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The National Broadban Plan should include plans to eliminate issues and concerns that deter citizens from accessing the Internet. Promote online safety, privacy, and network security. Strongly enforce laws against online criminals, spammers, promoters of frauds, and other illegal actors.
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The National Broadband Plan should include recommendations to stimulate private sector investment in robust broadband, including:
i.Accelerate depreciation of broadband equipment and tax credits for significant upgrades to existing network capacity.
ii.Issue federal "Broadband Bonds" to finance, in partnership with private entities, deployment in un- and under-served areas, as recommended in California by that state's Broadband Task Force.
iii.Anchor Tenancy: Direct the General Services Administration's Public Buildings Service to assess anchor tenancy opportunities as a part of every agency's process to negotiate or renegotiate a telecommunications lease. Anchor tenancy can act as a catalyst, drawing providers to locations that have little or no access to broadband. By Executive Order, the President could require that agencies assess whether anchor tenancy could draw private providers to a surrounding unserved community or upgrade existing network infrastructure, if no other plans exist to do so.
iv.Collocation Facilities: Direct the General Services Administration's Public Buildings Service to offer, at cost, in un- or under-served areas, small spaces on federally-owned properties on which collocation facilities can be constructed. This will both reduce one of the cost barriers and also create "carrier neutral" facilities into which companies can connect with both regional networks and other networks that connect to major Internet connection points in metropolitan areas.
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The National Broadband Plan should include plans to initiate and expand programs to extend broadband to persons with disabilities, seniors, minorities, Native Americans, and other populations that are too often on the wrong side of the digital divide.
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The National Broadband Plan should include a plan to stimulate the supply of broadband in low-income communities by requiring as a condition for receipt of federal funding that public housing and other public buildings have robust broadband access available to all residents and tenants.
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The National Broadband Plan should include the Federal Communications Commissions' plans to modernize the federal Universal Service Program to support affordable, universal, landline, and wireless broadband.
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The National Broadband Plan should direct federal policymakers to open underutilized spectrum currently reserved for both public and private use for a new generation of wireless devices that will provide robust broadband service over great distances and rough terrain without interference to existing licensed uses.
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The National Broadband Plan should recommend that President Obama promote policies to stimulate both demand for, and supply of, robust and affordable broadband. The President should direct the heads of all federal departments and agencies to take specific action to:
* Ensure that affordable, robust broadband is available to all Americans;
* Include the use of broadband in meeting the mission of their agency;
* Make the implementation of the National Broadband Plan one of its highest priorities, and prepare action plans on initiatives their agencies are undertaking to help achieve the goals of the NBS; and
* Report annually to the President on the progress of these initiatives.
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The National Broadband Plan should direct the Office of Management and Budget to issue an annual report on the status of the execution of the NBP, with recommendations for additional steps and funding to ensure that the NBP realizes its goals.
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The National Broadband Plan (NBP) should include implementation plans.
The Administration should establish a cabinet-level interagency task force to execute the NBP throughout executive branch departments and agencies. Modeled on the Information Infrastructure Task Force, this task force should be made up of highlevel representatives of federal agencies, including the Office of Management and Budget, in coordination with the Chief Technology Officer. The agencies should develop comprehensive plans and policies to quickly and effectively execute the NBP, including interagency efforts that will cut across bureaucratic silos and stovepipes.
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The National Broadband Plan should help set a national skills agenda to compete globally and to ensure a rising standard of living for Americans.
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The National Broadband Plan should include a recomendation that Congress and the Administration fully fund the America COMPETES Act including the National Science Foundation grant program for institutions of higher education that award associate degrees to recruit and train individuals from the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math to mentor female, minority, and disabled students in order to assist such students in identifying, qualifying for, and entering higher-paying technical jobs in those fields.
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The National Broadband Plan should recommend that the Internal Revenue Code treat qualified health care information technology as a depreciable asset
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The National Broadband Plan should recommend that policymakers allow the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to make federally qualified health centers eligible to participate in demonstration projects related to health records and heath information technology.
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The National Broadband Plan should include recommandations to eeauthorize telehealth network and telehealth resource centers grant programs.
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The National Broadband Plan should include a design to modernize Medicare to facilitate telehealth service.
a.Remove Medicare's current geographic restrictions on the provision of telehealth services.
b.Expand the types of facilities authorized to participate in the Medicare telehealth program.
c.Allow for the provision of coverage of remote patient management services, including home health remote patient management services, for certain chronic health conditions.
