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tv   U.S. House of Representatives  CSPAN  August 7, 2009 10:00am-1:00pm EDT

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far less than economists had expected, a dark problem lurking in the numbers. dangerously high levels of long- term unemployment in america. skyrocketing numbers of those out of work for three, six, or more months at a time. economists worry that the shock of the financial crisis may have driven u.s. into a period of permanently high unemployment. monticello, arizona, kathy. caller: good morning. i am calling in on the unemployment figures and i understand that the congress is looking at another extension for people. i have been underemployed and unemployed for the three years since october 1. i was a victim of downsizing in our state where the governor signed a billion-dollar contract with ibm to downsize local
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social service agencies. part of my concern is that the unemployment numbers that you get, people do not understand that that is based on the people drawing benefits. whereas people who no longer have an unemployment benefits, those people are not even popping up in the numbers. host: we appreciate all your calls this morning. we will be back at 7:00 eastern time tomorrow morning. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] .
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>> he has been in the iraqi parliament since 2005. he is the first deputy speaker and the leader of the independent bloc in the council of representatives. he also chairs the friendship committee with the european union and it is a key figure in a coalition which was formed in the recent elections and an important member of the united iraqi alliance in parliament. his academic career is an impressive. he has a b.a. jurisprudence and have completed graduate studies
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under the supervision of others. he holds two master's degrees from the university in cairo. before becoming deputy speaker, he was the chairman of a commission in iraq and has published numerous articles and books on jurisprudence and islamic law and has edited several scholarly publications. khalid al-atiya has lived in egypt, lebanon, the u.k., and of course now in iraq. i did not introduce myself. i am a fellow. our moderator is familiar to everyone. without further ado, i will
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invite khalid al-atiya to take the microphone and to speak about iraq and the parliament in iraq. thank you. >> peace upon you from god. at first i would like to thank you for this beautiful introduction.
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and without a doubt, she is a very distinguished iraqi personality who has played a big role in the iraqi opposition. and represented iraq as the first ambassador after the fall of the previous regime in washington. and she is still connected -- very connected with her own country and aware of what is going on in iraq.
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i also would like to thank the united states institute for peace for their generous invitation to meet with people who are interested in the iraq matter. at first i would like to bring backed the -- or view the sides of the dictatorship in iraq.
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despite my article today as critical notes, it also should reflect the highlighted or the
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hopes of the iraqi people to build its own country. despite what has been said about this experience from both sides, the iraqi, and the american, it is worth noting that iraqis have gained the best out of -- have gained the best out of the experience so far. which is freedom.
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those who follow the iraqi issue, they know that iraq of the 88 years old -- the iraqi state that is 88 years old could not have established a complete understanding of citizenry or patriotism.
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loyalties to identities such as religion, political party, ethnicity, and sectarianism have continued or sustained itself and overshadowed the citizenry. the role of the staid has been reduced -- the role of the state has been reduced and overshadowed by power.
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proceeding authorities or governments have tried ever since 1920 to take the population into their own and have it act that way. despite the iraqi state having been established on a western style institution, it has build
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democratic institutions, as well. they have not been able to establish or crystallize a national i.d. for the population. therefore we have seen in 2003 when the u.s. has entered iraq, we feel this state has failed, by the failure of the power itself.
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what has risen as their results of the failure of citizenship or loyalty or patriotism, loyalties to sectarianism or religious or ethnic loyalties which led the
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american ruler at the time to adapt the democratic system, the consensus democratic system or a democratic system of consensus. and also there has been a lot of conflicts including -- excuse me -- doubts of the future or potential doubts and conflicts over hunger for power and money.
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and as a result of that, the democratic consensus or concession system of democracy has been adapted by the new constitution. i have to be brief because i
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think the time it is very short perio. therefore, i will focus on the negative news of the system that has been adapted by iraq. and then i will move to the vision of finding a way to get out of this negative -- and negativity.
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especially we are about to get into a new period where we have a new collection and there will be a new politicians and leaders that will lead iraq. the consensus democracy have created negative phenomena ls which led iraqis to think of a way to get out of it.
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first it created the consensus -- the consensus of democracy created a weak understanding of citizenship or patriotism, and affirmed the private individual identity for iraqi individuals.
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sharing the power have crippled the decision making and the operating of iraq. therefore, we have seen a lot of political conflict in that period of time. as a result of the difficulty to find consensus. for example, it took about five months to establish the iraqi government, the government of mr. maliki.
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and it also took about 117 days, is about four months to select the chair of the speaker of parliament. and also as a result of -- it is hard to get consensus among legislators, it had delayed some strategic and important laws that are still on the table above parliament.
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despite a majority to legislate or vote these laws, they already exist. to give you another example. another example i can give you is the law of establishing regions has taken months and it has not been legislated yeps. -- it is not been legislated yet. one law, a very important law,
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and the entire world has been waiting to see it. it has not been decided or legislated yet since three years ago.
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the apartment of ambassadors, deputy ministers, advisors, judges has been delayed or stopped -- the appointment of them has been stopped for years. embassies, most embassies in
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the world, iraqi embassies are vacant. for example, the embassy of iraq in britain is vacant. it doesn't have an ambassador yet. the interesting part is basically the government has recommended 62 names of ambassadors and they have been approved by the parliament recently at once. on the other hand, the power- sharing have delayed the observation role or the observing role of the parliament.
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it has crippled the prime minister or the government to hold the ministers accountable just because of the power- sharing system. this isn't what i think -- this is a way to have -- pushed for iraqis to think of a better way and to develop their own political system in zero way --
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in a way where there will be responsive to the needs of iraqis. especially if it needs the power or the ability to make legislation and make -- and have a rebuilding of the country.
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ever since the local elections, political entities have been trying to enhance their own performance and their own operation in order to be able to operate the country in a correct way and also to develop more.
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these elections have pointed out for brought out the feeling of the iraqi citizen that iraq has to stay united and have an effective government that is able to rebuild the country.
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and it also has brought up the need for the formation of parties or political entities and alliances or new coalitions that are beyond the loyalties such as sectarianism and ethnicity and think of a broader picture as patriotism or citizenship.
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therefore we say the need to be out of the narrow vision of the power-sharing democracy and the need -- and to move on for the need of pluralism and democracy. therefore, there has to be a
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ruling mechanism in order to provide the protection for the political majority that will result out of the upcoming elections, and it also should provide protection for the political minority and the other ethnic minorities. the most important mechanism that i see is, number one, getting rid of the power- sharing and the executive -- or
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the quota or power-sharing in the executive positions. and therefore it will achieve what the constitution has said in the basic principle. there for everybody will be able to reach the executive position out of the knowledge, experience. despite whatever the loyalties of whether it is a political or ethnic.
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the other important elements or mechanism is basically to have the opposition participate. that does not mean leaving the power-sharing democracy, it does not mean we will not, or we will give up national reconciliation.
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it also naturally it will guarantee -- it should guarantee the quota of minorities for small groups among iraqis. i think these are the important basics or principles that i think it will lead us to better performance to its chief the reconstruction and rebuilding of iraq.
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as for what is related to principles of the upcoming elections, i think they must appropriate direction -- the system of open slot, which will definitely achieved a better and precise representation of iraqi people. and it will encourage the
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population to come out and participate in the election. which also, i think -- which should be followed is the system -- instead of one slot -- -- i'm sort instead of one district, multiple district systems. -- i am sorry, instead of one district, multiple district systems.
