December 19, 2024 AZBSN Digital Access Task Force Video
10:32PM Dec 19, 2024
Speakers:
Steve Peters
Ilana Lowery
Mark Goldstein
Barney McCabe
Beth Neeley
Keywords:
Connect All Arizona
broadband office update
Connect all Arizona
Connect all Arizona
Connect all Arizona
Connect all Arizona
Connect all Arizona
Connect all Arizona
Connect all Arizona
Connect all Arizona
Connect all Arizona
Connect all Arizona
Connect all Arizona
Okay, good morning. Everybody glad to see you again. We usually like to start. Is there anybody who's new to us today? Anybody new today? Going once, going twice? Okay, well, let's just get into the agenda. First of all, as always, we'd like to thank our sponsors. Excuse me so care first, health plan, Karen Ziegler, consulting services, bally, telecom, Kajeet and triad. And let me change this before, okay, so this morning, and I just jump into it this morning, the folks from the broad, I don't know. Is there anybody from the broadband office here this morning? I know Erin and Kelly could not be here this morning. Anybody else from the broadband office here today? Okay? Well, just quickly, I will do a quickie update, and I'm sure there's other stuff, but I just wanted to make sure we mentioned and get included in my in my newsletter, which, by the way, again, reminder that most of the stuff that has links and announcements and events and things like that are included in my newsletter. So if you miss it, you should be able to pick it up there. And also, I do send out, as you all know, I send out the chat and the transcript and the video and everything after the meeting. And so again, if you missed anything, you should be able to pick that up. And then again, reminder that if you hear something that's in the chat and you want to get it, capture it. Today, you can go to chat at the far at the upper right hand corner, there's three ellipses. If you click on that, you can download the chat to your computer, because I know that we have links and things like that that it's sometimes hard to capture. So just wanted to to mention that. So the only thing I'm going to mention from the broadband office, and if anybody's got anything else they want to add, please jump in that you may already know that govern that the governor has launched connect all Arizona, a new initiative to ensure all Arizonans have access to information about statewide broadband so they have an excellent new website. Connect all Arizona. And the link is, is on my page here. Can also be included in the in my news. I'm on the Owen. Could you please mute? Do you need something?
Okay? I don't believe Nicole is here this morning. Are you Nicole?
Steve, I have a little brief update as well. I was on the call for bead open office hours yesterday, and Kelly did say the project areas would be published on Monday the 23rd
Okay. Good. Thank you. Thank you, Heather, you're welcome. Okay, anything else? Okay, if not, let's move on, on the agenda, and we're glad to see Beth Neely here today. Beth is the CIO for the Arizona Department of Education, Beth. Haven't seen you for a while, and you got some updates for us today. Yeah,
thank you, Steve, can I just share I've got one slide, and then I can send it over you if you want to send it out to everybody. So hello everybody.
I'll let you share your slide.
Do that. How there it is. Share. Tell me if everyone can Yep, you can see it, yep. Okay, so you see the broadband. I don't, I don't see it, but that's okay, as long as you guys are seeing it. So really quick, I just wanted to stop back in, I know I was in a couple of months ago to talk to you guys about the loss of a Mylan to the Department of Education, so I wanted to stop back in give you guys an update on where we're at. So our first round of trying to hire my lens replacement didn't go well, so we could not find a really strong candidate that we felt comfortable with. So act, matter of fact, in a couple of hours, we're beginning another round of interviews with another round of candidates for the position. So I wanted to let you guys know that you still have me. Yeah,
Beth, just Excuse me a second. So I think one. Of the people here probably know my one, but just to remind, remind people about what my one's job was,
okay, Milan was our broadband Project Manager for Ade so and he left, gosh, I don't, I don't even know now it's been maybe four months, five months, so about four or five months ago. So back filling his position as the broadband record.
You're breaking up. Beth. Think we thank you. Pros.
Um, yes, now there you go. I think it's just you, Steve, she was fine for me. Oh, really. Thank you. Thank you.
