THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING

1996 CIVIC NETWORKING GRANT PROPOSAL

A CIVIC NETWORK AS A STRATEGY FOR BUILDING A "SMART" COMMUNITY

Table of Contents

Introduction

For the past three years, the University of California, Davis has been investigating how community networking might represent a new form of transportation, and further, how community networks could be one strategy in the development of "smart communities." A smart community is defined as one in which government, education, non-profits and businesses work together to employ information and telecommunication technology to transform their community, thereby increasing choice, convenience and control for all members of the community. Smart communities help to make the region economically competitive in the new global economy; and attract commerce as a result of an advanced telecommunications infrastructure. The Davis Community Network (DCN) originated as a research testbed designed to explore these and related issues.

Adopted wholeheartedly by the local community which provides over three full-time staff equivalents in volunteer effort each year, and by major community institutions (contributing partners include the university, the city, county, school district and local public access cable television station), DCN has become a stable, self-sufficient non-profit. DCN and its partners have successfully brought on-line all of the major institutions of the county, the public library, community-based organizations (the Chamber of Commerce, Explorit Science Center, AYSO), individuals in the community (teachers, students, hobbyists, literary ventures) and 95 businesses. With training and support, many are now self-sufficient information providers. In addition, the all-volunteer DCN Web Team has created hundreds of pages of content, and developed several new community network applications, including a community calendar, and an interactive campaign contributions analysis tool. The DCN has a new role as a catalyst in the development of a "smart region" to address the region's needs in education, the environment and economic development. This spring, DCN brought together organizations from throughout the county, facilitated mutual understanding of common needs, goals and the barriers to the achievement of those goals, and created an informal partnership called the Yolo Regional Network. (See ATTACHMENT 1, page 22.)

The lesson we've learned is that the practice and art of civic networking is based on partnership, sharing, demonstration, and persuasion. A civic network represents a creative and innovative way to reduce risk for local public sector agencies (government and education) in adapting the use of new technologies as problem-solving tools. This reduction in risk, combined with the invisible but compelling effects of institutions working directly together across their more traditional programmatic and jurisdictional lines, will have the cumulative effect of transforming the region into a "smart region."

For this grant, a regional partnership of the Davis Community Network, University of California (Davis), City of Davis, Yolo County (Community Development and General Services agencies), and Volunteer Center of Sacramento/Yolo County is proposed to design and implement new Internet-based civic networking services built on the existing Davis Community Network and Yolo County telecommunications infrastructures, with an increased sharing of infrastructure and information resources. This partnership would develop on-line communication tools and specialized information content on the Davis Community Network in three areas: geographic information systems, integrated document databases and web service, and an on-line volunteer management and coordination system. These new resources would be showcased at three newly-developed regional technology demonstration centers through an educational program for local governmental staff, elected officials, and through public demonstrations designed to educate, inspire, convince, and provide concrete evidence and compelling persuasion for the role of information technology and telecommunications tools in building healthy communities, for the ongoing usefulness of such partnerships, and for the community network's unique position for facilitating such partnerships.