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this will also contributes to the precise representation of the population and it will also encourage them to widely participate in those elections. the direction of most political entities, as far as i know, in this direction of adopting the above system. despite another important political courses, it is
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adapting to another point of view. but i think generally the direction in the parliament and in the streets of iraq is the system of open slots and multiple districts. at the end, i think, as i have said in the beginning, despite whatever we have seen in the previous experience in iraq, whatever has been achieved, actually achieved, the election
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in parliament and the establishment of two national government has not yet taken iraq out of the civil war towards the national reconciliation. and the direction towards rebuilding and reconstruction and openness to other variable world countries. and last is the successful agreement between iraq and the united states throughout the
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security treaty or agreement that has been signed by the two countries. which has given the gradual withdrawal and safe and gradual withdrawal for the american forces. after preparing the iraqi forces and having it sufficient enough to takeover the security
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file. i think all of this will give us hope that iraq will continue its democratic direction. and it will affirm its own constitutional institutions, and the reestablishment of its own natural position within the international community, which enables iraq, who has the fortune and the resources to
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achieve prosperity, advancement for its own people. thank you very much. >> i am going to abuse my privileges and ask the first question. if you have other questions, please line up at the microphones. i think you will find a lot of people in washington who agree with your analysis and who would agree with your support for an open list, system in the elections. i have to tell you in meeting
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with maybe 25 of your members of parliament, i found no support for the open list. they were collected on a closed list. the pressures, as you mentioned, for a closed list are strong, and you cannot tell us where they come from. is there a strategy -- how are you going to put together a majority for a open list, up multiple district system? >> the fact is, a lot of political entities have declared their support for the
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open list, and on top of these entities is the rocky alliances and the front of the court, and others of those entities and naturally them. this is on one hand. on the other hand, the religious system that has a huge influence on the iraqi street
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have called the politicians yesterday and the council of representatives in particular to adapt the open list and the multiple districts. and i think this will represent huge pressure on politicians and it also supports the opinion of the iraqi streets to push the politicians to adopt this system. therefore i think it will be very embarrassing for most iraqi politicians to go against the
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wishes of the iraqi streets on one hand and the wishes of the religious faction on the other hand. >> thank you. introduce yourself. >> i am bob with "the nation" magazine. i find ironic that you say iraqis should reduce their religious identification, and yet you were wearing a turban and you are a religious man in politics. the kurds have a secular leaders who are like most of the leaders in the united states or the arab world who are not
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clergy. the same with the sudanennis. some are secular individuals. what you think the shia of iraq have so far been unable to put forward secular politicians who are not affiliated with other parties or the supreme council or another party? why is it so hard for secular politics to emerge in iraq among the shia, seems to be the only sector of the country where people still follow that? what does a 75-year-old clergyman know about shia -- know about that? what do you think is so hard --
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in the elections, it seems to me that people rejected that. >> ok. >> as i said, local elections, or the governors at the local elections have brought upper what the iraqi people want. and the iraqi population, or rockies won a system that will keep unity -- four iraqis -- or
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rockiiraqis want a system that l keep unity. and at the end to go towards the building of a stage away from the narrow loyalties of political parties or ethnicity and bringing back the spirit of unity.
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the cost of the previous experiences iraqis have underwent, they're looking forward to live under a state that can bring everybody
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together in one stayed that could have them live peacefully. and that is what everybody is looking forward to and get rid of the thinking of being under
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sectarianism or ethnicity and that includes the secularist, as well. as far as the failure of secularists being in power, it goes back to reasons of their own. >> please. >> i am with the american information network. you made a reference to the lack of patriotism in iraq. if you look at it, thereat and unnatural state. i am referring to the kurdish question in iraq. the oil that lies under the soil of kurdistan. the desire to be free between
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the kurds and the arabs is real. they have been coopted not to state it. do you see checklist of akia in the future of -- d.c. a check of slovakia -- d.c. an amicable divorce? >> the iraqi constitution has lined out new iraqi states -- a
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new iraqi state. the most important elements of these elements is federalism. and the constitution has given the right to regions and government to -- to run its own affairs within certain limits. but that does not mean exiting out of the overall iraq.
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and i think all parties, whether it is the kurdish party or other arab parties, have agreed to this principle and have agreed on -- to have iraq state as one unit -- to stay as one unit. kurds are a part and important part of iraq, and they have authorities given to them by the constitution. and they are themselves, and i heard it from their own leaders
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-- a firm on the unity of iraq and their part of iraq itself. and they do not wish to separate from iraq. >> i would like to take the last two questions together. >> the question of majority rule and minority rights is one of the principal problems of democracy. in the united states, we address it through judicial review. minority rights are not guaranteed through the political process but through the guarantee of judiciary that can overturn laws that violate the constitution. you did not mention the judiciary. you only talked about the political process.
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you are a scholar of jurisprudence. please address the role of the judiciary in guaranteeing minority rights in iraq. what are the sources of lot you would look to? >> and your question? >> according to the constitution, it should only exist for one term and should end with the next parliamentary elections. there is a call to extend this. do you think this amendment or any other amendment will be considered in the upcoming fall term?
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>> undoubtedly, the judiciary is one of the main elements in the iraqi state. and it deals with the iraqi citizen despite its belonging, or whenever he or she comes from.
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so that principle of equal treatment of everybody, the iraqi minorities -- the judiciary has been dealing with them as equal as everybody else. however, the rights of the iraqi minority are guaranteed by the constitution in terms of civil and human rights and other rights.
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politically, the political minorities are represented within the government now. i did not think there is any problem minorities experiencing now. in the law of local councils, they have given a quota to the minorities. >> under presidency council. .
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>> [speaking in foreign language] >> and -- >> [speaking in foreign language] >> and in the next four years
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election term, there will be a president and possible vice- president, and the vice president will be taking authorities from the president himself. >> [speaking in foreign language] >> and within the commission of the constitutional review, there has been calling to increase the authorities of the presidency. >> [speaking in foreign language] >> but there is no consensus on
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those callings, so it will be discussed in the next term. therefore by -- therefore, the constitution will stay where it is mayor -- where it is. >> you have been generous responding to our questions and questions, tough ones. -- you have been generous responding to our questions, tough ones. the key issues in iraq today. we thank you very, very much. [applause]
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>> as this even comes to a close, president obama signed the extension of the popular cash for clunkers program. adding another $2 billion. officials estimate the money should last through labor day. this morning from the white house. a little bit later we will have live remarks from the president on the state of the economy. he will speak to a group in arlington, virginia. we will have its starting at 1:30 p.m. eastern. after that we will go to the white house for the briefing
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with press secretary robert gibbs. you can see that at 2:00 p.m. eastern. all this month, revisit the fairs and festivals we covered this year on c-span2. this weekend, panels from the key west literary seminar and the annapolis book festival. the phenomenon of facebook, a best-selling author on the success of the social networking site and how it tour two best friends apart. >> sunday, frank rich reflects on 15 years of political columns for "the new york times," it including a look the internet and his columns following 9/11. >> according to the ap this morning, we heard reports that
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florida senator mill martinez was resigning. the time line is not clear -- florida senator martina's stepping down. the stimulus package called on the fcc to develop a plan for providing all americans access to high-speed internet. as part of the process the fcc is holding a series of workshops on national broadband bid yesterday in washington, this is 2 1/2 -- on national broadband. this was yesterday in washington. >> it is my pleasure to welcome everyone here to the kickoff of the omnibus broadband initiative's public workshop series. we have come as you know, a plan to host two dozen workshops in the next month. a goal some have said is impossible. to them i say, the washington nationals have won 4 straight. [laughter]
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this is a very important day, today i hope we can have real discussion. let me be as informal as we can, but let me see if i can put today's events in a little bit of context. the president and congress a few months ago and trust that the fcc with the very important responsibility of this -- developing a national broadband strategies. we should have had a strategy years ago. we didn't. but now we have a directive from the president and congress for the fcc to develop one. this is a very serious responsibility that the agency is taking with the seriousness it deserves. broadband is the great infrastructure challenge of our generation. it is to us what railroads, electricity, highways, telephones, were to previous generations. a platform for commerce, for addressing major national
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problems, and for civic engagement. it is not an abstract exercise. i think a lot of americans when they hear universal broadband, aren't sure yet exactly what that means. part of what we hope to do with these workshops is to animate the meeting -- meaning and importance. we know from a data point of view that every point increase in broadband deployment will lead to an increase in 300,000 jobs, according to a study by brookings. i had a chance last week to meet with some people who are starting to use broadband to do job training. and i met at valencia gardens, a public housing project, people who were able to find jobs through broadband. i had a similar experience in cleveland a couple of weeks ago where i met people who, before
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they got involved in some training problems -- programs and before they learned broadband and internet skills, had great trouble finding a job and were able to find a job using the internet. i saw last week when i was in california at the of lucille packard children's hospital, some incredible programs that when you see them, you can't help but think, how can we live in a country where this is not available to everyone. for example, we saw a program where doctors use imaging technologies and broadband to diagnose newborns for this particular disease, a very long name. it causes blindness. it is very treatable if it is caught. there are too few doctors who have the skills to diagnose this particular disease. and what happens now all over
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the country is that doctors with this specialty spend their time driving around, examining as many kids as they can. some kids are cents -- newborns are sent to what the specialists are. it doesn't make sense in a world where we have the imaging technologies and we have broadband connections, so you can get better images and better diagnoses of more newborns for less cost up front and clearly stating the country over time. this is up and running in paul alto. it should be everywhere. this is the kind of opportunity we hope to tackle with the broadband project. the last example, i was in erie, pa., and i met a farmer. i met a farmer who says, when i went into farming, the last thing i thought would matter to me were computers and internet connections.
