capability because Seattle’s residents will not be informed if Seattle government and Seattle leaders are not informed. Today, Crosscut reporter David Kroman published an article entitled, “Seattle Installs New System to Track Individual Drivers,” which concerns a related parking identification tracking technology. There are a few problems that I have with Seattle’s interpretation of what it considers to be a surveillance system and how it’s unable to safeguard its residents from intrusive surveillance, even in light of its recently adopted privacy principles. Some of the facts of the system has Seattle government, including its Chief Technology Officer, doesn’t consider this to be a surveillance system despite the manufacturer calling it a tracking system. History proves that tracking systems easily become surveillance systems. Just look at our cellphone network. SDOT is free to pursue infrastructure improvements without approval from the City Council and even called this project ‘business as usual.’ The public was not brought into the conversation before the deployment of this tracking technology. A privacy assessment was not performed. The tracking system records when and where an identifier exists, including personal cars, personal cellphones. And markers such as speed and distance and behavior are analyzed. Seattle does not receive raw data, and so the claims that they do not store raw data, despite there being no audit for the system. Washington State Supreme Court (SIC) recently unanimously passed a bill restricting the use of Sting Rays and other surveillance devices that mimic cell towers because of the privacy implications. The tracking system was something that was already in place and it’s privacy invasive capabilities were later upgraded to include these wireless surveillance mechanisms. The data is collected 24/7, 365, including nearby homes and workplaces that are within reach of monitored intersections. The data is transmitted to a third party, but we do not know if the data is encrypted at rest before it is transmitted or if the transmission is encrypted. SDOT Public Information Officer Norm Mah was quoted in the article, saying the City receives no raw data from the readers, which they say means it cannot trace information back to individuals for individual devices. Mah compared it to a bar code on a baseball ticket. The system knows you’re there but not who you are. The data is fed into the readers. It’s scrubbed, meaning that it’s analyzed and aggregated into a lump of useful information absent of discrete data. The metaphor, itself, is wrong, and the explanation is not a true presentation of reality. We do not carry baseball tickets with us everywhere we go, 24/7, and they are not scanned every time we go through an intersection. The public knows that American businesses do not have the ability to keep collected data safe from governments, be it the American government or the Chinese government. It would appear that employees of Seattle forget their history. Do not forget that in 1943, census-related Japanese Americans data was released. Congress passed saying that they could release the census data so that they could detain Americans of Japanese descent. Seattle has no business collecting and tracking Seattle residents’ physical location data and handing it over to third parties, because they cannot control how it is used once it’s collected. Thank you.
Michael Mattmiller: Thank you, Chris. You make a number of really great points there. And you’re right. Going forward privacy impact assessments–thinking about privacy risks before systems go live–is critical to standing up our privacy program. Some of the things we’ve learned about the E.Cyclical system since they came to our attention, just to give you a quick sense of the high level data flow, when you pass by one of the E.Cyclical readers, it does capture your MAC address to understand at a point in time how a car is traveling through the system. Once it is read, your MAC address is encrypted and transmitted. It’s not stored locally. When it gets to E.Cyclical solution. the MAC is decrypted and immediately salted and hashed. So once that happens and it gets written out, your MAC does not live in a decrypted state at rest. It’s always either encrypted in transit or salted and hashed and then written out until the point where it can be determined how you’re crossing through.
Chrisopher Sheats: What cyphers is it using?
Michael Mattmiller: That is a good question. I apologize. I know it’s a Shaw 256 based cypher, but specifically, I am not sure. In terms of them being able to go back and identify, the vendor has expressed to us that they do not maintain the salt. So it is not possible for us to take the MAC address, then go back and look for that information at a later point in time. This is what has been communicated to us. Do I have the audit to say this has been observed and tested? That’s what we’re requiring the vendor to go back and do. So I will have that update for you as we go back and get those results.
Chrisopher Sheats: Well, you probably don’t know this, but I’m a member of the Washington State Address Confidentiality Program. Physical location is paramount to families in that program. This system that you equate is similar to Cisco’s network analysis system, where any WiFi device, be it a laptop or cellphone, is monitored in the WiFi network. And looking at this system, I can say. okay, here’s this device. There’s no name on on the device, it’s just a number. But I can physically go there and say, oh, that’s that person. And now that I know, every time I see that number, whether it’s a physical MAC address or not, I can know that it’s the number assigned to that person. This is not a system that’s designed to withstand.
Michael Mattmiller: Thank you.
Nourisha Wells: Any other questions?
Beryl Fernandes: I would just like to add that the issue I brought up relates to much broader issues of low income subsidies. And the Brookings Institution made a nation-wide on low income subsidies and it said they are not being used. They’re being under-utilized. Well the reason for that is the lack of trust in government’s ability to protect their data and themselves.
Michael Mattmiller: It’s a very valid point and we very much recognize that. When we set up the privacy initiative last fall, building the public’s trust in how we collect and use data was very much a part of it. And I very much look forward to having the program operationalized, when we can ahead of these technology purchases and have a conversation about the right way to minimize risk. We’re also going to have increasing scenarios across the City where there’s a desire to improve City services, make more data-driven decisions, and in this case, be able to better manage traffic through downtown. So we’re going to continue having these conversations where there’s a tension between what is the right way to protect. So one-way data collection and also make sure that we ensure quality of life here in Seattle. They are not in conflict, those two things, but I really do look forward to the conversations that we’ll continue having about how we navigate that tension. I just realized that there are some people from SDOT here and yet I’m talking.
Nourisha Wells: I just noticed that I skipped over approving the minutes from last month. My apologies. So, we need to do that. May I have a motion to approve the minutes from last month?
AUGUST MINUTES APPROVED
Nourisha Wells: Announcements?
Bruce Blood: I guess that would be me, for one. As Michael, mentioned, we’re about three weeks from officially launching an application that we’re developing. Actually, M-Lab, part of the Open Technology Institute, is doing most of the development, although certainly, Open Seattle was very much involved in the early parts of it. It will allow anyone to measure their broadband speed on whatever device from wherever they are. Derrick, are you running that thing? You could actually open it up. http://seattle.gov/broadband/broadband-map . This has been a really interesting project because of working with a nonprofit to do the development–actually a couple of nonprofits to do the development. So this site is not yet live for testing because I happen to know there are a couple of bugs in here that we have to fix before opening it up. But, hopefully within the next couple of days or early next week at the very latest, because we need to get it tested, I’m going to ask you folks to go out and bang on it. Basically, I’ll probably just shoot it out to the CTAB list and for those of you who are not necessarily on the CTAB list, I’m bruce.blood@seattle.gov. I will be happy to shoot you the URL for testing. There will also be a Survey Monkey survey to track the results you get. All that should be available at the latest early next week. We’re really pretty excited about it. It actually works. Except for the fact that there’s a bug. The M-Lab folks have been wonderful to work with. They’re really sharp folks. So the way it’s working is that they are doing all the development for free for us. It hasn’t cost us anything except for the labor in the City to get it on our servers and for me to project manage it, more or less. And then they will take it and basically start handing it off in any number of other cities to work in the same way. This is the first time that I’m aware of that you’ve got actual third party pretty much verifiable speed testing of broadband. Now we’ll see if our providers have been telling us the truth.
Beryl Fernandes: We’ve had some people who live in apartment buildings where it varies a great deal from one floor to another, one side of the building to another. Is this going to capture that?
Bruce Blood: No, it will not, unfortunately. Once again, for privacy issues we have to anonymize it to the census block level. We can’t be exact because then you would be able to track people down.
Beryl Fernandes: So, what do you do? Take the average?
Bruce Blood: Right now we’re taking the mean. What we will do eventually is take the highest and lowest, take the extremes, and then in Phase Two, we’ll start plotting in. We’ll need to get this out by the end of the month.
Nourisha Wells: Do you have any questions for Bruce?
Comment: I noticed you had the demo site up earlier, broadbandtogether.com. It is further along on that site now?
Bruce Blood: Yes, that was the original site that John Tigue was working on. And he basically, became the point person and he got really busy paying the mortgage and things. But I don’t want to diminish that work because that was important. M-Lab took it from there.
Comment: Is it still open source?
Bruce Blood: You know, I haven’t asked them whether it’s going to be open source. I think it is, actually.
Comment: If someone wants to know what the metrics are to represent different areas…
Bruce Blood: I’ll ask. Don’t know why I haven’t asked before.
Dorene Cornwell: I have a question, sort of a follow up to Beryl’s questions. I’ve been collecting anecdotal stories about people’s issues with Century Link, and in my building it seems to be that they have to come to the building and do something to increase the speed. And so it happens on different floors at different times. And the speed, until they do it, is zero. I have these random conversation with other people who I think must live in multi-family buildings, although I sometimes hear about it second hand. So it’s all very nice that Century Link has got 100,000 households that have gigabit speeds, but there are some other households where it’s taking a week to schedule the physical visit, so the speed is zero.
Bruce Blood: And it’s not 120,000 households that have gigabit speed. You still have to pay for the gigabit speed. It’s 120,000 households where it’s available. And that’s what they say. I don’t know what the solution is to getting that granular except for maybe that there’s nothing that says for a person who wants to opt in, say, could run the test over a period of time, keep the results and then talk to the Cable Office.
Nourisha Wells: Any other questions? We will have Mary Catherine Snyder for the Pay by Phone Parking update.
PAY BY PHONE PARKING UPDATE
Mary Catherine Snyder: I’m in the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT). I’m in the Parking Program, which is in the Transit and Mobility division. I’m here to talk about our Pay By Phone project that we’re still working on and trying to expand. Just wanted to provide a brief update about where we’re at and maybe see if you all had some feedback or ideas about how it’s going. I would just say generally that I have a suspicion that there’s not a lot of people on the staff that do either project management, technology, or data management that are really aware of the resource that you might offer as an advisory board or at your monthly meetings. So that might be something for us to work on.
And if we have time, I’m happy to talk about our broader efforts to share parking data and work with app developers to develop parking apps. So, I was here in April and at that point, we were just starting to think about how to grow Pay By Phone use. So, if you’ve been paying for parking on-street in Seattle since 2013, you can use an app called Pay By Phone by our vendor that we contracted with for that purpose. You sign up for an account and from a customer perspective, it’s pretty straightforward to pay for parking. It tends to be quicker than a pay station. You get a text message, you can extend your time, so there are some customer service benefits. And that’s really why we’re trying to push more use of the Pay By Phone app. I think over time, we’d also see a better management of our infrastructure on-street, because it’s pretty expensive to operate pay station kiosks on the street. So if we can encourage more and more people to use the phone app, then we can reduce our reliance on infrastructure like that. But right now, we’re promoting it as a payment option that we’re trying to emphasize.
Right now we have a drop plan that we’re working on getting funding for. Right now there’s a user fee. If you pay by phone, there’s a thirty five cent per transaction user fee, and we would like to eliminate that fee for the parker. So that would really put Pay By Phone and pay stations on an equal footing. There would be no penalty for using one versus the other. And then we would really like to get some funding to market the program. That’s really where we’re at.
We’re also talking about, if you’re familiar with the racial equity toolkit that the City has, we’re building that out for Pay By Phone. So it’s been really helpful to use DoIT’s technology access survey. Because there’s a lot of information about smart phone ownership. The challenge we have is we don’t track who parks. We don’t know a lot about parkers. So, we don’t really have a way to say, if we do this thing, it’s going to have certain regional disparities, because we just don’t know.
We’re hoping to be able to identify funding through our departmental process, that we could launch an expansion plan in December or early next year. So I was really here to provide an update and see if anybody had any comments or questions or ideas about how to understand technology access. It’s smart phone access but it’s also credit card access, because you need a credit card to sign up for Pay By Phone. It’s a similar discussion that people are having with other services, like Car To Go, or Uber, all of those are also credit card and app based.
Joneil Sampana: Based on your early marketing plans, do you feel that engagement with citizens has been positive for the last couple of cycles?
Mary Catherine Snyder: When we launched in the summer of 2013, we spent some resources on our marketing program. We had online media, online ads, we had postcards we put out in business districts, and I think that helped. We also had word of mouth and media announcements to get people to sign up. Just anecdotally, we know people that use Pay By Phone love it. People say, “I’ve used it and will never go back. I haven’t been to a pay station in years.” Almost 90 (SIC) percent of our transactions are by phone now, which for us is about 80,000 to 90,000 a month. So we’re trying to figure out whether we’re at some point where that’s the market in the City and we need to do more marketing. And we really think the user fee is a barrier to use. Especially if you’re buying a dollar’s worth of parking, the idea that you pay 35 cents more is really a problem. I’m hoping that removing that barrier helps. We’d like to get to 30 percent of transactions by phone by the end of next year, which is a big goal. So we’ll see if we can figure out how to do that.
Dan Moulton: Is there a Chinese wall between ticketing and your racial point, referencing Ferguson, Missouri?
Mary Catherine Snyder: I need a little help with that.
Dan Moulton: [unintelligible]…revenue generation.
Mary Catherine Snyder: This is the pay for parking part of it. Separately, the Seattle Police Department handles parking enforcement.
Dan Moulton: Is there a Chinese wall between them? Never the twain shall meet.
Mary Catherine Snyder: When you pay for your parking on-street, if you’re the parking officer, which is really a great job, you’re walking down the street and you see either a pay station receipt on the vehicle. You’d see some other way that they’ve paid for parking legally or that license plate shows up on the Pay By Phone database that parking enforcement has access to. All parking enforcement uses are license plate and whether they’ve paid by phone and how much time remaining. So there isn’t any other vehicle information if/until the officer goes to write a ticket.
Dan Moulton: My question is a futuristic question.
Dan Stiefel: Does he or she punch in a number? Or is it scanned?
Mary Catherine Snyder: It’s punched in. At this point, there’s no scanning.
Dan Stiefel: So, it looks like the car might be subject to a ticket before they punch in the license plate number.
Mary Catherine Snyder: Yes.
Lee Colleton: So, the Seattle Police do have license plate readers on some of their vehicles, including some of their parking enforcement vehicles. As for the futuristic point, they could put license plate readers on all of their vehicles and have a more perfect enforcement of parking regulations than they do today. But only the meter readers are actually checking for the sticker.
Dan Moulton: I don’t want to see people ending up in a cycle of debt. That’s my point.
Mary Catherine Snyder: Are there any more comments on the Pay By Phone program? I’m hoping that by the end of the year we have a plan that’s funded. We’re pursuing that. I can come back and talk about it more.
Karia Wong: Is there going to be any translation? Or language version of the app available?
Mary Catherine Snyder: The app is available in French, because they’re actually a Canadian company and they operate in Paris, and Spanish as well. We have over time translated our parking materials into various languages. We continue to try and do that when we can, especially on the public education side.
Karia Wong: But for the actual app, is it going to be localized in Chinese or Japanese or other languages for where we have our poorest residents?
Mary Catherine Snyder: Right now, French, Spanish and English are the only languages available to us. If that’s something we’d like to pursue, we’d have to work with them or see if there’s somebody else that can do it. Our pay stations are in Chinese and Spanish and English languages.
Lee Colleton: I have a concern about the third party provider that is storing this information. You said that SDOT does not view any analysis currently of who’s parking where. Does this third party provider store these records of people’s phone, their other identifying information, a record of where they’re parking? Do they sell that to other third parties? How are those privacy concerns presented to someone who is just trying to park, and they may have their credit card appear on the app?
Mary Catherine Snyder: Pay By Phone has transaction information that’s connected to your license plate and payment because they’re charging your credit card for that. When you accept the app, it states that they may not sell that data to anybody. They also meet the highest levels of PCI security, both for the app and they also have an IBR phone system. So that’s really important to us. On our end, we actually do get transaction data from Pay By Phone. What we use is location of purchase, and the amount, but we don’t have any vehicle identification information. So we don’t know who’s parking. We just know that a parking event occurred. We compile that data, along with similar data from the pay stations. We track parking occupancy based on that data. We track the time, location, and amount, but we don’t have any information about the parker.
Christopher Sheats: I just wanted to make a note that even the platinum level of PCI identification is still a check box that gets checked on. It’s not a preventative measure by any means.
Beryl Fernandes: When the language says they do not sell, does that mean they could gift it to somebody?
Bruce Blood: They can’t redistribute it in any way. I don’t know. I haven’t seen it. But I have seen similar language and that would be what we would ask in a contract.
Mary Catherine Snyder: Well, I really appreciate your time. If there are other projects or programs at SDOT that people are interested in hearing about, I’m happy to help connect people up. You guys are a really helpful resource, and it’s a very different view of how we do our projects.
Nourisha Wells: Thank you. Next up we have Kathy Putt from Comcast.
COMCAST INTERNET ESSENTIALS LOW INCOME PROGRAM
[CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION TO THIS PRESENTATION – History of Internet Essentials
This clarification is offered in response to the statement below about the history of the Comcast program and city of Seattle. This clarification from David Keyes was approved at the October 13, 2015 CTAB meeting:
From David Keyes: The proposed “Comcast Broadband Opportunity Program” that later became the Internet Essentials program was proposed by Comcast in December 2010 as part of the FCC regulatory review of the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal (FCC MB Docket No. 10-56) and included in the FCC Memorandum Opinion and Order adopted on January 18, 2011. See https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-11-4A1.pdf. City Council Resolution 31328 to launch a Great Student Initiative to form new partnerships to provide internet, computer, software and services for low-income students, was introduced later, on September 19th, 2011, by Councilmember Bruce Harrell and adopted on September 26th, 2011. The resolution acknowledges Comcast’s Internet Essentials program. This resolution is available via a search for 31328 at http://clerk.seattle.gov/~public/RESN1.htm.]
Kathy Putt: [Hands out brochures and swag.] Is it safe to assume that everyone knows what Internet Essentials is or should I explain? I’m Kathy Putt and I do local government relations for Comcast. And I’ve been there for 15 years so I’m sort of surprised that I haven’t been here before. Thank you for having me. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Internet Essentials, it’s a program we launched four years ago where we provide discount internet to low income families. It’s a program I like to remind people that was Bruce Harrell’s idea. He pitched it to me and we floated it up and we ended up launching it at a national level. So I always try to give him credit when I can. We are now halfway into our fourth year in the program. We launched it back in 2011 and in the last four years nationally, we’ve connected about 1.8 million Americans or 450,000 families. In Washington, we’ve connected about 14,000 with Internet Essentials, and in Seattle we’ve connected about 1,700 families. That’s about a 27 percent penetration rate of eligible families. So, in my mind, that’s pretty good, but there’s still room to grow. Over the years, I’m happy to say that we’ve enhanced the program a number of times. We’ve created a dedicated call center. We’ve created partnerships, both at the national and local levels. We’ve increased internet speeds multiple times. We’ve produced an online application. If you happen to be at the library and want to submit application online. And last year we announced this amnesty program for families who have a debt with us that is older than a year. I should say that one of the limiting factors on Internet Essentials is that it is for families without internet and you have to live in our footprint, obviously. And if you have a past due balance with us, normally you would have to pay up before being eligible for the program. However, as I said, last year we announced an amnesty program where if you have a debt owed to us for more than a year, then we will go ahead and forgive that if that’s what is keeping you out of Internet Essentials.
Just last month we announced our 2015-2016 enhancements. I think that’s really what you wanted to hear about tonight. The first one I’m excited to announce is the doubling of speeds. We’re going — it does sound so low, but it is for our starter customers–we’re going from five to ten megabits per second, which is not only faster but allows for more devices to be connected in the home. We also added a wireless router to the package. This was probably the most requested enhancement of anyone who has ever inquired. We’re really excited about the different enhancements and add ons that will allow multiple devices to be connected. At the same time, it will allow multiple family members to be connected within the home at the same time. How many people have multiple kids all trying to do homework at the same time? And then also it will allow people to connect to their home internet service versus using their data on their phones. So we think that will be a good thing.
Also, we have expanded the auto-approve schools. This is where if you attend a public school where 50 percent of the families are on free or reduced lunch, every family attending that school, regardless of income, is now eligible for the program. That’s a huge enhancement. We’re really excited about that and that actually eliminates the school lunch verification process and it adds 315 more schools to the auto-enroll list, for a total of 576 in the state. In Seattle, there are 46 schools that meet that criteria. And as a result of the enhanced auto-approval, we’ve added 17 more schools to that list. That just eliminates any redundancy for work by the school administration, and it just allows all families, regardless of income, who go to those schools to participate.
Originally, somebody had asked how we were trying to get the word out about these enhancements. We have historically, and continue to work with the schools and our community partners to help get the word out. Seattle School District has been a great partner of ours. They do have a non-solicitation policy, which was a challenge initially. Because we’re Comcast, we couldn’t send out materials to students with a Comcast logo on it because we’re corporate. But we did find a work-around where we crafted a brochure without the Comcast logo, and instead we listed some of our national nonprofit partners, like the Urban League. And there are multiple partners. We ended up crafting a non-branded brochure, and they allowed us to distribute it. Since that time, for the last three years, we’ve distributed materials twice a year. And every time we distribute brochures, we see the numbers go up. So, it’s proven to be a really positive thing. It’s back to school time, so we always try and hit it in the fall and in the spring.
The district has had a number of turnovers in administration, so I’m working with the new administration to get yet another distribution going.
In addition to the schools and our community partners, we have also been working closely with Seattle Goodwill in their back to school backpack giveaway program. They had a big event at their Seattle facility as well as at seven other facilities in the vicinity, including Marysville, Everett, Burien, Bellingham, Spokane–a whole bunch of other locations. So they handed out backpacks in all their facilities, and we made sure that all those backpacks had Internet Essentials materials included in them. And they probably had some pens and mints in them, too.
One of the other enhancements that we announced was the introduction of Internet Essentials to low income senior citizens. We’re starting with a pilot program in just a couple areas so we can test out how the program will work with that demographic. It’s a totally different demographic than low income families. Right now we are testing it. The first pilot was announced August 4. It’s in Palm Beach, Florida. It’s really way too early to provide any preliminary results, unfortunately. We did just announce that the second pilot program will be located in the Bay Area. We’re hoping that as soon as we establish some best practices, we’ll be able to apply those as we launch it in additional areas. Hopefully, it will come to Seattle. People have asked about it. Councilmember Licata has asked me about it several times. Hopefully, we’ll learn how to best hit that demographic, how to teach them best how to use it. It’s a totally different segment, so hopefully that will be coming soon. I don’t know when at this point in time.
I’m happy to answer any questions or concerns.
Beryl Fernandes: Do you have designated staff in Comcast who will answer questions for families who don’t know what to do and where to go? And I ask that question because a large family that lives in Yesler Terrace, definitely low income, who had cancelled their internet subscription because they couldn’t afford it anymore. It was another company, not Comcast. Most of those kids are in school and they absolutely need it. So I suggested they call the Cable Office here, and call you people. I also suggested them trying to contact Century Link and Comcast to see if they could get some kind of deal going.
Kathy Putt: We do have a dedicated call center. We also have a web site. Not that they have internet, but if they happen to go to the library and they go online, assuming they know how to navigate–that’s the problem, a lot of times they don’t know how to navigate. If you call Comcast locally, they would probably route you to one of the three or four people who do my job.
Vicky Yuki: Just to clarify, and I’m glad you brought this up, that it is in the area where your footprint is. Yesler is part of WAVE. So, there are certain limitations. We’re hoping that some of those can be addressed.
Kathy Putt: I would just point out that Century Link also has its version of this program. And over the last few years, FCC has been urging all broadband providers to adopt this type of program. Except for WAVE, I think all the other major providers have some version of this type of program. We are probably the largest and most out in front on it. But I know Century Link has a program.
Beryl Fernandes: So, if they’re with WAVE, is there any place they can go to get it reinstalled?
Vicky Yuki: There are basically three providers in Seattle that offer $10/mo. internet as a low income program, and they are Century Link, Comcast, and Everyone On’s basic internet program, which used the T-Mobile network. So those are the three options currently in Seattle that we are actively talking about.
Karia Wong: I’m just wondering how many do have access to the auto-approved school list?
Kathy Putt: I have access to it. I don’t know why I wouldn’t be able to share it.
Karia Wong: The reason I ask is because we work with a lot of families. If we know the school is on the list, we can just mention it to them. Is that an option? We work with Vietnamese and Chinese families in Seattle area.
Kathy Putt: If you’re going to help us get the word out, I’m happy to provide that list to you. And just so you know, we do provide our brochure in about 10 languages. Our standard is English on one side and Spanish on the back, but they’re available in many different languages.
Karia Wong: I guess the challenging part, as we have discussed earlier, is the navigation. For people who don’t have experience, it will be hard for them to get it done by themselves.
Kathy Putt: Okay. Let me just get your contact information.
Question: David Cohen announced in Florida a similar program for seniors. When will it come to Seattle?
Kathy Putt: I don’t know when it will come to Seattle. The pilot started a month ago. We just announced a second pilot in the Bay Area. I think we’ll probably see how those play out, and then launch additional sites as we move forward. If and when Seattle gets added to the list, I will certainly let everyone know. Because I know everyone is excited about it.
Dan Stiefel: About a year ago, I was trying to help a low income person sign up. So I called Comcast to try to get some questions answered and they forwarded me to a machine. And they never called back. I called and left a message twice, and I never ever received a call back. Now, I don’t know if that’s still the way it’s working? Did you address that as far as responses?
Nourisha Wells: Do you have the actual number?
Kathy Putt: I don’t know the number. It’s probably in the brochure. 1-888-972-5982
Dan Stiefel: Is that the low income program?
Kathy Putt: That’s the Internet Essentials number.
Dan Stiefel: Do you know if it ever gets picked up by an answering machine?
Kathy Putt: It should get picked up.
Dan Stiefel: A year ago, that wasn’t the case.
Kathy Putt: That’s not good. It’s a live call center today. I’ll give you my card. If you call and get an answering machine, let me know because we need to address that.
Jose Vasquez: Two quick questions. First, do you have plans to expand the program to all children?
Kathy Putt: We have no plans to do that.
Jose Vasquez: Many families, unfortunately, don’t have children but are low income. This would be very helpful to them. Talking about Digital Equity, if I remember correctly, the FCC put out a statement that the bare minimum of internet speeds is 25mbps. Is Comcast trying to achieve that goal through this program, or are you just going to keep it at 10? I know you’re saying that you doubled it from five to 10.
Kathy Putt: This is still an introductory service. It is lower than our lowest tier. In the last four years, we’ve raised speeds twice. I actually was thinking that we have to be climbing towards that 25. So I don’t have a definitive answer. I’d be shocked if we didn’t continue to increase it to get to that level. Especially as people consume more and more bandwidth. The need is there.
