TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Advanced IT Policy for a New America

The Public Square Requires Redefinition

The obvious good news is the incoming Obama administration recognizes that a national advanced communications and information technology policy should cut across all the “silos” of our government, including the departments of Commerce, Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, Defense, Homeland Security, Energy, and, of course, the Federal Communications Commission. The potential bad news is that the new administration will simply embrace the easy answer of more broadband for the different parts of society these departments serve, falling for the false promise of more competition and new technologies providing all Americans with speedy access to the new, online public square.

If only it were that simple. First off, the term “broadband” is so degraded today that it is of little use in a discussion about the future of Internet access for all. Instead, we should be talking about a national advanced communications and information technology policy that encompasses all aspects of public safety and civic participation, and recognizes that structural social and historical barriers to Internet access remain pervasive. The “digital divide” in our nation is vast and deep, threatening our national health and education, national security and economic prosperity.

Fortunately, public policy tools are on hand for the incoming Obama administration and the 111^th Congress to promote the common good through effective, science-based advanced communications and IT policy. They have at their disposal proposals to prioritize these policies in White House deliberations, congressional legislation in place to gather the data necessary to understand how to close the digital divide, and a new set of wired and wireless spectrum policy proposals to create a digital public square that is every bit as open and diverse as our founders and the progressives who followed them envisioned. These policy tools need tweaking, to be sure, but they are available and should come quickly out of the toolbox in the first year of the new administration.

The Role of the White House

Advanced communications and IT is vital to public safety and civic participation, something that President-elect Obama’s transition team clearly understands. But the idea of an IT czar, or federal chief technology officer (as belated as such an office is), does not quite capture the importance of advanced communications and information technology in today’s world. A great deal is known today about the importance of access to advanced IT in relationship to economic development, education, and health care. But equally vital is the relationship between advanced IT access and public safety and civic engagement. I have written on the relationship between advanced IT and public safety in “Ubiquity Requires Redundancy: The Case for Federal Investment in Broadband.” Here, I will examine briefly the relationship regarding advanced IT and civic engagement.

Federal investment in communications services for the purposes of strengthening our democracy is a deeply-rooted American tradition going back to the founders’ substantial investment in the U.S. Postal System. The rationale underlying much of U.S. communications policy is tied to the value of ensuring all Americans access to competing sources of information to support robust democratic discourse. In addition to democratic discussion, supporting the ability of citizens to actively engage with government is also a long standing tradition. Both democratic deliberation and civic engagement must be protected in the digital age.

Increasingly, being able to take part in an open government requires access to the Internet. As government records, administrative proceedings, requests for proposals, tax forms, job announcements, even school closings and emergency warnings go online it is increasingly important for all Americans to have access to advanced telecommunications services.

The Obama campaign and the Obama transition team demonstrated a unique understanding of the importance of advanced IT, enabling them to go around traditional gatekeepers and speak to and hear from the American public. The online activity of this historic campaign and transition is far deeper and far more engaging than the mass media interviews, and it encompasses not only record-breaking fundraising but sophisticated policy discussions.

Unfortunately, not every American has equal access to either government records or on-line policy discussions. Libraries and schools are all too often only occasional access points for the community, and many employers discourage non-work related access to the Internet. This leaves too many Americans with very limited access to advanced IT. Yet access to participate in a local, state, or federal proceeding should not be determined by the unwillingness of the private sector to deploy new fiber or Wi-Max connectivity to particular communities. And access in already-wired communities cannot continue to rest upon a local library’s limited number of computers or whether it can keep its doors open long enough for those working two jobs. This inequality in access to important civic information and engagement should not be tolerated in a democracy.

That’s why the Obama Administration needs to ensure that its IT czar or chief technology officer and all the other relevant federal office holders are given a wide remit to craft advanced communications and IT policy to open online civic participation to every American. The director of this new office, however, must then grasp that closing this digital divide will first require extensive, data-driven investigation.

Defining the Digital Divide

Structural barriers to widespread and speedy Internet connectivity are stubborn. The Obama administration needs to get the data and then get going. The barriers that cause the digital divide will not come down on their own, and they will certainly not come down if we fail to look for them in the rush simply to roll out more broadband. Alas, progressives are not at all immune to the powerful dream of free market competition or ever-advancing technology as solutions to the problems of discrimination or isolation.

Even since Herbert Croly, who in 1909 penned the progressive manifesto “The Promise of American Life,” there is a strong strain in progressive thought that believes somehow the combination of new technologies and free markets will solve the persistent problems of inequality. Without denying the importance of either free markets or technological advance to the general improvement of living conditions around the world, the early 20^th century progressive intellectual (and eventual Supreme Court Justice) Louis Brandeis teaches us to look clear-eyed at the world as it is, and to make policy and law that promotes the public interest.

In the world as it is, there are still very high barriers facing women, people of color, people with disabilities, the poor, and those Americans in the isolated regions of Appalachia, Indian Country, and the hundreds of small black communities in the rural South. These structural barriers, the vestiges of a not-so-long-ago America where women could not vote, Mexican Americans were stacked in barely habitable migrant camps, and Jim Crow laws were strictly enforced, have not been torn down. There remains a danger that as advanced IT becomes increasingly important to our economic prosperity, our educational system, our health care system, our ability to respond to natural disasters and threats at home and abroad, and our ability to engage as citizens, the structural barriers of sexism, racism, poverty, and geographic isolation will reinforce the advantages of a few and make it even more difficult for children living in the other America to ever catch up.