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but today i don't think farmers can do their jobs without computers and high-speed internet connections for real- time weather, pricing and selling their products. he asked us to do everything we can to extend broadband to all americans. here is the challenge, of course. nearly 40% of american households don't have broadband. in some communities, low income and minority communities, that number is closer to 60%. this is why the president and congress did two things and recovery act. they started addressing this issue through $7 billion in broadband grants and why they gave the fcc the responsibility of developing the strategy. as the team started chat -- tackling this challenge, we set some goals.
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we want this process to be the most open ever at the fcc, the most participatory ever at the fcc, the most data driven ever at the fcc, and the most innovative ever at the fcc, encouraging experimentation to find solutions to make sure the commission meets this moment. yesterday when we welcome the broadband staff, we welcome and encouraged experimentation and innovation and we expect mistakes. today is the first hearing. i'm proud the commission is doing this. i fully expect it will not go perfectly. we are streaming it live, someone will -- something will go wrong. someone may get off on the wrong street. that is okay. this is a real-time, live experiment in democracy and participation. i think we will have an excellent day and it will get better and better. i am particularly pleased that
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the first workshop is on the government -- e.government and civic engagement. we have had people working really hard on e.government in the white house and indiana. and i am pleased that everything -- that this is our first topic is because everything flows from civic engagement. it is the foundation to the solutions to all our challenges. in the 21st century there is no excuse to find ways to connect all americans to each other and the government through high- speed internet. these workshops take on some added importance because the first round of filings in this proceeding did not advance the ball forward as much as it should. we are where we are, but it is
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essentials that through this process we have full participation, we have ideas that meet the moment, and that we receive data that tackles the hard questions that the commission has to address in this proceeding. with that, let me just say how pleased i am that we have the panel we have today. i am honored on behalf of the commission that we have the country's first chief information officer, then back kundra -- vivek kundra. we have that noveck, also are occupying in the commission, deputy chief technology officer for open government -- beth noveck. gramm richard, one of the most innovative mares in the country, especially around digital -- graham richard, one of the most
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innovative mayors in the country. let me go quickly through the other names. we have some extraordinary thinkers working around, engaging the public and thinking about these hard issues. norm ornstein from american enterprise institute, andrew reseij from personal democracy forum, ellen goodman from rutgers, john wonderlich from the sunlight foundation, and beth white had the great -- an order to get the olympics to chicago, had a great idea of electing a president from chicago. the immediate next that is to let eugene huang open this workshop.
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until there recently he was at the treasury department working around difficult issues with economic relations with china. before that he was in the state of virginia as the secretary of technology. between eugene and vivek, we are proving there is great innovation each -- east of the mississippi and we are looking forward to innovators from west of the mississippi joining us. i look forward to a productive workshop, and thank you all for being here. [applause] >> thank you, mr. chairman, for those warm and inspiring opening remarks. it is my distinct privilege to welcome each and every one of you to this first workshop of the national broadband task force. my name is eugene huang and i will serve as moderator. joining me today from fcc is kristen kane, national
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broadband task force, mary beth richards, special counsel, and steve van roekel, managing director of the office -- or office of the managing director. i would like to extend a special welcome to those of you joining us on line. i understand there are over 100 individuals and entities who are registered, including individuals through the webex online platform. it demonstrates the power of broadband technology to promote a more open and transparent government. this first workshop covers two topics -- open government and civic participation. for both topics we assembled some of the lead practitioners and experts from using broadband to build an open government and transform civic engagement. before we began, i would like to know this workshop is the beginning of the conversation. today's workshop will not answer
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all of the difficult questions for us. but it is a strong and important start. with the individuals gathered here today, through a conversation of commission staff, panel participants and the public, we aim to learn about best practices, generate ideas and augment the knowledge of members of the commission. today's discussion will frame and shape the work of the national broadband -- broadband task force and guide development of the plan. for the first panel, i would like to welcome the deck kundra -- the that kundra, graham richard, former mayor of fort wayne, and beth noveck, deputy chief technology officer. at the conclusion we will open up to the public for questions and answers. before i began i would like to ask our audience here in washington to please turn off
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your cellphone or at least put them on vibrate. we want to make sure our participants on line to not hear the buzzing of ourself phones here in washington. with that, vivek, the floor is yours. >> thank you, eugene, for that kind introduction. mr. chairman, thank you very much for holding this very important hearing. a subject that affects the united states government, and more importantly, the very people we serve. if we really think about this in a macro level, there have been three major revolutions that now lead to the technology revolution. the first was the agricultural revolution. if you think about the movement of people and the movement of capital, it was limited to a essentially a 25 square mile -- an individual could literally
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spend an entire lifetime with the means of production and distribution of food and distribution of goods. then came in the industrial revolution. as the chairman said, which trains and the ability to move goods and people -- with trains and the ability to move goods and people at much higher velocity. as we move to the technology revolution, one of the things that happened is we fundamentally changed the way we interact with government. if you look at the major innovations that have happened within the federal government and how we serve the american people, what we have been able to do as a result of broadband penetration across the country and the ability to engage the american people has changed permanently how we operate. yet there are too many people who are not able to participate. what i want to do is highlight a couple of things that we are doing within the united states government that are showing the
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idea of open government and democratizing data, how they are actually producing results. one of the big things we are focused on is to simplify access to government services. what underpins that is the digital and the structure that powers the modern economy. one of the big problems we have is the ability to access some of these services in a way that allows people to, on a real-time basis, see how their government is performing, be able to participate, and actually move toward a participatory democracy. there are unprecedented opportunities as a result of some of the work we're doing in terms of citizen participation, transparency and open government, how we democratize data. two big phenomenon, on the -- how we take this $76 billion that the united states government spends today on
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information technology, the majority of that number is act -- money is actually spent on integration services. how do we take advantage of some of the innovations in the consumer markets where there is a darwinian pressure to innovate and where we see massive gains in productivity that have not unfortunately been matched in government? secondly, how the look at agencies that have actually done a good job, such as u.s. patent and trademark office, to fundamentally change the way the agency operates? what i want to talk about from a participation perspective, the president talked about laying a new foundation, h rent -- a foundation book on transparency and open government. one of the things we looked at as we looked at the problem of optimizing and rationalizing the $76 billion the government spends, we asked a very simple question which is, how can we engage the american people to help us shape the way we spent
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that money and recognize the fact that the federal government does not have a monopoly on the best ideas out there. what we decided to do is fundamentally change the way we iraq chile managing by engaging the american people -- we we are actually managing. the old model was an opaque, closed exclusive model of managing $76 billion. it was bad and there was a faceless accountability. in 1994 there was a report issued by the senator that talk about billions of dollars that are being wasted on information technology projects. last year there is a report that talked about $30 billion of i.t. investments that are in trouble. yet of the reporting that was there was the management watch list, a static list that congress, gao, an administration issued. the president talked about a culture where we move away from
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secrecy, where we can change the default position from secret to open and transparent. what we did was build a dashboard that would lift the veil on i.t. expenditures. as soon as we launched this, that exposed every layer of spending, from who was -- responsible for the project -- and you connect to see who is running it -- which projects we are working on, where we are in terms of milestones. we saw very quickly that we got over 43 million hits. there is this hungerford disinformation in the public domain. -- hungerford for this information. so we can engage the american people to give us ideas where we can move the needle and find innovative path as we invested
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in the projects. what we saw quickly was a whole new model of looking at i.t. projects, to the point of the veterans of the station recently announced it is temporarily halting 45 projects. one of the worst offenders out of the project was one that was 110% over budget and over 17 months behind schedule. and you can see as we move forward, cio's, that we were not looking at the project is starkly and analyzing them. we announced publicly within 30 days we have to evaluate every single project. as you can see from the chart, we hit that mark. public was calling, the congress was calling, gao was calling and asking each cio where they were and the office of management and budget. what that led to was better governance in terms of what we were doing. but this was one model. it will take a lot of hard work
