A Study of State-Funded Community Networks in Indiana:

Final Report

Recommendations

The analysis of state-funded CNs indicates that they have reached a stage in their development where their technical infrastructures (for those running their own servers) or web sites are sufficiently well-developed to support useful network-based community information systems. There are two critical challenges that must be faced to make this transition - one is social and cultural and the second is economic. To remain successful once the state-funding runs out, CNs have to create the kinds of social and cultural content and services that will enable them to integrate their systems into the routine lives of their communities. This will involve the development of deep and meaningful local content and interactive services that will encourage ongoing and regular social interaction among CN members. CN Boards have to learn more about their communities and user populations in order to accomplish this. They also have to begin the transition to self-sustainability. Board members recognize that they must develop viable strategies for attaining self-sufficiency through the generation of ongoing revenue streams.

These challenges have been anticipated by AI; according to Whitman (1997):

The ACCESS INDIANA community network model has been based on achieving self-sufficiency within the first two years of operation. Content has been the cornerstone of [AI]- supported community networks...

There are five basic recommendations that have come from this research. The first is technical and the remaining four are social and economic.

1. There have emerged two tiers of CNs, ones that are acting as ISPs in their regions, providing dial-in access to members and hosting pages on their own servers and ones that have worked out relationships with ISPs that free them from the day to day technical concerns of running a network. Some CNs have become the major sellers of internet connectivity in their regions and, if they have developed a technical support staff among the Board or have the capital to hire technical staff, they should be applauded. They have carved out a viable niche for themselves that should allow them to generate revenues to cover their costs.

However those CNs that have been not successful at being ISPs or who see the arrival of local or regional competition should get out of the server business. They should transform themselves into a digital community information center and not an ISP. CNs should concentrate on developing a good relationship with an ISP, pursuing, for example, the possibility of "finder's fees" from the ISP when individual and organizational CN members are encouraged to have their pages hosted on the ISP's server. This also allows Board members to take advantage of developments in networking; they should be able to request, for example, that their ISP assist in the development of CGI or Perl scripting or Javascript to add interactivity to their pages without them having to learn a new programming language themselves (unless they want to). In addition, not having to maintain the technical infrastructure should free up both time and money for CNs to concentrate on developing content and increasing membership through marketing and promotions.

2. CN Boards have to learn from each other. Development in isolation greatly increases the risk of failure and duplicated effort. Information sharing can save time and effort, both of which, according to many Board members, are scarce. Board members throughout the state have to develop efficient channels for information exchange, perhaps through ICNA, perhaps through private mailing lists. A good example of the way in which information sharing can assist development efforts is the development and spread of the interactive community calendar.

What are the best practices that have been successful in the ICNA CNs?

What are some features that appear in various CNs t hat are worth the attention of Board members? A short and selective list might include (note - many CNs also have similar features and including a feature attributed to one CN is in no way intended to slight another) :

Access Laporte County: Business and Technology Plans
http://www.lc-link.org/orgs/alco/bizplan.html
http://www.lc-link.org/orgs/alco/techplan.html

Access Perry County: Annual Report
http://www.perrycounty.org/APC/information.html

Boone County Community Network: Information about BCC
http://www.bccn.boone.in.us/admin/About_BCCN.html

Communinet: Acceptable Uses Policy
http://www.communinet.org/About/acceptable_use.htm

Crawford County Community Network: Help Pages for New Users
http://www.cccn.net/help.htm

Dekalb County Community Network: Child Safety Tips
http://www.dekalbnet.org/childsafety.htm

East Central Indiana Community Net: Resume Database and Job Bank
http://www.ecicnet.org/workdb/index.html
http://www.ecicnet.org/jobbank/

Falls Cities Community Network: Tiered Annual Sponsorship levels
http://fccn.venus.net/fccnhtbm.htm

Fort Wayne Infonet: How to Submit Pages
http://www.ft-wayne.in.us/infonet/content/fwai_submission.html

Greenet Public Opinion Poll
http://www.greenet.net/opinion/default.htm

HoosierNet: Local Community Calendar (interactive)
http://www.bloomington.in.us/calendar/index.msql

Huntington County Community Network: Key services of our network
http://www.huntington.in.us/services.html

Indianapolis Online: FAQ and Comment Center
http://www.indianapolis.in.us/home/faqs-net.htm
http://www.bit-wise.com/indyforum/forum.htm

Michiana FreeNet: User Home Pages and FAQ
http://users.michiana.org/userpages.shtml
http://michiana.org/MFNetAdm/MFNetInfo.html

Midwest PrarieNet: Community calendar and How to get your business a page
http://www.mwprairienet.lib.in.us/Calendar/calendar.html
http://www.mwprairienet.lib.in.us/special.html#bus

NobleCan: Community Calendar Festivals and Events
http://www.noblecan.org/calendar/calendar.cgi
http://www.noblecan.org/~super/events/

South Central Indiana Community Access Network: Tax Center and Troubleshooting page and Community Information Development Grant Application
http://scican.net/taxes/taxes.htm
http://scican.net/scican/trouble.html
http://www.scican.net/scican/grant.html

WCICnet: Virtual Community Mailing List
http://www.wcic.org/maillist.html

3. CNs must develop strategies for integrating themselves into their communities. By demonstrating the value of the CN to current and potential individual and organizational members, Board members can begin the process of institutionalizing the CN. Community members have to learn to view the CN as a routine and useful component of their daily information behaviors, much like listening to the radio, watching television, or reading the newspaper. The digital environment that now seems to be commonplace for Board members is still foreign territory for many members of their communities. These people may have computers, modems, and connectivity, but they do not have a good understanding of what this technology would let them access and use. CN Boards must develop strategies to educate their communities about the functionalities of the CN for different user populations. This is where the development of deep and meaningful content and the provision of a range of interactive services is critically important. The problem is to get the community into the CN web and keep them there. Remember that digital interactivity is a new type of social interaction and people have to be taught how to "live" in this world. Some important activities include:

Promoting and advertising the CN: there is a need to evangelize about the CN in the community. Board members should consider spending some money to target advertising to specific groups of individuals, not-for-profit organizations, and businesses. They should also look for all of the free and low cost opportunities to advertise the CN (press releases to the media).