Yeah, my internet connection is unstable, okay,
so we're starting another round of another round of interviews today, looking for a really strong candidate, looking for somebody that has got some broadband experience. So that is surprisingly difficult, but I always say if, if I can learn it in four or five months, you know, I'm sure that we can get someone that can cover that. So I just want to give you an update. Still got me still doing everything I can working with the schools, but I do want to say that we've made a few changes, so we've been looking for some process improvements in the area. So we've got a couple different improvements on our process. Kind of streamlines things. You guys can find that on our website, there is a link to it right here. Tell me, if you can see, when I slide over the web page, you see the new website.
Yes. Okay, so the
link is in the slide deck, and again, I'll send it to Steve that he can share. So you might want to go out there. There's a new process for our broadband standard work, a new state match funding request form that we're using, very similar to the one that has been used before, example of an RF bid evaluation sheet. You know, how we evaluate special construction projects? So we're building that out a little bit, as we're learning, so you'll find some updates there. Also, we have a new email address to reach out to the team right now. It's a team of one in the future, hopefully it's a team of more than one. So it's broadband@az.gov so if anybody has any questions comments, you know, or you are going to be working on any special construction projects for E Rate schools, that's your best place to start. Uh, currently still in recruitment, and I've had a lot of questions come from people on how many, how much funding is left. And currently, I think it's actually 3,034,000 if you want the specifics. But currently, right now, there's still approximately $3 million in the fund available for the projects. And currently we've got four schools signed up for 2025 hoping to see a few more come in for this year. So I just wanted to make sure everyone knew I'm still here. Best way to reach out is through that broadband email, and hopefully I can come back in a month or two and introduce our new broadband PM, who then will be joining this meeting a little more regularly. I unfortunately have a day job, so sometimes it doesn't allow me to make this meeting on Thursdays, but I wanted to make sure I stopped by today to give you guys an update.
So Beth, is that position that my one had a broad broadband job, or is it focused primarily on E Rate?
No, it's, it's broadband. It's, it's broadband, it's, it's, we're going to focus on broadband. There has been a little bit of confusion on what the job specifically entails. But if you guys go out to our website now, I just lost the web. The website, hang on a minute. We're trying to be provide enough information for everybody to understand all of the E Rate resources that are available to everyone, whether it's through USAC, all of the different tools, and then actually the statutes regarding E Rate and then, but this position focus will. On broadband, special construction projects.
Hey, thank you. Any questions? Okay, thanks. Beth, good to see you.
You're welcome. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas to everybody. I hope you guys have a great couple of weeks and get some rest.
Yeah, thank you. Bye. Yeah, good bye. Now. Okay, so what's not on the agenda, but I want to make sure we give her some time. Is Judy Sol trip, who many of you know, is with Senator Mark Kelly's office. She's been a great supporter for us, range for us to get an update last week. But here, do you want to kind of give us a quickie follow up what we were talking about before the meeting started?
Hi, yeah, you were asking about the continuation of the budget, and I think at this point it's very up in the air. The senator is back in Washington, DC. We don't know the decision needs to be made by Friday, which is tomorrow, so we'll see what happens. We have had a shutdown in the state before, and I think it really affects public lands coming over Christmas, that could be a problem for people's vacations and things like that. But some of the other funding does continue. For instance, the post office does continue. However, there are some cuts in there, and then, like the Social Security office, I think they only allow the managers to come in, so any of the federal agencies that need to be working with the public that could be a problem. So we're hoping that they come to resolution. And that's all I have right now.
Okay, any any questions for Judy, lots of like we've been titling some of our updates in the past. There's things we know, things we think we know, and things we don't know. Mark, I did you have something you wanted to talk about?