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to move in that direction. we also made sure we democratized the data so people can actually slice and dice and give us different views of risk across the board. we allow people to actually take any of the projects they are interested in -- if you are interested in public health or education or and -- energy, you can't and dead them on facebook or twitter for your own personal -- you can embed them on face back or twitter or your own personal blog. it is not limited just to the federal work force. we are looking at new and innovative ways to approach the problem. another area, thinking more broadly, around democratizing data across the board. we embarked on an initiative called data.gov that would release as much of the public debt as possible, recognizing that there is information that is pocked -- classified or
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sensitive. as of now we have over 100,000 data feeds from every aspect of government operations, from how the essay is looking at flights -- how the faa is looking at flight, to toxic waste data from the epa, data from medicare and medicaid. and what we are finding very quickly is that innovation is happening in the market as a result of democratizing the data. within 24 hours of launching this, the sunlight foundation actually launched the compotation -- launched a competition, $20,000 for anyone who could develop applications based on data.gov. we sought a number of applications. an example is flyontime.us. they took the data that faa put
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out and made an application that allowed you and i to map out from one city to another, the average delay time of flight so we can make a better decision. not only that, but we issued a challenge to cio's across the country, every state and local government, to create a data.gov, so for the first time you will be able to see what is happening across the transportation grid. for that matter, broadband. so you can think about comparing whether it is cellphone plans or thinking about where you have broadband deployment and where you don't and what is the delta, to applications developed with the intersection of multiple data feeds allows us to see spikes and disparities as to what is happening as far as health outcomes for how we can address some of the toughest problems this country faces today. when it comes to broadband
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deployment, though, what we are seeing in the federal government is in there are some agencies that have led -- some because they were looking at broadband and teleworking to drive productivity and to insure they attract the best people, and others were reacting to add of work -- adverse circumstances. patent and trademark office is a perfect example, a federal agency were close to 50% of employees are actually teleworking. they will tell you already seeing cost savings and 14,000 tons of carbon emissions saved. the other example i would like to highlight is the gao. after september 11, it had to vacate its building because of the anthrax attack at the senate
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hart building. as a function, they had to come up with a solution in terms of how to continue the operations of the united states government in that environment. the employees actually turned to teleworking which is really important. across the board, from the forest service, nasa, department of defense, we are also as a government consumers of the technology that is deployed out there in the consumer space. it is very important for us to be able to leverage that in times of great need. as a matter of fact, as a policy, as we think about the very nature of work in the 21st century. what i would like to close with is to talk about the huge opportunity and importance of the great work you are doing here today. as we think of health care and education, as we think about fundamentally changing and introducing technologies across
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the board, we have an imperative to make sure that communities that are not able to access broadband or not able to access the global economy and the digital world are disenfranchised. what we need to do is redouble efforts to make sure that we have an infrastructure across the country that will allow us to take this nation to the 21st century. thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak. i look forward to the discussion. [applause] >> thank you. we will now hear from graham richard, former mayor of fort wayne, indiana. >> thank you very much for the opportunity to be with you today and to share a story about a community in the midwest that
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perhaps maybe both metaphorically and perhaps physically as we look at it a city that has 250,000 people -- and when i became mayor in 2000 we are facing a recession. not the recession, but a recession. the great history of our community is innovation. when i look back, in 1980 there were 13,000 g.e. workers, 10,000 international harvester workers, 105% average annual wage for the citizens -- high paid, low-skilled jobs. by 2000, 83%. president obama was just an our neck of the woods where there is 20% unemployment. the issues about broadband hoping to retain jobs and becoming part of an economic development strategy is what i want to talk about. in our case we decided early on,
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if this young man were to grow up to enjoy hundreds of miles of greenways and lots of wonderful assets of our community, we have to think about how he as a young people would be able to compete in the world that we all know now to be much more competitive. we set three goals. retaining quality jobs, we wanted to be the safest city of our size in the country, and build excellent government services. john chambers says it this way -- i might change that word too collaborative government. when you look at the cult -- infrastructures, if a city does not have a broadband plan as part of the plans to invest in those things that will make the difference in the lives of their community, they will lose. so what we did was to say, how
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can we have smart, fast, agile, green city government to support the things we knew our citizens would need. in addition to use business management teams from management teamsg.e. and gracie and and others -- management teams from g.e. and others, we were able to pick take the head counts -- nine different labor unions -- and we set out and we engaged arts and minds of city employees to keep our head count flat and improve services. technology is a key part. but the leadership work with our employees became a critical part in and powering them to help solve problems. you can see data about the change of population, principally by annexation. the city is 109 square miles in a large county. examples of savings --
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technology was always a part of every project. what can we do to make services more effectively available at a lower price? if the department of defense had a similar savings, it would be $50 billion. you take things better, and, like looking at safety. 50% of most city budgets, as much as 70 percent go to public safety but we were not safe with our own employees. technology -- because of the expansion for 800 -- 850 miles, up to 1,200 miles of roads, we needed more equipment. the st. dept. -- the streets department said we needed more street sweepers. i thought we might not have used it as efficiently as we could. we used a real-time wireless monitoring of when the street sweeper was actually sweeping verses the time it was going to
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the location. you can see that we actually had very inefficient use of that vehicle. that was just one example of many where technology help us improve public service. libraries -- we have many languages spoken in our schools. we have more burmese residents in fort wayne than any other city in the country. these are individuals frequently that do not speak english. serious problems, many of them having health challenges. the library is the place where people go. we have now connected all libraries with a system, wireless wifi, library -- wireless sites in the locations. people are scheduled to use those sites because that is where you get on line to file unemployment, medicaid, medicare. schools -- what if we could get every school system -- student in our community to have access
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to the very best on the internet and the web? you will hear from ba'ath about collaboration -- beth about collaboration. what we did was say let's connect, with a nonprofit entity, so collect -- connecting all libraries and every school to the system. what does it mean? this fall we will be offering for the first time in our community, mandarin chinese education, language instruction for any high school student who wants it, japanese, and arabic. that will be offered from the campus to students three days on an online learning program with high video connection videotwo days at the university. -- i video connection, two days at the university. when gte was purchased by
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verizon -- -- was purchased by verizon. i said we do not want to be last. the strategy of having fiber optic access was a strategy that was a win for everybody. we were able to convince verizon to build it, first in the midwest, 132 homes and businesses -- 132,000 homes and businesses. we promised to make sure we work to get all the utilities locate quickly and create an innovative as -- innovators form. investing in companies to develop new broadcast applications and new teams for broadband. the goal, working in an innovation center, in addition to the campus -- i would just use a couple. more than 40 different i - teams.
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what -- wouldn't be nice if everyone had electronic records. this is a not-for-profit no federal funds, no government funds, one of the largest in the country, health care clinics, dental and medical. with electronic medical record and the ability to diagnose potential retinitis for tight to diabetic patients remotely, we have had eyesight save -- for type 2 diabetes patients. having it read quickly and accurately. hearing impaired, simple, very important. individuals who cannot hear are finding that by using a digital bridge through an interpreter in indianapolis who is calling a computer repair call center in salt lake city, that individual using signing will now be able to get resources and communicate in ways that make them more
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productive. senior connect -- digital literacy. we have broadband, the combination of high-speed wireless and fiber optics. why aren't people using it? in many cases, they don't have a computer, they don't understand the power broadband. this is a case where seniors in high schools get refurbished computers from the location technical school given by local businesses. we put them in homes and community centers and work with senior citizens to get them connected to the web. they can began accessing their own digital medical records, communicating with grandchildren. before i became mayor, there was a terrible tire fire in an area of the highest percentage of low-income single mothers. i said, let's think about building new suburban homes with purchases -- porches but in
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an urban style, but let us put the fiber of through the homes and take a 95-year-old home and retrofit to make it a smart, green home. so the single mom and that home can remotely see her latchkey kid, communicate with good communication when the sun comes home, and with wireless interconnected remote handling of the appliances and 80 ac, save energy, and at night she can take a course -- appliances and hvac. and low income family and our community, household and transportation energy costs are two of the fastest growing costs in the last three decades. if you can reduce that cost, that person can invested in education, downpayment for a new coat -- for a new home.