Karia Wong: I just have a comment. I echo the comment. For the past two years, I have never successfully helped people to sign up for internet basics at Comcast.
Kathy Putt: I’m going to give you my card.
Karia Wong: Every time I call, it’s voicemail.
Kathy Putt: I’m sorry to hear that. That’s not good.
Nourisha Wells: Do you have to leave?
Kathy Putt: No. I can stay.
Nourisha Wells: Okay, if you don’t mind sticking around, we have to move through the rest of the agenda, but we’ll have a break in the next few minutes, and you guys can come up and ask any questions you might have.
Beryl Fernandes: Can we make sure that her name and contact information gets into the minutes:
Cass Magnuski: Can I have one of those?
Kathy Putt, Director, Franchising and Government Affairs, North Puget Sound.
Comcast Cable, P.O. Box 97007, Redmond, WA 98073
Office: 425-867-7447
Cell: 425-471-1638
Fax: 425-867-7455
kathleen_putt@cable.comcast.com
Nourisha Wells: Thank you, Kathy. We’ll move on to the Comprehensive Plan. There is a Council meeting next Tuesday at 2:00 to discuss some proposed changes and amendments to the Comprehensive Plan, and so we wanted to allot space on our agenda today to talk about anything that we want to present. And I just read the announcement of the hearing and they’re going to specifically talk about three areas. None of them are actually related to our topic, and so I don’t know if we want to still have the conversation and then look for the chance where we can present that input. So I’ll put that question out there. Are there specific things that we definitely want to give input on? And then, do we have that conversation now or table it for another meeting?
Beryl Fernandes: What are the three areas?
Nourisha Wells: The three areas are the periodic updates that are made to the plan under the Washington State Growth Management Act; they’re look at amendments to the future land use map; to adjust the boundary of the urban center and change some single family and multi-family areas to commercial mixed use areas; and then the last one is to look at amending the Comprehensive Plan related to affordable housing.
So input? Do we want to table the conversation for another meeting when the Council meeting is going to be more relevant to our subjects? Or do you want to go ahead and have the conversation now?
Nourisha Wells: It’s got the commercial mixed use, so it’s combining the two for some areas. It doesn’t necessarily say where, but it’s definitely going to be related to the urban center neighborhood, the urban village thing that they have going on.
Community participant: That doesn’t include things like where the cables will be laid?
Nourisha Wells: I imagine it could. It doesn’t specifically say. So if there’s anything under that area that we would want to address, then it could come up. But I’m not sure.
Dorene Cornwell: When I think about one framework and change, I think how did this flow, so I can get at it in an open data way without having to fund my business or buy up a whole bunch of real estate. Which I’m unlikely to do, but just think about it in an open data perspective.
Nourisha Wells: I don’t know if you guys are aware, but there is an open data web site, http://2035.seattle.gov . That’s an interactive collaboration on the Comprehensive Plan where you can go and share your thoughts and comments. They have some of the key proposal components. You can weigh in on it. It requires you to give your information, but you can do it anonymously or you can have your information included. So there are some interactive things available for that. So board members, are we going to have this conversation or are we going to table it for later?
Joneil Sampana: For upcoming meetings from this commission, do we happen to know what the sequence is going to be?
Nourisha Wells: I’m not sure. I just saw the announcement of what was going to be covered.
Beryl Fernandes: [unintelligible]
Nourisha Wells: It’s actually going to be presented to the full Council.
Beryl Fernandes: If it’s going to the full Council, then I would say that unless we have a really well-defined set of issues, then I would say table it.
Nourisha Wells: Okay. So with that, we’ll go ahead and take a quick break.
BREAK
PRIVACY COMMITTEE UPDATE
Beryl Fernandes: Last month, I reported that we’d finished the third in the series of workshops that made up the collaborathon. Since that time, we’ve been having meetings out in the community, as I have been for the last year, but the five commissions that deal with under-represented groups at the City Boards and Commissions, and they invited me to come and talk to them. And probably 25 to 30 showed up. It was really good, really engaged people. They were very pleased that we were taking this approach with marginalized populations. That is their business, and to see us come in with this was very exciting. They are going to help us in whatever way we would like them to and they would like to. And have individual meetings, offshoots of that one, with the Mayor’s Office for Seniors, and several other small meetings like that. Those are very targeted. So that’s what’s going on there.
On the symposium, I’ll give you a better update next month. There are a lot of moving parts, a lot of challenges with nailing down a date, so I’ll wait until next month to do that. So I’ll just end there.
Nourisha Wells: Any questions for Beryl? Next we’ll have Amy Hirotaka with Cable and Broadband.
CABLE AND BROADBAND COMMITTEE UPDATE
Amy Hirotaka: As we discussed last meeting, I went ahead and submitted the FCC comments on the Lifeline update. I just got an email from David Keyes that those have been put up on the web site with a blog post. So people can check it out there. I was unable to attend the last Broadband and Cable meeting, so Sarah Trowbridge led in my absence. But I have some high level take-aways, and then she and Dan can give any specifics needed. There’s a pre-briefing on the Comcast franchise renewal that will take place at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 16, for the Public Safety Technology and Civil Rights Committee. This would be something that would be good for us or members to attend. The actual public comment meeting is on November 18. So we should come up with a position statement before then. This is something that the Broadband Committee is talking about, so the progression of events would be that we would come up with a position statement, share it with the group here, and then we could approve it. And then we would work with Councilmember Harrell’s staff to make sure that it gets addressed.
Also,l my understanding is that folks will be working with the Digital Inclusion Committee and Jose Vasquez on the Digital Equity Initiative. Because there are some shared concerns and overlap between the two groups, especially in regards to outreach and low income internet.
Sarah, do you want to add anything?
Sarah Trowbridge: Just specifically, that pre-briefing on the Comcast franchise renewal negotiations on potential public benefits that are getting negotiated, we can come up with a position statement that we can share with City Council.
Nourisha Wells: Can you share those dates again?
Amy Hirotaka: The pre-briefing is on September 16, and the public comment meeting is on November 18.
Nourisha Wells: So we’ll need to review at the October meeting. Any questions for Amy or Sarah? Next we’ll have the Digital Inclusion Committee update with Jose.
DIGITAL INCLUSION UPDATE
Jose Vasquez: I’m glad I got extra time because I might need it. First I want to follow up on what Nourisha said. I’m also hearing conversations here. The broadband providers talking about opening up access to their Lifeline program to more people, but then a comment I just now heard was that they don’t have the staff capabilities of doing that. I think that’s what we’re going to start talking about at our Digital Inclusion meetings to see if there’s a potential fund it from multiple nonprofits to be able to provide that capacity and share more of the resources. I know people that work directly with low income communities. I think there’s a lot of opportunity here, so I’m excited about that.
I want to give a brief update. We did a site visit to one of last year’s Technology Matching Fund grantees, the Boys and Girls Club up in Shoreline. They got close to $20,000 to create two fully equipped computer labs with 23 computer stations. In the past year, over 500 youth have used the computers to do homework after school, and partnered with Google to do some coding curriculum. I got to see the kids interact and play. They were creating games from the coding they learned. It’s pretty cool because it’s drag and drop. This was elementary kids learning about programming and very basic coding, which I’ve never seen. Somebody told me that there are schools that charge hundreds of dollars to provide this type of curriculum. The grant that they got enabled them to provide this for free to the kids that use their services. So that was great to see the actual impact of TMF. With that, I want to open the invitation. If you want to get involved in next year’s TMF review committee, you are all invited. We’re having our next Digital Inclusion Committee meeting Tuesday, September 22, at 6:00 p.m. at the Beacon Hill Library. We’re going to start preparing for next year. I really want to get committee members involved in being more engaged prior to the application process, so that we can get to know ourselves, and through our communities, recruit organizations that could really benefit from this program. I think it’s a really cool thing we do here at CTAB.
Joneil and Beryl have been talking about updating the TMF criteria to make it … maybe I’ll let you talk a little about it–the reason behind–making it a stronger emphasis on targeting under-represented communities, as well as focusing that criteria into a more measurable way. The things that we have talked about, as far as–some of these aren’t necessarily updating the TMF guidelines or criteria, but maybe recommendations for City staff. And I talked with them about a couple of these things and these are some things that we can start implementing and we can work towards. For example, adding some working opportunities to help facilitate a collaboration between potential applicants, both prior to the actual application process, and inviting previous grantees to come. So that new applicants can learn from previous projects. And maybe partner on some really cool projects. Another point was trying to find a way to simplify the application process. I know it’s a City-wide application process. Neighborhood Matching Fund goes to the same web application, so I don’t now how easy it would be to update or make it easier to use. I think that’s always going to be a challenge. Or maybe providing some basic trainings for potential applicants who are interested, to make it easier for under-represented communities, or communities that are not used to applying for a grant . I know in this last round, we saw a couple applications where you could clearly see which organizations had a paid grant writer and which did not. We took that into consideration, making sure that we didn’t weigh one lower than the other because it wasn’t written professionally. So that’s something that we can work towards as far as closing that gap. I think it’s important to not set up more barriers or more bureaucracy to a grant that’s supposed to build capacity in the community, and to provide more opportunities to under-represented communities. And that brings me to a point that Beryl brought up about focusing on and emphasizing under-represented communities. And I think that’s the motion that you (Beryl) wanted to bring up, so I’ll let you talk about that a little bit.
Beryl Fernandes: The reasoning behind putting an actual motion on the table–we’ve had this discussion over the last three and a half years here at CTAB, about not only having the grant funds benefit kids in classes, take classes and finish summer programs, things like that, but actually have people from the community running the programs, managing the programs, participate as technical and in management roles. So I thought that if we had it as a motion, it will 1) be searchable on the agenda, as we asked for earlier; and it will also be searchable later on and findable in the minutes, and hopefully that way it will be a reminder to all of us that what we want to make sure of is that we are building capacity within the low income communities. To be able to formulate and run and manage their own programs. Sometimes it might take a step or two before they can get there but we thought it was important that the groundwork be laid so that it’s not just people from the outside coming in and doing it to them or for them, but people from the inside actually running these programs. So with that, Jose and I have talked and here’s what we ended up with. There is a clause already–and you probably know the criteria–but it says applicants must actively seek the involvement of community members and/or business proprietors–that’s actually in the language right now–and I added, “in all possible roles, including training, technical, and management positions. They must also show how this will be achieved and the results measured.” That is a motion that we add that to the existing criteria.
Question: How is this measured? Do you have any ideas on how to measure outcomes?
Beryl Fernandes: Well, the outcomes for each project will be different, but measurement is always possible and outcomes should be stated at the proposal state. It should be tailor-made.
Vicky Yuki: One of the criteria is evaluation. There is a component that is evaluated and that’s a place where you could note your community participation. We actually weight community participation quite high when we go through the applications. Each of the criteria is weighted differently. One might be worth 10 points, but then weighted double, it might be 20 points. We do weight community participation higher.
Beryl Fernandes: Vicky, since you know the program as well as you do, the purpose of this was trying to take it one step further. The purpose of this was to include training, technical, and management positions. Do you not feel that this is adding something to it?
Vicky Yuki: We like to encourage applications from everybody. One of the challenges is that when you add elements to criteria, that might make it more daunting, so we want to be careful in the way in which we word things. If they don’t have people in their community that they feel could represent well in those types of leadership positions–it’s not leadership training grant–so the portion that makes it challenging is that we want to encourage leadership in the community and we want to encourage community participation and people being able to bring applications that represent what the community needs are. And so we try not to be too prescriptive because we find that the more prescriptive we are, the less likely that under-represented communities will apply. I’m totally for weighing more participation at the granular level, but I do get a little bit concerned about adding elements to the application that might hinder somebody from applying because they don’t have that element. It’s recommended, but what that might look like in your plan.
Beryl Fernandes: Recommending is fine and then you can weight it, give it some points. But here’s what I’m hearing out in the community and especially the low income communities. Jobs, employment, training–that is number one. What we see is the frustration and the anger coming out, feeling like they’re being left out. Throughout the ages, when we talk about the STEM fields, environmental, tech–when there are grants that are earmarked for low income communities of color, too often the people who come in and apply are people who have grant writing skills, have the education and know how to put together a good proposal that the evaluation panel will respond positively to. I’ve seen that for like 20 years. So this is an attempt to say these funds from the City Council, the Mayor, and people were earmarked for low income communities of color and all marginalized people–people with disabilities, seniors, whatever. We want to make sure that they are having the opportunities to apply and succeed in it. If they don’t have capacity in the community. If somebody comes in from outside, it’s okay. But they’re actually building capacity from inside so that the people can in the future run their own programs. But otherwise, they’re being left out. And they’re being left out generation after generation. And we as a society can only take so much of it. And I’m hearing it. I’m out in the community all the time. I was in an African American meeting, and I could see they were looking for some technical help. I said, you guys should apply for the Technology Matching Fund. Well, they didn’t know where to go, how to do it. And I just think that we’ve to to have opportunities for people who have never ever stepped into this realm. We as staff or whoever need to get out there in the community and talk with those people on their own turf.
Vicky Yuki: Also, we try to make it so that communities that are under-represented–many of them work with fiscal agents. We actually connect them with fiscal agents so that they can have a successful program once they apply and are granted. I just want to say for the record, that I’m very proud of the work that the team effort of the City does, not necessarily taking the applications word for word, but looking at the underlying need within the communities. A grant that sounds like a really great grant gets dissected down to where we ask does it really reach the community and population that we want to serve. I think that if you have a motion on the table. I like the idea of it. I don’t know how you would really implement it. This is the first I’ve heard of it. That was my only word of caution. Sometimes if you set the bar too high at the application stage, then it makes it very difficult and challenging for people to actually apply. Let’s make sure that this is not like that. Requirement, but more like a recommendation, or a way in which a given mechanism, for instance, the networking sessions you were talking about at the very beginning, those are opportunities in which to get some of those skills and maybe make some of those connections that make it easier for you to respond to that element, criteria.
Beryl Fernandes: I was hoping that Jose’s committee could take it and figure out how to actually implement it.
Karia Wong: I am putting myself into a grant writer’s shoes. If you raise the bar too high, I would think that would be a challenge for a small nonprofit, or grassroots nonprofit. Because different communities have different situations. If they are not up to that level to be able to have the leadership development to write into their program, then they lose. But if we put it in the grant that we encourage the people who are interested to apply, like Vicky said, they are not ready. Who is in the community that can do that? I would be intimidated. It will hinder my intention or my interest to apply.
Beryl Fernandes: Well that’s why what this says is that they could bring somebody from the outside to help manage or lead or use whatever skills they don’t have at that point, but those people, the outsiders, then are obligated to build capacity off that community.
Jose Vasquez: I’m kind of in between. I definitely agree with the sentiment. At the same time, I don’t like the idea of adding more requirements, but I definitely want to emphasize building capacity. I do want to include the Review Committee in the process. Maybe a quick training, and that’s something we can talk about in the Digital Inclusion Committee more in detail. There is a motion on the table. I definitely want to continue this conversation with City staff to look at more specifics. I think we can all agree with the sentiment. It might just be the wording.
Amy Hirotaka: Or what part of the process to implement that, whether it’s in the application or in the review.
Nourisha Wells: So we have a motion. Do we have someone to second it? No. So, the motion dies.
MOTION TO AMEND APPLICATION CRITERIA FAILS
Jose Vasquez: But I am going to take that wording and talk about it within my committee, and work with City staff, too.
Nourisha Wells: Beryl can you send it around so we can look at it. Jose, can you say when you are meeting?
Jose Vasquez: September 22, 6:00 p.m., Beacon Hill Library, and that will be a topic of discussion. I know my time is up, but there is one other thing. Can I get three more minutes?
Nourisha Wells: There are several more things on the agenda. We’ll have to decide if we want to extend the meeting.
Jose Vasquez: We will have to wait until the next meeting.
E-GOV COMMITTEE UPDATE
Joneil Sampana: Our biggest event is coming up that we’ve been striving for all month. It’s the WTIA, which is the Washington Technology Industry Association’s full contact event next Tuesday. It’s an all-day conference where they’re bringing together a minimum of 500 folks from tech, education, business, and government sectors. The interns that have been working all summer are going to showcase their solutions to five agencies at the state level. We have a special invite for all those in the E-Gov distribution list at attend the VIP session in the evenings, and it does count for the full day conference if you’ve registered. If you’re interested in attending let me know. It’s next Tuesday, 8:00 to 5:00, and the VIP session is 6:00 to 8:00.
Nourisha Wells: We have on the agenda to talk about board member talents and composition needs for future members. I think that that’s definitely going to take longer than three minutes. But one of those things to think about is that we have two positions that are open. One is open in October, and that’s Ben’s position. And then Dana’s position will be open in January.
Beryl Fernandes: Mine too, in January.
Nourisha Wells: So that’s three positions
Dana Lewis: I thought mine was October.
Nourisha Wells: Okay, Dana is October and Ben and Beryl are January. so we will have three positions that are going to be open. We wanted to have a conversations to think about what areas we want to look at that are going to be needed on the board, given the scope of work that we’ve had over the last couple of months, and projecting for the next few years. I guess we can probably add that to our agenda for October? But we can start the conversation through email. People can say what they think their skills are, and maybe some areas that we are missing on the board. And we can talk about that in October.
Joneil Sampana: Nourisha, this is my first time going through this type of conversation. Is there a framework that we’ve used in the past to help us come up…?
Nourisha Wells: It’s been different every time. There was at one point a major kind of theme. We did a survey. It’s happened all kinds of ways. I’m for the simplest way.
Beryl Fernandes: Is it best for us to just send out comments via email?
Nourisha Wells: I think we should just have the conversation through our listserv. I think we should talk about what you think your areas of strength are for the board. And then what are some areas we could use moving forward. Then we will add that to our agenda for October and talk about it in more detail. We have a space for public comment. Let’s keep them very short.
PUBLIC COMMENT
Christopher Sheats: In a recent Capitol Hill Seattle article, it was said that in the wake of a recent shooting. (The owner of the place where the shooting took place) told DHS that he and a couple of other owners are exploring a new heightened scanning software that will track who has been kicked out of a club. This is a system where you give your I.D. to the officer and they scan it into a computer and use a web cam and take a picture. And they upload that data to a third party. The third party keeps that data for 90 days and they give it to any police investigation with or without a warrant. Does that concern you guys that Seattle bar owners are going to start employing an official recognition system?
Comment: I don’t know if you know it, but that system was recommended by [unintelligible]. They are the official suppliers of body cameras for police.
Nourisha Wells: Yes, I think that is definitely an area of concern. I don’t know that we can necessarily speak to how the City would respond to addressing that concern.
Christopher Sheats: Well, this is a community technology issue.
Nourisha Wells: Right. Absolutely.
Beryl Fernandes: The Mayor isn’t exactly using that kind of evidence in making his most recent edict, either, on the hookah clubs.
Comment: They actually allow the marijuana smoking pipe.
Christopher Sheats: So, I don’t know if that’s something that needs to be escalated to City Council or if you guys should organize something around it. I want to work with Seattle Privacy Coalition in writing a letter to the owner and other bar owners using this system.
Nourisha Wells: I don’t know anything about it, other than what you said. So I think it’s something we can definitely look into. Any other public comments?
Community participant: Is there some way we can put it to Comcast and other broadband providers that the bare minimum is 25mbps upload and 25mbps download so that we can stop talking about five and ten, which doesn’t do anyone any good. Just never talk about it again?
Nourisha Wells: We’ve included that comment….
Community participant: It should be part of the legal negotiations. No one want to hear that.
Amy Hirotaka: The opportunity to do that is now, as we’re negotiating the franchise agreement.
Nourisha Wells: I think the statement was for it to match what the FCC had said.
Community participant: This is a City negotiating with a commercial interest. So I think the City should set what the standard is. And in the same way, I think the City should also be setting where the mouth for broadband is, where they put their infrastructure in. It’s up to Seattle, the foremost place in the nation that could possibly get done to say, if you’re going to put broadband in, you’re going to include our communities so that we can achieve our goals, instead of just talking about our goals.
Sarah Trowbridge: What most likely happened is that the legislation comes down to what you can affect with cable. So we can attempt to negotiate an added benefit for internet, but at the end of the day, there’s no way that we can legislate the minimum. So you could have a map that shows (unintelligible).
Nourisha Wells: I think the Comprehensive Plan guards against that. I think that the conversations from the City’s perspective area definitely there. As far as negotiations, I think the Broadband Committee is working to make sure that we include all those concerns in our statement.
Iga Fikayo Keme: My question was just clarification of a question. Is the 25 megabit from the FCC a mandate or a recommendation?
Sarah Trowbridge: It’s a mandate if you’re providing internet broadband.
Nourisha Wells: We are out of time. Joneil, do you want to give us the summary of action for the next meeting?
Joneil Sampana: Sure. 1) Michael to respond to SDOT’s system questions, including what site do they use in their privacy impact approach. 2) For all of us, let’s be prepared to test the interactive broadband map in about three weeks. 3) Consider SDOT’s exposure to CTAB. Some of our opinions and offerings may be partnered there in the future. 4) Get access to the auto pre-school list. And share that list to our constituents. 5) Send comments regarding your board member strengths to the rest of the board for our board evaluations. 6) Explore potential action to take for tasers or a facial recognition system.
Jose Vasquez: I forgot to hand this out earlier. It the current TMF criteria. If you want to just take it and review it to prepare for a conversation that we’ll have at the next meeting.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 8:08
Cable & Broadband Committee – August Meeting Minutes
Monday, 8/31/15 Cable and Broadband Meeting
O’Asian Restaurant, 8/31/15, 6:30 – 8 pm
Attending: Dashiell Milliman-Jarvis, Dan Stiefel, Lambert Rochfort, Tony Perez, Janice Tufte, Sarah Trowbridge
Meeting Minutes:
– FCC 621 order cut back negotiating level for the city of Seattle. Right now Comcast provides free cable to all city buildings and schools. FCC order now says cable providers can deduct those services from franchise fees.
– Comcast and city negotiated that Comcast will not deduct free service from franchise fees for the time being.
– Nearing end of negotiations on Comcast’s cable franchise: Tony Perez will provide a pre-brief w/ council on Wed. the 16th of September at the 2pm meeting of the Public Safety, Technology and Civil Rights Committee
– After pre-briefing, Tony will transmit franchise legislation to Council. Council will not have final vote until early December, which allows CTAB two months to provide input.
Discussion on the action strategies for the City of Seattle Digital Equity Initiative
– Cable and Broadband Committee members would like to see dedicated funding for staffing through the city or other non-profits to provide education and outreach for available low-income internet services
– The CTAB Digital Inclusion committee has also discussed this very topic, and it might be beneficial for members of the Cable and Broadband Committee to collaborate with the Digital Inclusion Committee. The next Digital Inclusion meeting will be meeting on Tuesday, 9/22 at the Beacon Hill Public Library.
Action items for Cable and Broadband Committee:
– Attend / watch the pre-briefing for the Comcast franchise renewal that takes place at 2pm on Wednesday, September 16th for the Public Safety, Technology and Civil Rights Committee
– Determine if there are any places we as a committee can provide input to Council before the franchise goes to a vote.
– Sarah Trowbridge has sent an email to the Chair of the Digital Inclusion Committee, Jose Vasquez, requesting time on the next Digital Inclusion Committee meeting to discuss action strategies for the Digital Equity Initiative, specifically strategizing how to dedicate funding for education and outreach on low-income internet.
– Cable and Broadband Committee members who are interested should attend the next Digital Inclusion Committee meeting (Tuesday, 9/22 at 6pm, Beacon Hill Public Library) to weigh in on conversation and collaborate on other digital equity strategies that relate to the Cable & Broadband committee.
For any questions, please email Sarah Trowbridge at trowbrsa (at) gmail (dot) com.
FCC Lifeline Reform: Seattle Community Tech Advisory Board submits comments
The City of Seattle’s Community Technology Advisory Board (CTAB) has submitted comments on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed modernization of Lifeline plan to expand broadband to low income residents. These were discussed at CTAB’s August meeting.
Here are the Board’s comments:
September 8th, 2015 Seattle Community Technology Advisory Board (CTAB) agenda
Meeting: September 8th, 2015, 6-8 pm
Location: Room 2750 (27th floor), Seattle Municipal Tower: 700 – Fifth Avenue
Draft Agenda
Item | Time |
Intros, agenda approval | 3 |
Minutes approval | 2 |
Chief Technology Officer Update: including citywide IT Consolidation, privacy initiative, broadband and Digital Equity Initiative progress report – Michael Mattmiller | 15 |
Announcements | 5 |
Pay by Phone Parking – follow-up from earlier meeting: Mary Catherine Snyder, Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) | 10 |
Comcast Internet Essentials low income program | 15 |
Comprehensive Plan: input on technology elements (in prep for Sept 16th Planning Commission meeting): Nourisha Wells | 15 |
Networking Break | 5 |
Privacy Committee: including report on Collaborathon – Beryl Fernandes | 8 |
Cable and Broadband Committee: Amy Hirotaka | 8 |
Digital Inclusion Committee, including Technology Matching Fund criteria discussion: Jose Vasquez | 8 |
E-Gov Committee: Joneil Sampana | 8 |
Board member talents and composition needs for future members | 10 |
Additional Public Comment | 5 |
Summary of action, to do’s & next meeting items | 3 |
TIME subtotal | 120 |
Balance on time (120-subtotal) | 0 |
August 11 Seattle Technology Advisory Board Minutes
August 11, 2015 CTAB Meeting Minutes
City of Seattle Citizens Technology Advisory Board (CTAB)
The group heard updates on the Cable and Broadband Committee by Sarah Trowbridge and a discussion of comments to the FCC regarding Lifeline for Broadband; a reminder and request to review the municipal broadband report from Joneil Sampana; a request for help in development of suggestions for the Comprehensive Plan before the September 16 Planning Commission meeting; a report on the Privacy Committee from Beryl Fernandes; and an update from Joneil Sampana on the E-Gov Committee.
This meeting was held: August 11, 2015; 6:00-7:30, Seattle Municipal Tower, 700 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2750
Podcasts available at: http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/CTTAB/podcast/cttab.xml
Attending:
Board Members: Nourisha Wells, Beryl Fernandes, Joneil Sampana, Karia Wong, Sarah Trowbridge, Amy Hirotaka, Ben Krokower, Carmen Rahm, and Iga Fikayo Keme (new Get Engaged member)
Public: Dorene Cornwell, Henok Kidane (Open Seattle), Kevin O’Boyle, Kevin Volkman (A.R.T.), Dan Moulton, Steve Stiefel, Nancy Sherman, Lloyd Douglas, Heather Lewis (UW-Comotion), Karin Volkman (A.R.T.)
