April 27, 1995
General Meeting of the Task Force Chairs and Co-Chairs
International Center for Communications
Attendees: Art Ammon, Mike Bardin, Nadine Bezuk, Charlie Christ, John Eger, Joe Giammona, Phil Garcia, Beth Givens, Gilbert Huey, Kevin Hopkins, Holly Mayo, Pam Morgan, T.J. Murray, John Pavlik, Bob Plotkin, Ted Purvis, Ann Redelfs, Lee Rizio, Peter Rosen, Doug Scutchfield, Howard Stapleton, Gordon Thompson.
Welcome and Introductions
The meeting was called to order at 9:15 by Chairman John Eger. He pointed out that this would be the last meeting before the task force reports are finished, but a workshop is tentatively planned for the third week of May, so that everyone involved in the Region of the Future project will have a chance to give their input before the RFP is finalized.
RFP Report
Howard Stapleton then outlined the objectives, options, and time schedule concerning the RFP.
One objective is to create a regional standards-based network anchored by City and San Diego Data Processing (SDDP) sites. Another is to create a positive image to small and large businesses interested in operating in the area. The project should also create a net economic benefit to government by increasing revenue while decreasing costs. The final objectives are to ensure effective competition, and to provide affordable universal access.
Stapleton outlines the organizational options. One is to maintain a private virtual network like the San Diego Communications Network (SANNET), and to expand the network to the point where the expensive local access costs will be minimized. Another option is to migrate the system to a switch network. Alternatives for operating SANNET are also being explored, including its infrastructure, maintenance, billing functions, and its telecommunications provider.
Additional considerations include exploring coordinated regional efforts to expedite the implementation of services, seeking partnership opportunities to expand the network, exploring the market potential for a new teleport in San Diego, and continuing to assist the City in maintaining leadership in the telecommunications area.
Stapleton anticipates a release of the RFP within two or two and a half months.
SDDPC Report
T.J. Murray then gave an overview of the San Diego Data Processing Corporation. The SDDPC is an independent, non-profit organization chartered to "lessen the burden on government through the use of technology." SDDPC provides information and telecommunications services to the City and County of San Diego, regional libraries, and commercial entities in strategic partnerships. The Corporation serves as a common meeting ground and a mediator for government and business concerns.
The SDDPC develops interactive voice response technology, client/server networks, stand-alone PC applications, platform alternatives, and multimedia technology.
However, Murray stressed that one of their key businesses for the future is data management, which makes issues of security and data modeling critical.
Examples of systems developed by SDDPC are the Automated Regional Justice System (ARJIS), which coordinates information from various law enforcement agencies, and CUBE-CALTECH earthquake notification system, which feeds current seismic information to various users.
The SDDPC also operates and maintains the telephone system for the City of San Diego, as well as SANNET, and the Regional Urban Information System (RUIS), which incorporates information about land use from the various agencies of the local governments into one standardized database. 3-D visualization technology, such as the virtual reality model developed for the convention center, is another important application under development, since it will be a vital tool for land use and development in the future.
The group toured the SDDPC facility, and saw some of the products developed by the Corporation, including a CD-ROM program, a multi- media information Kiosk, a program developed for a CADD system, and the Geographic Information System.
When the meeting resumed, Eger asserted that in order to make these technologies available to the public and to private industry, developing partnerships with industry, through channels such as Info San Diego, will be critical.
The URL for interface between the public and Info San Diego was also posted during the presentation:
Info San Diego Report
Gerald Lowell then spoke about Info San Diego. Info San Diego had been broken down into a variety of subcommittees, including Legal/Regulatory, Technology, Marketing, Applications/Content, and Economics. A new subcommittee, Public Participation, is also being formed.
Info San Diego is the on-line information service to the region, the information portal between San Diego and the rest of the world, and the Internet home page for San Diego.
Lowell listed eleven recommendations that are in the overview of Info San Diego. One recommendation is that SDDPC should be charged with the startup of Info San Diego, which should later be spun off as a separate entity. Info San Diego should be based on the standards of the World Wide Web. It should have of a core group of 20,000 to 25,000 support companies as its main clients. It should develop a comprehensive business plan and address all legal issues. The service should commit to soliciting and securing public involvement, and city employees should be required to inform the public about the service. Info San Diego should offer services via links to other information systems. Data used should be current and updated. Info San Diego should provide services that go beyond simply providing information. It should keep liability issues under control. And finally, it should provide as much universal access as possible.
An open committee meeting for all of Info San Diego is scheduled for May 3rd. A final steering committee meeting will be held on May 5th.
A discussion about Info San Diego followed, and a number of points were raised. One was that the service aspires to showcase all the services available in San Diego, yet it must integrate dissimilar sets of information to do so. Another point was that Info San Diego should be promoted during the Supercomputer Showcase in August, so a URL and a few impressive applications need to be finished by then. A third point was that Info San Diego must be made accessible to everyone in the community, even those who do not normally use the technology.
John Eger then asked to table any further discussion about Info San Diego and continue with the other task force reports.
Education Task Force Report
None of the chairs from the Education Subcommittee present at this meeting, so there was no formal presentation given in this area.