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crime -- a lot is spent on crime. you call 911, the folks need to respond. the worst crime rate and 28 years -- we said how can use broadband to deploy public safety personnel. you have expensive people and equipment. how can they do patroling and local police work rather than paperwork? early on we called a summit, pull together all the public safety partners from the state and federal level and began to figure out ways to communicate data more effectively, including daily tracking, automated fingerprint identification, remotely from a police car we can take a fingerprint and search a million fingerprints' to quickly identify an individual and what the problem or a challenge might be. dod, we have a partnership with the department of defense. the little orange robach --
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think of columbine or a terrible fire where your public safety personnel are in jeopardy. while we were doing training we actually had a live hostage- taking in a house that was suspected to be that of a drug lord. we took the orange guy, blasted the door, put in the house -- found out the guy climbed up into the attic. remember, no human being has entered the house. we were able to apprehend the individual, finding him crawl's pitched in the attic without a hostage -- crouched in the attic. broadband allows us to build collaborative networks of innovation and problem solving. i have three ideas i would like to present very quickly. one, i think as it relates to the broadband plan, if we could see a collaborative effort at
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the federal level with all of the other national plans better taken place. we have plans coming from hud, transportation, we have a homeland security plan, health care plans. we all know the energy plan. i see broadband as being the innovation platform to support all of this. second point, in terms of the web portal you hear -- you have here the fcc, let us make a dynamic and collaborative and a place where millions and come and share ideas about this plan, and we can suck up the great information coming from the innovative proposals in the first round of the broadband stimulus money. the last point -- how do you take the innovation success stories of places like the national institutes of health, national science foundation, and others -- how can we create may
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be 100 cities, in network, a competitive process where we say indiana, in your city, you have high-speed broadband, let us now create an incentive for bringing innovative broadband applications right down to helping people get better health care, improve public safety, improve the energy costs of their homes, figure out ways to get higher levels of education? and maybe that innovation can spread and we can again be the leader in the world in terms of innovation using high-speed broadband and we can learn from what these small cities and innovative cities are doing. thank you very much for the opportunity to be with you. [applause] >> our final presentation for this first panel is from beth noveck, deputy chief technology officer for open government. >> i want to thank the entire
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broadband team for having me here today. and my co-panelists. i have to do cleanup, if you will. so i will try to cover other examples. but i will make many of the similar points, points that have been echoed by the president, which is that broadband is helping us to create a platform, allowing us to fulfil our commitment to tap but intelligence and expertise for the american people -- of the american people. looking outside washington to find new ways of tapping the intelligence and expertise and experience of ordinary americans to solve the problems of our time. more americans today own cell phones than own dishwashers. the question is, what does this growth of technology, the internet and the devices that allows us to connect to the broadband superhighway that the fcc is working to put in place, what does it mean for political
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institutions? what does it mean for government and the future of our democracy? i am really delighted that today, the kickoff for the workshops -- really all of these workshops that themselves reflect openness and participation, that the first workshop should be about open government. it is not surprising this parallels in some way the fact that the very first executive memorandum that president obama signed was his memorandum about transparency and open government. it signaled the commitment is administration has for being more purchase of the tory, for being more open, and creating the policy -- more participatory, for being more open, and greeting the policy -- reading the policy that enables us to create the most participatory, collaborative democracy of our time. it comes in an era where we have that technology that allows us to do this, to work together in teams and groups and
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communities, whether to build software platforms like mozilla browser, or crowd sourcing information about the flu or h1n1, who for debate in wikipedia, and we have folks participating from second life in this workshop did. the goal here is, at the president has said, to work together to solve problems. because the problems we face are many, the problems we face are great, and we can solve them better working together. this is the guiding philosophy behind the white house open government initiative and the administration's commitment to this set of issues, which is to think about how we bring innovation through broadband technology and the use of technology to the way the government works, both to provide better services, create the data transparency, but also to create more open ways of working and more open policy making. we put up something we called
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innovations gallery on the white house website to showcase some of the many platforms. we will look to the national purposes team to help us identify more examples of the excellent use of broadband in government already to try to open up the way the government works and to really show case the way we're doing everything from -- from the beginning -- from the projects vivek is spearheading, to work at making procurement more open, for example, at department of defense, the way the many government agencies now -- and i have to say we have gone from one at the beginning of in the station, to half a dozen that i using technology as a way to consult employees through electronic suggestion boss -- boxes, helping people connect people on the ground, in the institutions, to think about how we improve the way they work, to make them, as graham has done in
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the noveck -- indiana, more green, more innovative, by tapping intelligence for those who work in the institutions but also the public that interacts with and worked with government. this is why we created an open government policy-making process. as we thought about what are the ways in which we can begin to lower and erased any impediments, and policy impediments that might exist to the adoption of broadband policies in government and by government to engage the american people, we turn to the american people to ask us best how to do this. instead of the traditional process of drafting a policy and going out for comment, potentially when the comments come to late, we very much like this broadband process, turn the policy-making process inside out, and went to the american people first for their ideas, and to government employees, about how to do this. we launched a three-phase process that involved
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brainstorming, discussion of the difficult ideas and challenges we might be facing, and finally turning to people just the last few weeks to use an on-line wiki, collaborative drafting tools to create language that we might use in crafting open government policy that would allow us to use wikis and blogs. it is why the regulations.gov team, run by the epa that enables britain vacation in rulemaking -- enables participation and rulemaking, launched a problem to reinvigorate what regulations participation might look like, what it might mean for american to participate in crafting the 4000 to 8000 rules the government makes every year. we are working on pilot programs to bring broadband technologies
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into the agencies to make these innovations possible and to reinvigorate the democrat -- democratic right of participation. i mentioned broadband-based suggestion bosses like tsa's idea factory. we mentioned the united states patents and trademark office. i would be remiss in not talking about their peer to patent project, to connect volunteer scientists and technologists to help them make better and smarter decisions in forms by the expertise of people from the outside the institution. -- informed by the expertise. how we can connect people by using the tools, not only to consume services from government but also to provide their expertise and thinking. to tap the intelligence and expertise of the american people to ensure we are making the best possible decisions, whether it
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is about broadband or patent policy. that is where we have started to do things like adopt the use of new blogs, office of technology policy and the white house, helping the public prints as bait in crafting recommendations on scientific integrity pursuant to a request from the president back in march. we needed to come up with new ways of thinking about how we tap, not just general expertise, but scientific expertise to inform the way we make decisions. we're just in the beginning of thinking about what is the potential for using broadband tools to improve the way the government makes decisions and to create a more participatory and open democracy. how might we use things like web-based games, like the kinds of virtual worlds we see involved in this presentation today to deepen the ties between the u.s. and moslem communities around the world to fulfil the commitment he made in a speech in cairo? another major commitment the
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president has made is around science, technology, engineering, and math and investing 3% of gdp in science are indeed. how can the new techniques being exploited -- explored help us actually tackle some of the major issues that we are confronting? again, how we solve the major problems we face today using the new tools that are available? what i wanted to close is a couple of examples, not only of how we might use broadband technology to foster to the patient and the government but how we might use broadband and our investment to foster civic engagement outside of government, allowing people to solve problems in our own communities. whether it is blogging about problems in local communities -- this is more in new york than indiana. whether it is gathering data, to analyze data sets coming off of data.gov.
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whether it is making commitments to one another, as is in this case -- if you participate in cleaning up the park, i will donate $100 to help by the garbage bags. whether it is actually helping to crawled source, to get networks of people involved in identifying problems like pot holes in their communities so they can be fixed and identified. whether it is using, again -- this is on-line technologies to enable people to solve problems, as in this case in connecticut. this is an older project but my favorite example because it involves senior citizens and young people involved in cleaning up derelict building sites in municipalities in connecticut. what was wonderful was the collaboration that the government undertook with citizens to help solve the problem to clean up those sites, thereby bringing down
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crime, bringing down drug use and other urban blight problems, all because these networks -- the government and citizens were connected together on broadband networks, using new visual technologies to help work on doing cleanup and solving problems together. just this year, more recently, a blogging similar ideas in san francisco. project connected the citizenry and local communities to pull and collaborate on applying their buying power, not to engage in a boycott, not the stick, but the carrots, to direct purchasing power to the businesses that were the most green. and what the extra money they would receive from the extra purchases consumers were making, they would reinvest in retrofitting and other environmental improvements. let me close by saying that the promise that broadband offers us, i think, both to create better government institutions,
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to create better civic engagement in communities, is one i think we see here, taking up graham's challenge -- and sec's commitment to create a federal communications commission to use broadband technologies and. setting up broadband.gov and creating the two dozen participatory workshops, to now launching -- and i want to announce -- i think i am the first to mention it, really -- we set up fcc-opengov.broad band.com -- allow people to suggest examples and stories to inform the team and the crafting of a national broadband team to tell us, please, how are you
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using broadband technology to promote civic engagement and open government? if you want to jump ahead to tlework and telemedicine, and a minute examples you brought to us from indiana, this is the place we want to hear about them. we can only talk about a few examples of these workshops. we want to invite you to participate -- fcc-opengov oideascale.com. and to the virtual world where this event is being lied strained today, and now, again, more people to participate -- being live streamed today. demonstrating really in practice the potential of the use of
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broadband to create truly open and participatory government. thank you. [applause] >> great, thank you. i am sure we will have on broadband.gov, and linked to the -- a link to the url. we will now turn to q&a for the fcc panel. >> my first question -- you gave some great advice to the broadband tax -- task force, your three points to prioritize. i would love the same top three advise for the mayors of the country who maybe don't have broadband in their rural town. what are the top three things? >> convene, collect, collaborate. pull together people and their community -- in every community -- there are 40 small indiana
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town that have firebird to their home, most of them through funding. there are ways you can do this. only two are municipal utility. the advice, go to the people in your community who are already using high-speed broadband. hospitals, colleges, universities -- in every single indiana town -- by the way, many of these communities have fewer than 10,000 be bought as residents. so it is really a function of local leadership. figure out a plan -- who is out there who would like to work with us? .
