Internet2 K20 Initiative Advisory Committee Comments on the June 17, 2011 interim draft Report of the U.S.

UCAN CAI Task Force on Economic Models

June 30, 2011 Introduction As the Internet2 community begins to deliberate the recommendations put forth in the interim draft report by the U.S. UCAN CAI Task Force on Economic Models, we believe theres value in reflecting on our shared history of engaging Community Anchor Institutions (CAIs). In the years following the creation of the Internet2 consortium, leaders in the academic research and technology community saw an opportunity with Internet2 to engage the broader education community in the development of the next-generation Internet. The Internet2 consortium launched the Internet2 K20 Initiative in 2001 to extend network access to public libraries, K-12 schools, baccalaureate colleges and universities, community colleges, and a host of cultural and scientific organizations such as performing arts centers, museums, science centers, zoos, and aquaria. The Sponsored Education Group Participant (SEGP) program was the approach developed to connect CAIs to Internet2. Rather than being born out of an eagerness to reform or transform K-12 education, public libraries, or any other community anchor sector, Internet2s decision to connect and engage the broad formal and informal education community was aligned with its advanced technology missions. By putting tomorrow's technologies into the hands of as many innovators and educational sectors as possible, the Internet2 consortium sought to both accelerate the cycle of technology evolution, transfer, and diffusion and provide CAIs with an opportunity to shape and utilize the content, services, and applications of the nextgeneration Internet. This approach has been remarkably successful. Today, over 66,000 CAIs across 40 states are connected to the national Internet2 backbone network, via state and regional R&E networks, under the popular SEGP program, which has grown well beyond initial expectations. Through consistent engagement of CAI practitioners at the grass-roots level, the Internet2 K20 Initiative has created diverse communities of trust whose participants are bound by a common interest and commitment to, advanced networking, content, services, and applications. This has been accomplished without over-promising, over-extending, or losing focus on the primary goals of Internet2 membership community. The Internet2 K20 Initiative continues to be a win for Internet2, SEGP networks, and the millions of Americans served by the connected community anchor institutions. We appreciate the Task Force's acknowledgement of the successes of the K20 Initiative when it recommends (RECOMMENDATION III-5) that the "strengths of SEGP should be incorporated into the national U.S. UCAN program . . . extending SEGP successes to the broader community of CAIs for which U.S. UCAN is being established." The "strengths of SEGP," which include connecting large numbers of willing CAIs to high-performance networking, fostering community, facilitating collaborative work, and convening a broad constituency of users, offer a strong foundation on which to build a successful U.S. UCAN program. We believe using the existing Internet2 SEGP/K20 and Health Sciences Initiatives as a base and expanding that work over time would allow the U.S. UCAN program to operate initially with a lower overhead than envisioned by the Task Force, obviating the need for an increase in fees until additional CAI's connect in numbers sufficient to support growth of the organization.

Our nation is counting on the R&E networking community to provide community anchors with the advanced broadband infrastructure needed to fundamentally improve education, government services, health care, and public safety, and unleash waves of innovation, discovery, and opportunity for all Americans in the 21st century. It is in this spirit the K20 Initiative offers the following response to the Task Forces June 17, 2011 interim draft report: RECOMMENDATION III-3: A U.S. UCAN Council should be established, on which CAIs have at least equal representation with U.S. UCAN network services providers, including statenets, regional nets, the U.S. UCAN national program office and the Internet2 national 100 gigabit backbone infrastructure. An initial Council should be chosen from among willing and knowledgeable volunteers and chaired by the Director of the U.S. UCAN national program office. A high priority for the Council should be development of a statement of program goals and milestones for U.S. UCAN. With respect to creating a U.S. UCAN Council, the foundation already exists for six of the eight sectors; K12 education, 2-year and 4-year colleges and universities, public libraries, museums, and health care. There is no need to start from scratch. The K20 Initiative Advisory Committee, composed of leaders from the anchor tenant and state and regional networking community, has successfully developed strategic goals, identified and completed projects, modeled innovations in advanced applications and collaborated with others to achieve benefits to the community. The Health Sciences Initiative has had similar success in supporting and facilitating activities involving advanced networking applications for clinical practice and health awareness and outreach in the U.S. research and education community. The talent and experience in these groups, as well as the K20 Initiatives successful track record of collaboration and community building, can be leveraged and applied to shaping an initial U.S. UCAN Council. The K20 organizational model is easily expandable to include all sectors interested in participating in a U.S. UCAN program. The strength of the model lies inherently in an established culture of valuing differences, supporting multiple stakeholder priorities, and respecting diverse communities of interest. These essential attributes are needed to successfully integrate the sectors less familiar with organizing around the common vision of advanced networks. Building upon the K20 Advisory Committee structure and membership, an initial U.S. UCAN Council could be launched immediately (supported by existing Internet2 staffing resources) while being instructed to take a measured and well-considered approach to their endeavor over the course of the entire U.S. UCAN BTOP period. The Council would be charged with providing strategic direction and goal setting, identifying and piloting potential above-the-net services, and helping to iterate proposed program fee models. We believe it is critical to use the entire U.S. UCAN BTOP grant period to conduct this additional consultation and strategic planning with the various CAI sectors prior to launching the U.S. UCAN program office as currently envisioned by the Task Force. We offer the following additional thoughts on how such an initial U.S. UCAN Council might be structured: At-Large Council composed of members representing all 8 sectors and of other vested parties (such as representatives from associations and R&E networks). Executive Committee designated to help organize, facilitate and complete the work of the AtLarge Council. Community-of-Interest working groups derived from the At-Large Council. This is where sectors could come together to discuss common issues, identify opportunities and strategies to recruit their peers, and create subcommittees around specific topics/issues. Lastly, cross-sector subcommittees of the At-large Council could be formed as needed around a common issue or question and dissolved when the work is completed.