Sure, I was surprised to see I was tracking my clients work, and they just got their $25 million grant formally in Alaska for a community called Hoover Bay yesterday. But as part of that announcement, I was reviewing Cox also got an award for $14.8 million down in Cochise, Pima and Pinal counties. I The announcement does not include a list of the specific communities, but says it will benefit thus connect 665, 70 9p, nine people, 88 businesses, two farms, nine educational facilities. So Cox may be able to provide more details on the exact communities in Cochise, Pima and final,
yeah, actually, Mark, I had also included it on the agenda for today. So thank you. I did I did see that. Okay, let's move on to the agenda. We have a couple of awesome presentations this morning. Can be just a second here to share. I
Paul. So we have a couple presentations this morning from people who've been pretty regular attendees at these meetings. And so I'm going to start with Paul. Paul Ross, who's the Associate Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Phoenix College and a doctoral student in the College of doctoral studies at Grand Canyon University. And for those of you who have been attending these meetings and have heard from Paul, he's doing amazing work, I always tease him about, do you ever get any time off into sleep because of all the amazing work that he's doing? So with that, Paul, I'm going to turn it over to you. I'm going to stop sharing, and I assume you may have some things to share. Paul, are you there? There he is. I
you mute?
Oh, are you there? Are you muted? Yep, all right, there we go. We're good and we're good and moving now, okay, all right, okay, so I'm gonna, I'm. Going to whip through a few things because I because I do like the work at a little bit of a fast pace, but I'm going to share a few things with you about what's going on. One with the research that I'm conducting to the grant we have right now at Phoenix College, which is, which is an NTIA CMC grant connecting minority communities grant. I'm also going to share a little bit about workforce education relating to an NSF grant that I also leading that's entering into its sixth year at Phoenix College. And then finally, as part of that presentation, I've got a world first for you, so I'm going to save that till the very end, but I'm going to whip through so that way I can make sure that John has some time as well. Otherwise, I know I could probably consume the whole day. Alright, so let's just start a little bit about me. Yes, that is me. I have been up a pole when it's been 115 degrees at 80 feet high, putting CBRs Wi Fi equipment, actually, on a pole. So I've seen our lovely area of Phoenix at a somewhat different vantage point to quite a few people. And you could say that I'm a CIO that goes from the cloud to the closet or the closet to the cloud. I really like to cover the whole spectrum of things, and I've had the privilege of working in multiple education environments, both here in the US and also in Australia. And currently, as Steve was saying, I'm a doctoral candidate focusing on learning and technology at the Grand Canyon University. So being a doctoral candidate, I'm involved in some research, and it's taken me about four and a half years to get to this point, and I'm conducting a study, and so I'm just sharing with you right now on screen, our my problem statement and my purpose statement. And it's really about trying to identify the solutions to close the digital divide, but also identifying the factors and the barriers that actually contribute to it. And so it's about building a conceptual model. And a lot of the existing models that we have out there are very, I would say, limited, or they're focused on a particular facet, such as access. And there's a lot of models that are focused on technology use, so I'm envisaging, creating a model that actually tries to capture the phenomena, to really bring it all into context. And the model is actually going to be very extensive and based on existing research. And my the the research I'm conducting, and also upcoming interviews, where I'm actually there's a solicitation that's going to go out shortly for people. So hopefully, I can interview between 20 and 50 people to contribute to the study. So as I said, you know, right now, I've identified about 450, plus components and about 23 domains of knowledge that actually group the components. And part of this has actually been looking at all the material that I can really put my hands on that has been published. And YouTube is a great treasure trove of resources. I've actually listened to videos as long as three hours long to as long as three minutes. And what's surprising is that in some of the video that I've analyzed, some of the best gems are actually in that 10 to 15 minute range. Some of the three hour ones, you get just as much content in the 15 minute one instead of listening for three hours. But this has been a very extensive study, and some of the domains, as you can see on screen there, sociological, psychological, technological, governmental, educational, service, and those are just a few of the domains that I'm starting to delve into. And so what we're trying to do is, I'm trying to interview people next, and that's the next phase within my research. And so that interview solicitation is going to go out in about three different channels to hopefully be able to gather people who will volunteer their time to interview with me, to contribute to the model. And so I'm really looking forward to that on screen, you can actually see a mind map of mine that I had created relating to a vision for closing the digital divide. And that's just a sample of a component of a mind map that I've created, and that was created several years ago now, just around the COVID time,