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>> what are the best practices for sharing best practices? >> i think part about broadband -- the way to advance a broad band agenda has to be at a higher level. what i mean by that is you have to be able to lead by the value it would create, such as how will it change the way medicine is practiced? how will it change education? how will it change the way government operates? i think it is less about the technology or the deployment of the technology itself, the making of a very powerful case in terms of value it will lead
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to the public sector and to the american people. if we look at the uspto example, it was not driven just because of the broadband technology underneath it, but it was driven because there was a demand. there is leadership in terms of adopting new technologies and making sure they were changing the way those institutions were running. what we need to do better across the federal government is to make sure that we look at ourselves and self image of this $76 billion consumer, and think about how we can leverage some of these technologies and inshore that we are scaling these ideas. -- and ensure we are scaling these ideas. >> let me say briefly in response, i think the best
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example of how one engages in best practice sharing is through leadership. the work he has been doing, this has been an inspiration and model for many people as he talked about he has put a challenge to copy the model. we are in seeing that happening in that states and we are seeing states adopting their own version of president obama's memorandum. i have a mayor i am talking to on monday who says i wanted to open policy-making in the same way. i think leadership is important in sending a message around best practice sharing, but i think projects that have success are important. it is one reason we are inviting others to use new technologies to engage in best practice
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sharing. that means when we talk about how we pushout data, we are trying to do that in ways that allow other people to share those models in their own communities. not making everyone come to us, but allowing data to be downloadable by others so they can take them into their own communities. this allows us a way to think about how we engage in best practice sharing. it is all set your platforms and new technologies. we are working hard to make it easier of acquiring new tools by making sure that they are available, so when the general services administration negotiates model contracts with many technology providers, when the move towards this infrastructure that allows people to share tools, that makes it easier for people who want to, to create a blog or use
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different techniques that allow them to engage in open government, and a around some of the best practices around other broadband technology. >> we have a follow-up question from our online audience. many the -- many examples you cited are impressive. how can citizens find these opportunities? is there a web site that lists these examples? >> may i jump in on that because that is something i felt frustrated about. and silos of federal research you can find wonderful examples, i would hope this plan would engage in creating a national clearing house, a place where you can get these best practices. many of us are anxious to see video-based 911. you are at the scene of the
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accident and somebody takes a picture, and then they called using old-fashioned hi, i am reporting someone who appears to have a heart attack. they just had a picture of that. why can we not have a video 911 system and share that? this innovation is in 100 cities where we test, we say to the world bring your apps, let's bring the best services to serve these communities and let's make it widely shared, and let's have the ability -- let's have expert panels and let's have it citizens to give feedback to these ideas.
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no one is as smart as all of us. if we can all collaborate, that is the power of broadband. how do we get these ideas out? that is one of the critical things you can do to come up with a practical way of quickly getting innovation out there to folks that want to use its and will modify it and adapt it and make it their own. >> thank you. >> i have a quick request of you, mayor richard. if you would not mind fleshing out for us in more detail some of the powerful strategies you have recommended to us, particularly the one about the 100 cities, and give us more details about how we might bring that to life in the context of this plan. >> thank you, i will try to put my passion to paper. >> the question i have is
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somewhat similar to mary beth's question. it gets at the challenges of folks in any level of government, at not only adopting innovative technologies, but taking the next step to innovate themselves. and beyond sharing best practices, are there other challenges we need to be cognizant of with regard to basic capacity? are there different strategies each of you in your roles had used to help people be able to take advantage of the opportunity? >> i think he raised an important point about -- i will speak to the open government that we're focused on today. it has to be a two-way street,
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both in terms of what government can do to create and poor freight more opportunities for citizen participation, -- to create and proliferate more opportunities for citizens of participation. organizations that have become used to a model of that closed model that we talked about, have become used to wielding a certain set of tools and a more limited set of tools and going around the closeness of our government institutions. as we think about more open ways of providing data, with casts of live events, creating on-line policy forums. -- webcasts and live events. they're now being invited to participate for the first time
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in new ways by technology. i can report that i came from a workshop earlier this week called strengthening our nation's democracy, that brought together 100 different institutions representing the democracy movement. it took upon themselves the commitment to say we need to build a tool kit of the civic literacy. we need to think about what are the skills people need in order to work together in a broad band future, so working together -- it is in the book. i cannot remember. what does that mean in terms of technical literacy, but what does it mean more generally in terms of ways of collaborating and working together in teams? what does it mean for organizations to say we will step up to the plate when the white house is asking about open government policy, or right now
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we are running 84 a on air cookies policy -- we are running a forum on our coolies policy. -- our cookies policy. and we are getting lots of people commenting and responding to one another, but there are still traditional people sending in a letter is at the 11th hour, and we are reposed in them online even though those folks have access to a computer, because we want everybody to comment on each others' comments. we want to make it clear that we take seriously these new ways of working, and that requires some investment in civic literacy. it is an important point to the ways we think about funding and what is the tool kit for a healthy democracy?
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>> from my experience the, when you look at some of the challenges this country faces in the k-12 system, being at the third grade reading level is of vital. literacy is important as we think about the three windows, the telephone, internet and c ell phone. we need to think about the cell networks and the opportunities that can be released through cell phones. we have heard a lot about the penetration of cell phones in india and china and africa, where you can go to villages and you create new information markets. the same way, the story that has been told in the u.s. is as you look at schools and literacy,
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one of the most common factors we find is a lot of the people actually have cell phones. one of the primary means of communication is still through text messaging and figuring out how can we tap into that space? how do we look at the cell networks and communications there to figure out in what context do we think about democracy and the cell phone itself, and not just broadband and the second window? >> one of the challenges we found was that families of low income typically a single mother, might get, that if her kids were not on line and capable of being able to have the skills of producing a video to communicate have the skills of the video literacy and being able to understand how they can access services, that they would
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have a difficult time being as successful as their peers. we set up an interim program on line and said let's get 100 retired schoolteachers who might not want to come down to the urban league computer center, but if we could connect that significant lerner with that child of some aspiration, then we could create an on-line entering. could that accelerate the pace of educational attainment for that young person? we got mixed results. my hope is that maybe this broadband plan the president already with roots and community organizers will think of a teach for america, a group of young people trained or entrepreneurs looking to get back into public
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service that will go door-to- door working with families. think of this as a technology tupperware party. think of this as an opportunity to reach out at the grass roots and show a person how their life can be better. they can get connected, they can communicate with relatives, they can get remote diagnostics from a health care clinic. that is the grass roots movement i would love to have been part of that 100 cities where we test out this technology of volunteers working in every community. >> one of the other things i would encourage you to consider is the game changing nature of actually deploying broadband. we have thought about it in terms of typing and interacting that way. he will be able to shatter barriers when people can communicate with each other across state lines, across the
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world without having to worry about that interface. it will be pirate by what you do here in terms of the work. -- it will peak howard -- powered by what we do here in terms of work. i ask you to state your name and organization. >> my name is jacqueline with the minority telecom council. i have a follow-up question. for unevenness apelles that have difficulty connecting , they're low on -- for the people who have difficulty connecting, if they turn to broadband to get their message across, " they still miss these low income constituents because the adoption rate is so low? without universal broadband service, it doesn't reliance on
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broadband for government amplify the voice is that already have access to these technologies? >> lun i see a community, i see so many different dimensions. -- when i see a community. a person who is blind or who has hearing impaired, we have an increasing population that will have a hearing impairment. those individuals may not have the financial constraints of those you are talking about. i would envision a day where when you have substantial public services coming to a household, maybe there is a young person with a father who is away in prison. the probability of that young person moving towards that same direction is very high, so how do you intervene when there is already a lot of public money coming in terms of assistance to that family?