Staff: Kendee Yamaguchi, Derrick Hall, Cass Magnuski
20 In Attendance
Meeting was called to order by Nourisha Wells.
Introductions
Nourisha Wells: Let’s do a little bit of house cleaning. When you are making an announcement, asking a question, or making a comment, be sure to say your name so it can be included in the minutes. You’ll notice, if you have been checking the minutes online that some things are missing because we don’t hear. So you have to speak up. Also, today, there is this nifty little sign that we will be holding up to remind you to project so you are picked up for the podcast.
First order of business is to approve the agenda. We do have some discussion for that, so I open it up for a motion.
Carmen Rahm: My only motion for the agenda is to remove the break since we’ve got over 30 or 40 minutes of content missing, and because Jose is missing also. We want to bring the meeting down to an hour and 20 or 30 minutes.
Comment: I second that motion.
MOTION CARRIES
Nourisha Wells: The agenda has been amended to remove the networking break.
Just to give you an update, Michael Mattmiller will not be here to give his presentation today. He’s in DC, but we do have some things to share. And, as Carmen mentioned, Jose Vasquez is not going to be here, so I don’t think there is a backup for the Digital Inclusion update.
Can we approve the agenda as amended?
Ben Krokower: I move we approve the agenda as amended.
Beryl Fernandes: I second.
MOTION CARRIES
Nourisha Wells: The agenda has been approved. Now let’s approve the minutes from last month. From the people who were here last month, do we have a motion to approve?
Beryl Fernandes: There is one fairly minor, but I think, significant correction. There was the low income broadband proposal that was submitted. I was all effusive about Dashiell saying thank you for the work you did. Later on, I realized that Nancy Sherman was really the one behind that initiative. She started it and she just put in a huge amount of work and Dashiell told me that. He said he came in at the end. He was being very gracious about it. In order to be accurate and to recognize this community volunteer who put so much time and energy into it…I don’t know how you handle that. Do you amend it now.
Cass Magnuski: I would think that this comment should go into the next minutes–the minutes from today– since it didn’t really happen last month.
Nourisha Wells: Do we have a motion to approve the minutes from last month?
Beryl Fernandes: I move that we accept the minutes from last month.
Joneil Sampana: I second.
MOTION CARRIES WITH ABSTENTIONS FROM THOSE NOT PRESENT AT JULY MEETING
Nourisha Wells: Michael is not going to be here, but we do have an announcement about digital equity.
Derrick Hall: Phase one is complete. I think many of you know that. And the report will be out next week. It will be online but if you do want a copy, please let Vicky Yuki know. I have her contact information (vicky.yuki@seattle.gov)
Nourisha Wells: And can we send it out via the listserv?
Derrick Hall: Yes. I’m sure you can do that.
Nourisha Wells: We will open it up for announcements from the public or from the board. None? Okay! Well, I’ll announce that there are snacks. Feel free to go over and grab some.
Let’s move to the Cable and Broadband Committee update. We have a discussion and vote on the comments to the FCC for broadband. I’ll turn it over to Sarah Trowbridge.
Cable and Broadband Committee Update
Sarah Trowbridge: I just want to thank Amy Hirotaka, who helped spearhead our efforts to collect comments from the Cable and Broadband Committee about the extension of the Lifeline program the FCC is proposing for broadband services. I believe there are hard copies for anyone who is interested in reading those comments. For CTAB members, it was also in email form. Do you have any further comments about the document?
Amy Hirotaka: A comment on this document is that there have been many hands on it. I went through it again about an hour ago. There is some iffy language that I might to still change and it hasn’t been fully formatted. The other thing to remember is that we started from the assumption that we should be as critical as possible because of what Tony Perez of the Cable Office said. Because we can be more critical than the City itself. The City is submitting comments, as well, and they have to be a little more candid. So that’s how this ended up where it is. Also, big thanks to Lambert Rochfort, formerly from Solid Ground.
Nourisha Wells: How many pages is this document?
Amy Hirotaka: Six.
(Confusion because all pages are not available.)
Beryl Fernandes: I think what I’m going to do is look at it online.
Sarah Trowbridge: I’d also like to add that I like some of the emphasis that you put on the expansion of the eligibility requirements. I think this document serves as some good framework, both for our low income internet position statement that we discussed earlier, and as a framework for thinking about how to expand programs and how to be more inclusive for other technology programs. Really good work on this document.
Amy Hirotaka: Great. Thanks. Thanks mostly goes to other people. But I do think that one thing to consider is the reason I was giving that context is that if you will look at the call for comments, this might seem out of scope, which was my opinion initially. But after talking to other folks, I sort of relented, and thought, sure, why don’t we just talk about everything.
Beryl Fernandes: The version I saw online didn’t have page numbers. That would be helpful to add to this six page document.
Amy Hirotaka: Will do.
Joneil Sampana: What was the form for collecting all of these thoughts? Was it all virtual or did you have to get together in a round room?
Amy Hirotaka: Initially, we at the broadband meeting collected thoughts on it, and then we had a Google doc. We used a separate from this one because there are just a ton of comments on it and changes.
Joneil Sampana: Was that a beneficial way, using Google docs?
Amy Hirotaka: It was and it wasn’t because Dan and Lambert ended up sort of creating their own separate document from it, and then putting everything together was a bit of a hassle. Some folks were more comfortable with tracking changes in Microsoft Word. So I think that next time, we will just figure out whoever is going to be doing the most work will make the call early on. I thought it was going to be me, but then Lambert and Dan ended up having a lot of stuff to add. I prefer Google Docs over anything else.
Sarah Trowbridge: And in terms of timeline, the FCC opened up comments on the day of our meeting, which was July 17. So if we submit this by August 15, and a vote today would be timely if we want to get this on record with the FCC.
Beryl Fernandes: Well, I know you guys put in a tremendous amount of work into it.
Ben Krokower: Besides nitpicking, it’s a fantastic document. So, thank you for putting it together. I feel pretty comfortable voting on it as is.
Nourisha Wells: I think we can approve it without seeing the final.
Amy Hirotaka: Yes. If there is a substantive change, I think that is something we should talk about now. But if there are language edits or typos, which are likely, or formatting or page number stuff, my opinion is that we could vote to submit it and then take care of that later.
The other thing is that we’re submitting this big, long document, but having done FCC comments before, the most important thing in the end is that we’re going on record supporting it. But the document itself is quite important. But what’s going to come out of this is just that we’re on record.
Sarah Trowbridge: Do we have a motion to approve the position statement for the FCC.
Ben Krokower: I move that we approve the draft with minor language and non-substantive changes.
Carmen Rahm: I second.
Nourisha Wells: To approve the public comment to the FCC Lifeline Program?
MOTION CARRIES: PUBLIC COMMENT TO FCC LIFELINE PROGRAM APPROVED
Amy Hirotaka: If you make changes on a hard copy, just give them to me. The reason why I didn’t allow editing on this was that I just didn’t want it to get crazy again. So if you could comment where you see issues and then I can go in and make the changes that would be best at this point.
Sarah Trowbridge: We should probably submit those comments within the next 48 hours. And then you’ll submit to the FCC, Amy?
Amy Hirotaka: Yes, I can do that.
Sarah Trowbridge: Do we want to include our individual names on this document, or just submit it on behalf of our chair, or as a committee?
Beryl Fernandes: I would think as a committee chair.
Sarah Trowbridge: The chair of CTAB?
Beryl Fernandes: The chair of whatever committee is overseeing this.
Amy Hirotaka: No, we’re submitting on behalf of CTAB.
Nourisha Wells: I think in the past we’ve done it as a board, as in the Net Neutrality comments.
Sarah Trowbridge: And then for our most recent position statement, because we couldn’t have a vote before we needed to submit for the cable franchise, we just included individual names of CTAB members and what their role was, but we did submit as a board.
Beryl Fernandes: I think that’s fine, but I really think that, for the record and for later on down the road, if somebody has specific questions–and that does happen on occasion–the chair will not know, but the person who had a hand in writing it would know. So it’s still submitting it with everybody’s name, but also somehow the main contributor. Because if somebody has a question down the road, they want one person they can go to and say, ‘what was the basis for that because we’d really like to incorporate’ or whatever. But if we don’t, they’ll have to go down the list of ten people, trying to figure out who knows the specifics.
Sarah Trowbridge: So we could just add something in the conclusion that says, ‘if you have questions, please contact blank.’
I have a few other updates from the Cable and Broadband Committee. We’re still seeking comments for the Digital Equity Initiative that’s spearheaded by the City of Seattle. We have a draft via Google Docs that you can put suggestions or edits to. And to navigate to that draft you can go to the CTAB blog. You can also just make comments to the blog if you want to speak more generally, too. I’m not sure exactly what the timeline is on finalizing the action strategies, but I think sooner rather than later. Particularly if there are opportunities to talk about accessibility to technologies or internet in Seattle, connectivity, ideas for skills training and resource development. So those are opportunities for us to say, ‘I want to see this in Seattle.’ You could even provide a timeline. We’ll be submitting this to David Keyes for his review.
Beyond that, I have a few notes about our Cable and Broadband Committee meeting in July. The main focus of that was our municipal broadband report. The majority of the conversation was asking specific questions about how some of the conclusions were drawn in the report as regards to operational numbers and such. We determined as a committee that the conclusion that the [consulting] firm reached was good, and there was no point at this time to squabble over how they reached some of their conclusions. We also discussed, moving forward, what it looks like for the City of Seattle to continue pursuing better internet options. Michael Mattmiller asked specifically what our view is on public/private partnerships. As a committee, we determined that more competition is better, but if we have specific ideas about public/private partnerships, we should send those over to Michael Mattmiller, because he really is soliciting what the feel of what a partnership with Comcast might look like, in order to increase internet in Seattle.
Beryl Fernandes: Is that part of what Joneil’s got down here?
Sarah Trowbridge: This was just a reflection of what we discussed as a committee.
And then the third thing we discussed was that Comcast has just recently hired Mayor McGinn’s former communications director Beth Hester. Michael Mattmiller recommended that we reach out as a board and invite her to a meeting. We can discuss specific ways that Comcast is tracking connectivity issues in Seattle, or just to start a dialog as a board with a point of contact with Comcast.
Joneil Sampana: Sarah, is that private/public partnership discussion just for the board?
Sarah Trowbridge: I think probably we collect it and give our overall comments to Michael Mattmiller.
Beryl Fernandes: Regarding the public/private partnerships, I think it depends on how it is shaped. It’s very difficult to say in a vacuum whether one or the other is going to be better. It’s certainly something that should be on the table as far as an option goes.
Sarah Trowbridge: Yes, and I think the next opportunity where Michael Mattmiller is present at a meeting, it would be another opportunity to raise what our concerns are and what our opportunities are. And I specifically, personally, am interested in public/private partnerships that work with some of our local ISPs, such as Cascade Link. I think that would be interesting to help keep our local economy going.
Nourisha Wells: Does anyone have any questions for Sarah or any comments.
Carmen Rahm: One quick question. I’m not sure how this relates, but I know that Vicky Yuki told me earlier this month that Comcast had announced that they were going to be offering their Internet Essentials program to all students in any school that had at least a 50 percent free or reduced lunch. So that was keeping the student from having to go and say, ‘I get free or reduced lunch,’ so that then eliminated concerns about Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) — where you can’t out an individual student, which is great. So this is going to seem like a really weird question, but how can I tie that back to this committee and the City, because my problem is that the school district has a very strict ‘no advertising’ policy. So I can’t go out to all the schools that have 50 percent free or reduced lunch, and say that Comcast offered this. You can get it. Here’s how to sign up. Because then I’m advertising for Comcast. So I’m trying to find creative, and more importantly legal, approved ways to be able to get the word out to these schools. And a lot of schools meet the 50 percent.
Nourisha Wells: How do you do it for other things that would be considered? How about the Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA)? Is there some kind of communication as they’re going back to school from the PTSA.
Carmen Rahm: We send information out–school messenger blasts, the internet, Facebook. Everybody gets information at the beginning of the year. But the concern is can we put something in everybody’s school packet that says this is available for these schools. Can we put something on Facebook? The answer is no, because it violates the public/private rule. I went through this at the university that I was at, which was when AT&T came in and said, ‘if you have a .edu email address, AT&T and Verizon said we’ll give you a 15 percent discount off your cell phone bill. So the IT department was going to advertise that, and they went, ‘No. If they want to advertise that, they can put it in the paper, the school newspaper and pay for it, because we don’t promote AT&T and Verizon.’ Now, if they were doing that as part of their contract with the school, then we could advertise it. And I understand the separate there, because next week Costco comes in and says, ‘Guess what? We’ll give you a free hot dog if you’re a school employee’, and then they want that advertised. And Les Schwab comes in with a free oil change. So I’m just trying to find out how to tie that back to this committee, because I’m a member of this committee, then I can tie it back to my job and then be able to get the word out. Any creative ways that somebody can think of for this committee to get the word out to the schools, because I don’t want to miss that opportunity for hundreds or thousands of our students who struggle with being able to afford broadband.
Beryl Fernandes: Did you just say that they could pay to advertise in school papers?
Carmen Rahm: But there are no school papers.
Nourisha Wells: Could it be tied into some of the local organizations that are going to do back to school drives? Because those are the kids that are going to need it. So Comcast needs to be out there in the community.
Carmen Rahm: I don’t want to belabor this and make the meeting last forever, but you mentioned the PTSAs and it might be appropriate–I’m sure that it’s acceptable for me to provide this information to the PTSAs and then they can take the initiative to advertise it in the schools. I think that might be it. Tomorrow, I’m having breakfast with all the PTSAs, so this is very timely. But if you can think of any other ways….
Ben Krokower: I think short-term, you’ve got to partner with the PTSAs or whatever, but I think for the Lifeline, there’s an exception where it should be incumbent on the providers to reach out to the people who qualify for these programs. These are people with deep pockets, deep marketing budgets who typically use these programs for image reasons. There was a great article during the Comcast/NBC Universal merger talks, that the Washington, DC area was blanketed with advertisements for the Internet Essentials program in the DC area. So every single subway had advertisements everywhere. And then as soon as it got passed, all the advertising went away.
Carmen Rahm: I can let Comcast know there are 47 schools that qualify, and then they can take it from there. That’s all we can do. Then they can advertise. I’m looking at this as not that Comcast is going to make ten bucks a month, I’m looking at it as the number one challenge that our students have is and the future is giving them a one to one laptop program, as all schools are doing, but if they take that laptop home and can’t connect to anything, then big deal. So we want to make sure that they have this access, too.
Nourisha Wells: We have a comment in the back. Can you say your name?
Doreen Cornwell: I think it’s timely to be moving on this right at the beginning of the school year. I like the idea of saying that Comcast hears of all 47 schools. But I’m wondering when you’re trying to think about measurable stats, is there something where you can say to Comcast–also whether there are 47 PTSAs–or to have some goals between CTAB and Comcast, we want to cover as many schools, as many students as possible. I don’t know how to do that, given your ‘can’t advertise’ problem. Is that something the school district can do, to say ‘we know these 47 schools that Comcast is going to do this for, in two months do we have a way of knowing how many are being served?
Carmen Rahm: I doubt if we’d have that metric or that data collection. My goal is just to get the word out.
Dan Mouton: DSHS and United Healthcare both send out unsolicited or as soon as you qualify, notices on the low cost opportunities. So, if you have social workers in the school, United Healthcare because they have the Medicaid, there might be dual usage of solutions. So there is proactive resending out of things or programs. Perhaps it is called Lifeline. They called it something else in the mail that DSHS and United Healthcare send. Do you want me to give you an example of that letter? I might be able to thrash around and find it, but we do have other avenues.
Carmen Rahm: That would be great.
Nourisha Wells: Can you provide that directly to me?
Dan Mouton: Yes, I can see if I can find something.
Sarah Trowbridge: This would be another point to bring up if we do invite Beth Hester from Comcast.
Nourisha Wells: We should be able to get her here in September, if she’s available. We’ll have to ask.
Sarah Trowbridge: I can make it may action item.
Beryl Fernandes: I have one more question for Carmen. If the message goes out to the PTSA, and we depend on the PTSA to get the word out to mostly low income students, I don’t know how many of those parents sit on the PTSAs and how much communication there is between the PTSAs and the low income students.
Carmen Rahm: Well, there’s no doubt about it, the schools that have the highest free or reduced lunch programs are the ones that have the least PTSA involvement. I’ve told stories about PTSAs, that the very impoverished schools that raffle Starbucks giftcards and make a few hundred dollars and are very excited. And I was told a story about a school in the northwest that raffled off a Tesla and made $100,000.
Beryl Fernandes: Right. So maybe that strategy needs to be supplemented with something else. Just as long as you keep that in mind.
Nourisha Wells: Okay! Thank you, Sarah. Joneil, you have an announcement?
MUNICIPAL BROADBAND
Joneil Sampana: Just a quick reminder from last meeting. In a similar spirit as the Lifeline program, we saw that this initiative was led by a lot of citizen interest. If you’re interested in commenting or providing guidance for CTAB to move forward with the Citizen Broadband Report, please let us know on the signup sheet, perhaps let us know your interest in that topic. Show of hands: Is anyone here interested in making comment or suggestions on municipal broadband?
Beryl Fernandes: I’m not sure about the request that’s being made here. Who is asking for our comment on the report?
Joneil Sampana: No one is asking for our comment. There is interest from citizens. We want to create a space for you to share your beliefs. We want that to be a part of the Broadband Committee, and we want to give it a formal structure and create some kind of platform where we could talk about the broadband report and to suggest to CTAB what we should do moving forward. Because the last time it was shared with us, there wasn’t much talk or conversation.
Beryl Fernandes: Here’s why I’m asking that question. The Upgrade Seattle people had Chris Mitchell. He came in first and he talked about all the great things about broadband. The very next day, the City’s report came out and it basically crushed that idea. So, it seems to me that the next step is for the City itself to now say, ‘We’ve heard from Upgrade Seattle, the citizens, we’ve heard from the consultant.’ And my request last time was to say, ‘Okay, Mr. Mattmiller, where are you going to take us now? Where are you going to take the City, now that you’ve got two very different approaches? Is it a done deal? Is municipal broadband dead?’
Nourisha Wells: Sounds like it’s a partnership thing. A private/public partnership, right? I think that’s what he’s asking for.
Ben Krokower: I’m sorry to interrupt, but I would dispute the idea that the report itself seemed quashing. The report had a pretty clear way forward when it comes to municipal broadband. It just was that the preferred manner of funding that was not feasible. But there are other options, either having been studied or were not exercised by the City.
Beryl Fernandes: Okay, so there are options and that’s what we need to hear about from the City itself. And if there is a preferred option, that the CTO has decided on and wants to take, we need to hear that. And then I think it’s appropriate for us to comment. But at this point, I think there’s so much up in the air. Maybe you know something, Ben, that I don’t.
Ben Krokower: Speaking as someone who was one of the founding members of Upgrade Seattle, and wholeheartedly support municipal broadband, the report–and also for those reasons, I’ve been disengaged with the board’s activities on this–I had some fairly concrete steps that the City should be taking on this. Number one, introducing a pilot program, putting some real money toward that. I think the price tag was $5 million. Choosing a couple of neighborhoods around the City doing a proof of concept for making it profitable. Getting some actual numbers on the take rate for the municipal option for the different price points. In addition, also an additional educational campaign for what gigabit can do, why it’s important, all that stuff. And also some other funding on this. Primarily property tax. Most of the focus was on issuing municipal bonds, which wasn’t feasible for a number of reasons. But it’s definitely feasible if we turn to property taxes. If we choose to tax ourselves, we can have — and it says in the report, $45 a month gigabit internet–so I’m in a situation where I feel we are stuck where we were in 2009 when the last feasibility report came out that there was just not the political will for it. Not that it’s not possible or feasible. It’s just that it’s not a priority for our elected officials. So I think that Upgrade Seattle’s goal is to create the political will for it.
Beryl Fernandes: I think getting property taxes for anything is very difficult for us to do. Not that it’s impossible. It’s only that it’s difficult. I guess doing the pilot projects in different neighborhoods is a different beast from having a municipal broadband utility that serves the entire City. Because they are talking about a management system for a utility that’s City-wide, which is very different from the pilot. The pilot would give you an idea of how a City-wide utility would work out.
Ben Krokower: Right. But a lot of the assumptions that are in the report have to do with take rates, what the rate would actually purchase. And these are assumptions, and they’re based on lots of market data, but they’re still assumptions. The pilot program would, number one, have more concrete examples of that take rate assumption. Number two, it serves as an educational project. Can the City deliver gigabit internet to a neighborhood? Yes or no? Can they operate it successfully? It can answer some of those questions. It’s not what is really needed, but a step in that direction.
Beryl Fernandes: So has Upgrade Seattle heard from the City on which ones of those options they’d like to proceed with?
Ben Krokower: No.
Beryl Fernandes: Are you waiting for that?
Ben Krokower: Personally, I don’t want to speak for Upgrade Seattle. I’ll speak for myself. I have opinions about it. I think that since the report came out, it was treated as a dead end. There’s been some light work towards it, but not much action. That’s my take.
Beryl Fernandes: May I offer one suggestion? I think that my hesitation about it, with City Light utility with the experience that they currently have –not with City Light, but with Seattle Public Utilities–has not been great. In fact, I’d use other adjectives if I wasn’t on the record. This is something you can do at the front end if you want to push for municipal broadband, is to design into the front end of it internal controls, so that expenditures don’t skyrocket, as they did with the utilities, so that now we have the highest water rates in the country, which is not what we bargained for when we asked to form the utility. I was on the advisory committee that recommended the formation of Seattle Public Utilities. I think the main problem is with oversight. We, citizens, or City Council, whoever it is–did not provide adequate oversight to make sure that those expenditures did not go out of control and that management was much tighter. So this is something that you can do at the front end by learning from that experience. And I think it would make a proposal way stronger.
Ben Krokower: I think I’d prefer to focus on the front end, and I like City Light. It’s a huge positive. There are pro and con examples across the nation of publicly owned whatevers. And I think the idea is that whatever gets built obviously should stick to best practices.
COMPREHENSIVE PLAN
Nourisha Wells: I have an announcement about the Comprehensive Plan. The City is having a planning commission meeting on September 16, and if anyone is interested in helping to develop suggestions for the Comp Plan, which can be found on the Seattle government web site, you can either sign up on the sign in sheet or come and talk to me after the meeting is over and I can facilitate that connection. I don’t know the actual time for the planning meeting, but we can definitely send that out through our listserv. But if anyone is interested, if you haven’t read the Comprehensive Plan, I definitely recommend checking it out. CTAB will be discussing it at the September meeting. If you haveany itnerest in that, please see me after the meeting.
Beryl Fernandes: Is there anyone on the CTAB board who is planning to help on it? It’s a huge document and a huge undertaking.
Nourisha Wells: Yes. And we definitely don’t have the focus on all of it. There are key points that make sense for CTAB.
Sarah Trowbridge: Specifically, economic development and public utilities are areas we can focus on.
Nourisha Wells: Next up, we have Beryl Fernandes with the Privacy Committee Update.
PRIVACY COMMITTEE UPDATE
Beryl Fernandes: The workshops we’ve been having in the City–and we’ve completed three so far–is called Protecting Privacy and Yourself in the Digital Age. The charge that our committee had back in January 2014 was when Councilmember Harrell listed privacy as a priority for CTAB. We grabbed it and began a grassroots inclusive approach to addressing privacy in the City. What we mean by inclusive is as broad a cross section of the population as possible, but particularly those that have been left out of privacy discussions in the past. And generally, privacy discussions have been led by technologists. There is something called the theory of privacy and harm and they talk about subjective harm and objective harm, which I won’t get into. But subjective harm is anxiety about what might happen when new technologies come online, or existing technologies or technology harm in the future, that hasn’t actually happened yet. And objective harm is where people are actually harmed by whatever is being done. We consulted with people and providers, from marginalized and vulnerable populations, and focused on existing technologies as well.
We did a whole bunch of background research, interviews, meetings, focus groups, with youth, seniors, people with disabilities, LGBTQ, low income, whistle blowers, immigrants and refugees, and a whole bunch. We just wanted to make sure we got as many people as possible for their perspectives. Perspectives, rather than people, because you can have a low income person who might not bring a different perspective, to the table. So it’s the different perspectives that we were interested in. So we involved people from these communities at the grassroots level to identify what the problems, the needs, and most importantly, the strategies. We’re less interested in a whole litany of problems, and more interested in the strategies for addressing each problem. I was less interested in having a zillion people show up, or a zillion people contacted, and more interested in having one example from each of these groups. A perspective and a compelling story that said here is what happened in the past, and we don’t want to see that happen to any of our people again. So the questions is, ‘What ideas do you have for addressing that issue?’ And the premise behind that is to say if you’ve been affected by privacy harm, generally people have thought about what could be done to mitigate or to avert it.
The methodology, then, is what can we do at the local level? We’re not looking for what can be done at the federal level, or globally. We’re looking at community generated ideas, localized strategies. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be scaled up.
The sectors were broken up into three broad categories: residence, small businesses, and workers. We used the term, ‘collaborathon’ to signify a collaboration among people. It would be tech, non-tech, north Seattle, south Seattle, all sizes, all shapes. It was a collaborathon where we have the needs identified, we have people with a set of needs, and we’ve got people with resources to help address those needs. And it’s a bringing together of all these people, and that’s how we came up with the word.
The objectives were to develop and present strategies for addressing privacy harm to the community as well as at the privacy symposium, a resource fair.
One of the things we realized is that the insidious nature of objective privacy harm in marginalized communities. It’s not possible to just go there and ask, ‘how have you been affected by privacy.’ Often the issue of privacy is much more insidious, and you get at it by understanding, really getting into the community itself. As an example, is a school lunch program. One of the students that I mentor was flunking five out of six classes and I decided to go spend the day with her at school and figure out what was going on. She was really lethargic, and I asked her what she had for breakfast. And she said, ‘nothing.’ I asked why, and she said they didn’t have anything. I asked what she brought for lunch, and she said ‘nothing.’ Same thing. Didn’t have anything at home. And I said, you know they have free lunches at school. She just mumbled something. She was very embarrassed and put her head down. So I didn’t push it, but I went to the administrators later and they said her family didn’t apply and if you don’t apply, you don’t get it. And I said, I don’t care what you have to do but that girl’s got to eat, not tomorrow, today. Anyway, we did what was necessary to get her on the program, but it points to a much wider issue in privacy with low income people in marginalized communities. Some of them do not want to apply for subsidy programs because of the intrusive nature of those applications. The Brookings Institution did a big study on this, nationwide, and talked about subsidies were just not being used. And you know what that next step is going to be. It’s to grab that money. But what we need to do is to look underneath that and find out why is it that they’re not being used. One reason is the trust is government with providing all your financial information to them, with immigrants, any low income, the African American community–major issues of trust.
