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03/06/2007Q&A with Costis Toregas, W2i Wireless Communities Awards Jury Chair
To pay tribute to local governments implementing broadband-wireless deployments for their communities, the Wireless Internet Institute hosts the annual W2i Wireless Communities Best Practices Awards. During the second annual Awards ceremony, at the W2i Digital Cities Convention in Philadelphia (Dec. 5–6, 2006), Jury Chair Costis Toregas, who is Chair of the National Academy of Public Administration Standing Panel on Social Equity in Governance, led an interactive discussion among the finalists about project objectives and lessons learned. W2i spoke with him at the event.
 Q: This is your second year chairing W2i’s Best Practices Awards Jury. How do you think about the Awards now and their role within the Digital Cities Convention?
A: The best-practices process is something that many industries use to identify smart ways of doing things and to reduce the cost of reinvention. In the W2i arena, we started off by observing presentations at W2i conferences, where cities, regions and governments would come in and describe how they use broadband technology. The notion was that it’s useful to hear presentations and panels, but couldn’t there be some way to evaluate some of these applications and bestow some kind of a star of excellence to a small number of them, so that it would identify for all concerned what are some real tremendous attributes of best practice.
We tried that last year, and I was happy to accept the designation as chair of the committee that reviewed the first group of some fifty or sixty projects from around the world. We began to look for truly innovative experiences and truly innovative approaches. I think we found those, and we selected several cities and nations with broadband deployments. This year was a little different. We found truly exemplary projects, and yet over the two years and 120–130 projects we have seen, I think some standards and practical ideas are beginning to identify themselves across the years and across the project presentations.
Q: How would you describe those?
A: There are some guiding principals that begin to emerge, such that I could almost close my eyes and say, this project is truly going to be a best practice — this project will truly be a tough competitor in the Awards program. And it’s that kind of identification of a small number of guiding principles — like involvement with the community, a visionary leader who can drive the process forward, outstanding partnerships between industry and government — that truly make the difference. So the experience has been a good one.
Q: As it relates to technological innovation, how do you view the evolution of broadband wireless in society?
A: Four years ago, broadband networks were being deployed, and we began to say, it’s really neat, and really cool, to simply see a network deployed. The machines can talk to one another. Signals can actually bounce back and forth between antennas. Two years ago, that was a big deal. Today, we have developed a more mature approach that says we assume that that technology will work technically. Now we’re drilling down into the application providers, looking at what people do with the broadband networks they’re putting up.
Two years from now, I think we’re going to be looking at another set of initiatives — from the technology to the application to the who-knows-what — but we are evolving as an ecosystem in broadband communications. Therefore, what we look at to target, celebrate and give awards to is also going to be changing. To the historians of the future, they will look at the Awards that W2i has bestowed and observe this trending of a different kind of initiative that W2i begins to recognize.
Q: What is the make-up of the Awards Jury?
A: I think W2i has been wise in assembling a Jury that represents many facets of society, and of the community, that will absorb, accept, and celebrate the use of technology. There are local-government representatives from both the National League of Cities and the National Association of Counties, which, combined, represent the common voice of 20,000 local governments. There is academia, which has the depth, knowledge, and intelligence to analyze trends and give us historical and technological perspectives. There is a whole variety of individuals who make up the Jury, and that Jury has developed a very wise platform, if I can call it that, to review and evaluate the submissions.
Q: How does the selection process actually proceed?
A: The Jury itself receives the submissions for the Awards electronically. Not only do we receive written statements and PowerPoints, but more recently we’re also looking at videos, so that we the Jury can begin to develop a quick and comprehensive understanding of the projects.
We then do an electronic voting session, which is very important, so that we have a chance to know what each other feels about what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s strong and what’s weak. Then we assemble together in Atlanta for an afternoon’s worth of discussion, deliberation, and an ultimate decision. So far, the discussions have been very fertile, very rich, and also they’ve been unanimous. As a chair I’m always worried that some people may champion a project and another member of the Jury will perhaps say no, no this is not a good idea. But we’ve been unanimous in our decisions, which means two things: that the Jury itself is developing a comfort level and collaborative spirit, and that the winners that the W2i process unearths are really spectacular projects, and those are the projects that receive the star.
Q: Who should submit a nomination for an Award?
A: I would say that all governmental units — local, county, state and central — should be encouraged for two different reasons. One is that it’s a chance for recognition on a global level — a chance to strut your stuff and say why the process and innovative spirit in your community is good. But I’ll tell you another reason. Sometimes in the very process of assembling the information, of creating the file that has to be sent to W2i, there is a process of documentation and self-examination, which, many times with complex technology projects, is not done routinely. And it’s that documentation and creation of return-on-investment analysis, of a true policy apparatus that can evaluate the project and its success that I think will be very helpful to government officials locally.
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