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it seems to me that just like you -- now some schools are paying for computers for all children. should we be thinking about a national broadband policy that makes available by buying down the cost of the barriers to entry to those families? it would be a good investment, but we don't seem to have data on the payback of what you do if you had subsidized access to families that are already receiving thousands of dollars of support by making sure that they also can do the things online that they are standing in line to do or waiting at the library to get a computer. >> on june 25 the president announced initiative with the immigration service that we had the privilege to be a part of
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which is going to use the cell phone platform, that technology that is more ubiquitous to deliver updates about the status of immigration applications via cell phone. many more people are going to have access to information that previously was never available to them before because that existed in a close the box. and meeting like this that would have only been accessible to someone who could come to washington, that is a much higher barrier of participation. by lowering the barrier of making it available through a web connection, so we are creating opportunities using other technologies, we begin to lower those barriers, but we are working towards projects like the president announced from the immigration service that will allow people to get the window
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into government more excessively. we do in a policy to match that that will help us figure out how we can do more to create open ness -- to create more openness. >> if i could pick up on that. i am from a law firm in d.c., but i am here on behalf of government organizations. one of the things we would like you to asked is what are the threats to the ongoing communications and community- building that local governments -- it is terrific a lot of people are seeing this on the web, but for years a lot of people saw this on government access channels. they did not have the ability to
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interact the way folks can e- mail today, but a lot of those are disappearing and disappearing because laws are changing allegedly to enhance the deployment of broadband, which we are not seeing. as you are doing your list and your first question was, what can other mayors do? a lot of them are not doing it on a daily basis, they are doing it with their governmental access channels. please identify some of those threats as they go away, because they are. >> thank you. a two-part question from our online audience. what is the most vigorous example of reaching out to the public that is going on within the federal government?
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a lot of data is being generated. what are the best examples of the public interacting with this data? >> where we are seeing a huge impact on the it -ford, where it is moving the way the federal government is spending money. -- the it dsahboard. the second part of that question was around data. on the data side, one of the things we recognize is that we don't really know which data feeds will lead to better analysis. we are trying to release as much data as possible with the exception of information that may be classified. as a result, we are finding a lot of innovation out there. a lot of people are spawning patterns that we have not seen
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before. just looking at the airlines, people have said this is fascinating. we never thought this flight was this late, so people are changing their behavior. in the district of columbia, based on where you are standing, if you have and i found -- if you have an iphone, you can look at where the closest metro station is and what time the train is coming. you can also see it close to where crime is where you're standing. you can also see the clothes as far as in the restaurants, -- you can also see the closest bars and restaurants. if we could create a national grid around information, it will
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influence the way the act in torrance -- in terms of letting us make better decisions because the government has made a decision not to keep the data secret. >> we have time for one final question. >> this has been a great panel, and i appreciate these questions. i am with the american library association. you have some great library people there to work with you. one of the questions i have is while we are building up broadband, we talked about broadband candi the library community is one such way in -- the broad band community is one such way to define the information. within a national broadband plan, how would you deal with the human infrastructure that meets to be developed to ensure
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that there is a collaboration? our research shows where there has been successful broadband is where there has been quality leadership with lots of collaboration. convened, connect and collaborate. but there is this human infrastructure it that we -- and tell us baby boomers die off, -- until us baby boomers style of, how would you do this? should that be at the local or national level? >> part of the purpose is to ask questions and offer comments, so i will take this as a wonderful comment to think about a hard issue for what this means in terms of how we think about our institutions.
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we can lower the barriers and the way we make decisions to foster cooperation, we change the way people worked either. we create new mechanisms for people to collaborate. the example popping into my head is in left field, but it is in response to another question. it was about a kid i knew it named sam. he lives in illinois and he and his friends got together and decided to film an expos a on their teacher -- they decided to decidedan expose on their teacher. they adopted -- they did this on their own of recognizing the ways in which they could collaborate to change the institution in which they
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operate and, but there is a way in which we who have power in these institutions need to embrace these ways of working to encourage people to work together on making this video projects. to cross swords and permission about h1n1, and the institutions spurring those, whether it is the libraries or government institutions playing catch-up, all we can do is take your question as an injunction to say we need to do more of this as we think about what our innovation policy looks like. it is always about investing in people not only through to the national thinking about -- not only through a traditional -- think about how do we train
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people for 21st century chomps? that means new ways of working and new institutions that know how to respond to them. >> one of the biggest problems you see is the fact that so much of what we do on-line requires training. what you will see the greatest innovation in the coming decade is going to be around the human condition and -- human computer interface. i know there are people on a second life, but imagine a universe where you have been " star trek" -- you could ask questions to the computer and get answers. if you look at some of these software companies, they have made it so complicated to interact with their technology is. at the same time, the underlying architecture -- it is almost a
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chicken and egg question because a lot of it was built with constraints. therefore, you have to deploy technologies that are much more complicated in terms of communicating. as broadband deployment, and if you look at the megabits per second, how much information can we get through the pipeline? as new software technology is being introduced, you will see a huge change from how applications are built with video and much more human ways of interacting, rather than binary ways of interacting. >> thank you. please join me in thanking our guests for appearing today. [applause] we're going to take a five minute break for the next panel.
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>> i would like to welcome you back to our second panel which is on civic engagement. we have five speakers here. norman ornstein the public policy research, ellen goodman from the wrecker's school of law -- from the rutger's school of law. we will hear five minute
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presentations followed by "q & a. >> thanks, and let me thank blair and all of you for what you're doing, which takes on the importance of a top national priority. some of the earlier discussion -- everything in this society, from our discourse to our commerce, is going to be done through the vehicle of broadband as we move ahead. if we move to a society of haves and have-nots, it is simply not appropriate for a functioning democracy, moving to universal broadband is critical at so many levels. i want to focus on a couple of things. one is the public square and the second is the campaign finance
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system we have. on the public square, let me start by giving my definition. having a public square means having a viable forum where citizens can learn about a government, about what government is doing, about how government interacts with them. it is a place for its citizens to communicate with government. that includes communicating ideas. one of the great virtues of the obama perform, which senator obama and his colleague did it when he was back in the senate of putting all government contracts on line, is you can move beyond the small number of experts who can examine these to see if there are corrupt elements, to unleash the large number of people who may have
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more time and brainpower to do those things. putting all earmarks online is another way of doing this. it is also a way for citizens to air their grievances and other means, and enable those in government to learn what citizens are thinking. having a public square means having a forum for a row but he -- having a forum for robust discussion. that is a debate about issues, one that we should be having a more robust fashion than we are now on health reform. the forum for debate in a common space on the campaigns that we have. it is a real challenge to find a
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public square in an extended republic. it is something we have managed to do effectively in town meetings at the local level. doing it on a national level is difficult, it is something that was easier when we had three broadcast channels and virtually everybody tunes into them. it becomes much more difficult when you have a system witte fragmented areas of communication. -- when you have a system with fragmented areas of communication. it is extended into almost an infinite level with the internet. what it means is as we look for those innovative ways of developing a public square, ways in which people can learn about
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ideas, can have this debate in which they process of deliberation, cannot work unless everybody has access to what is going to be the vehicle for the public square. that vehicle will occur over a broad band. if you do not have access, it is the case that candidates will advertise on television. broadcast television remains a place where you have the greatest opportunity to reach the largest number of people, but more communication is going to occur over the other means, including the internet. if citizens don't have that access, that means they are shut out of the most essential elements of the public debate. just a few words on the second
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area. i have been engaged in a campaign finance reform for a long time. there is a real chance that the supreme court will knock the pins out from the final column inch of our funding system that has been in existence for 100 years. they could take away all restrictions and we will be back to square one and a brave new world. it is not clear where we are going. even if the court does not do this, they are chipping away at steadily at the system that exists. i have been spending time with my colleagues trying to look towards the next generation of campaign finance reform. what can we do that will fit within supreme court restrictions, but that can also
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lead to a better system that as much larger citizen participation, that moves away from large donors. they are a problem not just because they have an impact on political figures, but we have a shakedown scheme going on for a long time. my colleagues have come to the conclusion that the obama campaign offers the ideas and opening for what we could have in the future. for the first time in decades, it offers an opportunity to finance the -- doing that in the past 30 years was impossible because it was not cost- effective. i have many candidates tell me i would love to go back to the $25 ahead barbecues if i could break even i would do it, but it costs
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too much. now with communicating over the internet and contributed over the internet, that possibility exists. not every candidate is barack obama. by offering incentives for candidates to raise that money, incentives for citizens to give through tax credits, which some states have done effectively, we had a real chance to tilt the system dramatically and expand the number of people who give the small amounts. we know from experience that if you get even $5 just as you do with an ncaap pool, you get more involved. that is doable in a way that will make sense for our democracy if everybody has access to that system. what obama did was not just
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unleashed a small number of donors, but he created a community. that leverage the expansion of donors to do something more to expand democracy. if you cannot communicate with the largest group of people, especially those with limited resources, then we will not fulfill our goal would have been a democracy that works to the benefit of all and not just a few. it is critical to work through these elements of the future of our democracy to move as rapidly as possible to universal broadband. >> thank you. >> in february 2007, i started a political blog to track the way candidates were using the internet. we observed how citizens engaged
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in political discourse like facebook and youtube. we found the hands of americans commenting and watching youtube videos. of all the statistics we tracked, no statistic was more telling than those associated with youtube. there were over 150 million views of political candidates. many of them achieved the holy grail of the web. but as great as this explosion of media may have been, it was dwarfed by video created by the citizens themselves. in the 2008 election cycle, there were 1.3 billion in views of political videos created by this independent of the political parties.
