Everyone's Got an An Opinion These Days

Take a gander at all the early blog posts and articles analyzing the latest awardees? I wonder when the mainstream press is going to get on this. Kudos to the following outlets:

• EDITED TO ADD A BIG OMISSION: Craig Settles, the preeminent consultant and analyst who has been out in front on these issues since early on... In his review, he confirmed what he predicted months ago: that public/private partnerships would be among the BIG winners
• EDITED TO ADD Stacey Higgobotham's analysis which questions whether the original 4.1 billion allocated for Round 1 has been dwindled down to just 2billion.
  

• App-Rising has a critical but optimistic analysis

• Telephony's Analysis is pretty informative and introspective
  

• Telecompetitor's got the Local perspective

• The Blog of Equipment Manufacturer OCCAM Networks has a pretty good analysis with predictions
  

• The Benton Foundation suggests we (watchdogs and government alike) measure the results from what is supposed to happen with the grants and loans carefully
  

• A reporter from ComputerWorld took the bait from the PR pitch folks of Windstream or TDS Telecom, companies that challenged North Georgia Network Cooperative's application claiming they served the areas North Georgia proposed to serve. Looks like incumbent challengers won't go quietly into that good night after all...

• The White House has a full Report of the projects announced Thursday and a summary of this Report on its Recovery website

NTIA listed on it website an outline of each of the 10 BTOP grant awards it has made so far. (and edited to add that this explains why my informant was of the position that BIP and BTOP divorced. Looks like there is no BIP page for awards thus far as only those awarded BTOP funding must have been contacted for information that is not due diligence related)

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and in other updates, NTIA is now FINALLY on Twitter, (*edited to ADD, if it is real as it has not been Verified by Twitter) A little late to the party, but better late than never, right? Let's welcome them and follow them as with only 43 followers, NTIA has a looooong way to go to catch up with the FCC's 240,631 followers (and counting).

NTIA joins Commerce Secretary Gary Locke who has been there since September 24, 2009, who followed the FCC which started its Twitter account on August 14, 2009, one month and a day after the USDA (also unverified) did on July 13, 2009 (a trailblazer in Government years ).

I still think the BTOP and BIP programs should have their own unique (Verified) Twitter account which they use to supply up to date information. Come on in guys! The water's fine.

Perhaps part of this move to go where the people driving the discussions are is driven by the White House which issued specific guidelines and directives recently requiring all administrative agencies within the next 60 days to create an OPEN government website where they share with the public information about proceedings that the public wants to know.

I guess you can say that Broadbandusa.gov is that type of website, but since the purpose of the executive memo on transparency which was the impetus behind the directives issued this month was a call to more OPENNESS and TRANSPARENCY, we can all agree to disagree that the Broadbandusa could do more to be both those things.

Not to belabor the point further, but I really dug the part of the directive that required agencies to proactively use modern technology to disseminate useful information, rather than waiting for specific requests under FOIA.

I saw that and immediately thought of (1) all those States that refused to make their priority picks public and (2) Strickling's mention during the last oversight hearing of the dozens of letters the agencies had gotten from various Congressmen/women inquiring about projects on behalf of their respective constituents.

I mean inquiring minds wanted to know this type of stuff and shouldn't have to go through the sometimes timely FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) process to get it.

I'm off for now, just got a disturbing analysis of the government's latest statement about the Stimulus funding

Stay tuned...