Clevelanders must get connected

Norm Roulet - November 5, 2001, Opinion Editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer

Joe Frolik's Oct. 21 (2001) column, "The high-tech route to City Hall," finally starts focusing attention on the Cleveland area's only hope for economic and social renewal: information technology.

Independent studies prove Cleveland is deficient in its use of information technology in government and in supporting the needs and interests of citizens. As a result, the community and the local economy have suffered.

Cleveland must move to the forefront of the information technology revolution by doing two things quickly and effectively:

Achieve universal access for our people.

Develop an optimal virtual community.

Every citizen in the Cleveland area should have regular, convenient access to a computer, e-mail and the Internet - ideally at home. For us to accept that any of our citizens are disconnected is to accept that they are stranded across a divide and not part of a hopeful new economy.

Universal access can be achieved. A very high percentage of area homes are online, and many more households may be willing to pay for a computer and access, if both are made affordable and convenient. Households that cannot afford computers and access must be subsidized and sponsored so that no citizen is allowed to fall off-line. Local, state and federal governments and local and global businesses should be thrilled to help get Greater Clevelander connected - and create a model for the new world in the process.

If Clevelanders act in concert - like a large corporation - we may negotiate better deals for computers, access, applications and technical support than possible acting as individual customers. If we notify Dell, HP and Gateway that Clevelanders need 100,000 cheap, preconfigured computers at the lowest possible price, they will deliver and be very pleased to help support the world's first significant, universally connected city. Universal access can happen using existing phone lines. People don't need fiber-optics or cable to benefit from the Internet.

To optimize our virtual community, Cleveland must learn from the accomplishments of great cities like Seattle, Austin, Chicago, Boston and New York. Visit the northwest, at www.ci.seattle.wa.us [1], and imagine the possibilities for us.

Millions of people worldwide and around Cleveland already are developing cheap, effective application service provider capabilities (which allow users to do whatever they want to do on the Internet and which underpin a useful virtual community). These great, open solutions just need to be configured for Clevelanders' purposes.

Cleveland must re-engineer business and governance processes so they are Internet-optimized (by that I mean perfectly suited to users' needs). For example, if Clevelanders wanted them, they could have ASP capabilities for voting, paying parking tickets, searching and registering for adult learning services, complaining about code violations or drug activity, finding gas lines before digging, checking on a fifth grader's school assignments and grades.

When Cleveland offers Clevelanders the online resources and services Seattle offers its citizens and business community, Cleveland will become a much more livable city.

The Cleveland-area virtual community should be a place for all citizens to learn. Our children should find access to free, online learning resources - the best the world has to offer - organized by age and skill level. They should find a place to communicate with their teachers and learning peers, extending healthy learning relationships and environments to their homes.

Adults should turn online to help their children learn, supporting their healthy virtual and physical learning environments, and to access adult learning resources. A city with computer-literate, computer-educated, computer-trained citizens will create, attract and retain more high-tech enterprise and jobs.

It's up to us. Cleveland can develop a world-class virtual community and a new economy. We have to do things right and stick with our goals. There are no quick fixes to our problems. We need to get better at the things that matter, like sharing, learning, collaborating and information technology.

Current U.S. and global economic developments won't spark and fuel our local economy. Quite the opposite. Cleveland must resolve this economic and social crisis alone. I hope our next mayor will be the right person, at the right place, at this right time, to help lead us on a better course for the future. But each leader throughout the community must now lead better, and each Clevelander must personally leverage all the best tools, insights and opportunities made available to succeed.

Roulet is a Cleveland-area virtual community developer. He encourages readers to comment on universal access and virtual community for Cleveland. Go to his Web site: http://roulets.net [2] or e-mail him at: norm [at] roulets [dot] net