Having clear explanations of the benefits of CN membership for individuals, families, businesses, and non- profits available both on and offline. Many CNs have included membership information on their sites, but this typically includes the costs and simple descriptions of services. There should be much more detailed information explaining why people and organizations should join and/or sponsor their CN. Conducting or sponsoring more training and public appearances: there is a need to raise he levels or technical expertise and, sometimes, the level of comfort with networking technologies in many communities. People have to be taught that it is not difficult to use computer and communications technologies to go online and that being able to interact in the CN environment is not beyond their capabilities.

Getting more people involved in the CN: Boards should think about ways to draw people in by encouraging them to participate in such activities as creating content and suggesting services (such as subject specific discussions that run on the CN for a specific amount of time), assisting in training, and helping out in public appearances. The CN has to become viewed as "valuable community property" instead of technology that belongs to the Board.

Getting the CN more involved in the routines of major community institutions. An important step in the institutionalization of a CN is the recognition of its importance by other community institutions such as local government, schools, public libraries, and the not-for-profit and private sectors. If, for example, the CN hosted, managed, and provided access to local governmental and social service information for the community, it could become a digital community information center and "quasi-governmental agency." Community members might then view the CN as a gateway to vital local information, and local governments, schools, and libraries might be more interested in having representatives on CN Boards and underwriting some operational costs.

4.CNs should make a concerted effort to find out what their members and communities want in their CN and begin developing appropriate local content and services. CNs should be looking to do more than provide pages and pages of lists of links; CNs must redefine themselves as digital community information centers, online places where community members can regularly and routinely interact with each other. Networks are composed of people: content draws them in - communication makes them stay. A CN that resembles an online yellow pages is not useful to community members.

To learn more about their communities, CNs should consider:

Conducting community needs assessments through mail, phone, media based surveys (perhaps in the local newspaper) or meetings. The point of this exercise is to give community members a chance to tell the Boards what they want.

Developing an ongoing evaluation strategy as a way of setting benchmarks and measuring progress. This would allow CNs to monitor their progress on an ongoing basis. Some of these data can be gathered easily with server transaction logs, others can be gathered by periodic focus groups (perhaps at membership meetings) and informal conversations

Continually improving the design, layout, and usability of their web sites. An interesting exercise is to have different types of people try to navigate through the web site, perhaps in response to questions (what are the hours of the library?). Is the site easily handled by children? Senior citizens? Developing more extensive reciprocal partnerships with schools and libraries (and, where possible, local colleges and universities). There are many interactive projects that can be initiated between schools, libraries, and the CN. For example, the library could sponsor a young adult book review page where high school students post reviews on the CN that they have written in school classes while the CN provides a chat area where students can discuss the books and the reviews. There are many collaborative projects that are being conducted in primary schools around the world (such as environmental studies of water and pollution) that could be hosted by the CN.

Developing relationships with local businesses and non-profit organizations. There are collaborative possibilities that could involve the creation of an electronic commerce incubator, where the CN could assist local businesses interested in establishing a web storefront. Real estate, tourism, and digital product (software, reservations etc.) companies are good candidates for such activities. However, this would require the CN working out arrangements with their ISPs to offer secure transaction processing. Developing community-based interactive forums and databases that can be regional, neighborhood, or village specific. CNs should have job banks and resume databases for their members. Local clubs and organizations should have discussion areas or lists that they can use to communicate. There is a range of political information that can be made available to the community; there should be a wealth of local and regional government information that can be made available to members. The CN could sponsor electronic town meetings, chats with candidates, or discussions of relevant issues.

5. Finally, there must be a state-wide and concerted effort to develop viable strategies for self sufficiency and generating a revenue stream. All of the Board members who either responded to the survey or were interviewed mentioned that their CNs had to begin generating enough revenue to at least break even. Some suggestions and possibilities that emerged from the research include:

The suggestion that ICNA and/or AI host a conference on sustainability and self sufficiency for member CNs. Such a conference could bring in people from CNs who have implemented activities and services that have led to revenue generation or who have successfully pursued grants and other funding opportunities.

Hosting ecommerce. Many businesses are beginning to think about the potential of the web as a business opportunity. At the very least, the advertising value is clear for certain types of businesses; CNs should explore the possibility of acting as a "virtual incubator" for transaction-based storefronts.

Collecting linkage fees paid by organizational members to subsidize the cost of connection to ISPs

Soliciting business for design and build projects, although this depends on the Board having the necessary expertise in-house, unless they work a "finder's fee" deal with a local web design firm. Taking on special web development projects for government, nonprofits, and local clubs and organizations.

Hosting of and provision of access to government and real estate information for a fee.

Seeking grants from local governments, foundations, large employers, not-for-profits in the service area.

Developing and carrying out successful projects with these potential partners (participation in global K12 science projects; access to government information, electronic town meetings; training for employees, job and resume databases) increases the strength of the argument that they should have budget lines for supporting the community network.

Providing fee-based interactive services, such as special aliased e-mail, e-mail accounts, and private mailing lists or chat areas. If the CN is not an ISP, these services would have to be hosted by the ISP with some of the fees handed back to the CN.

Training for corporations and nonprofit organizations

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