Eger emphasized that there is a May 15th deadline for the reports from each task force, and that the findings of each subcommittee must be complete in order to assemble a complete report. He added that School Superintendent Bertha Pendalton and Deputy School Superintendent Beverly Foster had both expressed interest in seeing Internet links in all public schools, and links through Info San Diego to all cultural, artistic, sports, and library organizations in San Diego. They were also interested in making multi-media presentations available in schools. Doug Scutchfield supposed that distance learning is another potential that the Education Task Force should address. John Pavlik added that many of these programs are in development in the United States and elsewhere.
Health Care Task Force Report
Doug Scutchfield outlined the progress made by the Health Care Task Force. A major obstacle to bringing all the health care providers together in one network has been the providers' fears of giving competitors access to their files. However, Scutchfield said that within the past week all the providers seem to have agreed to cooperate with the program, which he considers a major breakthrough.
Lee Rizio then spoke about the organizational options for the health care program. He concludes that a non-profit organization (501(c)3) would be the best option, although a (501(c)6) would also be possible.
Options for financing include funding from CALTRANS, which is exploring its possible role in funding the information highway in place of physical highways. This could be used as seed money. Later, funding from each health care provider, and possibly funding from the telecommunications provider, could be added.
Next, Pete Rosen spoke about the health care applications. The recommendations in the original mayor's report included standardization of patient information, creating an informed medical consumer, and redefining the delivery of primary care.
However, there is already a formal a national effort for standardization by the Computer-Based Patient Record Institute, which is part of the Institute of Medicine. So efforts in San Diego should center around facilitating the exchange of that patient information, such as creating an E-mail system, rather than setting a standard that may undermine a future national standard.
Likewise, the goal of redefining primary care through telemedicine also proved to be beyond the scope of this project, so the task force is now concentrating on the goal of creating an informed medical consumer. This could include providing information to patients remotely, so that they wouldn't always have to visit a doctor, and developing a community-wide health status data repository for items like profiles of health risks and assessment of needs; data which hospitals are required by law to provide.
There are already some telecommunications systems in place in San Diego, such as the three telecenters built by CalTrans, and medical information systems used by Kaiser Permanente, Mercy Medical, Scripps Health, UCSD, and the Navy. These resources could be linked to users through Info San Diego.
Although these competing organizations may be reluctant at first to share information, collaboration is in everyone's best interest. Building a health information system alone would be too expensive and too risky, while collaboration will insure that all the systems can work together. Privacy will be a major concern in such an arrangement, but encryption technology should allow us to create a firewall which would allow for the exchange of some information while still guarding privacy.
Applications developed for this network should be interactive and engaging in order to hold the consumer's interest. They must also undergo periodic evaluation to determine how successful each program has been.
There are three potential sources of funding for this system. Healthcare providers, cities, telecos, and CalTrans should provide initial funding for the program. Later, partnerships could be established to draw support from vendors and other well-financed groups that would directly benefit from the system. A third stage could be grants and funding from national organizations, such as RW Johnson or NIST, based on demonstrative projects developed for the system.
The next steps for the Health Care Task Force will be to use site visits to determine what systems are already in use, needs assessment to decide what applications should be used, and an analysis of the technology required for those applications. Teams must then be formed to deal with each problem, and that first level of funding should be sought fairly soon.
Beth Givens of the Security Task Force pointed out that it will be important for the Health Care Task Force to insure that users can browse through their system anonymously, so that third parties, such as insurance companies or venders, could not find out what information the consumer has been looking for. Without such guarantees, the public will be reluctant to use the system.
Security Task Force Report
Beth Givens began the report for the Security Task Force. The task force has been broken down into Privacy, Intellectual Property, and Security subcommittees.
The Privacy Subcommittee has been working with a set of privacy principles, and analyzing how the City should be addressing those concerns. One major recommendation is that the mayor organize an advisory council, consisting of city officials and private citizens, to conduct an annual review of how adequately privacy issues are being addressed.
Intellectual property, on the other hand, does not lend itself to such a pro-active stance, since many facets of the issue, such as ownership of patient records, are still under debate. In such situations, where an organization is keeping records that it does not own, the principle of trusteeship seems to apply. The City should be made aware of these and other principles regarding intellectual property.
Gilbert Huey then spoke for the Security Subcommittee. He reported that all the encryption technology necessary to insure security is already available, so the major issue becomes the economics of using that technology.
The architecture of the communications highway must be able to support security devices economically. Security devices should be erected at the access points to the network, rather than within the network, where they would be far to expensive to build and maintain. This will also insure the versatility of the network, allowing both high and low security messages to be sent economically.
Another security issue to consider is liability, and who can ultimately be held accountable for data sent on the network. Joe Giammona said that a common carrier analogy would seem to apply. The network will only be delivering the data, rather than acting as a service provider, and therefore should be free from liability in the same way that the Postal Service is free from liability. However, various courts have been ruling differently on this issue recently, so it may be necessary to pass new legislation in order to protect Info San Diego from litigation.
Eger said that as the City of the Future project has advanced, it's become clear that there are additional areas, beyond the four included in the original report, that require attention. Each committee should stress the need for additional research into these areas, to show that the issues were recognized, but lie outside the scope of the report, and need to be dealt with in the future. Public comments on the final report should uncover even more of these issues. With that, he adjourned the meeting.
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