Topics covered included: Update by Chief Technology Officer Michael Mattmiller; Candace Faber spoke about Seattle civic technology advocate work; Hans Hechtman and Terry Davis outlined the Comcast Internet Essentials low income program; Carmen Rahm addressed Seattle Public Schools’ tech vision and update; Joneil Sampana and Heather Lewis gave an update on the E-Gov Committee; Cable and Broadband Committee Update; Jose Vasquez gave the Digital Inclusion Committee update.
This meeting was held: April 12, 2016; 6:00-8:00 p.m., Seattle Municipal Tower, 700 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2750
Podcasts available at: http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/CTTAB/podcast/cttab.xml
Attending:
Board Members: Amy Hirotaka, Joneil Sampana, Karia Wong, Iga Fikayo Keme, Jose Vasquez, Carmen Rahm, Chris Alejano, Mark DeLoura, Heather Lewis, Nourisha Wells
Public: Brian Hsi, David Doyle, Maureen Jones (Solid Ground), Dan Moulton, Kevin O’Boyle, Dan Stiefel, Dorene Cornwell, Hans Hechtman, Terry Davis, Sabrina Roach, Lloyd Douglas, Heather Griswold,
Staff: Michael Mattmiller, Jim Loter, David Keyes, Derrick Hall, Cass Magnuski, Candace Faber
27 In Attendance
Meeting was called to order by Amy Hirotaka.
Introductions
Agenda and Minutes approved with one name addition for the March minutes.
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER REPORT
Michael Mattmiller: Good evening. It’s great to see you all. It’s a very exciting week here in the City. This is the week when we are transitioning from the Department of Technology IT to the Seattle Information Technology Department. If that sounds like a word change, it’s so much more. This is actually the change that was approved by City Council last fall to consolidate the City’s 650 IT professionals into one new consolidated IT department. The change legally took effect last Wednesday, and over the past week, we’ve had a series of events and changes to help make this transition real for our staff and for our City. These changes culminate tomorrow with a celebration of the new department, that will be led by Mayor Murray. I’m very excited to work with all of our staff as we move together as one department.
Just to go back, it was 11 months ago that Mayor Murray announced that we would be consolidating our IT staff. And when we think about why, it really relates to the vision of a safe, portable, vibrant, and interconnected Seattle, where technology enables everything we do here in the City. It’s how we communicate with the public; it’s how we ensure that we have efficient City departments; and of course, as this group knows very well, it’s how we ensure that everyone who lives in the City of Seattle has an opportunity to advance themselves to get the educational and economic outcomes that they want through Digital Equity.
With all of that need, we realized that within the City, we did not organize ourselves to be successful. We had 15 different department IT teams that we all doing different projects that they had prioritized. They would go to their department directors and say, “We need a server with eight cores. The directors would say, “I don’t know what that means, but sure, I’ll pay for it.” We had teams arguing about who could administer an System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) server the best. And if the department head didn’t know what an SCCM server is, that was their problem.
So, we’re really in this new space, a consolidated department where we can really focus on creating the capacity to take on innovative new projects, like the new fire electronic medical record system that’s going to roll soon, thanks in part to a grant from Microsoft, for surface tablets for the field that we’re very excited about. We have a number of projects that have been envisioned. We’re able to work with organizations like Code for America to come help build out new solutions that will help police better interact with community members who are in need. A huge thanks to Seattle IT staff, and all of the City staff that helped make this possible, and to CTAB for your support.
It’s also been an exciting months since I last saw you. We launched the Digital Equity Initiative. Thank you to Amy Hirotaka and Jose Vasquez, and everyone, for your leadership in helping us get to this point; to Century Link and Comcast and the many providers in the room that were part of the Digital Equity Committee, and helped offer guidance and solutions to make that launch successful.
We also have Candace Faber with us today for the first time. I’m so glad to have Candace here with you to talk about how, as we come together as one IT department, and as we become a City that is data-driven, the role of this group, and of community partners and others, in helping to envision how we leverage our community’s collective brilliance to come up with ideas and solutions that we in government just never will have time to do on our own.
And I’m very happy to welcome our new members. I’ve had an opportunity to sit at the table with you just last week, and you are now official.
So, that’s my update for this month. Lots of exciting changes, lots of great projects. Any questions that I can answer, I’m happy to do so.
Carmen Rahm: I wonder whether Council has rejected any potential members.
David Keyes: Not that I’m aware of. I should also mention that we presented the Digital Equity plan to Council last week also, and there was a really good, hearty endorsement from the Education, Equity, Governance Committee. The two new members, Deborah Juarez and Lorena Gonzalez were part of that committee.
Carmen Rahm: Does the consolidation change the role of CTAB at all? Because, if CTAB was looking at advising you and your group, and now your group is this instead of this–I’m assuming that’s what happened–all of this new consolidated group reports to you. So, does it expand the expectations you have of CTAB on areas of advice, and do you see any restructuring or expansion of this group as you go forward?
Michael Mattmiller: That’s a great question. Amy and I have talked a little bit about this. First, the mechanics. When we talk about creating a new department, you may know that both my job description and the structure of the department are codified in Seattle Municipal Code. It’s not quite online yet. I’ve already reached out to the Clerk’s Office, but if you really want to go read it, it’s Seattle Municipal Code 3.23 is the chapter on the role of the CTO in the department. Until that’s live, it’s 3.22, its predecessor. There are a few minor changes. Interestingly, when we passed the legislation for a new department, we moved CTAB from being created as a part of the Cable Code in SMC 2160 to the part of the code that is Seattle IT. And that was intentional. The history of this group, as I understand it, is that this group was originally created in the 1980s to advise the City on our cable franchise. And over the years, based on the interest of this group, the Mayor and the Council, it has broadened, first, to be about community technology, and now covers how technology is used much more broadly. I really look forward to having guidance and thought from this group about the new department as a whole, and how technology enables out City. And if that means that this group is interested in SCCM, I’m happy to bring in Bill Norris and his team to talk about how we package into full application. The first opportunity we’ll have to look at that more broad application is our upcoming strategic agenda. The way that we govern IT in this City is through the Mayor’s IT sub-cabinet. One of the first things I did was created a board of directors for how we run technology in the City. Because we don’t want the perception that IT is doing IT projects to benefit IT. So, now we have a group of 10 department directors who meet on a quarterly basis, who help develop the strategy and advice the new department. this includes folks like Fire Chief, Police Chief, Deputy Mayor, who chairs the group, City Light and others. I keyed up for them this notion of starting our 2017-18 strategic agenda. I pitched to them what I think are our initial priorities based on what I understand are department interests, and over the next two months, I’ll be meeting one on one with department directors to really hone priorities. I want to get the feedback of Amy Hirotaka and Jose Vasquez. Once it’s a little bit more baked, I’d like to get this group’s input and thoughts, as well.