Carmen Rahm: Well, let’s go back to what I said earlier where when Comcast came out and said you don’t have to be signed up for free or reduced lunch, you just have to go to a school where it’s got over 50 percent. And that took out all of the stigma, and it took out all of the FERPA. Because now you say, ‘I go to whatever school,’ rather than say, ‘Here’s my proof that I qualify for FERPA, which takes it to a whole other level.
Beryl Fernandes: So, that’s just an illustration of how insidious it is and why it is necessary to focus on a different approach for looking at privacy in these communities.
Community based versus policy. So-called experts tell us that we can’t rely on government, and policies and principles to protect us. Legal and legislative changes lag well behind the pace of technology. A lot of people say education and awareness is the key. This came from both the experts, as well as our own Seattle youth in the number of focus groups and interviews and meetings we had with them. Which says a lot about our youth. They know. And that was the whole purpose of asking those people who are in vulnerable situations. They know more than we give them credit for. So let’s ask them directly.
We can expect in this day and age that we will be tracked on the internet and everywhere, but we don’t necessarily have to expect that that information will be used against us. That’s the problem that most of us have. Data collection has disparate impacts, and it’s intolerable in a just society. We need and want to control our own information, like the EU’s Right to be Forgotten. That’s the European Union.
We’ve had these three workshops. We will be continuing on the first Tuesday of each month. They are held in the Center City, 23rd and Yesler. It’s the heart of the Central District. What is really heartening is to see the people who are coming. I think we had about 60 percent of people of color there. We had African Americans. We had immigrant and refugee. You name it. When I first put this out, I sort of jokingly said, from birth to 99. We literally had people with their parents who were three months old. And this family has been coming every single month. We’ve adopted them and they’ve adopted us. And it is beautiful because this is a refugee family. The father was a human rights activist where he came from. This is a live example of the extreme that we hope we’re going to get into. So, it has just been a beautiful experience. I had one parent who said to me that her friend’s daughter committed suicide after she was cyber-bullied, and another whose son is on the internet all the time and getting more and more violent. The reasons are very personal.
Coming to the symposium, which we’re going to have this fall: Councilmember Bruce Harrell will be the sponsor. The theme is resources for peoples’ health and such. It’s a self-empowering process and objective. Bruce Harrell has asked me to convey that he is very appreciative of all the work that has been done to date, and we’ve done all of this without budget or staff support. It’s taken a lot of investment. Mostly likely, it will be in Bertha Landes Hall in City Hall. We’re looking at something between early November and before Christmas. That’s very broad, but there are many moving parts as to when.
Attorney General Bob Ferguson has indicated an interest, and I’m working with his staff at this point on actually pinning down his schedule and meshing it with other things. His office has, as we all know, a huge Consumer Protection Division, with a huge privacy resource base, so it fits very nicely. We’ll have resource booths outside, where they will be able to display their wares, as will other people as well.
Congresswoman Suzan DelBene has also indicated an interest. She also gave me her staff person, who I also met. And we’re working with them, as well. There are some great academic researchers who have specialized in privacy in marginalized neighborhoods. There aren’t a lot. It’s really an emerging field, but we don’t have money to bring them out here. If we can, it would be dynamite. And then, of course, we’ll have local community members. So, we hope to have a resource booth outside, where people who have worked on developing strategies can display. We hope to choose one or two to help kick off the symposium itself.
Joneil Sampana: Through the course of planning and discussions, what was the range of people attending at the library? Was it low numbers or high numbers. I’m just curious.
Beryl Fernandes: Last time we had 16 to 18 people. And we’re not looking for numbers. Because they’re very focused, very intensive discussions. So, we’re not advertising it, necessarily in a big way on the internet. If we did, we’d get lots of people coming in that are totally unfocused. We’ve done this through Open Seattle, and we’ve got a pretty extensive mailing list, as well. It’s mostly those three sectors I talked about. So when it’s workers, that’s where we’re focusing. A lot of the work is happening outside of the workshops, and then they come to the workshop to present. The ones that are happening outside are very small. They could be three or four people, but very intense. It’s labor intensive.
Henok Kidane: When you said, ‘localized,’ was it by neighborhood? By category? By area?
Beryl Fernandes: We haven’t really defined it. We leave it up to the people who are making those recommendations and developing the strategies. For example, there is one immigrant community where they’re going to have privacy training on the internet as a regular part of the computer training that they do.So that would be localized just to that one center probably. It’s conceivable that they would develop a template that could be used elsewhere, but at this point, that’s not our goal. That’s too much to ask of people. We want them to do this, and then we’re going to send them all over the City. But it could happen. And then, with a lot of the youth, they’re at community centers.
Carmen, following up on our discussion on the schools, we’re not even going to touch your bureaucracy. We’ll leave that up to you. We’re getting your kids by other means. They’re in the community centers, they’re in summer programs, and we’re reaching them that way. And our goal is not to reach every student. We are all volunteers. We do not have budget. We do not have staff. The whole purpose of this is to provide one or two illustrations. That’s really it. To illustrate the insidious nature of privacy issues, and how we approach it.
Henok Kidane: I’m just wondering if there’s some overlap that increases inefficiency.
Beryl Fernandes: Very good point. If and when we see that, we definitely would like to have a way to talk to them about collaborating and sharing information. Is that what you mean?
Henok Kidane: Yes.
Nourisha Wells: Any other questions? No? Thank you, Beryl. Next up is Joneil with E-Gov.
E-GOV COMMITTEE UPDATE
Joneil Sampana: This past month, we had a joint meeting with Jose’s group, the Digital Inclusion Committee. Essentially, we talked about the Digital Equity Initiative principles and goals. We talked about how we map our work to this document, some of the action plans. We would bring a lot of meaning and emphasis on different goals to light with this as our strategic plan. We moved forward and decided that all of our efforts would be aligned to this document. I encourage you, if you’re interested, to learn more about the digital equity principles. This is what helps shape your vision of what these two committees are going to be executing.
More about E-Gov: We’re shooting specifically around outreach and accessibility, and skills training, as well as, building community capacity. In that light, a quick update on the data visualization internship that we launched with the government of Washington State. We put a report out yesterday with Results Washington, which is Governor Inslee’s new performance management task team, that is trying to showcase how Washington State is performing on a lot of different measures towards citizenship. How they’re doing it is using students. In this case, we have four universities where we have internships with those students with industry partners, Socrata, Tableau, Microsoft, and Life Stories. We’re in our seventh week, and we showed them our initial data visualization maps. We had five different agencies, and they loved seeing what they saw about how easy citizens can actually dive into specific data sets that aren’t Excel based, or number based. They’re practical and inclusive. So what they want to do is showcase more of these best practices with the students with the governor in mid-October. Again, it’s part of a larger scale that Governor Inslee wants, combining his development with students, private/public partnerships with universities and partners, as well as interest in the new technology tools through government agencies. So this will be a platform. We don’t know where it’s going to end, but hopefully we’ll receive budget in October for more skilled roll out, with other universities, other skills, other agencies. So be on the look out for that.
The second project we talked about was the Citizen Engagement Series around an idea called Tech Etc. What we’re trying to do in the same spirit as Beryl’s group is to identify four topics that involve technology and will bring together a cross section of Seattle citizens through an event that will help cross sector collaboration, very similar to data visualization internship. The ideas that came out last week were kind of geared around these principles. So if one topic was about innovation, who can we attract in the area of education? STEM or STEAM was an idea that was brought up. Who would we want to hear from? And what type of collaboration would they bring to the table around STEAM? STEAM is the acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math. Another idea was 21st Century skills training for students as well as everyday citizens. What skill do we need to know for the 21st century? Coding, digital visualization, machine learning. Would that be something that City of Seattle citizens would be interested in learning more about?
And, lastly, community capacity. How can we align all of our private/public resources to build more capacity within our communities? Whether it’s funds, technology resources, volunteers–how can we actually come up with a holistic model towards any specific issue? Whether it’s homelessness, training, or what have you. So, right now what we’re doing is trying to identify what those four topics would be. And that’s why I asked the question, ‘how big is what we’re looking for?’ If we had an event like this in September, October, November, December, what would that look like?
So that’s where we’re at. We’re still trying to determine if these are the right topics, and what would be the ask? We don’t want to just do this as a blip. We want to build momentum. Any questions?
Nourisha Wells: I have a question. Because that’s such a large group, what is the plan for a structure for doing those needs?
Joneil Sampana: Similar to what we did for the indigent project. Although we have a report out in October, in September we partnered with Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA), and they’re hosting a big Full Con Tech convention which is 200 folks that are going to come to this event, we’re going to showcase our students and talk about digital visualization. So it’s kind of in the same manner. If you have the right private partners, if you have the right non-profit partners…and one thing I forgot to mention is, along each one of these topics, we have actually showcased one of our TMF grantees. It showcased them, what they are doing in the community, and made sure that one of the lessons learned or messages that all of the citizens get is there are actually organizations that are being funded right now with our tax dollars that are doing great work in the communities and we want to extend that. Right now, we’ve given 26 TMF grants, and how many of us know what that work looks like this year. So we want to make sure that’s top line, event after event. So that’s kind of what we’re thinking about. Get the right partners in place–companies, non-profits, volunteers and citizens–and let’s generate something new.
Beryl Fernandes: The topics that you mention, if we were talking to people who were preparing themselves for the tech world, I could see that. If we’re talking about marginalized communities, a lot of them are saying that the first step they can see in employment is child care, or home health care, or gardening. Not that data visualization and some of those skills are not important. They could be, and I think some people would jump at it, and others would just shy away from it. I wonder if you narrowed your focus and said this is for preparing people for the tech world. For kids, I think, great. But for some of the adults that we are dealing with, it may not be.
Joneil Sampana: Well, let me correct that. We’re not trying to create people for the tech industry. What we’re trying to do is use technology to try to engage citizens to ask different questions about their community. So if it’s visual, they see a map versus a spreadsheet, and they click on their zip code area, hopefully that will engage people to say, ‘I understand what this is about. This is where I live, and I see that the average income is blank.’ That’s what we’re trying to do.
Dan Moulton: There are state and federal funds for innovation, literally, in technology for exactly what you just said, specifically going after low income, home healthcare, etc. In Washington State, it’s called Healthy Homes Washington or something like that. I think what Joneil is saying is it’s not just about kids going into the tech industry. In the tech industry, people get shifted out and lose their jobs. They need to find a way back in. Besides that, just for the tech industry, how do you access your community, your government, what things are available to you through Comcast. etc. from open data, where would you find it, how would you find it, etc. So in the innovation team for FEMA, we took the government to the survivors, as opposed to asking the survivors to come to government. So that’s an innovation.
Doreen Cornwell: I’m sitting here thinking about the laptops in the households and Beryl’s comment about getting on board for the workforce for parents, and particularly child care. There are quite a lot of different things that are requirements for training, and so if I’m in my neighborhood and need a job, I’d try to do some kind of certification so that I could get something I use. I’ve had this vision about kids doing open data projects and seeing that they can do something that will make a difference in their neighborhood and that’s tied to PC or personal curriculum. But that means looking for some funds, doing some curriculum with the teachers, all these ideas need resources.
Dan Moulton: An example would be [unintelligible]. In the digital comments on this equity, two people started to say, this is too broad. We need to separate them out. And I’m thinking this is the path to separate but equal. What we need to do is flip our thinking to realize that the people that we’re dealing with are actually innovators. And in order to get them energized about the technologies for the 21st century, etc., they are most energized when doing something for their community. Also, instead of looking at it as something we’re doing for them, what can they do for us? I have an example from the toolkit from Microsoft’s Emerging Markets and Unlimited Potential, but the one for Hurricane Sandy was prior to the storm. Redhook Initiative was trying to do this for home healthcare, trying to give people access to try to apply online. Trying to get childcare, etc. by using the Mesh network. Sandy knocked out electricity, Verizon’s lines were flooded. No cell phone, no landline. no whatever. The innovation team found this group and got the rest of the routers, and FEMA got a line to them. So now all the rich people that are surrounding them were not able to communicate out. That’s something in that small community that was underprivileged and poor, essentially helped all their neighbors.
Beryl Fernandes: Absolutely. That’s the premise behind what we’re doing in terms of self-empowerment. They’re empowering themselves, and through that they are also making whatever it is available to others.
Dan Moulton: We need to flip our thoughts that we’re not doing it for them, that they are very powerful people with great minds.
Beryl Fernandes: Absolutely. That they are entirely capable and brilliant and know their own situation better than any of us.
Joneil Sampana: So in addition to relevant initiatives, if there is any other idea that you might have or interest in some of the topics, make sure to come to our meeting. We meet the fourth Tuesday of each month.
Dan Moulton: There was a citizen innovation summit last November, and the innovation team worked with other countries, Canada, and the United Nations. We need to look and see where this problem has already been solved, instead of just trying to reinvent the wheel. But that’s my soapbox.
Nourisha Wells: Thank you. Any additional comments?
Nancy Sherman: You said the fourth Tuesday was which group?
Joneil Sampana: Actually both of ours. We’re trying to align.
Doreen Cornwell: So in terms of planning, it’s helpful either to know in advance–well, it’s helpful also to have a stable place–but it’s also helpful to know at least a week in advance.
Joneil Sampana: I totally understand. I’ll get together with Jose and we’ll decide where it will be. I’ll get you the location soon.
Nourisha Wells: And that information is available on the CTAB web site. For everyone that’s interested in any of the committees, the meeting times are posted on the web site.
Beryl Fernandes: Now that Nancy Sherman is here, we mentioned your name. Were your ears burning? What I said was, last meeting you weren’t here, but Sarah brought up the question of the low income internet position statement. Because Dashiell was sitting right where are right now, and I remembered that he had worked on it towards the end, I was really effusive with my comments about his contributions. Later on, after the meeting, I thought about it and realized that Nancy is the one who initiated it, and put all this work into it. We should give her credit. My goodness, we ought to give her a big plaque or something. So I emailed Dashiell and he agreed totally. He said, ‘I came in at the end. I had nothing to do with it.’ But Nancy in particular I wanted to give credit to, because she was persistent. It took such a long time. And Sarah was so patient, just wording and rewording, and pulling that whole thing together. So thanks to all of you who contributed, but I just wanted to make sure that Nancy did get recognized.
Nancy Sherman: I appreciate that.
Beryl Fernandes: The plaque is on it’s way. (laughs)
Nourisha Wells: Okay, we are open to additional comments from the public, if there are any. Be sure to say your name before you give your announcement, so we can hear it on the podcast. And it will be recorded for the minutes.
Doreen Cornwell: One of the things I guess I want to note from the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) celebrations. There was a strong statement that the internet still needs to be accessible. That kept coming through from several different events. It was kind of cool for us to go because there are legal and technical issues all the time. The other thing that I’m kind of just noting as interesting public policy and privacy thing, was the thing with the bus driver wearing a body cam. And the sheriff’s deputy got fired but the bus driver got reprimanded for wearing a body cam. Honestly, if I were in the bus driver’s union, I might be all over letting bus drivers wear body cams. Bus drivers are out there, and they put up with a lot from the public. I don’t know if they would feel safer with body cams. It’s a whole interesting thing: privacy/management issue, but I’m just kind of throwing it out there. Because it’s kind of different from police officers having them.
Beryl Fernandes: We can talk offline about that.
Nourisha Wells: Are there any other comments? Okay, if there are no more comments from the public, then we will move onto the September meeting agenda items. For sure, we’ll put out the request for Beth to come to talk to us. We’ll have time for the Comp Plan discussion before the City Planning meeting. And then, also, we have on the agenda for next month to talk about the TMF criteria. And I know that that’s something that’s going to be discussed in the committee meeting this month, but we’ll have further discussion at next month’s meeting.
Joneil Sampana: We might have someone from Finance and Administration Services (FAS) coming along with Michael to talk about open data.
Ben Krokower: Our next meeting is September 8, correct?
Nourisha Wells: It’s the second Tuesday. So, yes that is the date.
Carmen Rahm: I’ll do my best, but classes start the next day. So it might be a little hectic around the office that day.
Beryl Fernandes: You don’t get the summers off?
Carmen Rahm: Are you kidding me? That’s when we get all of our work done.
Ben Krokower: Could you spend a few seconds talking about what the TMF item is about?
Nourisha Wells: It’s looking at the criteria and refreshing it. The judging of the submissions and also the whole execution process. There will be a guest that’s going to talk about his role and the organization that he works with that received a grant.
Ben Krokower: Was it in response to criticism?
Beryl Fernandes: No. It’s capacity building from inside. I made a recommendation, which was made many times before, that the TMF criteria should include one criterion that gives a certain number of points to a proposal that have management from the community itself. Because too often in matching grants situations–and I’ve managed an environmental matching grant. You can have people from the outside with management skills and experience writing great proposals and getting the contracts and using the kids from the neighborhoods to get the grant. Those kids don’t ever have a chance to get training and get into leadership positions. They have no hope of ever making it into the management realm. One of the things we’re seeing on a much bigger societal level right now is the tremendous anger from people not being able to cut through and make it into management range. The point is to give everybody a chance from the inside. To be able at least to aspire towards one day getting some training, some leadership roles. And this is one program that has done that. They’ve taken kids from the programs, given them leadership roles. They’ve now become assistant trainers in the robotics program. And there are others like that. There is David Harris in the African American community, who has done a fabulous job. There are several like that, and all I’m saying is in the TMF you have a chance to insert a criterion like that. If we as a society say yes, we want to give opportunities to our low income kids of color to be able not only to participate but also have leadership roles at some point. Does that make sense to you?
Ben Krokower: Sure. I guess I would ask if there is an exact spot for that currently in the TMF criteria–for community participation in the grant. We can critique either the language or the scoring, but I guess I maybe am a little bit defensive because I know how diligently the City focuses on that particular issue So I want to make sure that if we’re having an agenda item about it, that we’re doing it talking with…. If there are specific suggestions for fixing either the language or scoring, rather than a general critique. Because they work very hard at exactly that issue.
Beryl Fernandes: This is why Joneil and Jose, the two committee…
Nourisha Wells: It’s come up.
Sarah Trowbridge: I’ll just add as a member of the Digital Equity Committee, one of the things we wanted to do to enhance the TMF process is to have collaboration with people who are going to potentially apply for a TMF grant early on. So if there are places where those grants might overlap, they’ll have the opportunity before they even apply. So I think that might even be part of the discussion on how to enhance the TMF process.
Nancy Sherman: I’d just like to make a correction to what Beryl said. Beryl spoke of making sure that kids of color are included in the leadership opportunities. I would suggest or correct the idea that this is all about kids. It’s not just about kids. People in marginalized communities of every age get marginalized once again when their community gets a Technology Matching Grant. And those people who may be in their 30s, their 40s, their 50s, their 60s–I can tell you people who have worked for Boeing, who have worked for Microsoft, who have worked for other big names around, who have a technology background who are not included in the paid positions that the TMF grant offers, who are marginalized by fiscal agents, who are discouraged by the community builders or in some other ways cut out of the process in the various organizations. And are basically told, ‘Well I’m the expert. I have experience.’ And in many cases, the people of that community have way more training and experience than the person who is coming in to administer the grant.
Beryl Fernandes: Point well taken, Nancy, and absolutely you stated it so well.
Nourisha Wells: Any other comments about that?
Dan Moulton: Just again, you can do research. There are a number of groups that are devoted to passing on those skills. There are foundations, etc. to pass on and to teach those leadership skills and to just have the other person there as the coach or mentor, but are actually run. There are international foundations for this. I just wanted you to know that you can go out and look and find a model or actually existing funds to augment your own foundation, grants, etc. It’s just that people don’t know that they exist, so I want to make them aware.
Nourisha Wells: Thank you. Joneil, do you want to give the action items?
ACTION ITEMS
Joneil Sampana: Two action items for the board:
Provide digital equity edits to Google Docs, as well as provide private/public partnership definitions to Michael Mattmiller
Amy Hirotaka: And then to provide comments on the FCC document within the next 48 hours in order to get them into the document that I submit. And that’s just for the board.
Nourisha Wells: Anything else that I forgot?
Sarah Trowbridge: Part of the discussion for next month is also discussing the Comp Plan?
Nourisha Wells: Yes. So everyone on the board should definitely make sure you take a look at it. And if you just read the headings for inspection, that gives you a lot of information about what’s in it. But definitely, take a look at it because we are going to be discussing it next month. That’s in preparation for the public meeting to come.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 7:30 PM
August 11th, 2015 Seattle Community Technology Advisory Board agenda
Meeting: August 11th, 2015, 6-8 pm
Location: Room 2750 (27th floor), Seattle Municipal Tower: 700 – Fifth Avenue
Tweet: #CTTAB or @CTTAB
Agenda item | Time |
Intros, agenda approval | 5 |
Minutes approval | 5 |
Chief Technology Officer Update: including citywide IT Consolidation, privacy initiative, broadband and Digital Equity Initiative progress – Michael Mattmiller | 20 |
Announcements | 5 |
Cable and Broadband Committee, including discussion and possible vote on Comments to FCC on Lifeline for Broadband – Sarah Trowbridge | 15 |
Reminder from last meeting: announcement to see if there are people to review the municipal broadband report and next steps – Joneil Sampana | 2 |
Reminder from last meeting: anyone interested in helping develop suggestions for the Comp Plan (in time for Sept 16th Planning Commission meeting) – Nourisha Wells | 2 |
Networking Break | 10 |
Privacy Committee: including report on Collaborathon – Beryl Fernandes | 13 |
Digital Inclusion Committee – Jose Vasquez | 13 |
E-Gov Committee: including discussion of potential speaker series – Joneil Sampana | 13 |
Additional Public Comment | 5 |
September meeting (Agenda items) | 5 |
Summary of action, to dos & next meeting items | 7 |
Total time | 120 |
Comments for the Board can be sent to CommunityTechnology@seattle.gov
July 14 Seattle Technology Advisory Board Minutes
The July CTAB meeting was held on July 14, 6:00-8:00 p.m., 700 Fifth Avenue, Room 2750. The group heard an update from Chief Technology Officer Michael Mattmiller; a report on the Technology Matching Fund (TMF) awards; an update on the Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan); a report on Cable and Broadband Committee from Sarah Trowbridge; a Privacy Committee update from Beryl Fernandes; a Digital Inclusion update from for Jose Vasquez; a report on E-Gov from Joneil Sampana; a discussion and vote on the CTAB Twitter account hashtag.
This meeting was held: July 14, 2015; 6:00-8:00, Seattle Municipal Tower, 700 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2750
Podcasts available at: http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/CTTAB/podcast/cttab.xml
Attending:
Board Members: Beryl Fernandes, Jose Vasquez, Joneil Sampana, Karia Wong, Sarah Trowbridge
Public: Dorene Cornwell, Henok Kidane, Dashiell Milliman-Jarvis, Kevin O’Boyle, Greta, Kevin Volkman (A.R.T.), Enzhou Wang (City Light), Peter Abrahamson, Dan Moulton, Lambert Rochfort, Andrea McVittle, Josh Gerrish, Ronald Ning, Seth Vincent
Staff: Michael Mattmiller, Will Schoentrup, Tony Perez, David Keyes, Derrick Hall, Cass Magnuski
23 In Attendance
Meeting was called to order by Joneil Sampana.
Introductions
Minutes approved with one change from Sarah Trowbridge.
Michael Mattmiller, Chief Technology Officer: I’m pleased to introduce Will Schoentrup, our new Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the Department of Information Technology (DoIT), day two.
Joneil Sampana: I don’t know whether we can approve the agenda, because we don’t have a quorum. In regards to the minutes from last week, we can’t actually approve those, but are there any glaring errors.
Sarah Trowbridge: I have one edit. There’s a line where we’re talking about broadband where I state that I think it’s determined that the City can go to the electrical space, but in fact, I was asking a question: How is it determined if the City can go to the electrical space? Just to clarify that.
Joneil Sampana: We’ll hold off until next meeting when we have a quorum to approve both the minutes and agenda.
Michael Mattmiller: Before I jump into the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) update, I’ll give Will Schoentrup a couple of minutes to talk a little bit about your background.
Will Schoentrup: I’ve been involved with information technology for the last 19 years, mostly in the private sector–the last 13 years in retail for Tommy Bahama, and Union Bay, and most recently as Chief Information Office (CIO) for Sur La Table. Before that, a few years back, I was an officer in the United State Navy. I grew up in the Seattle area in Issaquah, and went to the University of Washington. I’m please to join the City and to give back to the community that I have been raised in and love.
Michael Mattmiller: We’re incredibly thrilled that Will is with us. It’s going to be a huge benefit to the department that we are able to double our capacity. Some of the things that Will will be focused on is IT consolidation. We’ve talked a little about it to this group where we’re going to be structuring the new Seattle IT department, in a manner where we will have strong shared services, and we’re going to have department account teams that have domain knowledge and focus on the needs of our larger departments. Will is going to be over the IT directors that run those department account teams. That’s going to put Will front and center in terms of strategy and how we’ll not only run our internal operations, but how we think about moving the City forward with incoming technologies across our departments. That’s one of the many things that Will is going to be dunking into and we look forward to talking to you more about it in the future. With that, we’ll let him go.
It’s been a great summer so far, here in DoIT with technology in the City. I’m so excited to be with David Keyes at table tomorrow at Council for the Technology Matching Fund (TMF) grants. It’s due in no small part to the amazing work that this group has done to grade 64 grants this year. That’s amazing.
David Keyes: Sixty-four applications, 22 grants.
Michael Mattmiller: For a total payout of $470,000, which is phenomenal. So thank you to everyone in CTAB who worked on that effort. And I have to share with you how jealous I hear my peers talk about the Technology Matching Fund program. I connect with IT leaders from across the nation in other cities. Even at the federal level, we’re getting recognition for what a great digital equity type of program initiative that this is.
Other things going on: IT consolidation is moving forward. We’re trying to bulk up that program. So from an internal perspective, but exciting nonetheless. When we think about how it is we’re going to bring together about 670 IT professionals to create the mature services which will allow us to focus on being innovative around technology.