RECOMMENDATION V-3: As described in the successful proposal to NTIA, U.S. UCAN should ensure that CAIs can connect with each other nationwide, rather than just locally, with respect to advanced broadband applications, including telepresence, distance education, telemedicine, and job training In 2007 the Internet2 K20 Initiative created Muse (http://k20.internet2.edu), an online community where innovators from Internet2 member institutions, K-12 schools, colleges and universities, public libraries, and museums from around the world can discover and connect with each other and the wide range of the applications, resources, and services enabled by high-performance R&E networks. The development of a social networking resource was a natural progression for our community, which has long sought more efficient ways to share experiences, ideas, resources, projects, and collaborations across global geographic boundaries. Whether or not Muse, or a next iteration, is something public safety, health care, and local government would find value in will require further consultation. Muse can be evolved to meet any new sector-specific functional requirements and immediately help to facilitate much needed cross-sector dialogue around how U.S. UCAN can support and add value to their missions. RECOMMENDATION V-4: A deliberate data collection and analysis effort is needed to document the depth and breadth of CAI use of services, to feed impact studies, to enable measurement of the goals of the National Broadband Plan, to serve as a status and prospects clearinghouse, and to provide data and feedback to U.S. UCAN itself in calibrating its efforts to meet the needs of CAIs. This effort is appropriate for a national entity with national membership such as U.S. UCAN because it enables consistent and standardized data collection across the country. In addition, U.S. UCAN is well positioned to undertake this task because it will be a trusted, independent agent in collecting and analyzing data, rather than self-interested. Working as a trusted partner with state and regional R&E networks in the collection and analysis of CAI connectivity data, the Internet2 K20 Initiative has developed a depth of expertise the U.S. UCAN program can leverage to reach the goals set forth in Recommendation V-4. We recommend a U.S. UCAN program, working with key stakeholders and partners, build the capacity to collect the following data for every CAI in the United States.

organization name physical address, including latitude/longitude federally and state recognized unique identifier1 organization type Internet Service Provider name (including both commercial and R&E network providers) advertised bandwidth (upload/download in Mbps) actual bandwidth (upload/download in Mbps)

latency jitter packet loss Internet2 enabled - yes/no circuit capacity (total available layer 2 transport capacities (e.g. 40Mbps, 100Mbps, etc) circuit type (DSL, cable, satellite, fiber, etc.)

The inclusion of a federally recognized unique identifier is absolutely critical in order to allow seamless integration with important nationally curated CAI data sets such as the NCESs Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), K-12 Common Core of Data (CCD), and the Institute of Museum and Library Service Public Library survey. This will extend the ability of the U.S. UCAN community and its partners to analyze and interpret CAI broadband data.

