INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT
History shows that economic prosperity closely follows the development of a community's infrastructure. A hundred years ago, lack of a railroad stop condemned many towns to a lingering death. Thirty years ago interstate interchanges helped many communities to prosper, while those on back roads stagnated. Now the information superhighway is coming. The telecommunications infrastructure, high-speed Internet access and other advanced communications services are essential for Arizona's educational, economic and community development. It is essential for the continuing development of Arizona's economy and for continuing improvements to our quality of life that this state's leaders commit to developing and maintaining an advanced telecommunications infrastructure.

If Arizona is to attract new sources of capital, jobs and revenue, its telecommunications infrastructure must adapt to new and emerging technologies. Arizona's telecommunications infrastructure must be capable of supporting the voice, video and data communications demands imposed by its general population, and must meet the evolving needs of its governmental, industrial, business, health and educational sectors as they seek to make their services more convenient and efficient. The benefits of advanced telecommunications technology should be available to all Arizonans, regardless of geography, economic, social or cultural distinction.

To achieve this goal:

1. Our state's leaders must ensure that the state's regulation of telecommunications providers and services is appropriate to the time and market, and it must reflect the emergence and evolution of new media and transport methods, for which existing regulatory methods and policies may be inappropriate.
2. Policies must embrace market driven investment solutions first, by encouraging competition among providers without favoring one provider or transport method, and by creating an environment that facilitates private investment in telecommunications infrastructure.
3. Public policies should minimize regulatory risk and uncertainty for potential investors to complete telecommunications infrastructure projects, while also protecting consumer interests for receiving adequate and reliable service.
4. Where market-driven solutions fail to generate sufficient private investment, the State of Arizona and its local governments should consider public programs, such as expansion of the state's Universal Service Fund program and other options, to support infrastructure development for the benefit of all Arizona's citizens.
5. Arizona should utilize best practices for managing the access to rights of way to promote and support infrastructure development.

Infrastructure Development
ATIC Platform Statement (May 29, 2002)
Adobe Acrobat file: infrastructure_statement.pdf (7k PDF file)

DIGITAL DIVIDE
Access to and the ability to use modern communications services and the Internet has evolved from a novelty to a convenience to a requirement for productive participation in today's society. The digital divide refers to the gap between those who use those services productively and those who do not. To illustrate the complexity of the problem, the divide is often broken down into three categories: those who have or do not have access to robust broadband communications, those who can and those who can-not utilize such communications infrastructure, and finally those who will and those who will not use such capabilities. Our main concern is with the haves and have-nots, an issue of access, and the can's and can-not's, an issue of ability.

The availability and affordability as well as the ability to use modern communications services and the Internet varieswidely between and among urban areas, small rural communities, Indian reservations, demographic groups, and private and public entities. Communities that persist on the " wrong side of the digital divide" will face ongoing disadvantages in educational opportunities and economic development potential.

In order to effectively bridge the digital divide, Arizonans require public policies that encourage wide-scale deployment and effective use of communication services and information technologies. This includes infrastructure deployment, applications development, content creation, technology-enabled education, workforce development and providing communities with a reason to bridge the divide. Such actions in turn will help to ensure economic prosperity for the Arizona community, expand the region's global competitive advantage, enable continued educational advancement, and support an enhanced quality of life.

Specifically, the following policies can help to bridge the digital divide:

• Encourage state and local government to act as "anchor tenants," and thus a catalyst for, deployment of broadband networks throughout the state.
• Urge state, county, and municipal Agencies to promote and participate in TOPAZ (Telecommunications Open Partnerships for Arizona).
• Adopt regulatory policies that expand the state universal access program and rural broadband network incentives.
• Maintain and expand opportunities for public access to communications services.
• Support public/private partnerships to develop content to make the Internet more meaningful and useful to all communities, and to promote technological literacy within our communities.

Digital Divide
ATIC Platform Statement (May 29, 2002)
Adobe Acrobat file: digital_divide_statement.pdf (10k PDF file)

ADVANCED APPLICATIONS
Whether it's business, government, education, health care or community services, technology is changing the way Arizona does business. Wired or wireless, the transition in communications is clear: We are moving from a world of simple voice communication and isolated desktop computing to an interconnected world where multimedia messages and communications will reach us anytime and anyplace. An advanced telecommunications infrastructure therefore is essential for Arizona to effectively participate in this networked world.

Once a telecommunications infrastructure is in place, it represents an opportunity that Arizona should be aggressive in developing, adapting and using. Voice, video and data applications will converge to ride over the telecommunications infrastructure. It is these types of applications that will support the emerging and evolving requirements of education, economic development and community services by linking the citizens of the State of Arizona. Examples of such applications include e-learning (the NAUNet Distance Learning Network, the School Facilities Board Students FIRST implementation), telemedicine (the Arizona Telemedicine Program), bioinformatics (for the proposed International Genomics Consortium), rich media content and video on demand to homes and mobile individuals as well as a proposed statewide audio, data and video teleconferencing network to support economic development. These are just the kinds of applications that will serve the enterprises and individuals located here and help to ensure economic prosperity for the Arizona community, expand the region's global competitive advantage, enable continued educational advancement and support an enhanced quality of life.

The State of Arizona therefore must take a leadership role and be a supporting partner of communities and enterprises in identifying and implementing strategies to enable the development, adoption and use of advanced networked applications throughout the state. This will involve:

• Considerable public-private cooperation at various levels,
• The availability of a technology literate workforce, and
• A versatile wide-ranging high-capacity telecommunications infrastructure

Advanced Applications
ATIC Platform Statement (May 29, 2002)
Adobe Acrobat file: applications_statement.pdf (6k PDF file)

CYBER SECURITY
Communications and electronically stored information is becoming increasingly important in every aspect of our culture, including our physical, political, and economic lives. Cyber security in this context is defined to include the protection of transmitted, stored or processed public information, and any and all shared transmission infrastructure. It is a basic stewardship of government.

Recent events, including terrorist attacks against our nation and various well-publicized intrusions into vital public records via the Internet, have pointedly shown the vulnerability of our current situation. Less publicized but equally serious to us are the frequent local attempts of intrusion into public and private networks, and widespread infections by so-called " viruses." These attacks are debilitating, and in the aggregate, have cost the state and its citizens many millions of dollars. They remind us that our electronic data integrity and critical information, as well as the data infrastructure is increasingly at risk.

The state is currently well behind in assessing its specific Cyber Security needs. Such needs assessments must be completed. Outcomes of these needs assessments should include the strategic plans and activities that will protect our information infrastructure and data repositories, should provide sufficient safeguards to maintain our citizens' rights to privacy, and should promote education of citizens, business and government leaders about the risks of data corruption and destruction, and the best practices required or mandated to minimize risk. The state must also include in this planning, upgrades of our substantially inadequate electronic records management and archiving policies. If improvements are not made quickly, vital original electronic documents will be lost forever, short-changing future generations of their civilizing records and history.

It is incumbent upon our elected officials to provide both the leadership and the funding necessary to reverse these fast growing cyber and data vulnerabilities. It is nearly impossible to overstate the urgency for best practices to be defined, and for policies to be formulated, disseminated, and implemented both in government and in the private sector. Current costs of intrusions and malicious attacks have been substantial. Without appropriate levels of investments in these areas, future costs to the citizens of the state could be catastrophic.

Cyber Security
ATIC Platform Statement (May 29, 2002)
Adobe Acrobat file: cybersecurity_statement.pdf (7k PDF file)