Next Generation Data Center (NGDC) is moving along as well, for anyone who has been paying attention. We have pictures of racks coming together, and in fact, a portion of our project team is in eastern Washington today, checking out data centers that will serve as our secondary facility to the main facility that we’re building out down in Tukwila.
Beryl Fernandes: When do we get to see pictures?
Michael Mattmiller: We can bring those next time.
Office 365 is growing, as well. Our first big push towards the cloud here in the City. We have a decision letter this month to see if we’ll proceed on migrating mailboxes, starting in late August. I can tell you that I’m signing up for that first wave, although my team is, perhaps, not on that same page yet. But it is very exciting to see the enthusiasm out of that team, and people around the City excited to engage in the rollout activities.
So, those are some of the big things that I’ve been focused on. A little bit more internal for the moment. And all of the TMF funds–David, I don’t know if it’s on the agenda to talk about the Digital Equity Advisory Committee?
David Keyes: Yes. We’re going to do a little bit on that and then it will come up in committee, also.
Michael Mattmiller: Great. So that’s going to come up. I know Tony Perez is going to be talking about, in part, the excitement yesterday where the City Council voted 9-0 to pass the Century Link cable television franchise, which will bring tentative service options, right off the bat, to more than 80,000 Seattleites. And we expect that number to continue to grow. Of course, if you are in an area that isn’t yet served by that Century Link product, we still see the benefit of competition, lowering prices and improving service.
Those are the things that are top of mind for me right now. Anything that folks would like to ask?
Enzhou Wang: I have a question in regards to consolidation as well as technology. What is the tone of your employees? How are they dealing with all of this change?
Michael Mattmiller: It’s a great question. There is a range of thinking, as you might imagine. There are people who are excited and ready to go. There are some folks that really question what this means for them. And there are those who need some additional information. We are very excited that we will retain the services of SV2, and MC2, a consulting firm that is run by Marty Chakoian, former CTO, and Marty’s firm is going to help us with change management, around consolidation specifically, but as you can imagine. So Marty and his team are going to have a draft change management communications plan done this Friday. We’re also retaining some organizational development talent as well to help make sure that we have the big picture to plan around consolidation and the right thinking around what we have to do.
I also forgot to mention that on the internal front, we received our PCI level one report on compliance last week. It was a clean report on compliance. If you can imagine where we started just a few months ago, it’s a tremendous amount of work that our City staff has done–more than 200 people involved in that project to bring us up to the highest standard for credit card processing security. Use your credit card with the City. You are safe.
Beryl Fernandes: You mean we weren’t before?
Michael Mattmiller: You were safe before, but you’re even that much more safe. We now have validation from an external assessor.
Enzhou Wang: I work for Seattle City Light. I just want to know if there are initiatives or things that collaborate to train local government…King County or other cities that share best practices or resources?
Michael Mattmiller: There are a couple of things we did to collaborate. First, I stay in close contact with Bill Kehoe, CIO of King County. We’re just across the street from each other. It’s a wonderful opportunity for partnership and our staff are talking about a number of initiatives. For example, we are developing a road map for our [unintelligible]. Starting about three years ago, we just had our third deployment. So we’re working very hard to understand the lessons learned that they went through. We also have some other specific Title II projects and partnerships where we work with partners across the region. So the Puget Sound Emergency Radio network are replaced the 800 mehahertz radio system used by first responders. We partner with all the people involved on that front, and have been very active.
Also, I had an opportunity last week to connect with not only my counterpart from King County but from Bellevue and Kirkland on what’s called the C3 Initiative, which is an effort to coordinate some fiber building activities around Lake Washington. Beyond that, we’re also part of an organization called ASIS, which I won’t even try to say what the acronym stands for, but it’s the IT leaders from across Washington State. We meet on a twice annual basis to share knowledge, talk about challenges. And of course, if you think of an opportunity, especially within City Light, please let me know all about connecting with those. And in fact, I’ve met a couple times now with Benjamin Beberness, who is the CIO of SnoPUD, to learn about the challenges facing his world.
What do you do with City Light?
Enzhou Wang: I’m part of IT. I work with treating system, hydro optimization, system optimization.
Sarah Trowbridge: With regards to the Century Link franchise that just got passed by the City Council, CTAB gave some testimony, and I was wondering, now that the franchise has been passed what other opportunities there are? We’d like to hear more from you on the topic.
Michael Mattmiller: Did the committee get that blocked off for next month? I don’t have my calendar.
Sarah Trowbridge: Next month on the first.
Michael Mattmiller: So, we can delve into all the details there about strategies and potential opportunities. What I’ve appreciated about working with Century Link is that while we landed where we did on the franchise after a period of negotiations, their government affairs has been very active and visible both within our community and in terms of being proactive in working with us. Granted, there were lots of stakeholders. The person in government affairs is not always the person negotiating the franchise. But that team will be amenable to specific concerns, thinking about how we address them. For some things like the discount program where they have drawn a hard line and said ‘we want a national standard.’ If we aren’t able to modify the terms of that, per se, I think that we do have an opportunity to dialog with them and think about wrap-around types of things and how it’s going to be helpful in digital equity and access issues concerning communities. Seattle Housing Authority was wiring a new facility, and Century Link realized that the way they were doing the wiring was going to limit future broadband space that would be offered in that building as well as other services. And so we were able to pull that in and make connections with Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) to have them think about changing their wiring standards. It’s a minor point, but it’s still an important one. And I think that we need to find those ways that we think of to engage them and ask that they do the same. Also, they’re going to be building out the community for some time so there’s lots of opportunity to think about how we continue to work with them.
Question: So Open Seattle met in January and are really excited about showing people in the community and answering any confusion or making corrections. Find and Fix It is something that the City is using and I haven’t played around too much with the data.seattle.gov, but I don’t want to reinvent the wheel when it comes to mapping things, or other issues. I guess the way I would put it is I don’t want to build a car on top of the wheels that the City’s offering, and how would we collaborate more with more than one system. One thing I’ve noticed is that we’re not using the Open 311 system that other cities are using. San Francisco, Boston, DC. I was curious about why Bill Schrier signed the pledge for Open 311. I don’t know the history of it, but that was one question that came to mind. What’s the difference between what Open 311 is offering and what the City is offering as far as building applications on top of data?
Michael Mattmiller: It’s a great question. And I would love it if you could send me Bill Schrier’s pledge. As luck would have it, my husband and I are moving to West Seattle within three blocks of Bill Schrier’s house. So, with 311, it’s a really interesting question. I’ve had several conversations with the team at FAS, in part based on the conversation you and I had about the state of open–“gee, why isn’t this data open?” I can’t, unfortunately, give you a date for how or when we will make that available, but I can tell you that we want to figure out how to get more of the high value data out to the Open Seattle community. I think the challenge is in figuring out how we can pump that into the Socrata data.seattle.gov platform. And as you pointed out, Chicago has figured it out, DC has figured it out. It’s not a new concept. I think that one thing that keeps us moving forward on that is our privacy study. I think we’ve got the preliminary report back. I haven’t seen it yet. But we want to make sure that we’ve got the right guard rails in place, that we know every day how we’re scrubbing that to protect identities. So, if you don’t like Find It Fix It, use the open source product. Build your own. Write it as an API into your system. I was having a great conversation with the winners of our Hack-a-thon. Do you remember Hack-cessable? How great would it be if we can figure out a platform for crowd sourcing information in a way that makes the crowd sourcing code part of ESG? And I don’t know if there’s another app that makes it easy. But whatever you want to crowd source in terms of information, we give you the platform and tools to source that. So they were starting to think about that a little bit as they consider a native app for access.
I’ll keep the script close as we have those conversations. I think everyone knows Bruce Blood. He and I and Kendee are working on a plan for seattle.gov next year, so stay tuned.
Joneil Sampana: Another data point to that. Can we get Katherine Schubert-Knapp to come and give a presentation for the September time frame?
Michael Mattmiller: That would be great. Straight from the source. I’ll try and grab her for that.
Greta: I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but DC and Boston having something like that and it is night and day. It’s just a world of difference. They’ve already got it down on privacy issues, not to say that Seattle couldn’t do it better, but you can make a widget and make it specifically be for Duwamish, for example. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We don’t need to over-complicate it or be afraid of the public’s input. We could use our best practices for how to handle that so that it’s a very positive forum. And I think that maybe talking to the people who had to deal with the worst parts of it in Boston, and DC, and Houston would calm people down about what it’s like to deal with the public. This is a much better process online than it is having an open forum, where someone hijacks the thing and it’s a nightmare for you guys, it’s a nightmare for citizens. There are studies that say that if you click online at their convenience, you are better equipped. It’s a big step up from what you guys are doing now, which is everything top down. It makes me sad because I love everything about Seattle. I think it’s the best City in the US, but I hate that, you know. Even New Haven has it better on the social-civic aspect.
Michael Mattmiller: Is the use case to be able to see what others have reported?
Greta: You can see what others have reported, but also you can see when the City as input on it. So, if I report something, I can see it, everybody else can see it They can vote on it. They can comment on it. People who know specific laws have input. Different departments in the City. It gets routed based on keywords, geography. It can go to the right place in the City. It’s just so much more efficient, and from the citizen’s point of view, it is so much more common so you know what’s going on. They moved the Share-a-Bike outside my apartment building. For two months, I couldn’t find out when it was coming back. It’s a big part of my commute. No information from the City. And Find It Fix It is like leaving a message. And it’s so different. It’s very inclusive also.
Michael Mattmiller: Totally valid point. So here’s the challenge we have today…
Question: Is it open source software?
Michael Mattmiller: The software is a third party solution.
Question: So, if we decided that we want to change it, how would that work? I think the difference is where we invest public dollars in something, it should be an open utility that we can modify. I’d advocate something that has a free license.
Greta: Yes, and they don’t have a great API either, but it’s ridiculously cheap for what it does. A lot of the things that you use are so much more expensive and things aren’t immediately solved. I’m not saying that you can’t do it better.
Michael Mattmiller: I don’t disagree with anything that you just said.
Beryl Fernandes: Sequent started as open source.
David Keyes: Just a quick request. I know we’ve had a bunch of folks come in over the last little bit of time. Try to remember to just speak up, so we can get it into the notes. And also, if you haven’t introduced yourselves in the initial round, just say who you are. During the break, maybe sign the attendee sheet. The agendas are over there, also.
Michael Mattmiller: I’ve been getting the high sign on time. One quick thought on that. The challenge is not just with our current voter roll and the Motorola CSR system. It’s actually the back end systems that pass information. So, in Find It and Fix It, if you take a picture of a downed tree and hit submit, that goes to Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and into the Hansen system that handles work orders. Today our interface between Hansen and the Motorola CRM is such that it only passes one way. So, immediately you get the email that says, ‘yes, got it, we’re going to think about doing something at some point.’ Bad experiences, totally get that. So the challenge is not just putting Sequent Fix. The nexus is how do we take Sequent Fix, figure out how that fits in our work order system. If you think about that being one process, and multiply that by over 20 or more processes you have to find. Not an excuse, but it’s the level of how we have to think systematically about the challenge. The way we’re starting to do that is the Council included in their budget last year a study to figure out where we need to be as a City related to 311. And as you can imagine, there’s a big system component to that. That study, if it doesn’t come out by September, we can ask Katherine Schubert-Knapp about where it is. And that will fuel our conversation about how do we get to where we want to be on that.
Beryl Fernandes: Quick question on the data center and the coordination with City Light on energy use: Did you guys do that or are doing it?
Michael Mattmiller: Yes. As part of moving to the data center, energy efficiency consumption was a strong consideration. We did as part of our competitive bid process for the data center, require that City Light be the energy provider. And we also, as part of consolidation and virtualizing the servers, so I think we will have something like 600 servers virtualized from the go to the new data center. So, if you can imagine the power consumption savings from 600 boxes down to five nodes–quite a bit in energy savings. The data center we are leasing from Sabey, down in Tukwila.
We are getting our power from Seattle City Light, which is a carbon-neutral utility. In terms of the specific power use, I’d have to go back and check.
As part of the next generation data center project, we’re procuring two data centers. The facility Sabey in Tukwila has been selected. And we actually have a team in eastern Washington right now selecting a secondary utility.
Approval of Minutes
Joneil Sampana: Okay. You turned into a real talkative bunch today. Thank you, Michael for all of your comments. We appreciate it.
We have some news that we actually do have a quorum, so we can vote. What I’ll do now is prepare the audience and we’ll have a five minute session here for community announcements that you’d like to share with the group. Before we get to that, let’s go back to our minutes and have a vote to see if we approve. Can I get a motion?
Beryl Fernandes: I move that we approve the minutes.
Joneil Sampana: Second?
Sarah Trowbridge: I’ll second it if you will make that one little edit. Second.
Joneil Sampana: All agree? I think it passes.
Announcements.
We actually have a larger group than when we started the meeting, so we have five minutes. Would anyone like to share any community goings on?
Seth Vincent: This is kind of a silly announcement, but for the past couple years, we’ve been called Code for Seattle. We renamed. We are now called Open Seattle. Hopefully, it feels, by the name, more inclusive. We’re also changing a little bit so the first Thursday of August we will have an orientation for Open Seattle, a volunteer orientation. So if you’re wondering how to get started, that’s how.
David Keyes: Has your web site changed? If so, what’s the URL?
Seth Vincent: Openseattle.org
Joneil Sampana: How many members here are from openseattle.org?
[Many hands raised.]
Jose Vasquez: It’s outside of Seattle, but we’re having our next Latinos in Tech meetup this Thursday. But we will be bringing it back to Seattle in October.
Joneil Sampana: Is that rotating?
Jose Vasquez: Yes.
Doreen Cornwell: Just a reminder that the 22nd is the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and there’s a big rally in Westlake Park, and there are some other events the next day at City Hall.
Comment: I’m technical adviser for the Young Professionals of Seattle, which is a fairly diverse group of young professionals. The young professionals of Seattle feel very disenfranchised. I’m working with several entrepreneur organizations within the City of Seattle to try to see if we can get some kind of collaboration workshops. There are some privacy initiatives that they have planned for this year to try and educate up and coming leaders of Seattle about what is going on with Seattle civic activities. Homelessness, transportation issues, etc.
Dan Moulton: [unintelligible] I haven’t launched this but the purpose is to allow people to create their own [unintelligible] g It would be across all skill sets, development, project managers…
David Keyes: Just a quick follow up on Doreen’s things. The rally for the anniversary for the Americans with Disabilities Act is on July 22, Wednesday, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. at Westlake Park. And there is also an event at the library the day before, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. with a Resource Fair. I’ll send it out to the CTAB mailing list.
Beryl Fernandes: I was going to make this announcement during the Privacy update, but as long as we’re doing announcements. The third in our series of workshops for the Collaborative Fund is taking place on the first Tuesday of August. I believe that’s the fourth. We had the first one in June, the second one in July last week, and the third is coming up in August. We’ve got some people here who have been there. I think it’s been a lot of fun and very connective. The focus is on marginalized populations and vulnerable populations, so we’re taking the issues they bring, the needs that they have, and matching them up with the resources that they feel they need. So far, it’s working pretty well. So I encourage everyone to come. It’s at Douglass Truth Library, 6:00 to 7:45 p.m.
Joneil Sampana: I’m going to pass over the next two line items to David for announcements on the Technology Matching Fund (TMF) as well as the Comp Plan draft.
David Keyes: As Michael Mattmiller mentioned briefly, tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. the proposed Technology Matching Fund grants are coming to City Council. We’ll be meeting briefly with Councilmember Harrell at about 1:45 and expect representatives from the 22 projects to be there. The actual agenda item isn’t up until 2:45 to 3:00, depending upon how the meeting goes. This is front of the Public Safety, Civil Rights and Technology Committee. There’s a report from the police chief prior to that, and one other item. We’ll be presenting the awards for a vote from the committee. The final vote, if they approve it, will be Monday for full passage. Following that, we’ll be having a reception for everybody, up on the seventh floor in the Mayor’s office. Folks are welcome to come. It’s a great chance to talk to and learn more about these 22 community organizations that are going to be doing digital literacy and access projects in the community. Just a wonderful array, thanks to you guys. I know Jose is planning to join us and talk there. Joneil, I think you’re coming also. Beryl, are you coming?
Beryl Fernandes: I think I’ll try to make it.
David Keyes: Quorum! So we can do more votes tomorrow. Thanks again to Greta for being one of the folks on the committee that helped.
Joneil Sampana: Is it not rude for folks to drop in around 2:30 or 2:45?
David Keyes: No. And for anybody that can’t make it, you can also stream it on seattlechannel.org. That will be available for viewing later. And if folks don’t know, also you can go to the City Council web site and sign up for alerts on the committee announcement, so that way you’ll get the agenda for things coming before. You can do that for any of the City Council committees.
Joneil Sampana: How about Comp Plan?
COMPREHENSIVE PLAN REPORT
David Keyes: This last week, the City just released the draft Comprehensive Plan. It’s URL is 2035.seattle.gov. Basically, between now and fall, I forget whether it’s October or November, the City is taking input on the draft Comprehensive Plan. They have put it up there. There are a number of different sections, about ten. Most of the internet components, first of all, are in the Utilities section. Along with electricity and other utilities. And that deals with public utilities, but it also deals with cable franchising, cable utilities, and so on. You’ll see some references to broadband in there. The other place that might be of interest, particularly in the Economic Development section that talks about workforce training, workforce development, and businesses. Certainly, there may be other implications. I know this committee has an invitation from the Planning Commission that works closely with the Department of Planning and Development to meet with them and be on a panel with them in September. They sent an invitation to the board to participate in that. For folks that weren’t here, we had people from the Planning Commission here a couple of months ago to present.
I think that now that the draft plan is out, that’s the next step, to get into nuts and bolts about changes you would like to see in the Plan to address your concerns.
Beryl Fernandes: Have they invited other boards and commissions, too?
David Keyes: Yes. My understanding is that that meeting in September is an invitation to all other boards and commissions that want to comment. So, it’s a round table.
Other folks can certainly comment on the Plan. So visit the site. There are other folks providing feedback through the CTAB committees on what our position and recommendations are, as well as certainly participate directly through the Seattle 2035 site. There will be some other public meetings that are coming up around it.
Joneil Sampana: This is a really great opportunity to have a place at the table to have your feelings known, especially on the Comprehensive Plan for many years out. So, if you’re interested, I’ll like to do this a little more formally. On the signup sheet, if you put by your name that you are interested in participating on a volunteer basis in this subcommittee, that would be really helpful.
David Keyes: Maybe just put a big ‘C’ next to your name, and circle it.
[Note: Those who signed up are Karia Wong, Dorene Cornwell, Kevin Volkmann, and Ronald Ning.]
And also when you folks go and read it, you’ll also see that there was quite a bit of work around race and social justice and equitable development threaded into the Plan this time, too.
Joneil Sampana: Our specific angle, obviously, is where does technology plays into the Comprehensive Plan.
David Keyes: And that sets the guiding framework. It’s not the implementation, but it sets a guiding set of policies and framework around growth and development and what a department should be thinking about as they institute practices in programs.
Sarah Trowbridge: Since you’re in the middle of working on the Digital Equity Initiative, how do the values that come out of the Digital Equity Initiative get inserted into the Comp Plan if technically the initiative is in its final stages?
David Keyes: I did provide some input as the Department of Planning and Development staff were working on it, mainly on the Utilities end of it. I think there is probably more that you’ll see that you’ll want to make more overt about that. I think, as we’re looking, we’ve got the values and principles–we’ll talk about that a little later in the agenda–but the Comp Plan is not set in stone. Now is when they are looking for comments around it. So I think we should take some of what we’ve got on vision and principles and goals that we’ve been developing for the Digital Equity Initiative with the community members and CTAB, to take some of that and see where we want to literally put that into the Comp Plan around internet and broadband. Or is it reflective there? What we have now is not final, but what we have scoped out already for the Digital Equity Initiative I think is probably a good tool to use.
Beryl Fernandes: A question for Tony Perez with regard to the infrastructure. Where is the fiber laid, and does that have any bearing on how the Comp Plan is made. I don’t know that we can change where the fiber si already. City fiber.
Tony Perez: It’s changing. Century Link is building it out, along with Comcast.
Beryl Fernandes: But they both affect each other. So, if you have major concentrations, densities of population in certain areas, then you would want more fiber going in that direction rather than someplace else. All I’m saying is, ideally it would be great to coordinate those. I’m not sure that it has been done. I’m not sure it can be done at this point.
Tony Perez: We talked about including broadband in the Utilities element of the Comp Plan. So we’ve had some discussion, but not necessarily what you’re saying. Driving fiber or creating incentives for public investment. I’ll have to take a look at that.
Beryl Fernandes: I think it’s worth throwing it out there for the Planning Department at least for the next iteration.
Tony Perez: I don’t think it’s part of the Comp Plan, but the Utility Coordination that the City wants to have can modernize the Utility Coordination program. For instance, if there’s work being done in a certain neighborhood, then trenches are going to be opened to make sure that we impact that neighborhood as little as possible. This is your opportunity now to get in there because we’re not going to tear up the street, dig up trees and things. We’re not going to do that for another five or ten years. So those kinds of descriptions are taking place but they might be outside of context.
Beryl Fernandes: That policy has been in place for a few years, but it’s really hard when it gets down to Seattle Public Utilities having to go in there tomorrow and do something, to then get the other utilities aligned. Easier said than done.
David Keyes: The Comp Plan doesn’t answer some of that. What the Comp Plan does address is some of those elements. The coordination on the rights of way, the siting of facilities, looking at equitable practices in development as the City is planning growth. Those are elements in here within some categories. On the practical level, the Comp Plan is not going to address the day to day stuff, but it gives you a framework to point to and argue for in base practices.
Tony Perez: Yes. We’re going to be part of an inter-departmental team that is going to look at how to modernize that. There’s still a lot of good institutional memory, paper permits, just how do we do technology tools to modernize that entire utility process.
Joneil Sampana: Looking at the time, we have to jump to Digital Equity. I’m not sure if you’ve covered what you want to talk about on the initiative.
DIGITAL EQUITY INITIATIVE REPORT
David Keyes: I think this will come up more. Jose and Sarah and I met and just talked a little bit about the coordination with CTAB on the Digital Equity initiative. Short summary is that we’re just in the final finish up of phase one where we did some community round tables, a number of interviews with people, had a Digital Equity Action Committee composed of a diverse group and an inter-departmental team with representatives from a number of City departments to just start to frame out the vision and goals and principles. We also had discussion at CTAB here. What I’m handing out is the latest version based on the input that we’ve gotten from folks on a vision statement around Digital Equity. A set of principles, over-arching things that would apply throughout, and a set of goals. I think we’ll probably still end up doing a little bit of tweaking. Some of the principles may be moved into goals. There might be a little bit of moving around. But I think that all the basic concepts are there. What follows that is a list of possible action strategies. So, over the next few months, to head to a final action plan at the end of the year is to say now, what can we get done to move Digital Equity forward/ So, we’ve been starting to take input and have an initial brainstorm on some possible strategies–things we can do along that way. Right now those action strategies are grouped under each of the goals. I think that sets the stage for the committees.
Sarah Trowbridge: I brought a draft of this document to the people on my committee a couple of months ago and they determined that the two goals that we were interested in for our action strategies were connectivity and accessibility. The workflow that we determined for that was everyone was eager to get started right away, so I wanted to use an open platform. So putting this document into Google Docs and then having people draft out action strategies related to those two goals. And then we come together as a committee next week and talk about those and see if there is an tweaking before we present them. This might be a good opportunity to talk about whether there are any other committees that see goals that really resonate with the topics they are working on, or if there are any suggestions for improving the workflow. I want it to be an open and accessible document. One way we can get public input is including the link to that Google Doc on our CTAB blog and then distributing that elsewhere. But if anyone else has any other ideas on how to get community input, let us know.
Jose Vasquez: You know we’ve been doing this work with different inter-departmental groups. Now we can take that work and start plugging it in to the different committees.
Sarah Trowbridge: That might make sense at the August or September meeting, to block off some time for us as a board to look at those action strategies and look for the next steps.
Joneil Sampana: This is a great plan you have here. Wow!
Jose Vasquez: This enabled some really exciting conversations. It’s helping us move forward as a City to start looking at these issues. I’m really excited to take this on and have those conversations.
Joneil Sampana: When you went through the citizen engagement process, was there any negative intensity towards the committee? Was there any outrage?
Jose Vasquez: I wouldn’t say ‘outrage.’ People just had a hesitation to bring out some historical issues regarding digital equity issues. But I think that that’s where we come in. We can help provide a broader input from community members who don’t ordinarily take part in these things.
David Keyes: There were two things when we were starting to get into some deeper discussion in trying to craft that, and one of them was certainly knowing that there are racial inequities, historical inequities, justice inequities in the past so that certainly digital equity’s been exacerbated and shown in the technology sector and field and access. Whether it’s enough to just say we intend to serve all residents, does that get at the need to do the depth to make something equitable, rather than just equal. I think there was some sense that we do need to call that out to make sure that it is getting addressed, and you’ll see that reflected in the document. Certainly, people from both the community and the tech sector, and the communication, are all itching to do something concrete. So it’s hard to spend time on the framework to get there. I think there’s a little bit of tension around setting the large vision versus the pragmatism for what we can get done–what’s practical and what can be done soon.
Greta: She commented on how the city has been evaluating data and suggested weighting or conversely weighting data variables to show areas of opportunity and more specific analysis of factors.
David Keyes: I think some of that will come more to fruition in the strategies. There was certainly discussion about the importance of data and evaluation and using metrics. As part of the City’s equitable development work, there was an interesting and valuable index, an opportunity index, and risk index that was done not long ago, which is probably up on the Seattle 2035 Comp Plan. Part of the analysis is to say here are areas of the City that in a sense provide higher opportunity for investment because of past inequities. There is an opportunity to make the difference there, and so I think in that same sense, we have not done that kind of an index for the digital opportunity. But we do have some of the data from our technology adoption study by zip code. But I think there is an opportunity to overlay some of the digital opportunity with that equitable opportunity map.
Beryl Fernandes: But with everybody throwing the word, ‘equity’ around–and that’s not only here but everywhere–the question in my mind is what do we mean by it? I mean in this case. You don’t have to answer that right now, but it just came up.