Amy Hirotaka: Thank you. Are there any more questions for Michael?
Lloyd Douglas: Is there going to be a organizational chart someplace?
Michael Mattmiller: There is. And it’s actually fascinating. For our open house last week, we printed out our organizational chart, which, if you can imagine 650 people in a multi-tiered organization, there were about eight people to have a 12-point font. We don’t quite have that translated yet into the detailed org chart that has all the position IDs and funding sources on it yet. We will have that live within the next week or two at seattle.gov/tech.
Carmen Rahm: At the Mayor’s Education Summit that’s coming up. The synergy between Digital Equity and the Education Summit–and the partnership is so obvious–that anything that this group or you can do to promote how the Digital Equity and everything else going on, and the partnership between my department and your department to benefit education for the City, please take advantage of that. Because the collaboration there is so obvious now.
Michael Mattmiller: Thank you. I will proffer that. Carmen, that makes me think that we should probably do a joint meeting between our leadership teams sometime soon.
Carmen Rahm: I would like that. If we could plan that and get that on our schedule, that would be great.
Dan Moulton: You mentioned the consolidation and the new board of directors. Does this mean–I didn’t catch your answer–there will be a new office that goes across that partnership and those directors?
Michael Mattmiller: We do. Two things: We have the governance of the Department of Technology in the City, and that governance is controlled by the Municipal Code, the Mayor’s IT sub-cabinet, and a business steering committee we’re forming underneath it to prioritized projects. And then we have CTAB that is our community voice for this process. On the management side, we have a Director of Strategy and Planning, and within his portfolio is a PMO that is responsible for the execution of our large scale projects. We also have a portfolio team that produces a quarterly report so we can balance what’s on the portfolio, manage risks, and give this information to the City on what’s happening.
Dan Moulton: Do they come into a single point?
Michael Mattmiller: There’s the senior manager, the PMO, who reports to the director of strategy and planning, who reports to me.
Amy Hirotaka: Thank you, Michael.
Michael Mattmiller: And I’m going to apologize and go get ready for a speech I have to make tomorrow.
INTRODUCTIONS OF LATE ARRIVALS
Amy Hirotaka: Next on our agenda is Candace Faber.
REPORT ON SEATTLE CIVIC TECHNOLOGY ADVOCATE WORK
Candace Faber: My name is Candace Faber and I know a lot of people in this room. For those who I haven’t met yet, I’ll just tell you a little bit about my life before I joined the City. I’ve been with the IT department here since last December. I am midway through my fifth month. I worked with the City IT Department a little bit before that. In 2015, I ran the Hack The Commute initiative, which we were Skyped in from the launch of the project. I’ve been involved in civic technology in Seattle for a few years, since I moved here and got engaged with Open Seattle. In 2013, I hacked to end homelessness. In 2014, I did a variety of other work at the intersection of hacking public policy. When Michael said he was ready to hire someone who could bring some of that work into the City and start making connections that are needed with City departments to scale up, I was very excited and it’s been ‘drinking from the firehose’ ever since. So, I’m happy to be here and get a little bit of an introduction into what CTAB is, what you do, what you’re interested in, and how we might be able to work together in setting up new programs in the City.
I have a walking doc, which is very much like a living draft. More on the principles of what we’re doing. And I can talk a little more specifically afterwards with a Q and A about what my work has been so far. But I thought for this group, it might be interesting to get a sense of the vision. Have patience, because this was initially intended for cabinet, and I would have asked them to have patience, too. You’ll see why.
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The bigger question that I’m trying to answer in this job is ‘what does a Smart City look like for Seattle. Often, when people think of a Smart City, it’s something like this. Futuristic, and things taking off, and almost being a scary, alienating digital space. Our vision here in Seattle looks much more like this. This is a photo from Hack the Commute. To people who showed up to help us work on potential digital solutions to some of our transportation problems, and ended up using a combination of hardware and software to create a package that would let riders know whether there’s space on the bike racks on the buses. Fairly small problem, but you can understand would be of particular interest to the bike community. I use this photo because our vision is really much more about collaborating with the people and the resources that we have here in Seattle so that we are focusing on problems that are really relevant in demand, not looking for applications of technology for problems that don’t exist. But focusing the work on the needs of the community and engaging the community in developing those tools, or at least helping us think outside the box in City government.
I have three basic pillars for this vision. The first is to empower departments with data analytics and tools that make it easier for them to make informed decisions and communicate with the public. Again, this is a pretty ambitious goal. We are just in the process of budgeting to get a position, to get governance. A lot of these issues are emerging as we’re implementing the new Open Data policy and recognizing the need for better data management across departments. So, it’s a goal, but it’s part of the vision.
The second pillar is to accelerate innovation through engagement in largely nationally and globally funded initiatives into developed technologies for use in cities.
The third is engaging our local tech community to design innovation that meet our immediate needs, and also strengthen our relationship with City government.
