Information superbyways: cities and counties get plugged in

Students passing notes or dozing off in Spanish class at Sand Hills High School might get caught by a teacher 20 miles away. If those same students fumble with an awkward word, furrow their brows or raise their hands, the teacher sees that too.

The students and their teacher are in rural central Nebraska, connected through a “distance learning” network of cameras, monitors and fiber-optic cables. As the teacher presents a lesson in the Anselmo-Merna school’s interactive classroom, her words and image flow in real time to the students in Sand Hills’ interactive room.

Their responses are received in real time as well. The teacher can see a puzzled expression, answer questions or watch as students write on the chalkboard. Students in both classrooms can see one another, as if they were all in the same room.

In all, five schools along an 85-mile crescent are connected through the network, over which they have been exchanging classes for four years. Telecommunications have thus been a way for these schools to meet the challenge of providing quality public education with limited resources.

Local governments throughout the country are likewise using telecommunications to make their operations more efficient. They are turning to advances like fiber optics, electronic gateways, automated messaging and trunked radio to improve everything from education to public safety to administrative systems.

Both large cities and counties as well as small communities are pushed to provide the same or a greater level of services with fewer dollars and employees. Telecommunications can be a means of allowing officials to do more with less.

For example, the Sand Hills school, in effect, is sharing teachers with the other schools in the “distance learning” project. Covering all of Blaine County and its 700 residents, the Sand Hills school district serves around 60 high school students and a total student population of 200 in grades K through 12.

Although the school and its partners are small, says Sand Hills superintendent Pat Osmond, the high-tech interactive project should not seem out of place.

“I don’t think it’s surprising at all,” Osmond says. “I think we’re probably more innovative than a lot of the big city schools.

“If rural areas are going to survive and prosper, they have to take advantage of technology. Technology puts everybody on equal footing.”

Each of the five schools can offer a class on the network, and any of the others can choose to receive it. The schools’ interactive classrooms have a dedicated fax machine, monitors and three cameras, with one camera trained on the teacher, one on students and the third acting as an overhead projector.

While each school owns its interactive classroom, equipment for sending and receiving on the network is owned by the Nebraska Educational Telecommunications Commission. Each school budgets around $15,000 to $18,000 per year to maintain this equipment and to lease fiber-optic cables from the phone company.

The five schools initiated the project and received significant help from several public and private sources. Funds have come from the state legislature, federal grants, the local phone company and others.

Don Davis, one of the teachers most experienced with the project, teaches composition at the Broken Bow schools, which serve about 517 middle and high school students in a district of 950 students.

Davis teaches Honors English on the network. Broken Bow also offers calculus and in turn receives speech and creative-writing courses.

Students at Sand Hills, 40 miles away, plug into Davis’ English class. The school also receives two levels of Spanish and creative writing and offers a college speech course.

Demand has been strong for the Spanish classes offered by Anselmo-Merna. Davis attributes this demand to the University of Nebraska system’s recent decision to raise its foreign-language requirements for applicants.

Michael Teahon, principal at Sand Hills, says the network allows schools to gain several teachers without hiring anyone, a sharing of staff vital for small schools like Sand Hills, which does not have a language teacher.

“Being a small school, it allows us to offer opportunities to our students they otherwise wouldn’t have, because we don’t have the resources,” Teahon says. “The opportunities you can give your students, for the costs involved, are pretty incredible.”

At night, the schools’ network becomes a resource for college credits and continuing education. Students in the schools, as well as area residents, can take interactive classes from community colleges throughout the state.

“Last year, it was possible for our students to graduate with 15 college credits, without leaving the building,” Teahon says.

Accessing County Records

For Montgomery County, Pa., population 690,000, telecommunications have meant more efficient access to courthouse records and better linking of county agencies.

In 1982, Montgomery became the first county in the nation to provide remote access to various government records, according to Dale Pennapacker, director of information services. Via a modem and computer, residents and businesses could search the county’s court and property information.

The county contracted with a private company in 1991 to provide access to these information services.

However, three years later, the pro, gram was ended when the company decided it was unprofitable.

Rather than run that risk again, the county decided to design its own gateway. The new system, installed for less than $100,000, is run essentially by a 486 PC, Pennapacker says.

Pennapacker advises other cities and counties to develop electronic gateways in-house from the start. “It cost Montgomery County a great deal of time and resources to make the transition to our service [from the contracted service].

“It was very painful,” he says. “If we had had a crystal ball, we would have done this from the beginning.”

Today, users of Montgomery County’s service can conduct a real-time search of either the “land system” or the “court system,” 24 hours a day. The land system contains information on all properties in the county, including owners, taxes and sales history back to 1979.

The court system contains information such as court schedules, dockets, warrants and a register of wills.

The county has registered around 3,000 users of the on-line service, most of whom are businesses like title insurance companies, realtors and law offices. Pennapacker estimates that 80 percent of the 1,200 to 1,400 on-line searches conducted each month are for property information.

Users pay 15 cents per minute, a price set by the county according to “marginal cost theory,” which requires a rate equal to the cost of delivering information, as opposed to an amount that would generate a profit.