Simply assuming that the market and continued technological advance will address the problems faced by those Americans we do not see until a levee breaks is taking too great a risk. There is still inequality in America because of the continued challenges of gender preferences, racial segregation and rural isolation, and there is still a digital divide.

Despite the marketers’ best gloss, this divide will not be bridged by access to cheap cell phone service. Access to a powerful personal computer linked to a truly high-speed Internet service is far better than even a Blackberry for doing homework or communicating video rapidly with a remote medical center.

But before we tackle the problems of technological inequality in America we must get a solid handle on who has access to advanced IT, where IT is deployed, at what speeds and at what cost. We do not have that data now. The Broadband Data Improvement Act has passed both houses of Congress but is not funded. The new 111^th Congress must do so promptly. There is now, after many years of argument, a consensus about the importance of mapping advanced IT in the U.S. As Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI) has said, we cannot fix what we cannot measure.

But as the new administration gathers this necessary data, it also needs to fund what we know works—the so called universal service program, particularly the program extending telecommunications services to schools and libraries. Despite the on-going attacks on the E-Rate program, which provides discounted telecommunications services to schools and libraries around the country, more American children than ever have at least some access to the Internet because of this program. There are consistently more applications for support than these programs have been able to handle.

There is also very good evidence that the moribund Technology Opportunity Program, which brought together the private and public sectors to develop new advanced IT communications solutions. This program, which still exists but has been inactive in the Bush administration, created important incentives for public-private collaborations and innovations regarding IT applications.

There is legitimate concern that the universal service program, which provides discounted telecommunications services not just to schools and libraries but to rural communities across the country, needs to focus more on access to advanced IT and focus less on supporting plain old telephone service. The current universal service priorities are no longer sufficient in 21st century America. Once the Obama administration has the data it needs to identify the digital divide, it needs to act quickly to provide all Americans access to the online public square.

Spectrum Policy for a New Century

First of all, analog wireless technology—the free “AM/FM/TV channels” we grew up with—has been obsolete for over a dozen years and must be replaced. Smart radio technologies, combining Internet-like protocols and signal scanning, now make a much more efficient use of the public spectrum possible. We need policies and regulation that catch up to the new technology.

We need to move all current analog broadcasters to digital service as soon as possible. There are much more efficient ways to use the spectrum, but they cannot be put in operation as long as old analog broadcasters, including radio and low power television, are taking up more space than the information they carry really needs.

We also must move forward on the transition to digital television, even while we prepare for the fact that too many Americans will not be ready for this transition. Plans must be put in place immediately to first determine where and exactly what the problems are going to be when the switch-over takes place on February 17, 2009—such as unexpected interference with the digital signal, a digital broadcast range that does not match the old analog range, consumer confusion—and to respond to those problems with real people, ready and able to help both on the other end of a telephone call and just a few miles away, who can come to assist where needed.

This will require a massive help-your-neighbor campaign to make certain this ongoing transition to digital occurs across America. One way or the other we must move quickly to get all of the old analog broadcasters to switch to digital services and free up that spectrum.

Then we need to craft new spectrum polices. As economist Greg Rose and I have written in the past—in “The Failure of FCC Spectrum Auctions”—the auctioning of spectrum does not work to encourage new entrants. The Obama administration must find ways to ensure that women, minorities, and small businesses have an opportunity to participate effectively in the advanced IT structure of the future. Current spectrum policies limit opportunities to new players and will continue to do so as long as we continue to play by old rules that tend to benefit powerful old telecom incumbents.

Allowing innovators access to the spectrum in exchange for clear public interest benefits, such as serving marginalized communities or creating platforms for public safety workers, in place of auctions is a way to open up opportunities for those who cannot compete at auction against large established companies or well-funded investors. Creating free unlicensed access to spectrum that can be dedicated to fixed protocols, such as Wi-Fi, but with multiple applications might also increase innovation and access.

Establishing incentives to immediately put public spectrum to use, to create opportunities for women, minorities, rural communities, and small businesses, and to limit spectrum squatting by auction winners might also work to bring U.S. spectrum policy into the digital age. A new spectrum policy for a new century will create greater access to advanced communications and information technology for all Americans.

Many of the old battles, of course, remain to be fought even as the Obama administration moves forward with far-sighted spectrum policies for the 21^st century. Public access media in communities such as Chicago and Burlington are still fighting under a set of policies that puts them at the mercy of their competitors. Public service media in the United States also remains under-funded and subject to political interference, and there is too much concern about sex and vulgarity and not enough concern over hate and violence. Finally, the public trustee model regarding broadcasting is broken, and the anti-trust rules are a farce.

But a new administration gives us many reasons to hope that as officials craft fundamental telecommunications and information technology policy, these other fights can also conclude and encompass the best progressive principles. The first order of business, though, must be complete online access to the public square for all Americans.

Mark Lloyd is an affiliate professor of public policy at Georgetown University and a member of the advisory board of Science Progress.

Tags: Internet, Telecommunications

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