Jose Vasquez: One thing I do want to mention is we were still missing people in the field. I think everyone has their own definition of equity, but right away everyone involved does recognize that. There are still people missing from the conversation. Usually, at least from my perspective, the people involved are the last. But we were able to talk about that in an open discussion and everybody was for it. So I don’t think we have an answer for that yet.
Joneil Sampana: When you say ‘that larger body of folks,’ does that include the big community?
David Keyes: Yes, and Digital Equity, who were the folks that were on the Action Committee listed on the web site seattle.gov/digital-equity. As I say, we’re just wrapping up phase one, so we will be publishing a progress report on page one. That will have a listing of all. Let’s talk about that definition. Also, some of the data we have is what we gathered from the round tables and from stakeholder interviews, where we did ask, ‘what’s your definition of equity; what’s your vision of digital equity.’ So there’s that body of information as well.
Beryl Fernandes: Is this the work that a consultant is doing? Who is doing the work?
David Keyes: Yes, we have had a consultant work with us on phase one. So it’s been my team–Derrick, Delia, Vicky and I. And then a few folks from the firm PRR worked with us.
Joneil Sampana: Out of respect for time, we’ve got to keep moving on to the next item before we get our break. Tony?
FCC ACTIONS: LIFELINE FOR BROADBAND, EFFECTIVE COMPETITION
Tony Perez: Our office covers Cable and Broadband issues for the City. I want to talk about two items on the FCC’s docket, but I thought I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Comcast introducing an over-the-top video service that will include the broadcast channels and HBO for $15. By over-the-top, for those who might not initiated, the terminology is just streaming video. We met with Comcast today and we actually got some good news. At least for now, Comcast will consider those servers to be cable servers. What that means is consumer protections under the City’s Cable Code will apply to that service. But more importantly, at least for the City staff, is that we can continue to assess franchise fees and cable utility tax on the revenues generated by the provision of over-the-top service. It’s a big issue.
That said, later on this year the FCC is going to issue a notice of proposed rule-making related to streaming over-the-top video services. And right now, the FCC has tentatively concluded that the type of streaming service that Comcast is going to be offering is not a cable service within the meaning of the federal definition of cable service. That can present all kinds of trouble for the City later on. I think maybe next month I can do that presentation on the implications of over-the-top service to the City. For now, things are not going to change, but we’ll see this fall what happens. One of the reasons we think why Comcast decided at this point is not so much to do a favor for local government, but by calling it a cable service, I think they realize that, given the FCC’s net neutrality rules, the streaming service would not be subject to Title II regulations around state caps and other things that the FCC is concerned about. So there is some trickery going on there, but we’ll soon find out.
The two other things I want to talk about is the FCC Effective Competition Order. They’ve already made the order. And what that means, right now we have rate regulation authority in this City. Other cities do, too. That means that we can regulate only the cost of Comcast Basic Service, the one that is like $18/month or so. Also, the law provides that certain channels, such as PEG programming and local broadcast stations must be available on that Basic tier of service. If Comcast wanted to not be subject to regulation from the City, previously they would have had to file with the FCC and prove why they are not subject to effective competition. So the burden was on Comcast. The FCC flipped that around and made a presumption that every community has effective competition. That’s the ruling, and once that is published in the Federal Register, which will be soon, the City would have 90 days to prove that Comcast doesn’t have effective competition. And that’s going to be a high bar, now that Century Link is coming into town competing with them. So we’re not going to be successful. But the more seriously consequences of any kind of effective competition finding is that Comcast can now charge different rates in different parts of the City. When you had right regulation you couldn’t do that, so it could lead to a real perverse situation where if they want to compete with Century Link in a part of town, they can lower the prices there. But in the areas where they don’t compete, they could raise them. And there’s nothing we can do about it, other than shame them, maybe, at Council or something like that.
Joneil Sampana: Is that at an address level, or like a block?
Tony Perez: However they want to do it. We don’t know how they want to do it. The Basic Tier that I talked about earlier, is a product of rate regulation. so they can say, ‘There’s no rate regulation. There’s really no such thing as a Basic Tier with requirements for PEG programming and local over-the-air channels. So, our lowest cost tier is going to include Fox and CBS but not ABC and NBC. If you want those two, you’ve got to subscribe to this higher tier.’ So right now, that’s not the case. So because of that–it’s an interesting development–the National Association of Telecommunications Officers (NATOA) is the national organization of which I’m president–We were approached by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), heavy hitters, and they seem to have lots of money and they want to sue the FCC and wanted NATOA to join in, because without NATOA joining in, the broadcasters would not have standing to sue. So, we’re in a fortunate position where we can leverage the considerable financial resources of the NAB, to file suit to try to try to get the FCC to reverse this order. So we’re going to do that and see what happens.
Question: If Comcast can price differently based on different areas like you were describing, can’t you file you filing with the FCC on the same basis? Saying there’s no competition? Indeed there is. Therefore we should retain the right to regulate.
Tony Perez: That’s not the way it works. Basically, they made a rebuttable presumption that there is in fact competition everywhere. So we would have to prove that in our jurisdiction, there isn’t. What effective competition means is in the old days, cable had like 90 percent of the market, and then when satellite came in, the rules said at a certain point, if satellite captured like 15 percent of the market of subscribers, you would have effective competition. We’ve been lucky in a way in Seattle–lucky or unlucky, depending on how you look at it–is that because of our terrain, and our foliage, and our rain, satellite penetration is lower than other communities. So Comcast never filed effective competition with the FCC for Seattle. Because they thought they would probably lose. But they did file it in Spokane, and cities east of the mountains, where it is easier to get satellite service. So, nice try, but that’s not the way it works. So, we’ll see. We’ll file suit.
The other one is that on the Lifeline, I noticed there is proposed rule making where the City is likely going to file comments. For those of you who are not aware of it, the FCC has voted to extend Lifeline to broadband as well as telecommunications service, which is great. It’s a $9.25 subsidy to lower income people from their broadband service. David and I were talking the other day and said that maybe that means the discount internet and maybe we can work with manufacturers like OOMA devices to make that a phone service at the home and you’re getting phone service and broadband for like $12 or $13. There are things we can do with that. And maybe it’s part of the Digital Equity Initiative.
But what I want to discuss with CTAB is whether or not CTAB is interested in also filing comments. We’ll have time. The comments are going to be due 30 days after the proposed order is published in the Federal Register. That hasn’t happened yet. So, at a minimum, we have 30 days. Basically, what we’re planning to say is we suppcort what the FCC is doing, we wish the subsidy were greater. One of the big issues has been a lot of fraud in the use of the Lifeline subsidy. So there’s a lot of political opposition from Republicans, just like they do in voting, (Voter fraud is nonexistent.) So if the Broadband and Cable Committee want to discuss filing comments in support of the FCC’s actions, maybe saying that they could do a little more in certain areas.
Greta: It would help to mention fraud in the statement, speed incentives?
Tony Perez: Yeah, that’s a really great point because one of the other things that the FCC is going to recommend is that there are minimum service standards tied to both the telephone service and the broadband services. We hope that the minimum standard for broadband at least, is meaningful. And not be two megabits per second.
Greta: If we can show that it’s not what it’s stated to be?
Tony Perez: Right. That it’s the minimum speed required during peak times.
Lambert Rochfort: It seems to me that the biggest issue is that they’re not allowing somebody to have both a Lifeline subsidy and a broadband subsidy. To have to say you’re going to have to cancel your free cellphone service and get a $10 internet is not going to work very well. I think that’s an issue that should be brought up.
Tony Perez: That’s why we get to comment. But I would say about 90 percent of the time when the FCC seeks comments on the proposals they’re making, they’ve already made up their minds. But we can try to nudge them. It’s always good to get things on the record in the event that they revisit this issue down the road.
BREAK
PRIVACY COMMITTEE REPORT
Beryl Fernandes: I’ll just barely give you a summary of what we’ve done so far. We have had these workshops which are part of what we’re calling the Collaborathon. It’s community generated localized strategies for protecting your privacy and yourself in the digital age. The first one we focused on was immigrant and refugee and youth. And last time, we did some focus on workers. But let me give you an idea of what some of the projects are that are coming out of there. One is a safe communication web site, where someone has to go up on a web site so that people who want to communicate with each other safely. It could be activists, it could be domestic violence, it could be any group that is concerned about having things publicized out there. They’re working on that.
Another is Open Data and Individual Privacy. That is something Dashiell and others are working on. People with a criminal past–could be a very long time ago, when they were youths even–but it follows them forever, and how do you balance that? It cuts across a lot of other issues as well.
Another is consolidating Low income housing applications. There were 17 different possible applications for low income subsidies. They are trying to consolidate that, having a place where an individual can go, put in all their financial and personal information, and it’s encrypted, so it’s only yours and you would have a pass code. So whenever you have an application, you pull out just those pieces of information and put them in there.
These are examples of the projects that people are working on. Internet privacy protection. We’re finding that, especially with youth–and this came out of a youth focus group I had with the Seattle Youth Commission and several others, teachers, computer instructors, talking about youth getting online and not really protecting themselves when they get there. So the question is not whether to do it. They acknowledge that they need to do this. The question is how do you get youth to do this. Tell them to come to a computer class where we’re going to teach you how to protect yourself? Not very attractive. So I think that what we’re looking at more than anything is the ‘how.’ One person has come up with an idea since the last workshop, and that is game-ifying it. Developing a game. So I put her in touch with some of the local gaming companies that I know, and she’s going to see about that.
Another is a woman, who is an immigrant herself, who teaches computer classes to immigrant and refugee women in some of the low income housing projects. She is now talking about simply incorporating privacy into those technology classes that she teaches. Another one is with the tech centers incorporating privacy into the classes they teach. The question that always surfaces is how much is this going to cost them. But that’s a different phase.
This just gives you an idea of some of the issues. But I think one of the best things to come out of these workshops–and we had one in June, one in July, one coming August 4th–is to watch the cooperation between the techies and the non-techies. People who have ideas on how to mitigate or address these issues and problems and they say, this is how far we’ve gotten. And there are always people who are ready and willing to step in and say, ‘maybe we can help you.’ That has been very exciting.
One completely unanticipated offshoot is that we have had a refugee family that is here on asylum. And they have come to our meetings and we have kind of adopted them. They’ve come with their kids and when I first out a description of this, I said we want everybody, from zero to 99 years old. Well, we’ve had two twins who were like three month old, very close to zero. So they have become very much a part of it. It also becomes sort of a backdrop. Here they left because of surveillance and the oppression that they face there, and here we are. We’re not there and never hope to get there, but it puts into perspective why we’re doing what we are doing. So it’s very exciting to watch how this thing is evolving. And everybody is invited. Everybody has something to offer.
It’s at the Douglass Truth Library, 2300 East Yesler Way, from 6:00 to 7:45 p.m. And we have to end promptly because the library closes. It’s always first Tuesday of the month, Tuesday, August 4th, and we do serve pizza.
Joneil Sampana: This is a great segue for the Broadband and Cable Committee with Sarah. But before we go there, David reminded me that after Tony’s presentation, his comment about Lifeline for broadband, if you would like to send that request to your committee for review for a vote or to comment.
BROADBAND AND CABLE COMMMITTEE REPORT
Sarah Trowbridge: We’ll be discussing that at our next meeting on next Monday, the 20th at O’Asian Restaurant at 6:30. One possibility is for CTAB members who are interested to attend that meeting. We’ll probably draft some kind of position as a statement that CTAB can then review. And then we could submit it as a board.
Joneil Sampana: To your point about having a position, we actually have something prepared for Lifeline. I didn’t realize that we’d have to choose one or the other.
Karia Wong: I just have some questions about Lifeline. I actually have a lot of experience in having people sign up for Lifeline. What happens is, for some seniors, we don’t know why, they have mailed in their applications but haven’t gotten anything back. To me, it’s more like a black box operation. We don’t know who to call, how to follow up. Some have submitted an application again and again without hearing anything back. We even talked to Century Link and asked them to help with the follow up to an application. Sometimes, they have looked at the notes relevant to that account, and said, ‘Oh, the social security number is not matching, or the name is not matching.’ Things like that. Person from CISC can look at the account, but there is no way we can follow up.
Joneil Sampana: Come to the meeting.
Karia Wong: Is it going to be July 20th? Okay.
Sarah Trowbridge: Also we welcome you to submit your thoughts by email to the listserv and then we can incorporate that into the discussion.
So, just a quick update. We’ve continued the discussion with Wave about their low income internet program. They requested a meeting with Interconnection, a local nonprofit that recycles hardware to people. We had that meeting in June and it was a good meeting. And it seems that Wave is on board and is currently collecting information on how they will roll out a low income internet program. I just want to thank all the committee members and community members who submitted their time and advocacy for pushing for a low income internet option for Wave. It’s seems like we put some fire in their bellies and we’ll wait to see what happens, but I think we’re on track for that.
Beryl Fernandes: We started talking about that a year and a half ago. Thank you, Sarah, for shepherding that thing all the way through, and Dashiell for all his help.
Sarah Trowbridge: Then, I also mentioned earlier that some of the people on the Broadband Committee have written testimony with regard to the Century Link franchise. There is a hard copy of that over there. We’ll be discussing with Michael Mattmiller at our meeting next Monday, July 20, about how that input that we submitted can be incorporated into the franchise when Century Link rolls out.
Lastly, we’ll also be discussing the action strategies related to connectivity and accessibility for the Digital Equity Initiative. The majority of next week’s meeting is going to be a focus on municipal broadband when Michael Mattmiller and Tony Perez can speak a little bit more to the subject. If you’re interested in learning more about the feasibility study, or what the City’s thoughts are, please come to that meeting. It should be a good one.
It’s next Monday, July 20th, 6:30 p.m. at O’Asian Restaurant.
I do have one final comment. I’m a Get Engaged representative, and my term ends. August is the last technical time in which I have voting power. I’m interested in going on as a full CTAB board member. and so I’m going to work on trying to explore those options. But if there is not a position that’s open starting in September, then I will be technically rolling off the board. So, anyone that’s interested in cable and broadband related issues, please come to the next meeting.
Beryl Fernandes: David, how does that work, technically?
David Keyes: Technically, the term is September through August. The Mayor’s office has been going through the decision making process and through the application process. And the Mayor has just made a decision on a new Get Engaged person. By our rules, someone who has served on Get Engaged could take the spot of a full time member. Right now, in terms of vacancies, we have Dana Lewis’ term is up in October. And we’ll also have some openings in January. The Mayor or Council, depending upon which the appointee is, has the option to renew the terms. So people can serve two terms. Does that answer your question?
Beryl Fernandes: I’m just curious about what happens now. Dana is leaving.
David Keyes: I don’t know for sure that Dana is leaving. Dana was a Get Engaged person. She served one term. I haven’t actually spoken with her about her intent. I think that’s the first question. And then needing to speak with the Mayor’s office.
DIGITAL INCLUSION COMMITTEE REPORT
Jose Vasquez: We already talked about the Technology Matching Fund. Everybody is invited tomorrow to attend. We’re also starting to talk about next year’s TMF process, so if anybody is interesting in getting involved with the Technology Matching Fund Committee, to help guide and recommend the grantees for next year, contact either me or David Keyes.
Just a quick update on what we talked about at the last meeting. For TMF, hopefully for next year, we can build out more of a networking component to the grantees process and the application process, so that it’s not just so one-sided, but they are also able to collaborate and hopefully connect with each other. I know that other organizations have been trying something similar, sharing resources. But we’re just providing the opportunity, and then we can start figuring out what components to add or start planning for next year.
Adding onto that, we had a group of volunteers and they’re interested in developing a platform to enable volunteers in tech to connect with nonprofits who need tech support, so connecting community organizations with resources. So, we’re going to be talking more about that at the next meeting. We’ll see what their needs are and what their technology expertise is, and I’m sure there are other hackathons or other events we can collaborate with to start connecting people to where they are most needed.
Beryl Fernandes: Do you know 501? Because that’s what they do.
Jose Vasquez: Yes. There are really a lot of great resources. But I think this conversation is mostly connecting tech workers to either 501 comments or hackathons or creating a platform to connect them to small nonprofits, small community projects.
We’re also going to be talking about the Digital Equity principles, and figuring out which action strategies to embrace. And we’re also planning on collaborating with the Broadband Committee on the low income internet position statement, and why broadband is such an essential. so we’re going to be having those conversations in our committee this fall.
Our next committee meeting is scheduled to be July 28th, the fourth Tuesday of the month. We’re going to do a joint committee with the E-Gov Committee. Because we’re also talking about open data. That was brought up, as well. So a lot of good cross points. We can talk about that at the next meeting and figure out how we can access more open data to address some of the issues, and what the needs are.
Beryl Fernandes: And we have some recommendations from Privacy that comes to you for Open Data, when you release it.
E-GOV COMMITTEE REPORT
Joneil Sampana: Last month, the fourth Tuesday of the month, we actually did not have a meeting because that was our kickoff event for the State of Washington’s Data Visualization Internship Project. It’s the first time ever that we have put together corporations–Microsoft, Tableau, Socrata, Life Stories–with about 11 college interns from the University of Washington-Tacoma, Gonzaga, Western, and another.
Beryl Fernandes: Is that lifestories.com?
Joneil Sampana: I think it’s techstars.com. They are a tech stars startup. They’re one of our partners, and we have collaborated with them and the WTIA, Washington Technology Industry Association, to launch this eight-week internship where six state agencies have provided data for the very first time, to share with this cohort to help develop new visualization stories. We’re going to take that to the legislative cycle in September. It’s kind of a win-win, where state agencies get to learn about new platforms to technologies, namely Power BI, Socrata, Tableau, and Life Stories, as well as Link or Skype for business because this is all done virtually. Students are scattered across the state, and the state agencies are working virtually from Olympia and here in Seattle. So, it’s really this learning opportunity for both agencies and students to start doing this virtual development. So, we have eight weeks to turn around seven digital stories, which we will present at the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) Full Con Tech event in September, as well as pitch this opportunity to the Governor in October. So, it’s a great opportunity for these students, for these companies, and agencies to collaborate cross sector for the sake of Washington State. Stay tuned. We’ll have updates through Brainstorm. I think they made the announcement. Thank you for doing that, by the way.
David Keyes: Also, the last issue of brainstorm.seattle.gov had a lot more information about the Lifeline broadband program, too.
Joneil Sampana: What we’re also going to do as we’re going through this process, we’re putting together a lot of the best practices from the corporate partners on what students and agencies are asking the most questions about. So we hope to release tutorials on how to set up a shared space, how to find data, how to lay geo data on top of other types of data layers within Power BI or Socrata, or Tableau. So if you ever want to learn more about these technologies, look to this program as a resource. This is version 1.0. We did a big send up to all of the universities.
Dan Moulton: I’m thinking about income inequality where a student might not be able to afford going to university or even a community college. Further down the road, I’d like to see it open up to someone other than a student at a four-year or two-year college.
Joneil Sampana: We’ll keep that in mind. We’ve got some great talent that’s not coming through those channels that we have to keep Michael up on. If you do want to see the end results, please stay tuned for the WTIA event in September, as well as the governor’s report associated with the results in Washington, which is this new performance-based entity within the State of Washington to showcase how we’re trying to keep our state government accountable to their promises.
The next thing that we will be talking about at our E-Gov meeting is a citizen engagement concept brought to us by the Seattle Channel. What we’re trying to do is create this event or events that bring together more folks from different sectors–corporate sector, nonprofit, education to bring about very similar programs, like the Digital Visualization Internship Program. That was only made available by having entities like E-Gov to be a house or a space for people to start sharing their resources. So, we want to continue to do that but on a larger scale throughout the City of Seattle. So, if you have any ideas on how to do that, please come to our next meeting, which is going to be on the fourth Tuesday of every month at Beacon Hill Library. We’ll send out announcements if you’re signed up for our newsletter. Any questions or comments?
Beryl Fernandes: I think it would be great to have your committee meetings go to all of CTAB, because there are times when–you know, we might not want to join the committee on a regular basis–but you might want to drop in because you just made a great pitch. Right? What do you think about doing that? I’m asking us all. So when the minutes come out, just have an upcoming committee meetings, date, time, place.
Joneil Sampana: Okay. We have one vote to tackle, and it’s the CTAB Twitter account. We actually had our name change from CTTAB to CTAB. So, through the power of email, thanks for your feedback, everybody. It came as the leading option Seatechboard as our Twitter handle. Is that something that I can get a motion on?
Sarah Trowbridge: I move that we change our Twitter handle to Seatechboard.
Jose Vasquez: Second.
Joneil Sampana: All in favor?
MOTION CARRIES.
Joneil Sampana: If you haven’t signed on, do it now. It’s going to be @Seatechboard. And we’ll be using the hashtag #Seatechboard.
David Keyes: So, Joneil, do you want to take care of the profile?
Joneil Sampana: I’ll do that.
PUBLIC COMMENT
Question: Regarding the open positions, so they actually announce them?
David Keyes: We will, when there are open positions to fill. In coordination with the Council and the Mayor’s office, we will post it on the web site and we will also send it out to the announcement list.
David Keyes: It looks like the hashtag is #techdiversity.
Joneil Sampana: We often have one session off for the summertime. I believe that’s August. Do we want to vote to keep an August meeting, or do we want to cancel it and reconnect in September?
Beryl Fernandes: I would like to have an August meeting, because we’re going to start going into high gear in preparation for the symposium, which will be this fall. We don’t know exactly when it will be.
Joneil Sampana: All those in favor of an August meeting?
MOTION CARRIES.
Joneil Sampana: Let me just go through the summary of our action items for the meeting. If I miss any, please call it out. What we’re going to do is have pictures from the DGC from Michael Mattmiller. That’s the data center. Board members, please read and get familiar with the Comp Plan; volunteers please also do that. See the reference in our minutes as well as the link; /2035.seattle. All committee leads, align your working committees to the Digital Equity Initiative. We want to look for the inverse digital opportunities via zip codes.
David Keyes: I think the action for that is to send out the opportunity index.
Joneil Sampana: We’re also going to revisit the idea of bringing Katherine Schubert-Knapp, who represents FAS, the Finance and Administrative Services organization that owns the 311 platform to come to our September meeting for a report. We also want to have the Broadband Committee report back on their considerations for Lifeline. We also want to revisit Dana’s intent for her next term. And that’s all that I have. Did I miss anything?
David Keyes: Just one thing. People can see me afterwards. The City is hiring. There’s a position open right now for an IT project manager for web. It’s a temporary assignment, full time, for approximately one year or completion of work. Project manager to lead the design of upgrade of the City’s Seattle.gov web site, and migration to the new content management system. I have a copy of it here, if folks are interested. Take a look at it. And I’m happy to forward it, too.
Joneil Sampana: I call this meeting to a close. Thank you, everyone who attended. Please make sure you sign the signup sheet and also indicate your interest in the Comp Plan by a circle ‘c.’
June 9 Seattle Technology Advisory Board Minutes
Topics covered included: an update on municipal broadband from Chief Technology Officer Michael Mattmiller; a discussion on the Century Link and Wave franchise with Tony Perez; a report on Cable and Broadband Committee from Sarah Trowbridge; a Privacy Committee update from Beryl Fernandes; a report on E-Gov from Joneil Sampana, announcement about the Americans with Disabilities Act Anniversary event July 22, and Broadband Service Speed Mapping Project information, FCC Chairman coming.
This meeting was held: June 9, 2015; 6:00-8:00, Seattle Municipal Tower, 700 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2750
Podcasts available at: http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/CTTAB/podcast/cttab.xml
Attending:
Board Members: Nourisha Wells, Beryl Fernandes, Joneil Sampana, Karia Wong, Amy Hirotaka, Ben Krokower, Carmen Rahm, Dana Lewis, Sarah Trowbridge
Public: Daniel Stiefel, Dorene Cornwell, Henok Kidane, Ann Summy, Lloyd Douglas, Alan Yeung (Adaptancy), Dashiell Milliman-Jarvis, Kevin O’Boyle, Greta (by phone), Allison Chambers, David M. Jones (City of Bellevue), Kevin Volkman (A.R.T.), Luke Swart (Code for Seattle), Doreen Cornwell. Margaret Nicosia, John Tigue (MLab)
Staff: Michael Mattmiller, Kendee Yamaguchi, Tony Perez, David Keyes, Brenda Tate, Alice Lawson, Derrick Hall, Cass Magnuski
33 In Attendance
Meeting was called to order by Nourisha Wells.
Introductions
Minutes approved with four abstentions.
Public Comment
Kevin O’Boyle: I’m interested in the whole fiber broadband effort. I had a chance to read the report that came out today–not all of it–and my comment/request would be that since it appears the Condo Internet subsidiary, Wave, is the only entity out there that is offering fiber to the home gigabit service at that price that’s around $75 a month. We should invite them to come in and find out what the City can do to encourage them to expand beyond their pilot in Eastlake.
Beryl Fernandes: My recollection is that they did come in and brief us last year, but there’s no harm in having them come in now that they have a few more competitors in the market.
Alan Yeung: I felt the price the City named is kind of high. If we’re trying to get that kind of penetration to be profitable or at least break even, I think that’s a bit high for just Internet service. I currently pay about half that and I’m a working professional. Government could drive a technology option, like we see on the federal side. At the same time, things in the private sector run more efficiently and costs less. The study, I think it was great–there was that motion when Tina (Podlowski) came in last time. The study seemed to show that it’s kind of a risky venture for Seattle.
Nourisha Wells: Any other comments? No? Okay, we will move forward. There are copies of the agenda printed out up front. Now we’re going to hear from Chief Technology Officer Michael Mattmiller.
Chief Technology Officer Michael Mattmiller Update
Michael Mattmiller: Good evening. As everyone know, nothing has gone on in the City today. (laughs) This morning, we did post the Municipal Broadband Study. This is a study that we commissioned in December as part of the Mayor’s broadband strategy. Going back to that strategy and that vision, we want to make sure that in the City of Seattle, the public has access to equal, affordable, competitive broadband options that approach rapidly evolving gigabit standards. We had three primary strategies to achieve that outcome. The first, reducing regulatory barriers; the second, public/private partnerships that can leverage the City-owned fiber network; and the third is if, and only if, those first two aren’t successful–understanding our ability to be a municipal broadband provider.
Before giving the highlights of the report, one thing I want to stress is that based on the results of the study, we don’t see a rate-payer-only funded model to be financially an option at this time. That’s not to say that we don’t see municipal broadband as something that we still need to understand in our ability to jump in and provide. It’s this particular model, that’s rate-payer-funded only, that presents real financial risks to the City.
