September 6, 1995

General Meeting of the Task Force Chairs and Co-Chairs

International Center for Communications

Attendees:

Don Anderson, University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
Don Bosseau, UCSD
Allen Brooks, San Diego Community College District
Charlie Christ, Teleport Communications Group
George Craig, San Diego State University (SDSU)
Steve Dahms, SDSU
John Eger, SDBCC
Al Ferris, Ferris and Britton
Gina Garcia, San Diego Union-Tribune
Joe Giammona, San Diego Data Processing Corporation (SDDPC)
Patrick Graupp, Sanyo
Kevin Hopkins, Mayor's Office, City of San Diego
Andrea Johnson, California Western School of Law
Sid Karin, San Diego Supercomputer Center
Ed Kopetsky, Sharp Healthcare
Herman Land, SDBCC
Scott Larson, International Center for Communications, SDSU
Gerald Lowell, UCSD
Don Martin, SDSU, for John Pavlik
Dan Paterka, Maxwell Labs
Ron Phillips, Economic Development Corporation of San Diego County
William Proffer, Science Applications International Corporation
Reint Reinders, San Diego Convention and Visitors' Bureau
Lee Rizio, SDDPC
Sandy Ruggiero, City of San Diego
John Schmitz, AmeriData
Renny Senn, Spectranet
Rick Shearer, National University, for Pete Wagschal
Howard Stapleton, City of San Diego
Julie Summerford, San Diego Transportation Management Association
Roger Talamantez, UCSD
Dick Wilken, City of San Diego
George Wood, Pacific Bell, for Jennifer Jackson

Summary: The COF committee held this meeting Wednesday, 9/6/95, between 1400 and 1600, in the conference room of the San Diego Data Processing Corporation. The agenda included the following:

1. Role of this committee
2. Report on the city's request for proposal (RFP)
3. Review of the San Diego Data Processing Center's initiatives
4. A brainstorming session on what can be done now
5. Role of the San Diego-Baja Communications Council
6. Status of the Berkom project

Minutes:

A. Introductions

MR Eger welcomed members and introduced himself as chair of the COF advisory committee and president of San Diego-Baja Communications Council (SDBCC). His introduction included following points:

• The minutes of these meetings will be available on the Internet.
• COF recommendations have been published, and there are many individuals and different ideas on how to move forward on them.
• Mayor agrees COF should not try to control or regulate others. It should focus on its own ideas; moreover, it can foster collaboration between different groups, providing a home for cooperation and progress.
• Purpose of this meeting is to move forward on COF recommendations: identify constituencies for the recommendations and make things happen.

Members of the group introduced themselves.

MR Hopkins, representing the Mayor as the liaison with the COF committee, made the following points:

• COF is one of the Mayor's prime initiatives.
• Mayor is very excited about the RFP(see below), which is the first big implementation of COF recommendations.
• As we move into the next phase of COF, Mayor looks forward to your ideas.

B. Report on the city's draft Request for Proposal-- MR Stapleton

MR Eger introduced MR Stapleton from the city's Office of Telecommunications, who is responsible for coordinating telecommunications for the city. He also acts as a liaison between the city and its citizens.

MR Stapleton made the following points about the city's draft request for proposal (RFP), which will solicit proposals for a partnership with private industry to develop San Diego's telecommunications infrastructure:

• MR Stapleton distributed limited copies of the draft RFP to COF members.
• RFP addresses two major questions: What are the telecommunication needs? What is available?
• It pursues the public-private partnership recommendation of COF to develop infrastructure.
• Much construction of telecommunications infrastructure underway. Questions have arisen as to how this infrastructure will convey content and intellectual property. This RFP does not address content.
• This draft attempts to address what local government can do to facilitate development of the infrastructure. It establishes certain criteria that the telecommunications infrastructure must meet: Extensive discussion with other communities, as well as input from the Mayor's advisory committee, helped shape the criteria.
• The criteria are:

