3. Community Partnerships

Ongoing community partnerships are the key to the success of the Davis Community Network and the developing Yolo Regional Network. The partners achievements and resources are described below.

Community Itself

Yolo County and the City of Davis are a unique university and residential community. Davis is internationally known for its commitment to implementing innovative programs. The city has over 150 volunteer-based organizations, and a recent General Plan update attracted participation from 750 community members.

Examples of Davis' unique community aspects include the Davis Food Co-op (where volunteers run the operation); the Farmer's Market (for marketing produce and other goods from family and organic farms in the region), and Muir Commons, one of the first co-housing developments in the country. In fact, Davis was recently named one of the healthiest US communities to live and retire in and has an active seniors community, another rich source of volunteers.

Davis Community Network (DCN)

DCN was designed to represent this unique community. The Davis Community Computer Network (DCCN) Task Force, chartered by the City Council six years ago, formed the core for a group of fifty representatives (the "Davis First Fifty") from the following community sectors:

• City of Davis
• University of California at Davis
• Davis Community Television
• Davis Unified School District
• The Davis Enterprise (local newspaper)
• Chamber of Commerce
• KVIE (PBS Channel 6 in Sacramento)
• Yolo County library
• Employees of state and federal agencies
• Several small businesses and consulting firms

This group has been a stable and long term volunteer pool which has developed exceptional skills in community needs assessment, consensus-building, and creative collaboration.

DCN has a demonstrated ability to recruit and manage volunteers. On an annual basis, members of the DCN Board of Directors, the DCN Executive Committee, and committees members volunteer a total of 475 hours per month, which translates to three full time paid staff members valued at $114,000 annually. These volunteers are highly-paid professionals contributing their skills in marketing, technical design, management, training, and strategic planning. (See ATTACHMENT 4, page 28 for the current DCN organization structure and ATTACHMENT 5, page 29 for the Sponsored Projects DCN volunteers have accomplished.)

In addition to volunteers, DCN has made fortunate partnerships with two private businesses, Davis Virtual Market, a webpresence company which developed a successful business as a consequence of its partnership with DCN, and American Cabling and Communication to provide modem and ISDN services.

University of California, Davis

The Yolo County region is home to the University of California, Davis campus and, as such, is a major statewide center for research and teaching. Its presence in the Yolo Regional Network effort gives all the partners access to the research, teaching, and demonstration capabilities of not just the Sun Technology and Research Excellence Center (SunTREC) but also of the larger University community including the technical expertise of the Division of Information Technology and to the subject matter expertise of half a dozen schools and colleges. In addition, this partnership extends into the private sector, by virtue of Sun's ongoing sponsorship and support of the SunTREC. The presence of the SunTREC in this particular partnership contributes to an unusually rich mix of public and private connections.

The staff of the Distributed Computing and Analysis department in the Division of Information Technology at UCD has four years of experience in designing, developing, implementing and maintaining civic networking projects. The staff of this division served as project managers for two California Department of Transportation research contracts, one resulting in the Davis Community Network, and the other in a California Smart Communities Guidebook (to be published Fall, 1996).

Yolo County Government

Through a Memorandum of Understanding, Yolo County government has been a partner to DCN for the past year. The following are evidence of the entrepreneurial attitude the County brings to its activities:

• 1989 Hewlett Packard Government Technology of the Year Award "Greatest Number of Integrated Departments"
• 1991 Hewlett Packard Government Technology of the Year Award "Most Cost-Effective Long Term Solution"
• Currently partner with Placer, Napa and Lassen County for Mental Health Billing and with Lassen County for overall general information service support
• Implementing and maintaining Local Area Network for City of Woodland (the County seat)
• Implemented and support Local Area Network for Yolo/Solano Air Quality Management District

The County has had long-term experience with wide area network, with fiber backbone running through several miles of the county, connecting county buildings, city buildings and the libraries.

The County is exploring the benefits of civic networks, and recently began installing a County-wide e-mail service. The County recently put on-line content from 27 different county departments, and this past year opened a regional demonstration and training facility. Because of the County's long-term investment in telecommunications infrastructure, it has an expert data communications staff and network management infrastructure which can be very beneficial to the partnership. (See ATTACHMENT 6, page 34 - Logical Network Diagram.)

City of Davis

The City of Davis has been an active DCN partner from the very beginning. With the DCCN Task Force, the City began exploring civic networks six years ago. The city discovered that to take advantage of wide area networking, the City would have to upgrade its internal networking infrastructure. In FY95, City Council approved $300,000 for a local area network $23,500 budget for a pilot project to provide on-line access to electronic information and install a World Wide Web Server. The city also set up a twelve-station computer training facility which will be used as one of the regional technology demonstration centers.

Based on the successful pilot, the City Council approved implementation of "Electronic City Hall" with a budget of $99,000, receiving $50,000 from Caltrans. Progress made this year included connecting City Council members home offices to City Hall and the Internet via ISDN, and completing desktop access to all workstations, successfully integrating three protocols (IPX, TCP/IP, SNA) in two topologies (ethernet, token-ring) for 200 workstations. The city trained over 100 city staff on e-mail and browsing the World Wide Web, and established large content base of city information (See APPENDIX B, page 48 for a complete list). With DCN's help, five public access kiosks were installed in city buildings.

This year, a full budget has been approved for:

• maintenance and support of Electronic City Hall
• support for DCN's effort ( budget of $32,000) to establish Yolo Regional Network
• begin building the regional telecommunications infrastructure by installing fiber from City Hall to the Davis Community Network (budget of $55,000)
• connecting the city to Yolo County and the University with fiber.