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many remember a few of these videos that not only became sensations on the internet but also television. these videos had achieved legendary status. but for every video that got millions of viewers, there were thousands more that were only seen by a few thousand people. this process of forming political opinion is easily as old as our country's founding in he is back to the traditions of socrates. -- and goes back to the traditions of socrates. in 2008 because of the internet reach, at these conversations are now on steroids. this became clear to me about one year before the election when my 82-your old father asked
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me to come over to his house to help them how to send out more than one e-mail at a time. i went over to their house at their computer showing them how to use their address book and i looked at his e-mail. the subject line was launched this, and then there was a link to a barack obama youtube video. it was the one on race, which many of you remember. in the previous election cycle my parents would not have picked up the fund -- they would not have been picked up the phone or in at campaign rallies, but if they were sitting at a dinner party with friends and in politics came up, they would have made their opinions known. but it would have taken my parents months to catch up with
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their friends in this way and only if the subject of politics was brought up. here they were reaching 50 of their friends in one afternoon where it would have taken months in the past. i parents have now become 21st century pamphleteers and don't even know it. the bad news is that large segments of the population cannot participate in this sphere. in new york city, the average cost of broadbent access is close to $700 a year. -- the average cost of broadband access is close to $700 a year. critics of this point of view will claim that the job of delivering information should fall to journalists. in 1995, "the new york times" was on average 30 pages.
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it covered activities of towns around new york city as well. today, the metro section bill longer exists and the paper barely provides 2 to 4 pages of coverage. the effort to keep track of government and its activities is falling to a new generation the report to citizens via blogs and online sites, but if working- class people cannot afford this access, they are going to be excluded from this. it is time to redefine the term public itself. it is no longer adequate for any government law that requires a piece of data be available to the public only in a government office. in our connected world,
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information can only be defined if it is machine-readable and accessible on line. we talked about education previously. let me give you a quick example of how much the digital divide has changed and how a relates to our subject. in 1997 if you look at the information available in schools and businesses, they are essentially the same. you have fax machines, xerox machines and telephones. if you got a business card from someone in 1997 that did not have an e-mail, you would not have been surprised. we called it certainly web because there were not many websites. what has happened in 12 years? jack welsch said the internet was a fad and would not last
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more than 12 years. if you look at the "new york times" you would see a full page at where their web site would be on a small -- would be in small print. every fortune 500 company in america has either built or is rushing to build a 24-hour in network where their customers and employees are connected regardless of whether they are on a laptop or iphone. if you buy a digital camera case and whether -- in leather, the cow knows it. if you were to get a business card that does not have an e- mail address, they probably did it on purpose. we spend massive amounts of time talking about wiring schools, but let me give you this small statistic. schools are only physically open
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15% of all the time in the year. if you add it up, what productive activity in the 21st century could be successful being accessible only 15% of the time? i imagine if we were able to connect students, teachers and community leaders to each other and all the world's information and learning resources on the same 24 our dynamic networks that are businesses have figured out how to do in 12 years? i would like to make a comment about health care. i invested in a small company in poland that figured out how to read ekg's by connecting two electrodes to people's chests and sending that signal through a small blackberry device.
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how many of you think that within 10 years it will be possible for us to monitor people's hearts 24/7 to prevent them from dying of heart attacks or bring them health care? just a show of hands? more than half the room agrees. we have to rush to deliver that future, not only for the health care of the people but for our country. thank you. >> thank you. ellen goodman, the floor is yours. >> 42 years ago, the public broadcasting system was created to innovate communication technology that did not realize its potential for universal service. this system was structured to be local, to reach out to
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underserved communities to provide access deliberation -- provide access to communications. 20th century broadcast technology could only do so much. public media now has the possibility of fulfilling the vision of the great society. for this we need broadband to allow all communities to experience the power of the stories in the intermission. to proactively -- the power of stories and information. to support the production of information through -- by amateurs and the public. public media and broadband need each other to fill the basic functions of public service. here i have three different c's. to create , curate and connect.
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i want to illustrate these to show how technology can actualize the public in public media. when we talk about creating for the broad band future, it is not just about straining -- streming "sesame street." one of the highest priorities is addressing the loss of journalistic resources. npr is joining with a dozen stations to pilot a project to strengthen local news reporting and web operations. this and other news efforts create tools to facilitate production, search and public use on line. they also harness psittacine journalism. i witness is a program that provides web cams and skype to
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allow people to report on ground. public media has also excelled in producing documentaries that foster democratic practices. producers are linking these works to collective action. an example is a documentary that was first broadcast one decade ago about how residents created a community initiative to combat local crimes. his model inspired moreth inspiredis model in spite -- thi smoel -- this model inspired others. you can see how the original production became the connective tissue in the ensuing action and communication.
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an important role for public media is to curate public audio and video residing across platforms. the objective is to bring people to have permission and vice versa. it is here that the trust in npr becomes an invaluable asset. a good example is the public radio exchange. prx brings local stations to new content creators and distributes content through its public radio player through closed platforms like the iohone. the content is rated and curated by an editorial staff. prx indexes over 20,000 works, most of mitch -- most of which kendeigh -- most of which can be
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done. public stations are moving from being media entities to becoming community hubs that uses information to foster psittacine engagement with each other and with every nation that makes -- to foster a citizen engagement with each other. their effect is to grow the public media audience and the appetite for broadband, and to tell the underserved populations there is something for them. to link communications to access requires training media makers. several non-profit programs outfit public media makers with skills and multimedia production.
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one such group has activated hundreds of new voices. the new model of public media is exemplified in st. louis. the public station responded to the mortgage crisis by getting media companies together to help people save their foreclosed homes. it connected people to content about managing debt and financial literacy. in six months in help over 8200 families. -- it helped 8200 families. public media has big plans which are dependent on and will contribute to broadband. if there is a sustained development, public media can catalyze innovation and make sure people have access to vital information. i just want to mention because the mayor talked about
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americorps. there is a proposal modeled on teach for america, which is to have a public media that would go into communities. i think the proposal is for about 20, and they would not only go into underserved communities and provide assistance with technological literacy, but would also reach out to the gatekeepers and leaders in these communities. child care providers, caregivers for the elderly and equip them with not only the technology, but also the audiovisual know how to connect these communities to the possibilities of broadband and meaningful content. fulfilling the promise of public
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media will require many changes. chief among these is better broadband. just as the original system was premised on universal service in every town, so to the new media system requires broad band. the broadband system without the mindful efforts of public media entities to create and connect. just to take one example, science education could move to a new level with access to hd to videoconferencing. for example, data bases of molecules that reside in america's leading research universities, so we could imagine students talking to nasa experts and collaborating with other classrooms. we can do this now if the schools have the necessary van with.
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hd videoconferencing requires 100 megabits and excess of multiple classrooms to the science collect from -- to the science curriculum from nova. it requires nearly one gigabit of bandwidth. public media applications and content properly developed can capitalize on the multibillion dollar investment we have already made in public media infrastructure. they can leverage the multibillion dollar investment we are now making in broadband to strengthen democratic engagement and quality of life. thank you. >> thank you. we next turn to john wonderlich. >> i in the policy director for the sunlight foundation. we are in nonprofits company.
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at the heart of all of our work is an appreciation for the transformational power of on- line technology. peering technology is -- paring technology -- it engages communities and makes tools and information are in the hands of journalists, citizens and everyone in between. technology's role as the driver of change has become culturally familiar, as our roles as consumers and business people have evolved over the last few decades. the internet's role in shaping citizenship is only starting to develop. as technology redefines how we interact, our government has an opportunity to redefine civic life to wreak -- to live up to present obama's vision of creating more transparent
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democracy. i would like to point out two primary constraints that will determine bell transparent government can become -- to determine how transparent government can be -- can become. as the fcc addressing its mandate to promote access cannot broadband policy should be driven by what the internet access makes possible. digital technology creates new forms of agencies for all citizens. online access to government information announce curiosity to become expertise, allows disparities to become investigations. citizenship can only transform into a more mature form for filling the potential of a nationally connected citizenry

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