So, just a handful of things. I won’t go through all of this, but you’re welcome to explore later, if you like. Under Empowering Departments, this involves Open Data, so we’re hoping through the Open Data program to improve use of data, and data standardization and also communicating better across departments with the Mayor’s Office and with the public. We’re also providing tools. It’s part of IT consolidation, actually, to procure tools that can be used across departments. And then, Partnerships, helping them identify that technology or technologists might be able to solve. And then, Developing Partnerships, whether that’s with the University of Washington or the companies or community groups to export solutions. Under Accelerating Innovations, this is exciting because a lot of this work is either completely unfunded or funded outside the City. For example, you probably know that we’re one of the What Works cities, and that’s been hugely instrumental for us in trying to move beyond what we know and inside City government to take advantage national best practices and open data, for example. We also have an MOU signed with the University of Washington to participate in the national metro lab initiative. That offer is still very nascent, but we do have some projects underway. The goal is to export some of these long term research partnerships that can help us. I put some intractable projects, but a lot of it is really future oriented. Are there ways we could be using technology that would significantly improve quality of life for people in Seattle, or save us money in City government as we maintain a standard of service. The final piece, which is really exciting, is to learn how we can work together in community engagement. I’m particularly impassioned about this, so I’m happy to share more. I’m working toward creating a more diverse community of civic hackers, or diverse communities plural, so that there are a lot of different cultural spaces that people can show up in and feel like they understand what we’re doing and how tech may help. Again, this is all very much vision. I still don’t have a web page yet. But working to communicate, again on an ongoing basic with the public about what we’re doing with civic tech. I have this dream to create a public facing cultivated list of project ideas so that people who are looking for open data challenges to solve or civic problems to solve have a place that they can go to find out. And also really crucial right now is supporting stuff that’s coming from the community. Instead of doing everything like Hack the Commute, which frankly we don’t have the bandwidth for, looking for where people are popping up in the community that have a specific interest in applying their data, science, or tech skills to a civic problem and then figuring out how I can match them up with some insight and expertise, or data from within the City to enable and empower this effort. A great example of that is the Hack-a-Thon that we did last month. It was organized by AT&T, and had a lot of people from the community show up. We brought in a ton of people from Parks staff to participate and mentor. And also opened up 56 new data sets for anyone in the community to explore as part of that initiative. Coming up next weekend is something that is pretty light touch from the City side, but is pretty exciting. It’s Fishackathon, awkwardly named, but it’s a US Department of State initiative across 41 cities worldwide and every continent, even Antarctica. We’re doing a version of that event here that is being led by Microsoft, sponsored by Microsoft and Vulcan, with organizational support from the University of Washington and Open Seattle, and additional in kind support from restaurants and the Seattle Aquarium. That’s the kind of thing I’m excited to involved in. Just getting our tech community more engaged in civic issues and helping them understand what the issues are, and where those nexuses are where data and technology can make a difference. If you have any questions, I’d be happy to take them.
Dorene Cornwell: What exactly is the Fishackathon going to work on? You said it’s the State Department and being done all over the world. Somehow, I envision the fishing industry and something maritime.
Candace Faber: It’s focused on sustainable fishing. we actually have the world’s leading expert on over-fishing at the UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, so he’ll be here to do the keynote. The challenges, themselves, are embargoed. They mostly touch on things that we don’t need here. What they will tell you is that the United States is doing a great job with Smart Catch and managing fisheries, but the problems that are happening elsewhere in the world are affecting our oceans and they are affecting our lives. It’s kind of cool to see. This is the first one that we’ve done in Seattle that I’ve seen with a real connection between local tech development and local problems.
Dan Moulton: Can you tell me how your work is to align with the Digital Equity Initiative plan? Have you created a roadmap for especially milestones and objective measures, or as we’ve found with the tech community, when they are allowed to self-organize, it’s always the same people. [unintelligible] It’s probably too early, but how are you planning to create roadmaps with measurements and milestones that includes low-income, lesser-served people inside the community?
Candace Faber: Yes, I think you’ll see that that was a condition of my taking this job. I was having a conversation with Michael about being able to focus and integrate into my performance in working toward greater equity. There’s obviously a lot of things that are outside of my control and that I don’t intend to control. I really like democracy, so I don’t intend to go into self-organized groups and tell them how to behave. But I am interested in creating a much more robust eco-system around civic tech. And that means providing information and opportunities to anyone who is interested in organizing. Right now, my office and program is one person, so I’m not planning to do another Hack-the-Commute that the City is entirely responsible for.
Amy Hirotaka: Does anyone else have any questions? So, Candace, if we do have things that we want to engage with you on, would it be more helpful for us to come as a committee and speak to you? Can we email you individually?
Candace Faber: That is a good question, and again, it’s rapidly evolving, so right now I’ll say go ahead and email me individually, and three months from now I might say, “Please stop.” I’m hacking the process by having two sets of informal office hours. Basically, once I have collected enough interest from people who want to meet with me and set up a time, one of the sessions is in person and the other is by phone, and that’s really intended to be open to anyone who wants to talk about civic tech. If you’re interested in talking in greater depth about any particular issue, we can do it.
Amy Hirotaka: Thank you so much, Candace. We will now move on to the Comcast Internet Essentials program.
COMCAST INTERNET ESSENTIALS PROGRAM
Hans Hechtman: Thank you for allowing us to come this evening. Both Terry Davis and I have been with Comcast for longer than we would care to admit. Not that that’s not been a good place to be, but we’re getting on in years a little bit. We’ve both been around for all of our Internet Essentials program. We’re in the fifth year of that now. Comcast and the City of Seattle have been doing Digital Equity for over a decade. As you probably are aware, we have hundreds of sites around the City which we’ve provided service to for many years. And we’ve committed to expand upon that over the next decade. With regard to Internet Essentials, Initially, it has been geared to families with children. So the basic premise, initially, was if you were on free, and then we added free and reduced, and we’ve done other things to expand and innovate on the program, but the premise is if you have a child or children, and are on another program, then you can get broadband from us for $9.95 a month. Once you’re in, you’re in, so if, God forbid, your first grader is still on free or reduced in the twelfth grade, we hope everybody rises up and does well over the time, but if that’s the case, it is. You’re in at that price point. We will not change it.