The report said that municipal broadband would cost between $480 million to $660 million, and would include cost of borrowing to construct. I read a couple of the comments on online sites, and they say, “Gee, how could we trust the City with that big of a disparity?” There’s one variable in there that’s causing that cost difference and that’s the ability of us to construct fiber optic lines in what is called the Electrical Space Utility poles. So, if you look at a utility pole (draws on white board), City Light controls what we call the electrical space of the pole, where you’ve got power wires going across. Down below that space, you have what is called the Communications Space. That’s where companies like Comcast, Century Link, Wave, and other providers are attaching their cables and their wires. If we were able to build in the electrical space, we would actually save money, because this space is very clean, very tightly regulated, and there’s not a whole lot of space up there because of electrical wires. If you go to the communications space, the reality is that it looks like this (draws a tangle of wires). And what happens is that before we can go out and build in that space, we would have to work with City Light to go out and make sure that the space complies with engineering standards and other types of standards before we could start stringing fiber, and that’s what really increases costs.
So, the study found $480 million to $660 million. We also did a marketing analysis and what that showed is that the most likely price point to get the service operational would be about $75 for gigabit broadband service. By comparison, Wave and Condo Internet charges about $80 for gigabit service. And for us to be successful at operating this utility as a rate-payer-funded utility, we would have to have a 43 percent take-rate. That’s 43 percent of single family homes in Seattle–we looked at multi-dwelling units a little bit differently because of the challenges in wiring up those buildings–but 43 percent is not an insignificant number. The City of Chattanooga, Tennessee, with their municipal utility, has about a 33 percent take-rate, based on their last annual report. So, to be successful, we would have to be significantly more successful than Chattanooga, Tennessee. I’d love to say that we can do that, but that’s a pretty big lift.
To put some context in the other direction around that take-rate, Comcast, as a cable television provider, with their monopoly status in most of the City, we’d have to be almost as successful as they are within a few years. If we cannot do that, because we cannot operate this as a rate-payer utility, we have to assume the risk of failure in our City’s general fund–the part of City government finances that pays for the police department, the fire department, all those government services that keep us safe and protected. And that’s where the risk at this point would not allow us to proceed with this model.
Again, that’s not to say that this changes our perspective on municipal broadband as an approach to provide equal, competitive gigabit broadband services to the City. It’s just this particular model cannot proceed at this time.
So what does that mean? One, we’re looking at funding options. State and federal grants. We’re trying to understand what’s available now. We heard the President say in the State of the Union address that they are looking at additional grant programs. We want to understand those programs and see what might apply to Seattle. Now, I don’t want to get everyone’s hopes up, because we have heard that those grants are likely to be targeted towards rural communities, but we do believe that there is a need within urban areas as the economic engines of our economy and our country to have access to those grants, as well. If we are able to see a funding option from a state or federal source, we would come back and reconsider the particular model described in the report today.
We also want to look at other models. If you look across the country right now, broadband is just an incredibly fast moving industry. Based upon the rapidly evolving nature of over the top services, like Sling TV–and it goes all the way to rumors that Apple is going to be coming out with an over the top product–there is a number of different players coming into the broadband space. As part of that, we see cities entering into some very interesting relationships. Joint ventures. So cities like Westminster, Maryland, where the city has partnered with a company that has experience with broadband utilities, can offer some scale. They’ve entered into a model that protects the city’s risk. This commercial entity will guarantee payments to the city to cover bond payments while the company is assuming the risk of going out and signing up subscribers. So the city gets their policy objectives met. The third party company that has some experience doing this can be more likely to be successful. And consumers get competition and gig access.
So, lots of models out there. We’re going to understand what models might work for the City. Part of that is working with Next Century Cities, the organization that I mentioned In January. That’s a network of cities that are all working through this issue and coming up with some very innovative ideas.
So, that’s where we are today. I’ll stop now for questions.
Ben Krokower: Can you explain the property tax option?
Michael Mattmiller: With the model I just discussed, the risk is to the City’s general fund. If the City were to build out this utility, and try to operate it–if we were unable to break even, the losses would be offset by the City’s general fund. Another way to approach it could be property tax-backed bonds. What that means is that the City would put a measure on the ballot and 60 percent of the voters would have to approve it. That would then fund the capital construction of the broadband network. And there’s a model in the report that says that would work. It’s interesting. We could potentially offer service at a lower cost–I think $45 per month. We’d still have to have very high take-rates. And the issue, then, would be that the risk would be around the operation. So the general fund would still be on the hook to make sure that we can raise the $40 million a year in operating expenses, plus replenishing the reserves for capital expenses to rebuild the network and equipment over time. So that diminishes the risk of the capital, but we still very much have the risk of the operation. So let’s say that competitive forces, Comcast, undercuts us on the price or various things happen, and we can’t get the subscribers necessary and are losing millions of dollar, the general fund is at risk and so we shut down the network. Now the risk has been shifted to the property owners. So they are now paying for 20 years an annual amount of money for a network that’s not functioning. That’s the downside.
Sarah Trowbridge: How is it determined if the City can go to the electrical space?
Michael Mattmiller: We’ve been working with Seattle City Light. And my experience within the City especially when it comes to broadband, they’ve been a great partner. They’ve been at the table. They’ve been working with us for CTC. We’ve had several conversations about how operationally we could build within that electrical space. The challenge come with the legal side of things. We don’t own poles outright in the City. In many places, we co-own poles with Century Link. So the concern is two-fold. One is the City working with the City–if City Light were to say yes, City of Seattle, you can build within the electrical space, does that mean we’d have to offer the opportunity to others? Would there have to be a competitive process? Or would there be some type of dilution of the cost savings? Because if we start building there and five other companies start building there, now you have the same make-ready issues that you’ve got in the communications space. The other side that we have to understand more is what Century Link’s response might be or what their ability to object would be.
Dashiell Milliman-Jarvis: I only had a brief chance to look at the report, but I think it said “at $75,” which was what the proposed number was, where you would need a 45 percent take-rate, “something like 45 percent would be very interested”, according to polling numbers. I was a little bit confused, because they had shifted down from 55 percent, and then the interest bumped up to something like 79 percent. A vast majority of the City was looking very interested in having broadband services. I was just wondering if you could summarize how it came to that exact number?
Michael Mattmiller: Sure. I’ll do it at a high level, and Tony Perez is here to answer additional questions. In the report, you’ll see that there are several different ‘what if’ analyses that are performed. Forty-three percent at $75 per month, or let’s say that we realize that we didn’t have more revenue, so we raise the cost to $85 per month. or we discount the cost–those types of things. Through the market analysis, what they tried to is what is that optimal point where we can capture the most subscribers and maximize take-rate to get the revenue we need to make this work from a cash flow perspective. So that’s how they landed on $75 and a required take-rate of 43 percent. In several of the charts, they look at and say, well, what would your interest be if we dropped the cost to $25? Yes, we could sign up a lot more people, but we can’t cover our costs. We’d be operating in the red and wouldn’t be successful. You can see in the indices and several different tables, the different combinations at this price, how many people would we expect to subscribe, and what does that do for the bottom line when we think about the costs we would incur.
Dashiell Milliman-Jarvis: I was looking at the initial polling and I just didn’t see how that matched up. One of the initial polls was at $55, which was lower than what Century Link is asking. That seemed like a pretty low rate, compared to a commercial entity is offering.
Michael Mattmiller: I think we have to keep in mind the incremental costs as we add subscribers. What the incremental costs would be paying for is to send fiber up and down the streets of Seattle. After we have signed you up as a customer, we still have to go and string the fiber from the wire on the poles to your house. So that’s the staff time as the cost of doing that. We’re going to have to put electronics in your house. There’s the cost of that device. Even though we’re getting greater volume, we’re also increasing costs to do that build-out. When you look at the table for the $55 option, or $65–I forget which one it is–what you’ll see is, yes, we would have more subscribers, but because the costs have gone up, we’re still in the red. Also, I think it’s great that people expressed an interest at 80 percent if we charged $55, or whatever the numbers are, but if we realistically think about that, that means eight out of every 10 people in the City of Seattle would be signing up for this service. That would be spectacular. I don’t know of anywhere in the country that has seen that kind of response to a new broadband utility.
Dashiell Milliman-Jarvis: Yes. The way I was looking at it was, assuming you could do that, the costs certainly are higher for the installation, but those are upfront costs that generally get paid off over the long term. They’re like anything else in economics. You have some costs and you pay that off, as long as you’re making more than what your cost is to provide the service for the long term.
Michael Mattmiller: I think Tony Perez can provide more detail. You’re right. It’s over time. But can we actually survive over time after the initial outlay?
Tony Perez: We can discuss that at the Broadband Committee.
Beryl Fernandes: My question is sort of related. It has to do with the escalation rate, where they have a built in escalation rate. When Chris Mitchell was here last year, and he was presenting various case studies, I asked him about that. Whether they had built in an escalation rate, and he didn’t know at that time. So my question to you is whether any of the studies address that. And I think it’s particularly important here at the City because Seattle Public Utilities (SPU), for example, has the second highest water rate in the country. And so we don’t want to see that happen. And it’s quite possible to build it into the design at the front end. Very hard to come back and retrofit.
Michael Mattmiller: That is a great point, and I don’t know the answer.
Sarah Trowbridge: Are there any next steps related to this report? Any public input sessions?
Michael Mattmiller: From the City’s perspective, we’ve put out info so that the public can read it, and I know that Upgrade Seattle is going to be having a number of events, which we will be listening for that input that is generated. From our side, we will be going back and looking at the state and federal funding opportunities, try to understand what other models or joint venture options might be available, as well as continuing to work with our partners in Next Century Cities to see what is happening around the country.
I should also point out that there is one more thing going on, which we’ve talked a little bit about, which is the Digital Equity Initiative. We have brought together this great group of stakeholders from industry, nonprofits, from the community to help frame up what goals do we need to have to make sure that we drive Internet access and technical literacy across the City. David Keyes can speak more to that, but I know that we’re getting very close in terms of goals and initial strategies for that effort.
Kevin O’Boyle: My question is if the City approved a property tax bond, and Comcast and Century Link responded by cutting rates by say, $20 or $25 a month, then everybody kind of wins, even if nobody uses the City’s network.
Michael Mattmiller: And that’s a good point, but if property owners approve a tax on their house–so let’s say, up to $120 to $150 a year, and then Comcast cuts rates by $10 a month, you’re still paying the same thing. It’s just a matter of what part of your checkbook it’s coming out of, so there are some interesting outcomes that could appear, but at the end of the day, we’d still have to raise the $460 to $660 million.
I apologize, but I need to run. Tony Perez and Alice Lawson are here to answer additional questions. Sarah, I’m sure, will be talking more about the report. So, I do thank you for the time. I wish costs would come down more, but the report at least gives us some perspective on what the market can bear now. Thanks.
Nourisha Wells: Thank you. Okay! Tony Perez!
Century Link and Wave Franchise Update
Tony Perez: We forwarded legislation to City Council about two weeks ago for their consideration of a franchise for Century Link to provide cable services. Under federal and state law, Century Link can deploy facilities on the City’s rights of way that are capable of providing data, voice service, and even cable services. However, before they can actually provide cable services to residents, they need the City’s authority in the form of franchise granted via ordinance by the Seattle City Council. The reason why Century Link wants to provide cable service, even though it’s a lower margin product than Internet or voice service, is they feel they can capture more market share by providing a bundled suite of voice, video, and data services.
(I also wanted to tell you that on the broadband report–I’m intimately familiar with it for over the last seven months, so if we want to have a more in-depth discussion at the next Broadband Cable meeting, I’d be happy to do that.)
Again, we received the application on the 28th. I’m not going to read all of this. On the third bullet, there, Century Link is in the process of building out fiber to the home in Seattle, over which they will offer gigabit symmetrical service over what is called a GPON passive optical network fiber to the home. They’re up to 66,500 homes now that are passed with fiber to the home. They expect to exceed 100,000 homes by the end of 2015. Here are some of the neighborhoods where they have been building it out. If it’s not up there yet on the Mayor’s broadband site, we’ll be posting it. It provides a general indication of where fiber to the home and where Prism–Prism is the name of Century Link’s cable TV product–where that will be.
I want to talk a little bit more about the network. Next slide. They’re going to offer Prism cable service over two different networks. So everyone in the 100,000 homes who have access to fiber to the home technology will be able to get Prism. However, those who get what is called ADDSL2 service–some of us are familiar here–which is a fiber to the node technology where the fiber just runs to aggregated cabinets in the neighborhood, but the network leverages the existing telephone twisted pair copper wire in your home. Typically, if you’re close right now to the central office or to that aggregated cabinet, you can get about 40 mbps. But beta transmissions over a copper network are subject to signal loss. It’s called attenuation. So the farther away your residence is from that aggregator box, the slower your speeds. If you’re beyond 4,000 feet, measured by wire, not as the crow flies, you’re likely not going to be able to get Prism service. And that’s because in order for them to provide Prism, they need a minimum of 25 mbps. So beyond about 4,000 feet, you’re just not getting those speeds. When you think about it–25 mbps–maybe you’re watching one channel and downloading from another–two channels, recording on one and someone surfing on the web–well, you need a certain minimum to be able to provide that. We can talk more about that if you have questions.
One of the biggest benefits, of course, that we’ll have substantial competition in cable services in Seattle for the first time. We’ve had some overlap between Wave and Comcast, but Century Link is a fairly highly capitalized company, and starting out with 100,000 or more households with access to cable competition I think is a really good thing. We’ll talk more about public benefits in a minute, but their technology is a little different than what is offered by the cable companies. Cable companies provide what are called QAM channels, each six megahertz slot compression scheme provide 38.8 megabits per second and so they divide their spectrum into those slots. But with cable HFC network, all of the channels are delivered at the same time over the big fat pipe. They’re delivered to your set top box, and you tune them at your set top box. Century Link’s network, because of the frequency of that copper wire, is going to have much less carrying capacity in the fat coaxial pipe. So what switch video does is when you order up a channel, it’s switched at the head end, which is located in Bellevue. And only that channel goes to that channel or channels that you’ve asked for. So it’s switched at the head end, as opposed to the channel coming to your set top box. But the functionality is the same. You get beautiful HD and digital transmissions.
They will have complementary service, like Comcast and Wave, to City buildings and schools, discounted pricing for low-income households, and we’re working on some side agreements to provide benefits to some nonprofits in Seattle, similar to what Comcast has and Wave has, but not at that level because they don’t have any customers yet.
I want to talk a little bit about the separate authority to employ the facilities of rights of way. I also want to talk about the effects of FCC 621 Order. Anybody here familiar with that? This order was released in 2007 and since then there have been two other commentaries from the FCC. The most recent one was in January of this year. And, basically, what the 621 Order says is that the FCC realizes that it was done at the behest of the phone companies, who want to get in and compete with cable companies. The 621 Order is saying that it makes it harder for us to negotiate for benefits; it makes it harder to say you have to do all the things that Comcast did. It really undercuts some of our leverage in negotiation. For example, the order that was clarified in January of this year said that a company could deduct from the franchise fees it pays to the City, the cost of providing cable to City schools and buildings or some of the public benefits that we get to provide services to nonprofits. Before, that never happened. That was just something that they did willingly. But the 621 Order made clear that we have to be careful of what we ask for, and we can’t require those things. We can negotiate them, and I’m happy to say that we did negotiate with Century Link that they would not deduct from franchise fees the cost of providing many public benefits as they seek a franchise.
And finally, it’s a very different time now in the market place–a very dynamic and competitive environment with the presence of over-the-top alternatives to traditional cable services. You have Netflix, Amazon, Sling TV, HBO, Showtime is now going ala carte–over-the-top. Apple will be coming out with its own channel line up fairly soon. So those are some interesting developments. And we’ll talk at the next meeting about some of the challenges that presents for the City’s PEG channels, for the City’s regulatory authority, and ultimately our franchise fees and taxes.
Next slide. Some of the benefits and the terms of the franchise. I already mentioned about some of these. Lots of financial support for PEG franchise fees — that’s Comcast and Wave. All of the City’s PEG channels will now be in HD. More importantly, they’ve agreed to provide for our PEG channels–the Seattle Channel, the University of Washington channel, public schools, public not for profit channels that provide local programming. They will all be available not just in HD but any comparable successive format, as in 4K, Ultra HD, and so forth. So we’re really happy that they agreed to provide that.
Next slide. We’ll bypass Privacy and Customer Bill of Rights. There is a number of reports that we’ll be getting from Century Link and others about their gross revenues and payments. One of the things we tightened up was one of our regulations in our cable code. We have too many people that complained to us that it took too long when you called your cable operator to get a live body to answer your call. We’re really cracking down on that with the cable operators. And there will be hefty fines for those that can’t comply.
Working with the Council provides some new regulations in the cable code that’s going to require the companies to meet with us every six months–at least semi-annually–to ensure that a significant portion of the areas where they provide service are areas of the City that are below median income. So, we’ll be getting those reports, reviewing them, there will be penalties attached if they don’t comply. There will also probably get an invitation from the City Council to come and explain why they can’t meet the City’s low income requirements.
So, with that, we have seven minutes for questions.
Karia Wong: What is the process for negotiation? The reason why I’m asking is that Seattle is a very diverse City. There are people who speak many languages other than English. So I’m wondering if it is too late to ask to incorporate other language channels.
Tony Perez: There is a very extensive channel lineup, so remind me. We’ll be sending Council a report hopefully later this week or early next week which details all the channels that are going to be available.
One thing I didn’t mention–that was the last slide–about the schedule for public hearings. Some of you were appointed by Council. The Mayor has transmitted the legislation to the Council side. That’s where the action is, so some of you who have been appointed by Council want to get involved in this public hearing process, now is a good time to do that. There will be two public hearings, one on the 17th and one on July 1 with the full Council. Both of those are opportunities for the public to comment on the terms of the franchise, benefits, prices, whatever it is people want to say.
Karia Wong: The other question is, if they want to provide more service, are they going to improve their customer service? The reason I’m asking is we spend a lot of times just calling customer service. That’s one thing. The other thing is language support. The just don’t have the capacity.
Tony Perez: I’m not sure about the language support, but the time it takes to answer a call–we’ve addressed that and there will be significant penalties for companies that don’t meet that standard.
Ben Krokower: To follow up on the customer service question, there have been reports of slightly deceptive–I wouldn’t call them predatory–marketing practices with their customer reps not distinguishing between fiber to the premise and fiber to the node. Is there going to be any kind of oversight?
Tony Perez: Yes! We hope those people will call our office. We can put a stop to that quickly, now that they are regulated. It’s a cable system now, so to the extent that we have oversight over the services provided over their network, we can enforce. We’ve read the articles.
Dashiell Milliman-Jarvis: I know you skipped over bullet points in the interest of time. Is this going to be on the Seattle Cable Office web site.
Tony Perez: Yes, we can put it there. Or I can just send it to CTAB.
Margie Nicosia: Just a comment. I have received an email from Comcast, and it seems like one of their approaches to get to closer customer service is to try to jump onto Next Door. I don’t know if anyone else is a member of Next Door. That’s a community based web site for people to share. And they’re going to use that vehicle to reach out and try to make that local presence felt. I took a poll like everyone in my area and they all said no. I don’t know if you have input. They are not approving business and selling in that type of environment. Because people aren’t looking for that kind of stuff there.
Tony Perez: No, I hadn’t heard that.
Dan Stiefel: We used to be able to call Comcast and get local support, but this last year, coming into negotiations, they just routed everything to Manila. And if you had a serious problem, Manila didn’t have the tools to solve it. It was very difficult to get transferred back to the U.S. What is to keep Century Link from gaming the system like that?
Tony Perez: Well, we hope that the standards that we’ve developed in our Cable Customer Bill of Rights will deal with that. It’s not so much the penalties involved, it provides some incentive. Although these are big companies, but it’s more, I think, the political shaming that we can bring to bear on them for not meeting those standards. And our standards are going to be that 80 percent of the time you call, at a minimum, that once you indicate your preference to speak to a live person, that that connection will be made within 30 seconds.
Dan Stiefel: But if it’s somebody that can’t really solve your problems, what is the advantage of that?
Tony Perez: There should be someone to solve your problems.
Dan Stiefel: There hasn’t been with Comcast for a good part of the last year.
Tony Perez: We know it’s an issue, so we’ve developed standards. With that 80 percent standard, I think it’s about $1,700 right now. So that could add up pretty quickly. And that’s per month.
Joneil Sampana: That’s your last question.
Dan Stiefel: Twenty five megabits. I think there’s something that says that if the copper wire is incapable of supporting 25 megabits, then Century Link is not obligated to provide this upgraded service, ADSL. Is that correct?
Tony Perez: Yes. In this particular franchise agreement, there is not a city-wide build out requirement. A policy decision was made that, if we required city-wide build out, Century Link said ‘we’re not coming to Seattle.’ So, the question was is some competition better than none. Let’s give these guys an opportunity to come in.
Dan Stiefel: Doesn’t that give them an opportunity to cherry-pick?
Tony Perez: They can’t cherry-pick because we have requirements in the code and we’ll meet semi-annually to ensure that…
Dan Stiefel: But 25 megabits, where the bad wiring is in all the poorer districts.
Tony Perez: Not necessarily. When you see the maps, actually it’s not quite like that. Trust me. You’ll get to see the map. They’re really adding the fiber where it’s most economical for them to do it. And sometimes, that’s the function of density more than anything else.
Beryl Fernandes: I want to follow up on an earlier comment. I care very much about the quality of the response I get. I don’t care which country it’s coming from. And so what I’ve learned to do with Comcast is to say that I want Level Two technical support. So that cuts right through it. And quite honestly, when I get Level Two, I don’t care which country it’s coming from, it’s always high quality. It is responsive, and that’s all I care about.
Nourisha Wells: We’re actually scheduled to have a break now, so we’ll break for ten minutes.
Break for 10 Minutes
Nourisha Wells: Just a reminder: If you do have a comment, be sure to say your name for the public record.
David Keyes: And if you haven’t yet, please sign in. There’s a sheet.
Nourisha Wells: Okay, we are coming back from our break and David Keyes is going to do a little recruiting for something.
David Keyes: I just want to mention that the City is in the process of starting to redesign the Seattle.gov web site. That’s not going to happen overnight. We’ve been doing that concurrently as we have also been implementing the content management system. We still have a lot to do with that. We started the redesign process and the web team would love to have some testers. As we do initial frameworks and so forth. So, the web team just put a little sign up on Survey Monkey (Link is https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3P8B2MQ) . I’ll send this out. I just got it an hour ago or so. You can copy it down here, and we’ll send it out. I also want to encourage you to — because we want a diversity of testers — pass that along. It’s an interesting opportunity to see that in process as we’re thinking and looking at different ideas.
Nourisha Wells: Thank you! Sarah, are you ready?
Sarah Trowbridge: I’m ready.
Cable and Broadband Committee Update
Sarah Trowbridge: I ended up cancelling the last meeting, in part because I was recovering from jet lag, but also because I felt there were lots of projects that we were focusing on. We’re kind of in a holding pattern. We were waiting for the feasibility report on municipal broadband. We were waiting for updates on the cable franchise negotiations, which we got briefed today on by Tony Perez. And then also updates for the Comp Plan. So I’m still a little unclear whether there is a draft version of the Comp Plan publicly available at this point. I know that EIS made something available…
David Keyes: There is not a posted draft version of the Comp Plan. I think they’re releasing it late this month. I do also have some copies I’ll hand around. I don’t have enough for everybody. I can get more, but there are two documents I got from the Department of Planning and Development. One is just an overview, just a brief glossy on the environmental impact statement. And another is this equity analysis that was done. So, I’ll pass these around and get more to you.
Sarah Trowbridge: Great. So at our upcoming meeting, we will be looking at the feasibility study and having a discussion around that. And over the listserv, I’d like to discuss opportunities for participating in the public hearings for the Century Link cable franchise negotiation. That’s coming up pretty quick. The next public hearing, I think, is on June 18, and the next on July 1. So as a committee, we talked about being involved with the public input process and now that we have these dates scheduled, I’m open to how we’re going to be involved with that.
Beyond that, once the Comp Plan is fully available, reviewing that and seeing if there are any opportunities with regards to technology at large, or municipal broadband.
At the last meeting, Dan gave an overview about the meeting with Wave. I just wanted to check in to see if there are any questions about that. I’d like to give you more information about the low income Internet rollout from Wave in the meeting that happened between Wave, Solid Ground, and the City.
So essentially, we had a great meeting with Wave. They are very interested in having low income Internet comparable to Comcast Internet Essentials and Century Link Internet Basics. So, we were discussing some of the challenges and obstacles low income Internet programs present. Connect Up, which is the Solid Ground Internet program that connects people to resources to get access to low income Internet. Unfortunately, they are phasing out that program. They were invaluable in terms of giving information on what makes a good low income Internet program, and some of the low income eligibility requirements that will make it more accessible for people. So the next step is that Wave is very interested in learning about how to connect people with hardware, such as routers and modems, so I’m going to be facilitating a meeting between Wave and Interconnection, which provides discount hardware, including laptops. So that’s a little status update.
We’ll have more once we meet at the end of this month. It’s going to be Monday, the last Monday of this month. Monday, June 29, 6:30 p.m. at O’Asian Restaurant. I encourage CTAB members and any community members that are interested in cable and broadband issues to join us. Feel free to join the listserv, as well. It’s on the CTAB web site. Any questions?
Actually, I do have one other update. Nourisha, maybe you’ll speak to this, but early in the month, Sabrina, who is from Upgrade Seattle and Brown Paper Tickets, reached out with an exciting opportunity. Sometime in mid-July, she’ll be meeting with other community representatives and the FCC chairman Tom Wheeler. He wants to meet with municipal broadband advocates and learn more about the process that’s happening in Seattle. Nourisha has volunteered to represent CTAB. If you want to give a little update about what the status is on that?
Nourisha Wells: Sounds like he wants to get ideas on what cities are doing. I don’t know if anyone saw his statement that came out last week or the week before. It was written up in the New York Times. That’s where I saw it. He wanted to meet with the Seattle community because of the work done from both the City’s perspective and the grassroots perspective. Looking at municipal broadband and the rollout and what that would look like here. They’re actually looking for companies or organizations that would represent….
Sarah Trowbridge: Yes, I think they would like a diverse group of people to be at the table. There are six to eight spots to join the conversation with Chairman Tom Wheeler, but one of those spots, maybe a couple, would be for local small businesses that are having Internet connectivity issues. So, if you have any familiarity with that as a business, just email Nourisha.
Nourisha Wells: So, it’s going to be mid-July. That’s all the information that we have at this point.