Achieving success in this important endeavor will require a U.S. UCAN program to work in close coordination with a range of stakeholders including, but not limited to, Internet2 staff and working groups focused on network performance measurement, state and regional R&E networks, commercial Internet providers, federal and state agencies2, academic researchers, CAI professional organizations, and CAIs themselves to develop data collection methodologies and analytical tools that reflect the interests, concerns, and needs of all involved. The level of effort required to provide the best work product should be properly factored into the staffing budget projections for any future U.S. UCAN program office. Lastly, we urge the Task Force and U.S. UCAN to regard CAI broadband data collection efforts not only as a means of providing the consistent and standardized data needed to conduct the quantitative analysis described in Recommendation V-4, but also as an opportunity to engage and inform CAI practitioners around the multiple benefits of advanced broadband connectivity. For example, a thoughtfully designed and virally marketed open source, standards compliant, user initiated broadband speed test purpose built to serve CAIs could provide CAI practitioners and decision makers with real data about the current capacity of their network connection. One way this data could be presented is in terms of the advanced applications currently enabled (or not) in their classrooms, libraries, museums, or hospitals. In short, CAI broadband data collection efforts can be designed to maximize the yield of valuable data, raise CAI awareness around the many exciting mission aligned uses of high performance broadband, and promote the value and benefits of R&E networking services3. RECOMMENDATION VII-3: The task force has developed and presented three possible models for U.S. UCAN cost recovery, of which it recommends Model B as the best balance between cushioning the impact of the creation of U.S. UCAN, and preparing for a CAI broadband future. The U.S. UCAN Task Force Recommendation VII-3 proposes changes to the existing SEGP cost model to support the additional cost of establishing a U.S. UCAN national program office with an initial annual budget of $2.65M and 2% annual growth thereafter. The Task Force identified a funding gap of 34% since current SEGP fees generate $1.98M. The ways in which SEGP costs are covered vary significantly from state-to-state, and funding the increase in annual fees for U.S. UCAN would also likely vary from state-to-state. However, there are cases the Internet2 K20 Advisory Committee have identified where the increased cost would have to be passed on to the existing CAI sites served by SEGPs. The group has further identified cases where doing so during a time when budgets are already severely constrained for these institutions would be catastrophic. Quite simply, many CAIs have no extra funds to support this effort. In the current fiscal climate, some SEGP's have already stated that they will discontinue participation in the SEGP/U.S. UCAN program if fees increase. Since they have budgeted for the existing SEGP costs, they will continue to participate if the level of financial commitment remains the same.

For example, part of the NTIAs State Broadband Initiative's (SBI) http://www2.ntia.doc.gov/SBDD charge is to collect Community Anchor Institution data from all 50 states participating in the program. The K20 Initiative has been working closely with the NTIAs SBI program staff to further leverage our collective efforts. Please see the following mock up of a user initiated broadband speed test purpose built for community anchor organizations. http://bit.ly/kBv0Xn
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Scaling back the budget for U.S. UCAN Year 1 to the $1.98M per year currently collected in SEGP fees, would allow Internet2, the vertical CAI organizations, and the state and regional R&E networks to grow the membership to support increases in the budget over time while not losing membership, and revenues, in the process. Closing Remarks The Internet2 K20 Initiative applauds the members of the Task Force for grappling with and proposing initial solutions to a wide range of complex issues involved in standing up a U.S. UCAN program. We continue to strongly support the notion of a Unified Community Anchor Network program where the advanced application needs and national networking requirements of community anchor institutions are understood, coordinated and fulfilled. In contrast, moving too quickly to launch a costly new program without broad community support, and whose mission and services are still perceived as amorphous by the great majority of those it aims to serve, will unnecessarily complicate the path ahead. It is our view that there is great value in taking the full U.S. UCAN BTOP grant cycle to identify and develop the initial set of above-the-network services identified by CAIs and build a strong community consensus around a sustainable and equitable fee model before fully funding and launching the U.S. UCAN program as currently envisioned by the Task Force. This would also provide time for continued outreach, education, and consultation with leaders from the anchor tenant community to build additional trust, mutual understanding around their needs, and, plans for how we can best serve them. We wish to thank the Task Force for providing the opportunity to comment on the interim report and look forward to participating in a constructive community dialogue in the weeks and months ahead. Respectfully submitted on behalf of the Internet2 K20 Advisory Committee by: Carol Willis Texas Education Telecommunications Network (TETN) Chair, Internet2 K20 Initiative Advisory Committee Kim Owen North Dakota State University Co-Chair, Internet2 K20 Initiative Advisory Committee