It was initially launched as a three-year commitment. It was something new we were trying. We then made the decision at the end of three years, to make it an indefinite program. This is what we’re going to do moving forward.
It’s been well-received. We’ve done 2.4 million folks, 600,000 families nationwide. In the State of Washington, we’re a little over 28,000 families. Here in Seattle, we’re pushing around 3,000 folks who have participated in the program and are getting broadband service. What we have done just recently was to expand that to two new groups, one of which I’m sure you’re familiar with because you had a voice in this, and that is expansion to seniors. This is a group that we had been looking at and had done a couple of pilots throughout the country. In addition to the things we’ve done in Digital Equity, which I would remind folks that we are not necessarily doing in other cities, you all wanted us to bring our Internet Essential pilot for seniors. We were happy to do that as well.
There are a host of economic indicators that we can go by to qualify folks, but one of them is your City Utility Discount program. And I understand by talking with folks in the City that there are just over 6,000 low income seniors eligible for that program in this City. We’re hopeful that there are a lot of folks who will take advantage of this. Sixty-two years or older is the age, who are again fitting into one of those Social Security, Medicaid, Utility Discount programs, etc.
On the 24th–we had intended to do it on May 1, because it’s a new pilot here in the City–but it coincided that we then, on our own decision, expanded Internet Essentials to public housing. It only made sense, since we knew we were going to be doing the senior pilot here in town to try and bring that up, too. So we accelerated senior pilot and had that launched on the 24th along with public housing. So, if you reside in public housing in the City of Seattle, you have access to Internet Essentials. You don’t have to have a child on free or reduced lunch. You don’t have to be 62 years old. If you’re a resident of Seattle Housing Authority, and we serve that facility, you have the opportunity to get in on Internet Essentials as well. Obviously, just having launched in that couple of weeks, they are just getting started. They are pilots that are new. I think the future is bright for both of these groups nationally, but every group is different and we do these in pilots to try them out and see what works with an individual group so we can tweak as we grow it out elsewhere. So far, so good. There are different web sites for different programs. We have call center folks who take these calls. Full disclosure: We had a couple of hiccups last week because some folks in the call center didn’t know that Seattle was added. But we’ve made sure that they know that now. So, we’re off to a good start on that, but we don’t have any data yet to report to you. Again, these programs are geared for folks who do not have internet for one reason or another, and I don’t need to tell you what all the factors are. You know what those are. Part of the component is not only providing the service at an affordable price. We cover all standard installation fees. We’ve added wifi modems with that, as well. So folks that have tablets and things like that can take advantage of the service and we offer training in digital literacy, and online safety, especially for kids. We look to partner with community groups in delivering that. We’ve done that with Internet Essentials on the academic front through K-12. And for our seniors, we’ll be looking to partner with community partners in the City that serve seniors. To the extent to where we would want to develop a relationship with these organizations so that the seniors can certainly contact us. If that community partner helps them in a way and they call us and say that Mrs. Jones plays Bingo on Tuesday evenings and we know that she’s a low income person, we’re good with that. We trust the community partner there that’s vouching for that person.
Terry Davis: Everything he said is good. I just want to overview some of the outreach efforts that were done. From the traditional model, we work with the public school system. We do two direct mailings through their Kidmail process. All elementary schools, middle schools, and targeted high schools. We do that in the fall back to school season, and then also in the spring. That’s generated through their communication department. It’s been working very well. One thing with the traditional model is if the school 40 percent or greater free or reduced lunch status, basically the whole school is auto-approved. It helps speed up the process so that they don’t have to go back and forth with a hand-held application.
Carmen Rahm: And that helps, too, because a lot of families don’t want to disclose.
Terry Davis: Yes. That has really helped grow the numbers. So that is the outreach model. For the seniors, we stepped up in order to meet the schedule that was geared on both. This month, what we’re working on –Vicky Yuki from Seattle IT is helping–we need to connect with the low income senior groups that service this particular group. What we will be doing is getting them on as partners. If they agree to be a partner, we can sign them up as a referral group. That will be the auto-approved system for the seniors. It eliminates, again, that paper process going back and forth and helps speed up the application process. So that is really our goal, hopefully by the end of this month, is to really get that outreach and solidify. Because we know that people connect to this program when they touch base with a trusted resource and hear about it from a trusted resource. The don’t respond when we direct mail as much as a trusted resource getting them to say yes, this is a program that does work and is truly $9.95. And they’re not going to upsell you into something else.
For the public housing, this one is slow to get going but we’re working with the Seattle Housing Authority, as well as several King County Housing Authority in the unincorporated areas like White Center. We included the Shoreline area because there is a general Seattle address that goes along. We’re going to be doing mailings of the materials to those demographics. And the auto-approval system on that is that we prequalify addresses that meet the public housing designation. We’ve done a serviceability review of those addresses supplied by the housing authorities so we have them in our system. So if people call in and they know it’s a Seattle Housing Authority designated public housing address, then that eliminates that address in verification. We’rte trying to figure out the best ways to streamline the process. But we can always use more help, and I’m going to put two packets up here. There’s the housing authority, and the seniors. If you know of folks that don’t have an internet connection and could benefit from this, please share the information with them. The seniors does not have an online application. It is all done over the phone. It defaults to a professional installation so that we can make sure that it is connected properly, they know their wifi settings and all of that. Whereas, on the public housing it follows more the traditional model, which is a self-install kit that is mailed out to the families. We know that in a lot of the rentals, probably 99 percent of them have had Comcast service at one point or another, so it connects in with our system and they’re up and running. It does take a little bit of time to make sure we coordinate according to their schedules.
Carmen Rahm: How many families from school have signed up?