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The National Broadband Plan should direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to:
a.Define and catalog the types of entities that govern, oversee, operate, and/or create policy for the electronic exchange of health information and produce recommendations regarding the appropriate level of consumer participation and requirements for transparency that should apply to them.
b.Require institutions and providers to begin sharing health information electronically.
c.Set standards for electronic exchange of health information; these standards should focus on:
i.Quality improvement;
ii.Care management;
iii.Billing;
iv.Decision support;
v.Performance data reporting; and
vi.Research and population health initiatives, including disparities reduction efforts.
d.Set standards for federal health information security and confidentiality; standards that should be guided by the following consumer-control principles:
i.Consumers should have easy access to review, add notations, and suggest corrections to existing information in their own records.
ii.Consumers should be able to limit which parts of their health information can be shared with which providers.
iii.Consumers should be able to limit how their personally identifiable medical information is used outside of care delivery (e.g., for research).
iv.Consumers should be able to easily designate others as proxies to act on their behalf (e.g., family member, caregiver, or guardian).
v.Consumers deserve an effective process and infrastructure for monitoring and certifying compliance with these common principles among organizations, initiatives, and technologies.
e.Encourage and facilitate the adoption of state reciprocity agreements for practitioner licensure to expedite the provision across state lines of telehealth services.
f.Expand the list of Medicare telehealth originating sites to include mental health facilities.
g.Include as a home health visit for Medicare purposes telehealth services furnished an individual by a home health agency.
h.Establish a demonstration project to evaluate the impact and benefits of covering remote patient management services for certain chronic health conditions.
i.Acting through the Director of the Office for the Advancement of Telehealth of the Health Resources and Services Administration, make grants to expand access via telehealth to health care services for individuals in medically underserved rural, frontier, and urban areas.
j.Work with health plans, employers, HIT vendors, and others to create and
maintain a centralized resource center of grants, loans, insurance savings opportunities, incentive programs, and other financing options for HIT for providers.
k.Establish a consistent methodology for measuring telehealth and health information technology adoption and effective use, and analyzing and reporting data.
l.Allow for electronic prescribing of controlled substances, with appropriate safeguards.
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The National Broadband Plan should include support for categorical funding for online learning initiatives and digital excellence initiatives.
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The National Broadband Plan should adopt principles and goals formulated by top educators for all federal education programs:
* Technology should be promoted to the greatest extent possible in every federal education program and initiative.
* Standards for educational uses of technology that facilitate school improvement should be required, such as the National Educational Technology Standards developed by the International Society of Technology in Education.
* Proficiency in 21st-century skills should be emphasized in education policies, as well as professional development programs that foster 21st-century teaching and learning.
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The National Broadband Plan should recommend appropriate funding for the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies. The National Center will support a comprehensive research and development program to explore ways advanced computer and communication technologies can improve all levels of learning and "make learning more compelling, more personal, and more productive in our nation's schools."
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The National Broadband Plan should support state, municipal, and school district efforts to bring robust broadband to schools.
One of the world's largest installations of wireless local area networks in production today has been constructed by the School District of Philadelphia, the eighth largest school district in the United States. It now provides wireless Internet access at every school in the district. As FCC Commissioner Michael Copps has suggested, the federal government should facilitate the expansion of these broadband networks beyond the schools to the nearby communities, as was done in Livermore Valley, California.
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The National Broadband Plan should include designs to provide one laptop per child and support ubiquitous computing. The new Administration should provide federal funding to school districts that implement a one-to-one laptop program for students in grades 6 through 12 and provide funding for teachers, students, and parents who receive training in technology-rich educational services and applications. It should also provide tax incentives and other support that encourage America's businesses to donate their old computers to economically disadvantaged families.
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Create and fund the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust and expand the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program. The Digital Opportunity Investment Trust will advance the high priority of bringing technology into the educational system, emphasizing the creation of educational content and software that incorporates the vast range of technologies available. It will also address the critical need to digitize and bring online the content of America's universities, museums, libraries, and other public institutions. The new Administration should also increase funding for the EETT program, designed to improve student achievement and boost students' digital literacy through the use of technology in schools.
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The E-Rate program has been extremely effective in its mission of bringing the Internet to America's schools and libraries. But too often, that Internet access is so slow as to be obsolete and may be available on only one computer per school. The E-Rate program should ultimately provide free broadband to all schools and libraries, as well as sufficient hardware and software for students to use it. Intermediate steps include lifting the E-Rate funding cap while simplifying its paperwork burden and bureaucratic complexity. E-Rate recipients should be allowed and encouraged to use E-Rate funds to create wireless broadband canopies that bring the school or library's broadband to the surrounding community. The program should support Internet broadband speeds of at least 10 Mbps per 1,000 students/staff, as recommended by the State Educational Technology Directors Association
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The National Broadband Plan (NBP) should direct th Deparent of Energy to report on progress made on achieving the the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007's "national policy goal" of a nationwide Smart Grid and recommend additional steps necessary to reach the goal, such as adoption of a Smart Grid investment tax credit, demand reduction tax credit, accelerated depreciation, or other steps.
The NBP should also include additional recommendations on ways the federal government can accelerate the adoption of Smart Grid technology, including using its purchasing power in the electricity market and increasing its purchasing of electricity from renewable energy sources, as called for by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
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The National Broadband Plan should adopt the recommendations of the Joint Advisory Committee on Communications Capabilities of Emergency Medical and Public Health Care Facilities to overhaul and update the communications systems of EMS, 9-1-1, and public health facilities, based on these principles:
* Encourage interoperable broadband networks.
* Improve interoperability through better interagency coordination.
* Enable consistent efforts through use of common standards and federal grant guidance coordination.
* Advance capabilities through better network integration.
* Ensure that first responders, health care personnel, and patients have ubiquitous access to broadband services and applications by fostering a regulatory environment in which private-sector companies build robust broadband networks and by providing targeted funding
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