The Broadband Wireless Opportunity for Glasgow
Local-government officials and IT professionals attending the W2i Digital Cities Convention in London this fall (September 25-26) will also have much to learn from initiatives in cities around Great Britain, including Glasgow. Gordon Kennedy, Deputy Chief Executive of Scottish Enterprise Glasgow, Scotland’s economic development agency, works closely with the City Council on its four-pronged e-Government strategy, much of which will be further enabled by the implementation of a citywide wireless infrastructure. The following is adapted from Kennedy’s remarks at the W2i Digital Cities Convention in Taipei, June 2830, 2006. Kennedy's presentation is available to W2i Fellows.
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Glasgow and Broadband Wireless
We’re in the same position [in our wireless planning] at the moment probably as Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Portland. Glasgow has very good coverage of telecommunications and broadbandalmost 100%but it’s primarily through DSL, ADSL, fiber optic, cable and satellite. Wireless is patchy. There are hotspots, hot zones, and specific initiatives, but until recently there has been no overall strategy for wireless in the city. A wireless steering group has been establishedpublic and private sectorto deliver a Wireless Glasgow strategy, and they’ve got a number of issues that there are about to tackle.
In talking about a seamless roaming wireless city center, it’s interesting because in Glasgow we have a deregulated approach to utilities, and the debate about whether the public sector or private sector should deliver that is being discussed at the moment. We’re looking at a model with the private sector to see if we can deliver that, and there’s an issue again about whether it should be free, or affordable and accessible.
Positive planning policies for any provider to get access to public infrastructure is going to be part of it, and encouraging all kinds of public-sector initiatives to use Wi-Fi, such as bus information, mobile and closed-circuit TV, etc.
The City Council’s e-Government Strategy
Glasgow is part of a six-cities grouping called the E-Cities Partnership, which has established a benchmarking process for best-practice aspirational standards for e-Government and e-Business. It was developed by the six Scottish cities plus a consultancy called the Business Lab and St. Andrews University. It’s not a scoring system where you beat other people or compete, but it’s aimed at improvement. There are four main themes:
• E-business
• E-learning
• E-community
• E-government
E-Business
There’s a whole range of E-business support for small and medium enterprises. There are E-business clubs, E-business advisors, broadband demonstration centers. These are about making the most profit and most activity rather than purely awareness. There’s special support to key sectors such as digital media and biotech through a couple of organizationsTargeting Innovation, Ltd., and the Intellectual Asset Management Centrethat help companies to innovate and protect and develop their intellectual assets.
There’s also an Intermediary Technology Institute, which looks at pre-commercial research for companies and helps them get to the point of market commercialization. Science parks, incubator units, and a digital media campus, and a wireless tourism initiative, which uses handheld devices and making sure that all the hotels in Glasgow have wireless hotspots and focusing on how tourists can move around the city more easily.
The Digital Media Campus in Glasgow is part of the riverfront regeneration as well as a technology focus, and this largely looks at digital media content and the companies that provide content such as film and TV studios. Digital studios have been built on this site as well as for games developers and ICT companies.
E-Learning
In the area of E-learning, the Glasgow Schools Network covers all of the schools in Glasgow. The Glasgow Telecolleges Network covers all of the technical colleges, and Clydenet, which covers all of the universities, and these all link together.
In terms of digital inclusion, there’s a project all the Real Learning Network. The Urban Learning Space looks at different ways of learning. It’s an innovation lab in terms of electronic learning and technological approaches to learning. There’s a Glasgow Digital Library where all the libraries in the cityuniversity and collegesare put into one common forum and share the information electronically.
The Real Learning Network is aimed at a large proportion of Glasgow who don’t have access to PCs and much in the way of learning, and to get them back into the process of learning. There are 100 centers across Glasgow, mainly in community centers and public libraries, and in social work centers. There are more than 500 free public-access PCs. Increasingly there’s also free wireless access, and more than 140,000 people have registered as Real Learners. Most of these don’t have access to PCs. And that’s about one quarter of the Glasgow population. It’s very significant project in terms of digital inclusion, and within that there’s a wide range of learning materials both sourced and developed, and there are people within the centers who can coach people with basic, comfortable, or advanced skills. So it’s a major plank in terms of digital inclusion.
E-Community
There’s a whole series of inclusion projects to try to get to different groups. Cisco have involved themselves in community networking academies which help unemployed people to get Cisco accredited qualifications and to get high-level jobs. They’ve been very successful in Glasgow; Cisco worked closely with HP as well.
And then there are a couple of projects that look at specific needs of specific groups. VIPONAIR is Europe’s first Internet radio service for blind and visually impaired people. It does things for them that they don’t usually get from other services, like instant access to audio newspapers, and also the people who work on it are blind and visually impaired, so it provides employment in terms of the inclusion as well.
And the IXSEED Project is looking at people with disabilities with a specially designed Web site for people who struggle with learning for all sorts of health reasons.
Finally, Community Cyber Cafés around the city link into the Real Learning Network as well.
E-Government
There’s a whole range of things that the City Council is doing in terms of e-Government, and it’s driven by a private-public partnership board with development agencies, police, the fire brigade and private-sector partners such as HP and Cisco. The Council has adopted a “I Business” program with multiple routes of access through call and contact centers, Web access, paper access, Smart Cards, mobile devices, and the whole range of points of access to Council services, and at the moment they estimate that producing this I Business approach has saved them already $200 million in the past few years. So it’s a very effective process. Some of the examples on it are the Web site, which has gotten a very strong rating for accessibility. There’s e-consultation with citizens, a whole range of services. There’s mobile workforce using laptops, blackberries, and notepads, computers.
Project 2002 is an interesting one. In the space of two years, Glasgow physically refurbished or rebuilt all of its high schools, and at the same time introduced high-level telecommunication technologies. Again, HP was one of the Council’s strategic partners.
For children under 16 in Glasgow, almost 100% use SmartCards (called “Glasgow Young Scot” and “Kidz Cards”) for a range of services. They can get discounted fares, free swimming, other discounts. They use it for cashless catering in the schools, and for access to Web sites where they can share and discuss issues appropriate to young people. And it helps develop the whole notion of citizenship and using smart technology. We do have a strange issue with the 1618 years olds. Few have taken up the cards, because they don’t think it’s cool. And it’s not compulsory, so that’s a challenge. But it’s a challenge to tackle the young generation, and the extent of coverage is impressive. What we don’t have is the wireless technology to do things like letting mothers know where their kids are.