Hans Hechtman: About 3,000. In Seattle.
Carmen Rahm: And that’s 3,000 families that might have more than one kid.
Terry Davis: That’s correct. About 75 to 80 percent of those families are eligible for the program. There’s a great opportunity. We need help to get the word out. Work with our partners to do that.
Amy Hirotaka: We have a lot of questions.
Lloyd Douglas: For the seniors, will that be a mandatory install?
Terry Davis: The can opt out, but it defaults to the professional install first unless they opt out for a self-install kit.
Joneil Sampana: In regards to the partnerships with community organizations, two questions: Does that include faith based organizations?
Terry Davis: Anybody that is willing to help spread the word, we want to partner with.
Joneil Sampana: Is there a sense that you have on the reach that that organization has in the community?
Hans Hechtman: We don’t mandate. We’re happy for the participation and help. We don’t have a criteria through which we measure partners. We want to get to the most effective ones that we can, but frankly, we don’t have the resources to screen in terms of providing information and flyers. If I’ve got great performers and ten that don’t do as well, we’re not going to kick those ten off. Whatever they can do is great.
Joneil Sampana: Is it more on holding them accountable? Sometimes they still don’t understand it. That’s my concern.
Hans Hechtman: If we get into where we’re providing resources and things like that, obviously we want them to make use of that training and get folks in and train them. So, if you had a group that didn’t really perform, then I suppose that we’d try to redirect those resources to those who are performing.
Joneil Sampana: I was thinking of communities of color that might not speak English.
Hans Hechtman: We have 14 different languages that we can provide these flyers in, at this point in time. Part of what we’re doing right now with Seattle Housing Authority is to try to identify the different languages and how many pieces they would need. I was talking with them last week, and they asked, ‘Can we get about 500 of these?” I said, “We’ll give you 5,000.”
Terry Davis: The traditional and the seniors are available in all of the languages. The public housing is just coming out, so we’re trying to figure out which languages. I have ordered Somali, Vietnamese, and Russian at this point. Looking at the numbers from Seattle Housing Authority, that definitely is correct. I need to check King County Housing Authority. There may be some others. Korean may be another one to add in. When we say partnership, there’s a partner portal on the web site for Internet Essentials that anybody can sign up for. We will send you materials for free. Anybody can order them. There are posters, newsletter stuff that can be downloaded. All of the materials can be downloaded. We just know that people sign up for the program not through direct sale from Comcast. It’s usually word of mouth from somebody else.
Jose Vasquez: Two questions: One, do you have a list of your current community partners that we can refer people to?
Hans Hechtman: In the case of traditional Internet Essentials, it’s been primarily the school districts. With seniors, and public housing, I would say it’s Seattle Housing Authority and King County Housing Authority. With regards to the seniors, we’re just starting it. Literally, we’re looking for those folks. So, if you have any suggestions…
Jose Vasquez: That was my second question. It looks like you’re looking for community partners. With regard to working with communities of color and non-English speaking communities, are you funding these organizations? Besides just giving them handouts and some training?
Hans Hechtman: No. Not in the form of cash.
Jose Vasquez: Are you planning on doing that?
Hans Hechtman: Not necessarily. No. We’re just providing resources and materials.
Terry Davis: I would say that with the traditional model, we had great response from Urban League, and a lot of the Hispanic organizations, and a lot of different community organizations. Really, it’s supplying the materials for free. We mail it. There’s no mailing cost. That’s really the support network behind it. There are some groups that we’ve done trainings with that we have supported: Goodwill, which had a great training program in place; Urban League also had one that we had supported. Beyond that, we are open to the conversation, if there is a good, existing training program there, but we’re not in the process of supplying money to build one out.
Maureen Jones: Is it still true that if you’re a current customer, you’re not eligible?
Hans Hechtman: This is, again, a program that’s geared for people who don’t have internet. We have a business to run. This is for folks who are on the wrong side of the digital divide for one reason or another. We’re not the only game in town that has a program. Another provider has exactly the same condition.
Amy Hirotaka: So, to be clear, it’s a 90-day waiting period between ending service and starting a new one.
Hans Hechtman: That’s correct.
Nourisha Wells: You said this is a pilot program for housing and seniors? How long are you running the program, and are there capacity limits?
Hans Hechtman: No capacity limits. In terms of timing, I couldn’t answer that. We’re going to see how it goes. You can count on us to give it a good try.
Nourisha Wells: Do you have a goal, as Joneil Sampana was saying? Do you have a goal for what would be a good number for people to be in the pilot program?
Hans Hechtman: I think it’s too early in the program to have something like that. Again, Internet Essentials is ongoing and indefinite.
Terry Davis: We are looking to see if the pilot program is really sustainable. Can it be rolled out across all markets? And is there a need for it? I can tell you with the seniors, there’s definitely a need. There is a lot more that goes into the senior project than the traditional. I would say that you’re probably going to see the low income housing project roll out a lot faster than the senior, just because of the time factor for the professional install. But i believe that you’ll see that one roll out as well.
Nourisha Wells: I have one more question about the quality of the internet–the speed and all of that. Because students in schools where they’re being forced to do all of their work online–it’s not just downloading a PDF. They’re watching videos and all that.
Hans Hechtman: The service, when it started, was 1.5. We took it to 3.0. Then it went to 6.0. Now we’re at 10 MBPS. See the trend?
Carmen Rahm: The current speed is 10 MBPS?
Hans Hechtman: It’s a 10 MBPS service, and it is adequate to do all the regular surfing. You can stream video and things like that over it.
Karia Wong: I actually signed up as a partner, but my clients don’t speak English. Even after they sign up, if they have any issues with technical support, there is no way they have access to it. And then they come to us, a social service agency. That takes a lot of our time, to help them set up, and to call technical support. I’m just wondering, in terms of access, will you guys provide support to anyone who doesn’t speak English?
