published by
The Technology Opportunities Program
of the
National Telecommunications and Information Administration
U.S. Department of Commerce

TOP Update is a quarterly electronic newsletter highlighting digital network technology projects funded by TOP. TOP projects are nationally significant demonstrations of advanced network technologies can be used to extend and improve the delivery of valuable services and opportunities to all Americans. The newsletter is a collaboration of TOP and its various projects across the nation.

In This Issue:

• More Than 660 New Projects Seek TOP Backing
  
• Get TOP Updates Online
  
• Networks for People 2001 Conference
  
• Start Planning for Next Year
  

TOP Projects by Subject Matter

Arts & Culture

• TOP Visits Museums and the Web Conference
  

  Assistive Technologies
  

• Minot State University Develops Information Technology to Assist People with Disabilities
  

  Community Services
  

• Building Community Assets, 21st-Century Style
  

  Health
  

• TOP Supports Diabetes Care for Rural Clinics
  
• TOP Teletrauma Unit Saves Lives in Vermont
  

  Public Safety
  

• American Meteorological Society Recognizes TOP Emergency Managers
  

More Than 660 New Projects Seek TOP Backing

The Technology Opportunities Program (TOP) received 665 applications for grants to support innovative public and nonprofit uses of digital networks this year.

The applications request a total of more than $366 million in federal funds, and they include pledges of $479 million in non-federal matching funds. Applications represent 49 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and American Samoa. "We are pleased with the continued strong response to the program," said Dr. Bernadette McGuire-Rivera, associate administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. More than half of this year's applications were submitted by a wide variety of nonprofit organizations, with state, local, and tribal governments, and colleges and universities accounting for most of the remainder.

Now that the March 22 deadline has passed, TOP has begun the comprehensive and highly competitive review process. In all, approximately $42 million will be available for grants this year. Decisions will be announced in September.

President Bush has requested $15.5 million for TOP for Fiscal Year 2002. Congress currently is considering his request.

For more information about TOP, call (202) 482-2048, or email to TOP@ntia.doc.gov, or visit TOP's website.

 

Get TOP Updates Online

For example, joining the Get Updates list will give you advance notice of the publishing of TOP's latest evaluation reports, focusing on projects funded in 1996 and 1997. You will also receive information on TOP's annual Networks for People Conference (see below). So, take a moment and join TOP's new email list. Go to the footer at the bottom of TOP's website, click on Get Updates and sign up. It only takes a few seconds!

 

Networks for People 2001

Start Planning for Next Year

Downs also encourages potential applicants to build on the lessons and accomplishments of previous TOP grantees. "We've done a number of reports, including independent evaluation studies, case studies of individual projects, and our lessons learned series, that are especially helpful for people planning their projects." All of the reports, along with a searchable database of all TOP grants ever awarded, are available on the TOP web site. This year's Networks for People conference will focus on the demonstrated results of TOP grantees.

 

TOP Visits Museums and the Web Conference

Museums are increasingly incorporating a variety of technologies cell phones, wireless PDAs, broadband multicasting into both their current curatorial initiatives and their long-range planning. One indication of the coming of age of the wired museum community is the preliminary approval by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, of a top-level .museum domain name. In 2000, MuseDoma, the Museum Domain Management Association, was granted the right to administer the new top-level museum domain.

What was most interesting about this year's Museums and the Web conference was the range of specific, non-theoretical applications of information technology to the work of museums that were presented and discussed. Talk has definitely given way to action in the online museum world. Sessions focused on such topics as making museum websites more accessible and usable; designing "virtual museums"; repurposing museum content for digital delivery; more effectively engaging artists in museum exhibitions though online tools; using a variety of cutting-edge technologies to enhance lifelong learning; and more effectively bringing cultural resources to the web. Of equal, and perhaps more far-reaching, significance was the discussion of new markup and tagging standards and open architecture to make museum information resources more usable in a hyperlinked environment.

There were discussions of using Tourbots, robotic "avatars" controlled by users over the web, as well as a series of discussions on the proper techniques for building collaborative online museum databases. But what most of the attendees from more than 35 countries took away from this year's Museums and the Web conference was a sense that online technologies allow more and more users to interact directly with the museum and its treasures. In the words of one presenter, Paolo Paolini of the Politecnico di Milano, "It is beautiful to talk to a museum," and these new technologies make the conversation possible on a global scale.