  -- equal access for everyone in the city
  -- open platform, hardware independent
  -- abundant bandwidth for future use
  -- universal availability
  -- low environmental impact
  

• The RFP comprises two independent proposal requests. The more modest is to upgrade the city's current telecommunications infrastructure. The more ambitious is to enter into a partnership to develop the region's telecommunications infrastructure.
• Schedule for RFP is as follows: draft and evaluation criteria sent to Rules Committee to review on 9/11. It will then go to the full Council on 9/25. If approved, city will request San Diego Data Processing Center (SDDPC) issue the RFP shortly thereafter.
• Process of evaluating the RFP responses is not yet defined. Have investigated how other cities have done this. One city has the mayor and other high-ranking officials participate in the final evaluation.
• Best group for San Diego RFP may be the Policy Committee of the Mayor's Advisory Committee.

MR Eger asked for comments from the members.

Discussion started with a recap of the city's attempts to coordinate this RFP with the telecommunications initiatives of other cities and the state. However, the complexity of coordinating with other governments would have delayed implementation. It was decided to get the ball rolling and as the program picks up momentum, other groups may want to join. Program will be open to allow this. Additionally, it appears that the state has not made this issue a priority, except for the California Department of Transportation (CALTRANS), which has funded a "smart cities" initiative. Expectation appears to be that communities to take on the responsibility themselves. The responsibility to do this is ours.

Concern was expressed about private management of critical services, such as fire and police protection. The RFP intentionally does not include the public safety radio system within its scope. However, the scope will affect land-line communications used in these services.

The RFP focuses on required services to be provided rather than how to provide them (e.g., what type of hardware to buy).

There is a range of desired outcomes for this RFP, from putting in an entirely new infrastructure, to negotiating agreements for developing a seamless interface that uses infrastructure already in place, to simply reducing telecommunications costs.

The discussion of the RFP concluded with the following observations:

• Could the city or SDDPC bring the local telecom companies together in a series of experiments?
• Is there more that could be done to encourage reduction in bandwidth costs, or the construction of the arch-network, the network of networks?
• How much influence can government or this committee exert over the rapidly changing field of telecommunications?
• Often hard to attribute impact of formal programs and initiatives to actual developments. Another initiative, InfoSanDiego, has been left unfunded. However, many of the ideas from this initiative were put into place by the city.

C. Report from San Diego Data Processing Corporation (SDDPC)-- MR Rizio

MR Rizio stated the SDDPC very pleased to take part in COF. He mentioned the following:

• SDDPC has no interest in becoming the 501-c3 organization for the InfoSanDiego initiative. It prefers to be a vendor or a partner.
• Interested in the COF Healthcare Subcommittee's recommendation that SDDPC assist in a creating a legal 501-3c organization known as San Diego Telehealth Incorporated.
• SDDPC has an interest in meeting with the Chief Information Officers of the local healthcare providers to help move forward on computer applications. Although some applications are in areas in which they fiercely compete, these areas also offer tremendous opportunities for cooperation.
• SDDPC has worked on several initiatives, including the Republican National Convention project; the Convention and Visitors' Bureau Berkom trial, which connects San Diego with many of the major European cities to put together tourism information packets; and the SDBCC's "blur the borders" initiative.
• SDDPC always looking for ways to contribute to network security, telecommuting, and private-public partnerships.

D. Brainstorming Opportunities

The Republican National Convention:

There are opportunities to use the COF idea to promote tourism and recognition for San Diego. The Republican National Convention is a great vehicle for visibility. How can we use it to help build the telecom infrastructure of the future?

--Broadcast the Republican National Convention over the Internet with technology called M-bone. Will cost little and give high visibility. Could city exert leadership to get agreement from broadcasting companies to allow this?

--Test the M-bone technology at the Supercomputer Conference, which the San Diego Supercomputer Center hosts in December. Get the bugs out before the Republican Convention next year. Also test it at the PCMA conference at convention center during 1/96.