Hans Hechtman: We have started to introduce that. Terry, do we know what languages we have other than Spanish?
Terry Davis: I don’t, off the top of my head. It is a service that brings in interpretative services.
Hans Hechtman: So, it’s an evolution.
Karia Wong: A lot of times, when people call, they don’t know the background. They don’t know anything. Normally, they will come back to us. the issue is, you have to find someone from your side who is able to speak the language, to serve those people. Otherwise, it will cost a lot for you. And the problem will remain the same.
Hans Hechtman: Yes. So we’ll definitely continue with that.
Dorene Cornwell: Do you have any plan for people who are on the utility discount program to learn about your program? I think the City could probably facilitate that by saying, ‘You’re eligible.’
Hans Hechtman: I think the City has about 6,600. So I will provide 6,600 of these. The City can’t tell me exactly who those folks are, right? That’s fine. I’m happy to provide whatever the City wants. There are different options. I don’t know if we have a tri-fold for seniors yet, or not. But we can get a piece that will work for the City, and they can let those folks know.
Amy Hirotaka: I think one important piece of information that we could use, is that we here at CTAB hear from a lot of folks about maybe issues that they’re encountering when they’re trying to access this service. Or they want to know which community partners that they could go to, for example. How do we get feedback back to you, and how can we follow up?
Hans Hechtman: That can be me. David Keyes has all my contact information. Just send it to me, and we’ll get those taken care of. Again, we’re looking at all of you to help facilitate the rollout of this, not only just letting folks know that you interface with regularly, but if there is a community group out there that you think would be a good candidate to be a partner, let us know.
David Keyes: We could go ahead and just figure out an email to send out to our list of community labs and things. Vicky Yuki has been working with Terry Davis on starting to list out who the different senior organizations are.
Terry Davis: They don’t have to partner if they don’t want to. We’re not forcing them to become a partner or anything like that. It is completely voluntary. But, we know that they’re interacting with the folks that you want connected to the internet.
Amy Hirotaka: Thank you very much for your time. And now we are moving on to public comment and announcements. The floor is now open for anyone who wants to make a public comment or announcement.
PUBLIC COMMENT AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
David Keyes: There is this open source event in July. I just put the OSfields.com up there, since Candace Faber didn’t get it in. I want to encourage folks to look at that good opportunity to participate in the open sources community. I will send out, for people who are interested, on May 18 in Kansas City is a national digital inclusion conference. I’ll be there. And then, the Get Engaged program is recruiting now. Eventually, this fall, Iga’s term will come to an end. There’s actually a workshop tonight that’s going on.
Sabrina Roach: A bunch of us were talking about the Digital Equity launch, and we thought, well, the City is really putting its shoulder into it, and some of the corporate partners are really stepping up. What are the kinds of things that we, as a community group, can do to put some organized effort into that? Even if it’s some low hanging fruit. Even with apples on the ground, you can make some good applesauce with them. On May 11, 6:30 p.m., we’ll be doing an event at the 2100 Building. It will be an exploratory session for the Seattle Digital Equity Coalition. Once I make sure of that date, I will send it to David Keyes. This is wide open to everyone. It’s not a ‘by invitation’ kind of thing.
David Keyes: I’ll make sure to share that.
Dorene Cornwell: A lot of you probably got the email. There’s a thing on Thursday from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. [unintelligible]
Amy Hirotaka: Thank you, Dorene. I’m going to suggest that we take a five minute, instead of a ten minute, break, because we’re running low on time.
BREAK
Amy Hirotaka: Next on the agenda, we have Carmen Rahm, who is going to be giving us an update on Seattle Public Schools Tech Vision and Update.
SEATTLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS TECH VISION AND UPDATE
Carmen Rahm: A little bit of history: Two years ago, just as I was arriving, they had a big review by an outside agency on the information services of the school district. Their number one finding was that the district had no established vision for how technology would be used to support teaching and learning going forward. Some of you may be aware that last year, we held what we called our big Teaching and Learning Technology Vision Summit. David Keyes was part of that. It was very unique, the way we put this together. We limited attendance to 120 people. We had 15 students in grades from five to 12. We had 15 parents, 15 teachers, 15 principals, 15 community members, 15 business partners in technology, from Google to Microsoft, Intel,Dell, Cisco. They all came together at 15 tables with eight people at a table, and they spent the day with these teams making sketches of what they would see happening in the not so distant future. What the technology and what the students can do with technology. It wasn’t about the technology. It wasn’t about what kind of technology. It was about what they wanted to do with technology. We made it very clear with the vendors. No sales people here; we want your visionaries here. And it was so funny to watch somebody from Microsoft or Google make a suggestion and watch a fifth grader give him the raspberries. That’s what they did. Because it was like, ‘Yeah, that’s what old people do.’
So they drew 45 pictures. I just brought two of the sketches along. This was a sketch that was put together. A student got up and presented this. This was one where a young high school girl got up, and she said, “I hate math. But I love soccer. Why can’t you integrate my love for soccer with math? If you can teach me math through my love for soccer, I’d be better at math. She talked about that and that’s what this is. How you can utilize that to learn statistics, and all of the different things that you can learn. And then I hand-picked out a special education teacher, because part of this vision has to be inclusive of all of our students, and have the equity not just across the district, based on race and income level, but also for our special needs students. This is one of the drawings that they made. If you count your traditional class, you can bring in your students from home. None of this rocket science. We’re not talking like holographic teachers and Mr. Spock coming here. We’re talking about real things you can have today. Students at home who maybe are mobility impaired and can’t get to school ever, or that day, how is your room set up so that you’ve got different areas where you can do different things? Imagine 45 of these, some duplicates, what we did was we said we’re not going to make a 20-page document that nobody’s going to read. We’re going to make it into a video, a video that someone can look at and say, that’s what students want in the Seattle Public Schools. That’s what their parents want. So this video is overall called a Technology Vision for Teaching and Learning, but the real title is A Day in the Life of a 21st Century Seattle Public School Student. So, we’ll kick this off if you can enlarge that, and turn up the sound.