 

TOP Supports Diabetes Care for Rural Clinics

In 1997, La Plaza began a dialogue with the New Mexico State Department of Communications to develop a model microwave radio project using State radio towers to bring high speed broad bandwidth services to remote areas. Questa, a village of 1,200, was chosen and the project was designed, installed, and completed in December, 1998. The Village of Questa municipal offices, Questa Health Clinic, and the Community Center have Internet connection with T1 speed using the radio system which is connected to the La Plaza Internet service. Not only did this model provide information to the State Legislature for public/private use of the State radio towers, but it also provided a solution for La Plaza to the limited infrastructure in Taos. (La Plaza also won the 1999 AOL Rural Telecommunications Leadership Award with this project.)

La Plaza now provides T1 service to the Penasco area using the US Department of Forest Service tower located on Picuris Peak, a 10,000 foot mountain. La Plaza and Integrity Networking Systems developed this service, using microwave radios, solar panels, golf batteries, patience and perseverance, to the Penasco School District, La Jicarita Enterprise Zone, and the La Plaza dial-in users. Line of site is necessary for these microwave radios and a repeater antenna is used on both sides of the mountain (La Plaza in Taos and a school building in Peņasco) to provide line of site.

La Plaza has become a successful community network and technology center by creatively meeting the significant technology challenges posed by the rural setting of some of their sites.

 

TOP Teletrauma Unit Saves Lives in Vermont

Saving Lives

Last year, Alan Boyea was riding a motorcycle in upstate New York when a car pulled a U-turn in front of him. Unable to avoid the car, he hit it and was thrown to the pavement. Mr. Boyea is a big man and emergency room personnel at Massena Memorial Hospital could not get a breathing tube down his throat.

So Dr. Frederick Rogers, a trauma surgeon at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, VT, watching on a two-way video monitor, talked the emergency room physician through installing a breathing tube in the neck of the critically injured man. It was the chance he needed. After being stabilized, Boyea was flown by helicopter to Burlington where he underwent emergency surgery.

Teletrauma Unit @ Home

Two Fletcher Allen physicians are always available; they each have computer systems hooked up in their homes. That way if a critical case, needing immediate attention, comes in at 2 a.m., the doctors don't have to go any farther than their home offices to give that attention. "It's a wonderful service," Boyea's mother Joan said of the system that saved her son's life.

"It's incredible. You are there in the emergency room. It's like standing at the foot of the bed," says Dr. Rogers. "It's a significant advance over what I could do over the telephone." Rogers says such systems can play an important role in rural areas where critically injured patients are first taken to smaller hospitals that are not well equipped to deal with serious injuries.

For information, email Dr. Michael Ricci.

 

Building Community Assets, 21st-Century Style

IT at the Grassroots Level

The SAVI Community Connections Project strengthens community efforts by creating interactive Internet tools that community members can use. Unlike most web sites, the SCCP web interface facilitates the user's ability to think and analyze spatially. Through the SCCP interface, users can submit queries or questions that access data sets in real-time, and allows the aggregation and reclassification of data to desired neighborhood levels. Coupled with this is the ability to display results in both graphical and tabular formats. Put succinctly, the SCCP interface allows users to input and map their own neighborhood data and to formulate unique queries and combinations of data based on their own particular needs.

The SCCP, now in its second year of a three year TOP grant, involves three inner city neighborhoods and provides opportunities to community leaders for technology training and learning to strengthen their decision-making process. For example, the Mapleton Fall Creek area has been losing population, and experiencing a shift in its racial makeup. Along with the changing demographics, Mapleton Fall Creek shares common national concerns rising crime, quality of educational opportunities, and protection of housing stock. Under the partnership with SCCP, neighborhood leaders were trained on the use of the web interface, and created demographic profiles of their neighborhoods, which provided them with a "data snapshot" to analyze. Now that concrete, documented community assets and vulnerabilities are being shared, community issues are no longer being discussed in ambiguous or subjective terms.