For the system’s users, that 15 cents is “a real savings, because [customers] don’t have to send their people down to the courthouse to do title searches,” Pennapacker says.

Keeping people out of the courthouse can also provide a savings for the county. “We don’t have to have as much workspace; we don’t have to have as many terminals in the courthouse to access our service,” he says.

The county has also improved efficiency by installing a fiber-optic network which connects all its main buildings, as well as 10 remote locations. The network’s 100-megabit band width makes possible an “integrated mail, calendar and scheduling capability for all the county agencies,” Pennapacker says.

Prince George’s County, Md., population 750,000, has used telecommunications with the same goal of efficiency as that of Montgomery County. But the county has taken a slightly different path to providing residents and businesses with services like online property and court records.

The county was providing access to these records through the same private company used by Montgomery County. When the company pulled the plug in 1994, county officials shifted to an in-house gateway and charged $25 per month for access.

However, unlike Montgomery County, Prince George’s County soon chose to find another private partner. In May 1995, the county contracted with Ameritech Information Access (AIA) to provide court and property information through the company’s CivicLink program.

The Civiclink gateway has been in place since the end of 1995. Real-property records, documents from adult criminal and circuit court civil cases, court schedules and judge assignments are available.

The majority of customers are businesses, which typically pay a $3-to-$5 transaction fee for accessing the county’s databases. The fees are subtracted after each use from a running account monitored by the company.

“[Billing] is something we didn’t want to spend a lot of time on,” says Daniel Roper, the county’s division chief for information technology. “This frees us from that.”

Another advantage of the public-private deal is the addition of the company’s resources, such as technical support and expertise.

For a share of revenue from the service, the company provides the necessary communications equipment and software and runs a help desk to assist customers. Thus, the county is not required to keep pace with constant, expensive advances in technology.

“We would rather contract with someone with the resources to keep developing the service, to continue to improve it and make it more user-friendly,” Roper says.

The company has shown strong commitment to the program, Roper says, though the county is wary of getting burned again by a cancellation.

“The question is, will they make enough money, or have the patience to stay with it long enough to make it profitable,” Roper says.

If the program were ended, the county would most likely return to an in-house system, rather than develop another gateway with a private partner, according to Roper.

The goals of Prince George’s County in providing on-line access to property and court records are similar to those of Montgomery County. Users are able to save time and money they previously would have spent traveling to the courthouse, and waiting in lines. They can do real-time searches, 24 hours a day.

“They can still go to the courthouse and get all that information for free,” says Roper. “But the goal is to provide enhanced access.”

As more people take advantage of that access, traffic in the courthouse is reduced. In turn, the county can better use resources which would have otherwise been needed to handle information requests. Roper says this has been vital in a time of significant downsizing of the county’s workforce.

Prince George’s County is also exploring options for making other types of information available on-line to businesses and residents. For example, the county is developing a pilot project with Andersen Consulting, Chicago, which would enable attorneys to file court cases electronically, according to Roper.

Ernie Shepherd, the county’s MIS coordinator, mentions enabling residents to apply on-line for various permits as another possible application.

Also, Shepherd says, having information from neighboring counties available through Prince George’s County’s gateway would benefit residents doing business in those counties, such as attorneys and realtors.

Enhancing Public Safety

The Dothan, Ala., police department spent more than $2.5 million in 1995 to upgrade its telecommunications capabilities by improving and integrating various radio, telephone and computer systems.

“The city basically sat dead for quite some time in the communications area,” says Lt. Jim Smith of the police department. “Communications were basically all driven by hand.”

Prior to last year’s upgrade, the city had moved from a system of handwritten messages on three-by-five cards, to computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and enhanced 911 service. “It was like going from riding a bicycle to a motorized vehicle,” Smith says.

During the upgrade, the police department built a new communications center and installed a fiber-optic network and an 800 MHz trunked radio system from E.F. Johnson, Burnsville, Minn. The result has been dramatically increased efficiency in the city’s responses to emergency calls.

The trunked radio system was a significant improvement from the VHF system used by the city since 1974, according to Smith.

“It was a mess,” he says. “[Previously], a police officer might have to wait five minutes to get on the radio during times of high traffic.

“Now it’s unusual for you to have to wait more than a couple of seconds.”

The radio system has 10 channels and two transmitter sites. Users from different departments like police and fire can create “talk groups,” to keep unrelated traffic better separated.

Fiber-optic cables link the two radio transmitter sites, the city’s main municipal building, the communications center, the Criminal Justice Complex and the central fire station. The city contracted with the local phone company to install the cable on existing utility poles.

The cables carry radio transmissions as well as computer traffic. Smith says the thin cables are an improvement because they require less space and can move a greater volume of data in real-time, even from remote locations.

Dothan paid for some of the improvements with funds from 911 charges, which both residents and businesses pay each month on their phone bills.

For example, the city bought the fiber-optic network for slightly less than $300,000, according to Smith.

Purchase of the network will save money in the long run, Smith says. The city estimates it would have spent the same amount in slightly less than five years to lease copper wires.