(Runs video.) https://www.seattleschools.org/cms/one.aspx?pageId=8544568
Some of the feedback we got was, why are high school students not tutoring elementary school students?
This is why the Digital Equity Initiative that the City is doing is such an integral part for us to be successful. And I look at this, and you can look at this, and see that there’s nothing that spectacular there, because it’s stuff that we can do already if we have the resources and the funding to do it. There are actually two videos on this web site, and this web site is on all my emails as part of the salutation. The other video we created before this–because this was created by a student. The person who helped put this together said that one of the feedbacks they get on video from the school district is that you alienate a lot of parents, especially in poor neighborhoods, who look at the video being shot in someone’s home, and saying, “I don’t have solid wood cabinets and a granite counter top. This obviously doesn’t pertain to me.’ So that’s why we did the background sketches as part of the blue screen, so it was more generic. The other video, that obviously, we are not going to watch, was kind of a lead-in to this, that said, “Why is technology important to education? We had industry leaders and what is the state of technology in Seattle Public Schools? We’re actually very poor. We’re going to make some great progress, but like I told people when I took this job two years ago, I was told by my friends and colleagues, “You’re so lucky. You’re going to Seattle. I’ll bet their school districts has the best of everything.” Not exactly. But we know that we’re making headway on that. And then we talked about the fact that we were creating a vision and moving forward. We’ve got pretty good press on this. I’ve seen it in feedback from around the country. People have seen this. It’s just about how we can partner over the things that we are trying to do, and when I look at this video, I literally see almost every one of those 45 sketches. The whole summit was about ‘how do you want to use it’ to benefit your day to day, from teachers to special ed, to the students and parents. We’re really happy with it. If there are any questions or feedback, let me know.
Mark DeLoura: I’m just curious what your next steps are, for moving from vision to prioritizing a list of things to attack.
Carmen Rahm: The next steps are to create that strategic plan and that roadmap for executing these things, which we’re already doing. We’re looking at all of these things in here, to implement the single sign-on, to implement the consolidation to move to Office 365 so the students can partner more. We’re hopefully moving to a one to one program for students computing over time. We don’t have the money right now to do it carte blanche across the whole district. So we’re putting together that roadmap. Right now, it is looking out two years. It will be looking out three to four years very shortly. So we can put the stepping stones together to get there.
Dorene Cornwell: What is the link to your video?
Carmen Rahm: Let me send it, so they can send it out.
Amy Hirotaka: Thank you, Carmen. Let’s move on to the E-Gov update, which is going to be Joneil Sampana and Heather Lewis.
E-GOV COMMITTEE UPDATE
Joneil Sampana: Just a quick update. We have three updates. The first one, I will do, and Heather will do the other two. The first one is the data internship for the summer. Last year, we partnered with the State of Washington. This year we met with Jim and Bruce Blood. We’re looking at doing that here with the City of Seattle in coordination with their data camp launch in June. We’re hoping to identify four to six agencies or partners that provide open data problems that students or other citizens who would like to get involved in this internship. We’re reaching out to a number of partners similar to last year, Socrata, Tableau, Microsoft. In addition, we’ll have Comcast this year as a new partner. And our WTIA [unintelligible] So, stay tuned. We’ll have an update in a month.
David Keyes: So, will the recruitment be going out for participants, then?
Joneil Sampana: That would be in May. We send it out based upon the internship description. The basic requirement would be the ability to work over the summertime, work with a technology mentor as well as a City of Seattle mentor. By the same token, we will have a mentor description for the City of Seattle mentor because we recognize from last year that type of connection about how to interpret the data and how to tell a story. That may not be the skill set of a student but better from a technology mentor. The use of technology and a new way to visualize the data might be something that a student can provide.
Heather Lewis: Are you looking for mentors?
Joneil Sampana: We are looking for mentors. We’re leaning toward having Jim and Bruce identify them for the City of Seattle. Next two projects?
Heather Lewis: We are writing a Metro Lab quality memo with the community in mind. It’s in its final stage of review from the tech lab. And then the other project that we’re working on is the editorial calendar. We are looking for events to help populate it. Right now, we have about 12 to 15 calendars around the City that we have incorporated into one calendar that we’d like to be publishing to the twitter account. But we are looking for events that would be other items that might be relevant to the broader Seattle community. So, if you have anything in mind for a specific audience, or that you think might be generally relevant to the City, please send it our way. I will put my email on the board.
Carmen Rahm: Are these technology related items?
Heather Lewis: Yes, technology related items.
Carmen Rahm: So, it wouldn’t be like integrating the school calendar, unless we’re having something technology-wise going on there.
Heather Lewis: It’s CTAB-related.
David Keyes: If you will send me a note, we can send that out to the fuller list.
Heather Lewis: Right now, we’re populating between now and December, so that would be the date range if you have an upcoming event. Please send them our way.
Amy Hirotaka: Oh, great! Derrick Hall just put up more information about the accessibility event that Dorene was talking about.
Joneil Sampana: Now that we have this calendar concept together, my hope is that between a number of different community members, on the CTAB or the E-Gov Committee, that they would be able to post some of these on an ongoing basis. I want to get a sense of our protocol in managing our Twitter handle–who can tweet, who can post. As these happen day after day, it would be nice if somebody could monitor that. I would share the responsibility or take a different approach to maintaining this ongoing communication with our community.
David Keyes: Similarly, if we can pull enough feed to our site.
Amy Hirotaka: For the Twitter account, I think that’s a great question that we probably need to have a conversation about. So, I’m going to bump it to the end, if we have extra time. And if we don’t, we can discuss it by email, I think. Because it is a very dormant Twitter account and I’m not really tweeting with the hashtag that much, so it’s something that we need to talk about. So, let’s move on to the Cable and Broadband Commmittee update, which Karia Wong is going to give.
