Working with Stakeholders to
 Bridge the Digital Divide

Short term / Long term strategies:

Government has made a commitment to bridge the digital divide in British Columbia by the end of 2006. Key stakeholders such as the health and education sectors, Crown corporations and the broader public sector all have an important role to play in working with government to help make this goal a reality.

Bridging the divide is part of government's plan to strengthen education, health and economic initiatives in the Heartlands of the province. In addition to connecting these unserved communities to broadband Internet, solving the digital divide also involves putting in place a strong network that will support the government's goal of enabling the delivery of e-government services.

Government has developed a self-funding strategic plan to design and implement the next generation provincial network, decrease unit costs of connectivity, increase services and provide eventual access to currently unserved communities. The plan involves reinvesting a portion of the savings accrued from aggregating service on the current government network into solving the digital divide issue.

The next generation government network is anticipated to include the present service to core government, the education system and colleges, but will also include agencies, Crown corporations and health authorities. It is anticipated that this aggregation of government and broader public sector telecommunications spending will enable network costs to be lower and provide better value, service levels and increased bandwidth.

This new network model is being developed now. Consultations with the health authorities are well underway and moving to the major Crown corporations. Over the next several months the consultations will extend to small Crowns and agencies, boards and commissions. What the new network looks like will be a partnership view. Aggregation members are being given the chance to influence the design through an advisory meeting and peer-to-peer meetings.

The partners being brought on to this extended public service aggregation will have access to higher network speeds at lower cost and their network management will be simplified. Other organizations that will be able to join the aggregation include First Nations community networks and municipalities. The key benefit from this aggregation will be an open access point of network presence in each provincial community where Internet service providers, municipalities and community groups will be able to have access to bandwidth at a cost level that is similar in all regions of the province.

For more information on how your organization can be part of this initiative, contact the NetWork BC Project Team at DigitalDivide@gov.bc.ca.