Sarah Trowbridge: From the CTAB perspective, what perspective are you going to bring to that?
Nourisha Wells: I’m presenting what we’ve done, what the Broadband Committee has done. And then I look to Digital Equity, part of our Digital Inclusion Committee, so I’ll be presenting the work that your committee has done.
Sarah Trowbridge: That’s my update, so you can go on to the next report.
Nourisha Wells: Okay! Beryl? Privacy?
Privacy Committee Update
Beryl Fernandes: We held our first in a series of three workshops last Tuesday, June 7. The three are scheduled for the first Tuesday of each month, June, July and August. Just to put this in perspective, it is not one of these big hack-a-thons where we’re expecting 100-250 people. We’re really looking for very small, very targeted discussion culminating in very specific recommendations. And if we get a couple that we can actually work through, we’re really happy. We’re not looking for a whole ton of them. Leading up to the workshops, we had lots of discussions. We had focus groups. We had all kinds of ways of tapping into the sentiment in the public, in the community. We were looking at three sectors: residents, small businesses, and workers. Those are just three broad categories to draw from.
This first one focused on immigrants and youth. And that’s simply because those were who we were able to have focus groups with, coming into the workshops. And they also had already developed ideas on what they would like to see. We started out with a seven-minute video, a clip that was off a panel discussion–panelists from around the country who were talking about the issue of privacy in marginalized communities. What does that mean? This panel discussion was from a conference and it was an hour and a half long. Not wanting to put anybody through an hour and a half long, we needed to have somebody edit it down. And the volunteers that we had coming into this workshop were just fabulous. We had this one volunteer who said, “Oh, my daughter can do that but my daughter’s in New York.” And her daughter in New York cut it down to seven minutes. And that just gave us a really good overview.
It was very heart-warming, just to see the spirit with which people were coming in. And I think it’s because they thought they were being heard. Anyway, we started with that, and people were very engaged. The people in the family immigrant community had ideas that they came in with. One of them held individual interviews with people in her community. She came back and reported on that.
I had a focus group with youth, and came back with that information. Plus, I had talked to a number of teachers in Seattle Public Schools, as well as some of the other schools and community centers. We had people, and I think some of them are here, from the tech community, who came in–and they had no idea what the community was going to come in with, what their needs were, what their concerns were, or what their recommendations and desires were–but they were there to listen and later to say, “Hey! We think we could do this, or this is where we could help.” And to watch that happen, that was the spirit of this collaborathon that we talked about. I thought that was great. Just a really good feeling.
It culminated with people saying, “I could possibly do this and I could possibly do that.” And that’s the start of the discussions.
We’re hoping that the people from the community will be in the driver’s seat on this, rather than a CTAB member or a techie being in the driver’s seat. We are there to facilitate and support, and say, “What resources do you need?” And bring them. These are people who are pretty well entrenched in their own communities. So they are representatives. They’re going back and talking to people there and then coming back to us as they need things. So, it’s working out that way.
I think what it did was it highlighted two issues in my mind. One was the need for diverse perspectives in privacy, and in tech in general. Without those perspectives, we are losing a whole part of our vision, really.
I think I’ve mentioned this example once before, about a hack-a-thon where somebody developed an app for health violations in restaurants. I just happened, as a member of CTAB, I was walking around, and saw that the date on it was six months earlier, and I was thinking if I was the restaurant owner, I would have cleaned up my act in a week. He or she probably did. But six months later, it could have killed that restaurant. And so the need therefore from our actions may be very harmful, but we don’t know it. We are oblivious to it because no one is bringing it to our attention. The only way somebody would is if they’re coming in with a totally different set of eyes, a different perspective. So, that’s one of the things.
And another one is, the impacted parties actually participate in the design of whatever–problem identification or program that we’re crafting–rather than have outsiders come in and design it for them. It’s bringing them into the process and saying, “Hey, let’s collaborate and do this together.” You get a very different end product and a very different process, as well. Those were the two take-aways from that, that I hope will lead to more discussion.
Everybody’s talking about diversity in the tech field. Rev. Jesse Jackson was here two or three months ago, talking about it and visiting. Everybody’s talking about it. But what does that really mean? Here it shows us exactly how it translates on the ground.
Sarah Trowbridge: What would be your next steps?
Beryl Fernandes: Well, right now there’s a lot of talk inside the community. They are talking among themselves. They are talking to me. And then we’ll figure out how to match up what they say they need and want, with the resources. And resources have already surfaced and said they’re ready and willing to help. So that’s great spirit. We know it’s there. And it’s not only with the resources who showed up at the meeting. There are lots of people out there, as well. We do have techies in the immigrant community who are willing to step up, as well.
Nourisha Wells: So, if someone wanted to participate in the next round, how would they get involved?
Beryl Fernandes: At this point, if they want to, just shoot me an email and let me know that you want to be involved.
Nourisha Wells: So, to the privacy listserv, or…?
Beryl Fernandes: Right between now and the next meeting? Things will be going on behind the scenes. If somebody has a particular set of skills and they want to bring them to the table, or they have knowledge about needs, then we would like to hear that, as well.
Nourisha Wells: For the people that might not know that their knowledge is necessary or needed, how would they figure out that this is something that they could do, be a part of or help with?
Beryl Fernandes: Then they could come to the next meeting, which is the first Tuesday of the month at the Douglass Truth Library, 6:00 – 7:45. So the first Tuesday of July, the first Tuesday of August.
Carmen Rahm: If you missed the first meeting, that’s okay? You can still come to the next one?
Beryl Fernandes: Not a problem. The other two sectors, we haven’t touched. And I’m hopeful that the next one will be small business and workers. If you have workers who can come to us with privacy issues for small businesses, we’d love to hear their stories and what they have to say.
Nourisha Wells: Any other questions? Is there anyone giving the Digital Inclusion Committee Report in Jose’s absence? There’s an email with an update. So we will skip that one for now, and hear the committee update from Joneil.
E-Gov Committee Report
Joneil Sampana: I should give an update on this weekend’s big Disco-Tech event as well as the E-Gov status report. If you haven’t known, on Saturday, from 10:00 to 4:00, we had this great event. It was about 60 to 70 person strong, despite the 85 degree weather. And it was a great event. So, essentially, it was called Disco Tech. And that stood for Discover Technology. It was a forum where we invited folks that aren’t typically hackers, but those that are interested in learning more about the civic movement here in Seattle. There were nine break-out sessions. Three of those were technically oriented. They talked one on one level programming in Node, JS, Socratum, and Tableau. What was interesting there, I actually saw our youngest attending member, at 10 years old, sitting there with a laptop just clicking away.
Then we had other topics that talked about the future of some of our organizations here in Seattle, like
Code for Seattle, which is going through rebranding and an inflection point because it’s been so strong for the last three or four years now. So that’s interesting for folks to get wind of. It’s not just hacking now. It’s going to be more open. The tagline, the name they’re going with, is now Open Seattle. So learn more about that.
Then I also had other updates in regards to Upgrade Seattle. They talked about their future plans, especially with the FCC chairman coming on board to learn about their progress. We talked about improving citizen services. And Open Data. Bruce Blood facilitated a work session on trying to distill some of the main data issues that citizens are having.
So, overall, pretty well attended. We also had a civic fair where the current projects that were our most popular projects recently, came to showcase their wares. We had Access Map, Upgrade Seattle, we had CTAB, and Hey Duwamish with Luke. So, good showing. Michael gave the keynote, and Candace Faber gave the closing. And overall, it was one more data point to add to the momentum of our civic movement.
Before I move onto the E-Gov status report, any questions about Disco Tech?
Question: I was just wondering, if there another coming up?
Joneil Sampana: Not from a national level. I think the next Open Seattle event is going to be Tuesday…?
Comment: There are several of them. We meet every Thursday. You can check out our meet up page. It’s currently Code for Seattle. Just click on meet up. http://www.meetup.com/Code-for-Seattle/ or http://codeforseattle.org .
We’re having another big event, though, called Electric Sky. It’s pretty extensive, but it’s going to be a three-day event. It’s a camping, outdoor event. You should just check out the page and see for yourself. There’s going to be WiFi there.
Nourisha Wells: Is it like a smaller version of Burning Man?
Beryl Fernandes: So are you guys changing your name?
Comment: Yes. Open Seattle. It means everybody, not just coders.
Beryl Fernandes: I like the name change.
Joneil Sampana: In that spirit, you can sense this cultural shift happening within the organization. You can see Electric Sky and there’s a lot more energy and artistic expression. For coders, that’s kind of an art form in and of itself. But this movement is open to everybody. Artists, big dreamers, thinkers–about trying to improve the Seattle citizen experience. That’s what we’re making this shift towards.
Beryl Fernandes: It ties into the diversity thing. And it says to coders and coding, look broader and be more inclusive. Because it enriches both the process and the product.
E-Gov Status Report
Joneil Sampana: Let me move onto the E-Gov Status Report. All the details from our last meeting, which is on the fourth Tuesday of every month. It’s actually listed on our CTAB web site. So feel free to look there. I just published it a couple hours before the meeting. So, I’m a little late. But it will be on there moving forward.
What I want to highlight is a couple of ongoing projects. This month, we were supposed to kick off the Seattle Police Department User Interface (SPD/UI) refresh. And, unfortunately, SPD hasn’t been able to make the APIs available to our designers. So that’s still on hold. But we’re hoping that that is going to move forward. We did get some funding for that project for our UI developer to designers, which would have done it pro bono, but in this case, there might be some resources to pay them for all their hard work.
In addition to that, we got some movement on the Civic Engagement concept that Seattle Channel came to us about a few months ago. We were lucky to have Kendee Yamaguchi and Megan attend our meeting last week. They helped walk us through a draft concept of what this next program could look like. Now, essentially what we’re trying to do is in the spirit of improving the Seattle citizens’ experience. We have a subcommittee. Within our subcommittee of E-Gov, we’re trying to think of a five program event that would happen throughout the year. We’re thinking one and a half months separated, or two months. And the goal is, to create a soulful intersection of civic minded citizens who understand the enabling power of technology but want to share the resources to collectively improve the Seattle citizen experience. If we were to aim out into the future, let’s say in August, how great would it be to get a gathering of maybe 150 or 200 folks together around the topic of convening Seattle’s top cross sector of leaders. This is just a draft concept. We’re trying to create this cross- sector, multi-sector eco system where we can all start to share all the resources that we have to bear. A month and a half later, mid-October, let’s add to that and say, Seattle’s secret sauce of multi-sector networks. We start with bringing together some really great leaders. After that, all these other network groups, like meet up groups, from all spectrums, neighborhood groups, political groups, organizational groups, what have you.
Then we move past that in January, and start looking at cross sector City planning and measures. What do comprehensive and cohesive action plans look like? Maybe by that time, we’ll have a sense of Comprehensive Plans. Maybe we’ll get a sense for civic issues that we want to work on as a City, like education, homelessness, joblessness.
The fourth topic, in March potentially, marshaling investments from private and public organizations. Let’s say, for example, this entity actually garners funding from a lot of sources, and we can leverage that towards these civic projects.
And then, lastly, a celebratory gala, where we showcase and feature some of our team efforts toward the projects. Now, along the way, we’re thinking about having Seattle Channel film many of these events, and also provide some prerecorded inserts that feature our team efforts. So in this 30-minute to one-hour production, we’ll have an in-person social networking opportunity with different folks from different sectors. We’ll have a keynote or panel discussion based on those topics I just shared with you. And we’ll have a little excerpt of a feature of a story on a team effort or Technology Matching Fund winner, which will have been awarded by September.
So that’s what we’re thinking about now. What we’d like to do is actually put that together and add to that some nonprofit partners that we think would like this concept. And maybe put some corporations on there, too, and make a proposal to this committee to see if we can move forward with that.
It’s a lot of stuff, but there’s a lot of energy in the group. You can see the participants of the group. It’s a small but powerful team of folks. And if any of you want to participate, please feel free to join us every fourth Tuesday.
The last project is the Washington State data internship project, which is kicking off this month. June 23 is our kick off. We’ve got eleven students coming from four universities, working with six data sets from the State of Washington. And then we’ll have data visualization coaches from Socrata, Microsoft, Tableau, helping the agency leaders learn more about visualization of open data, as well as helping the students learn how to use those technologies to collaborate virtually. So that’s an exciting project that we hope will go throughout the summertime and help these agency leaders develop their policies for the next legislative cycle in September. So that’s the goal for that.
Three folks, Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) is our nonprofit partner, and then we have Microsoft, Tableau and Socrata all helping to sponsor that. And, of course, Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the State of Washington kicked it off through Will Saunders.
Dashiell Milliman-Jarvis: Do you have any idea what data sets are being used for this.
Joneil Sampana: Good question. There are too many acronyms for the organizations, but the acronyms and the spelled out agency is listed on our web site.
Dashiell Milliman-Jarvis: I was just wondering how you check out some of the open data sets from Seattle, stuff like arrest records and stuff like that, that I personally find a little bit problematic if they were being manipulated or, “hey, look who in your neighborhood has been arrested recently” and the like.
Joneil Sampana: I see what you’re saying. What’s great about this project is this data set is newly released and the agency leaders are taking a lot of time and energy trying to make sure that the data set is a very strong and non-volatile data set. It’s a safe environment for them to explore.
Beryl Fernandes: That’s a very good point, because we are releasing tons of data onto the public with no controls whatsoever. One question. You mentioned the word, ‘leader.’ And you also mentioned civic engagement for Seattle. What is your definition of ‘leader?’
Joneil Sampana: I’ll take those separately. A leader would be, in context of civic awareness, is any person that represents our viewpoints on any issue. So if you feel strongly about potholes, and you have a sense of understanding of the issue, come to the table as a leader. Speak your voice with that authority because it is your story. It is your experience here in Seattle.
Beryl Fernandes: I’m really glad to hear that definition.
Doreen Cornwell: I seem to be in the slow data mode right now. We were talking earlier about Next Door. I get lost when we change our interfaces more often that I change my underwear. But the other piece of that is that when you’re doing things in the policy realm, we can change the data. But when you’re using it to make decisions, it’s nice if things are stable. Or if you focus on where there’s already value added. Like, whatever the City dashboard page is, it’s like no, it’s cool if you have some people with the know how-to talk to. I had a great conversation at Disco Tech about finding some people who are willing to go out, take it out to community councils and neighborhood groups and say, “See? You can get this data. And next month, you can get this other data”–the next generation of the same data. And then you can see what’s going on in your neighborhood. How much graffiti there is. Because where I think you’re going to get value is people working with this data. I used to play around with data when I had a job where I could [unintelligible) on a Friday afternoon. But there still was the need to do the monthly process so that all the other people who weren’t techies could see. I think there’s a little bit of tension about that in the open data world. How do you sustain it? How do you get it? How do you use it? So that you’re having a conversation where some of the same terms mean the same things. I’m kind of hot on that topic because right now I’m sitting on a thing called the Service Guidelines Task Force. Get the data out in a value added way and then don’t change it while you work the process.
I had this great conversation at the Disco Tech where other people were interested in that. You have a school teacher saying that we can use this data for this year to teach kids. It’s a different set of skills to decide what the data means, versus write code and compile it up and make a picture.
Joneil Sampana: To your point about that, and I’ll just comment briefly, obviously, we’re starting new with the data portal. With a couple of years under our belt–and there needs to be this normalizing of what each data set means–and that really is what Bruce Blood’s job is: to help us understand what these different data attributes are. Because from one set to the next, it probably is different. But as we learn more about each data set, and hopefully we won’t suffer from issue fatigue where you have a core of folks start out with the data set and maybe they stick with it for two years. That’s what is happening so far, and we’re seeing people jumping off the plateau. If we can reinvigorate their energy around that same issue still, and move it further down the road, then we actually won’t have that drop off. That’s what we’re trying to do here. Get people excited about it. Get more people involved from other perspectives. Add to it. Understand it. And move forward. Gotta stick with it. I think that’s my time.
Communications – CTAB Listservs & website
Nourisha Wells: Okay. We are way ahead of schedule. With the change of our name, as most of you know, we have gone from being CTTAB to CTAB, which means that we have some email change issues with the listserv and all that. And David Keyes is going to give an update on that.
David Keyes: We’ve been going through the web site materials and getting all the names changed. And then in my brain, I’ve been trying to write CTAB instead of CTTAB. We have a couple more elements to go. One of those is changing the listservs, which are all CTTAB-broadband or whatever. What we’re planning to do for that is we can move over all of those names, all the email addresses, to a new list. And that’s already ready to go. Vicky Yuki’s going to send out an email tomorrow with the notice for folks. On the discussion lists, because people would need to change what they have–filters or folder rules to send the email They may need to change that if it’s not just on the domain but on the full name. And if you send out an email, you need to change your address so that it goes to the CTAB for that list, instead of CTTAB. So, we’ll send out a notice to all the lists tomorrow, and then with that change being made by the 15th. So after the 15th, our goal is to just use those new lists. We’ll monitor those so if something does come through, we can catch folks on it, to be able to notify and get something over. I think for now, because there’s certainly materials like on the CTAB public notice list that are stored, so we’ll keep that archived and keep it there for now. If we need to come back to something that’s referenced that has been sent out on the list. How does that sound in terms of the transition process?
Question: Are people going to have to manually select “I’m going to be on the listserv?
David Keyes: No. We’re just automatically changing people to the new list, since people are already on it. And then, the CTAB Twitter account, which has been run by CTAB members. I know if you guys want to go in and change that handle?
Joneil Sampana: I can change it.
Doreen Cornwell: I think the issue is hashtag CTAB, with only one T, is used by the Christian Tabernacle.
Dashiell Milliman-Jarvis: Somebody recommended SEA-CTAB or something like that just to make it clear that we’re not Seattle Tabernacle.
Doreen Cornwell: Let’s do a little separation of church and state here. If somebody else has another suggestion, I’m totally open to it.
Nourisha Wells: We’ll want to announce it at next month’s meeting, whatever we decide.
David Keyes: Yes, an announcement at next month’s meeting. We do archive our Twitter information as part of what we need to do for public disclosure purposes.
Alan Yeung: What do we need to do? It could be that just your name changes but you still have your same nickname, which is your @. Keep that and everyone who follows you still follows you.
Dashiell Milliman-Jarvis: David, do you have any idea of how many people actually follow @CTTAB?
Dana Lewis: I would say that it’s insignificant. I would say we should just pick a new name and we just swap the account over. We don’t need to create a new account. And we’ll get to keep people like you and Jim. But it’s just a matter of picking what we use. At one point, we were talking about the original name change. We were talking about using SEATAB, as in Seattle. So in order to keep that resonating we could do something like that for the hashtag, as well as the handle, and resonate the Seattle part of it. And that would keep it short.
Doreen Cornwell: So then, just drop the ‘community’ out of it?
Dana Lewis: If we do SEATAB, it’s the Seattle Technology Advisory Board. In terms of being represented by a letter in the hashtag? Yes. In terms of that being represented as our name, we’re still Community Technology Advisory Board. And that’s just one option.
David Keyes: One point about that, too, is we could keep the same profile that’s up there. I don’t know if that profile has been okayed for the new name.
Dana Lewis: Probably not.
David Keyes: So that would be another change.
Joneil Sampana: I think what we’re saying is, we’ll start a new account. And then let’s move it over.
Dana Lewis: But that’s taken. So we could potentially get taken over because it hasn’t been used since 2011. And I have contacts at Twitter, so if we could decide on that, that’s an option.
Joneil Sampana: Inside? Hmm!
Dana Lewis: But I think it’s good to research both the handle and the hashtag to make sure it’s what we want.
Dashiell Milliman-Jarvis: It might have something to do with the listserv or something.
David Keyes: Can we give that to Joneil and Dana to determine.
Dana Lewis: Well, I would say that it would take more input from people what want input into what the hashtag and user name could be. SEATAB seems like an option if we can get that for our handle, in my opinion. That would be my vote. But if we want to wait a week and have anybody else brainstorm on it, that would be great.
Dashiell Milliman-Jarvis: I always recommend brainstorming. If we put up a Survey Monkey over the CTAB listserv.
Dana Lewis: Yes. We can do that. But we’d also love input from you guys so any ideas you have as well. Send that to us and maybe in a week, we’ll send out for voting on.
David Keyes: And then, just one other thing. On the Get Involved, we’ve got a quote from Daniel Hoang, a former CTAB member, and I just wanted to encourage you guys to take a look at this and if somebody else wants to submit another quote or two, picture, just to add something fresher from one of the current members.
Carmen Rahm: And do what? Send it to you?
David Keyes: Yes. Just send it to me and we can post it.
Nourisha Wells: How many do you need?
David Keyes: I think it would be nice to have a couple of them.
Carmen Rahm: So you have old quotes? If you change CTTAB to CTAB, can you really do that? I’m just kidding.
David Keyes: It makes it more fun when you go to the Wayback Machine, too. I’ll just send out a note, but it would be great to get something from you guys.
If I could, I’d like to make a really quick mention. The Tech Matching Fund legislation, we’re submitting that legislation. That’s going through the process here right now. Just a reminder to mark your calendars for July 15, which will be the day that it’s coming to Council. There’s a reception that evening or that day. It’s 2:00 on the 15th.
Beryl Fernandes: Is there a chance you could send an email?
David Keyes: Absolutely. And the Digital Equity Initiative–we’ll bring this back to the Inclusion Committee–we just got a new draft on the vision and goals following the last joint meeting between the Equity Action Committee and the Inter-departmental team. So, I’ll post that. We’re looking at putting something up to just get other continuance of brainstorm ideas around action strategies. So, we’ve gotten some of those down. I know Carmen is part of that committee, along with Sarah Trowbridge and Jose Vasquez. Right now, we’re looking at a blog post and comments, but maybe there’s something that will be more interesting or more exciting. I welcome ideas on how to do that.
Beryl Fernandes: As you’re talking, David, I’m thinking about what Joneil talked about and what Sarah talked about, and I’m picturing a map where we see all these major activities that are going on. And some of them intersect. And it would be very nice to be able to map that. I’m seeing it in my mind. Don’t ask me to draw it.
Doreen Cornwell: We’ll get Michael Mattmiller to do it.
David Keyes: Now that we know Michael can draw.
[laughter]
Other Announcements
Nourisha Wells: Is there anything else we need to mention?
ADA Anniversary event: Doreen Cornwell: July 26 is the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Americans With Disabilities Act. There is a big celebration on the 22nd. One of the things that’s kind of interesting about that is at the Disco Tech on Saturday, they reported on the Hack-sessible application (about the accessibility at bus stops at different geographic points) and there were a bunch of pieces and it’s all kind of conceptual. It was the winner of the hack-the-Commute competition and they reported on their concept at the National Institutes of Standards and Technologies in Washington, DC. What was exciting about that was that there were a whole lot of jurisdictions who said they hadn’t really thought about accessibility and ADA compliance, but this makes it seem doable and cool. And so, it’s part of my life to go to meetings and cross pollinate. That is the power of it. You do these pieces and then you go and inspire other people.
Beryl Fernandes: So, Doreen, can you send a message to all of us? Can you email all of us, or can you send it to David Keyes and he can send it out?
Doreen Cornwell: About the celebration? Yes. What I will do is nag them to publicize it. I’ll say, ‘if your organization wants to be a community partner, I’ll send the contact info.’ They seem to be looking for community partners, but again in a very grassrootsy way. I’d be happy to send out an email.
Broadband Service Speed Mapping Project
John Tigue: I got here a little late, so I didn’t get to do the introductory thing. I’m John Tigue. I’m working on the Seanet map project. That’s broadband speed test mapping. It’s at http://seattlegig.net/ . Go there for a speed test and results are bottled monthly. So that’s up and running. And Nlab, the folks in D.C. who are working on this project are all praying for version 2.0. what you see up there right now is very minimal, but usable. And data is being collected. In a month or so, there will be another version coming out that will be much more feature-rich. I’ll give you a report on that next month.
David Keyes: Congratulations!
ADA, Website and Seattle Schools: Carmen Rahm: One comment to combine a couple things. That Americans With Disabilities and the new web site. Having come from the school district where we were recently involved in a lawsuit because our site was not ADA accessible for the blind. And we have since converted over a week ago Sunday to a whole new web environment, which is accessible. We are upgrading all the content now. We’re really happy with that and all the other things we’re doing. We’re not just looking at it as making our web site compatible or ADA compliant for the blind. We’re looking at it as trying at best to be a leader, and speaking to other schools around the nation that this is the right thing to do. And what we can do. Since the word, ‘advisory’ is in our title, I would like to take an advisory position here, and advise the City that when you redo your web site, you are advised to make sure that it is accessible to the blind and those with other disabilities that need to access it. Because it’s the law. And since we’re in a City of inclusiveness and equality, that should be something that should be at the top of their list of compliance issues when they rebuild the web site.
Doreen Cornwell: It’s cool to know that you just rolled out a new web site. I have blogged about the lawsuit and it was getting a lot of hits.
Nourisha Wells: Okay. Well, if there’s nothing else….
Action Items
Joneil Sampana: I’ve got some action items. Ten things real quick. We are hoping to get the international channel lineup from Tony Perez. Also, for those who haven’t been appointed by Council or the Mayor, try to attend one of the public hearings coming up on June 17 or July 1. That’s the franchise schedule also, so kill two birds with one stone. We’re also going to hopefully have Tony Perez post the coverage map. Someplace. We’ll try to escalate that on his end. Also, a good reminder for anyone that knows any testers. Seattle.gov is looking for testers, so let’s all try to keep our ears to the ground and find some good folks to help us out.
Carmen Rahm: I think you should add that you should get testers that are blind and use screen readers and things like that. If you don’t do it, it’s going to come back and bite you. And I don’t mean that we do it because it’s a negative. i think we do it because it’s a positive.
Joneil Sampana: Right. Let’s be proactive on that. Our next one is we need a draft of the Comp Plan for CTAB review. Make sure that has a technology component. FCC chairman participatory interest: Send them to Nourisha Wells, if you’re interested in participating in that intimate gathering.
Nourisha Wells: If you know of a business that is having connectivity issues.
Joneil Sampana: Thank you. There will be new data in place by June 15. We’re getting ready to test it. And if you haven’t joined and you’re at the meeting, please feel free to join at that time. And then, we’ll have a survey going out regarding a new Twitter handle by the end of next week. Please review the Get Involved page for the CTAB members, and get your responses and feedback to David Keyes. And last, July 15, Tech Matching Fund reception. Be there are 2:00.
Nourisha Wells: Now the meeting is adjourned.
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