CABLE AND BROADBAND COMMITTEE UPDATE
Karia Wong: For the past month, we met on March 28. We have three main goals for us to work with for the rest of this year. Number one is we’ll continue to work on the recommendation to the renewal of the Wave franchise. The second one, we are planning to create and use for contacts, a spreadsheet to keep track and to engage past committee participants. The third one is to access penetration and adoption rate of the low income broadband program by Comcast and Century Link.
David Keyes: I would point out that Brian Hsi over here was really active in the committee last term. He’s an alumni of CTAB, for folks who haven’t met him. So, as you head into this round of franchising, contact him for mentoring and good advice.
Amy Hirotaka: That would be great. We’ll definitely hit up Brian. Are there any questions for Karia on the Broadband Committee? I think one thing I wanted to point out is that as far as the penetration is concerned, when we heard from Comcast, we had ‘this’ many families enrolled. And what we’re wondering is how many eligible families there are. Do they have a goal number? Sounds like no. Someone asked a question like that. But maybe we should have a goal for that. These are all things we are thinking about. Now, we’ll move on to the Digital Inclusion/Tech Matching Fund Committee update from Jose Vasquez and Nourisha Wells.
DIGITAL INCLUSION/TECH MATCHING FUND COMMITTEE UPDATE
Jose Vasquez: May is out get down to the nitty gritty month for the Tech Matching Fund. I know that Delia Burke has been in contact with a few of you who have expressed interest in serving on the Tech Matching Fund review committee. Raise your hand if you have been approached, or it you are interested. The idea, when I last met with Delia, is to have City staff, CTAB representation and community. Also, if there are any community at large members that want to participate, feel free to contact me or Delia or David Keyes or CTAB. Because May 4 is the deadline for the application for the Technology Matching Fund. In addition to participating in the review committee, if you are part of our organization or know of any group who is interesting in applying, I know that we’re done with the workshops.
David Keyes: Yes, last week. And we had about 40 people at the workshops last week.
Jose Vasquez: So, the deadline is May 4, but you can still approach us if you have questions. There are a lot of ideas around and I’m still encouraging people to apply. It means more work for us, but it’s very rewarding work. And then, we’ll present to the CTAB board with the final recommendations. So, May is when we’ll get real busy with that.
Joneil Sampana: Jose, isn’t it a requirement for the applicants to attend one of the workshops? Or are you saying that it’s not required?
David Keyes: It’s not a requirement to attend the workshop.
Carmen Rahm: If you get any from the schools, from the teachers or folks like that, a heads up as to what they’re submitting would be greatly appreciated. I mean, not that I have veto power, or would want anything like that, but if somebody is putting in for something like they did last year–they were going to buy 100 Chromebooks, which we are not supporting or encouraging in the district. I think it will work out pretty well this year because I think the group that had actually put in for Chromebooks have closed the opportunity gap. I got them to go with some lower cost Netbooks or things like that.
David Keyes: And I’ve told our staff to watch as we get draft proposals.
Carmen Rahm: I don’t want anyone to think we’re filtering. I don’t want that to get back to the teachers, because we’re not. But if we can intervene early enough to say, ‘hey, you’ve put this in,’ I’m sure they could amend it. And it’s not like the Donors Choose program where Paul Allen came in and said, ‘We’re funding them all!’ And I’m thinking, ‘Oh, no!’ We were talking about hunting down teachers who may have asked for 50 Chromebooks, and with those, what you ask for is what you get. I think through the Technology Matching Fund there is more flexibility. When you said you were going to get Chromebooks, you can get ‘these’ instead, as long as you’re filling the need.
Jose Vasquez: With the one minute that we have left, I do want to announce that Nourisha Wells is taking over as chair of the Digital Inclusion Committee. So, congratulations.
Nourisha Wells: So, we’ll just work to figure out the time and place to get together once the applications are in.
David Keyes: I would expect, probably, in a week or so. The applications are due May 4. We’ve got them all logged in. We’ll do an orientation session for folks that are serving on that matching fund review committee. So sometime in the next week or so, we’ll start to look at dates for that, because that’s usually the biggest challenge, just getting a date scheduled.
Jose Vasquez: Some dates that we jotted down as potentials: May 11 kickoff of the review panel; and then May 25 review/recommendations. That final week of May will probably be when we actually spend a couple of late nights here reviewing all the applications. And if you can’t make it to the meetings, you can also participate via phone conference. It’s so accessible.
David Keyes: So, please make a note for late in the day on May 11.
Jose Vasquez: It’s not official yet, and subject to change.
David Keyes: The goal then is to have those recommendation from committee back here int time for the June meeting.
Amy Hirotaka: Great! Are there any questions?
Mark DeLoura: So this is not the first year of the Tech Matching Fund, is that right?
Amy Hirotaka: Right.
Mark DeLoura: Are there things that we can learn from people who got grants last year that we could apply to this year?
Jose Vasquez: Be open-minded. And I think we changed some wording from the applications we had last year to invest in more community driven solutions. And also I think the grants are going to be larger this year.
David Keyes: Yes, we raised the cap to $50,000 per grant. We’re really encouraging collaborative projects. The focus then that we just addressed it so that it parallels the three threads of the Digital Equity Initiative of those goals to encourage people to write to those and think about it in that context. The 2015 projects are underway right now. We’re starting to get some invoices and progress reports from them. The most recent one that came in was from Voices of Tomorrow, that was teaching tablet use and it’s working with low income child care providers, who also have to report a lot of data to the state, so it’s doing a lot of digital training and helping equip them to be able to do that and for them to work with kids and parents. They’ve got about 40 people that they’ve started to train. I’ll send out and bring in a progress report next time to share that.
Nourisha Wells: There are also press releases of the previous awardees that you can check out on the City web site. http://www.seattle.gov/tech/initiatives/digital-equity/technology-matching-fund
Jose Vasquez: And I think you can see a couple of years back on it.
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