Lessons Learned

Some of the lessons SAVI can pass along to other groups engaged in similar community strengthening projects include: (1) begin the process by building group consensus around the type of information that is desired and the methods on how it is to be communicated; (2) present data over a series of meetings so as to not to overwhelm recipients; (3) collect information regarding assets and vulnerabilities, but use the assets as the platform for improvement and decision-making; and (4) subdivide into smaller committees to deal with specific datasets surrounding a topic issue or subject.

The popularity of the project has led to the proposed development of a "training institute" which will certify participants in the use of GIS-based tools and the use and analysis of data to strengthen community-building efforts. For more information on the SAVI Community Connections Project and the SAVI database, please contact the Polis Center at 317-274-2455 or visit the SAVI website.

 

American Meteorological Society Recognizes TOP Emergency Managers

Minot State University Develops Information Technology to Assist People with Disabilities

However, in the field of mental retardation (MR) and the organizations that deal with this basic public health issue we know far less than we should. Minot State University's North Dakota Center for People with Disabilities (a 1998 TOP grantee) has been looking at the difficult, even intractable problems that organizations serving people with MR face. As the project nears completion, we are learning some valuable lessons.

IT Can Simplify Lives

NDCPD, and in particular the director, Joe Ferrara, demonstrated that people with mental retardation can use Internet tools both for work and for play to enhance their lives. According to Dr. Ferrara, "It was clear from start that people with cognitive disabilities could benefit a lot from information technology. Not just switches and specialized keyboards the hardware part but also the fact that the more sophisticated the software gets, the more useful it becomes to people with disabilities. It has the ability to simplify their lives."

The project, Internet Access for People with Mental Retardation (IAPMR), provided high speed Internet access to more than 1,000 people with MR in North Dakota. Prior to IAPMR, few people with MR used Internet-based computer systems. One barrier to access was the perception that people with MR could not benefit from computer technology. IAPMR has demonstrated that this is NOT the case. They developed and tested Internet-based systems that allow people with MR to work and play on the Internet. The NDCPD used the Internet and project-generated software to provide data entry jobs for 94 people. The jobs included work for distant employers, such as Amoco and SquareD, as well as regional organizations.

The ability to provide work to a population that has not been able to earn their own spending money and feel as sense of independence cannot be overestimated. NDCPD also developed Internet-based recreational and social activities that are appropriate and usable for adults with MR. The accessories include an online radio; a tool that allows people with MR to draw, save their drawings and post them to an Internet-based art gallery; and an email tool that allows non-verbal adults to send and receive email messages through the use of symbols.

The Story of Phil

Internet access became an important part in the life of Phil, an adult with severe mental retardation. As a result of his cognitive disabilities, Phil does not speak. This limits his ability to communicate with distant family members and condemns Phil to a life of social isolation. For years, Phil had used a "communications board" to tell agency staff about his basic needs (e.g., bathroom, drink of water). Phil's board consisted of a series of icons. To communicate his needs to the staff, Phil would simply touch an icon. The NDCPD created an email system that built on Phil's demonstrated non-verbal communications board skills. Project staff created a system that replaced the communications board with a specialized keyboard and software that replaced the self-care icons with icons that can be used to construct email messages. The system also reads received email messages, copies the message to a screen with text and icons that can be read, and includes a picture of the sender. The email system has become an important part of Phil's life, enabling daily communications with family and friends.

Rethinking Websites

Currently, there are between 6.2 and 7.5 million people with MR in the United States. Projects such as NDCPD are life-enhancing and life-changing. The project discovered that "surfing the net" (i.e., reading web pages) required cognitive skills not possessed by most people with severe and moderate MR. Although these problems could sometimes be overcome with training and assistive technology (e.g., screen reading software), the use of the Internet by the MR population often required the development of specialized software. Without the TOP funding, adults with MR in North Dakota would not be using email, adults with MR would not be earning money, and neither staff nor secondary customers such as parents and guardians of the mentally retarded would have access to important information on MR. The good news is that a number of other states have expressed interest in purchasing the online services NDCPD has developed.

For more information on NDCDP, contact Dr. Joseph Ferrara, 701-858-3055.