--Install information kiosks before the convention, which will draw attention to this technology during convention. Kiosks will then be familiar to and available for the city when convention over.

--There will be 15,000 newscasters for convention. They will need high-tech links to reach their home audiences. They may be a more receptive audience to our offer of high-tech communication, since they cannot broadcast the actual convention.

--Find activities at the convention that will mesh with our local, long-term goals.

InfoSanDiego:

MR Lowell agreed to lead further implementations of the InfoSanDiego initiative, even though city may not fund. He stated he needed personnel and an official commission to get things going. MR Eger stated he would seek support from the local communications companies for MR Lowell's group. The best candidates for InfoSanDiego content may come from tourism, events, and library information.

Get InfoSanDiego off the ground, a commercial entity can then take it over and make a profit with it. It must be profitable to work.

MS Johnson volunteered to coordinate legal resources to form a legal entity for InfoSanDiego. Legal status may be necessary for InfoSanDiego to be able to do necessary things, such as handling money.

Another option is to restart InfoSanDiego through the Convention and Visitors' Bureau and then spin it off when commercially attractive. Perhaps start it through the SDBCC?

MR Kopetsky reviewed healthcare opportunities:

• Pursue items that everyone needs, but are not confidential, such as basic e- mail and insurance information for patient enrollment and eligibility. Set up one standard for easy access to information on positive identification, insurance benefits, and clinical data.
• There are queues in doctor offices because of time it takes to verify patient eligibility for insurance benefits. Fixing this would greatly increase productivity.
• One fear of insurance providers is that a company can use insurance data to target low utilizers with its own special offers, undercutting the competition and enjoying a lower-cost pool of customers than industry average.
• San Diego can become a national model on how to implement technology.
• Good to get the healthcare chief information officers to agree on what to do.

Other opportunities:

• Focus on things that have a long term impact, stay in electronic infrastructure.
• Get every member of this committee hooked up and communicating on e-mail to each other.
• Security is a big issue, what will happen to the data once it is put on line? Should there be subcommittee for security?
• Demand for information on community services from the home. Enough PC's out there to make this fly.
• There is an agreement between city and county to work together on these issues. How can we get other communities and the county more involved? We have to see cooperation to move.

COF committee actively looking for other ways to move forward:

--Many conversations with CALTRANS about developing telecenters for commuters
--MR Craig, who chaired Telecommunications Committee of COF, has returned to work on the telecenter idea
--MR Karin, from the San Diego Computer Center, has been investigating how the Center fits into San Diego. Can it expand access? How to connect it? He will chair a committee to study these issues
--Implement some of the small pieces identified in the InfoSanDiego initiative --Implement some small part of the community-wide health information network. Do it in one part of the city, some small way. Do it today!

E. Role of San Diego-Baja Communications Council

A forum exists to discuss and promote these ideas, the Executive Committee of the SDBCC, which promotes technology and regional development and emphasizes cross-border communication. December meeting will be open to anyone who wants to be involved in the COF. Will launch the roundtable on the COF, which will be industry-driven, under the aegis of the SDBCC.

MR Eger asked the group to submit their suggestions for the December SDBCC meeting on ways to move forward. He will compile a list. Minutes from other meeting members attend were also requested, so they could be posted on the Internet.

F. Berkom Project

MR Eger summarized the Berkom initiative. It includes an offer from Berkom to assist San Diego. Particulars include:

• Use of transatlantic ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) broadband network. Will start this with some experiments in tourism and travel.
• Further discussions with Berkom about experiments in healthcare.
• Further discussions with Berkom about educational applications.
• Later in year president of Berkom will be here for the SDBCC to discuss plan for the region. They have offered to deliver a package of software support for the region. How long Berkom will offer this is unclear. Also unclear whether there will be a future cost for San Diego. However, this is a gift we shouldn't turn down.

Minutes prepared by:

By S. Larson, International Center for Communications, ICC. Send suggestions or comments to Scott Larson, sll@cts.com

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