Paul, can I interrupt for one second? So he is, he's got, he is looking for people to interview, and I will be sending out that the solicitation to to our to our folks. Thank you, Steve,
so then we have the CMC grant. Well, the CMC. Grant. We it's a two year grant. We're currently in the throes of going for a no cost extension for one year to be able to conclude and achieve the goals of the grant that we set out to do. And so this is actually the mind map that led to the development of our Connecting minority communities grant. And I know this looks like a lot, it is a lot. There's a lot of information here, but these are how, this is how I put together thoughts when I'm developing grants or developing an idea. And so what we did was we applied for this grant, and as we know, it was a nationally competitive grant, and we there were 93 awardees nationally, and we were the highest funded community college out of 15 nationally, and we were the seventh highest funded out of all 93 awardees nationally. So our Phoenix College really had a good representation on that. So what's that mean? Well, the grant actually has multiple components. You traditionally will see many grants where people will apply for a particular project or a particular activity. We decided to go with more of a mindset, well, everything is interconnected, and let's put the pieces together. In other words, we're trying to put together a puzzle. And so what you see on screen some of the components that actually comprise the grant itself. So it's everything from hot spots to laptops, where, for instance, we've developed a loan to own program. So students are actually who qualify, are granted a laptop, but it's not theirs until they meet the requirements as they go through their coursework and meet certain credit requirements and such. And then we're developing new curriculum. So one thing that's exciting is that we are actually developing two brand new 12, six credit certificate courses, and they are focused on wireless technologies and also the digital divide, and I'll mention that in just a moment, other pieces that we are actually doing is we're actually upgrading some of our campus broadband capabilities, so putting in so gigabit point to point wireless networks, in other words, not having To lay new cable, new fiber cable between certain buildings and certain satellite campuses. We're able to do a line of sight point to point gigabit network, and that is currently in development right now. And we're also supporting the Guadalupe center, the Guadalupe Center, which is part of South Mountain Community College. We are actually funding about 200 students to go through their BPC 110 program, which is like a entry level computing course, to be able to get people back into learning and into education. And so we're helping fund that effort as well. So our new two new certificates that we're working on right now actually have not been approved. They are currently going through the approval process and will be reviewed by the governing board, hopefully in the next couple of months. But it's two one of them is emerging technologies, digital and wireless technologies. And the second one is wireless optimization, and it is really built around digital literacy, digital divide, closing it, and you can see by the titles of the courses that we are definitely updating the courses. And we've actually even just changed one title in the last 24 hours, and I have to update that now, but our grant is actually going to fund 48 students to go through this certificate program. Now we're going to be looking at starting that in the spring, so stay tuned for an announcement regarding that, but we are going to actually fund the tuition cost for 48 students to go through that program, and so that will be a great buzz, a great opportunity for our folks here in Arizona to be able to link in, and so that will be a an incredible opportunity there to go through and do a 12, do 12 credits with the tuition paid for by the grant, which will Then hopefully help our corresponding communities. So then we have workshop workforce development and internships. Well, we're working with different educational and private partners, and we are working with, at the moment, educational partners like Arizona Western College, central Arizona College, and we're offering students internships and externships. And we're also working with ASU and excelencia as well, and we're trying to provide our students with access to workforce experiences. Now, the way that can look like is currently in our computer science major area, information technology. We. We are minority majority in terms of the students that we represent in part of our program. And then when you look at the connected fields of interest, application development, is extremely high, followed by networking and cyber security. And so we have a large number of students. We now offer a bachelor's degree in it. And since we've offered that, our enrollment numbers have increased substantially. And so we are seeing a lot of participation in there, and in many of the classes, the majority is majority minority female. And so I want to mention that, because we're seeing a large number of females enter into the field and female minorities as well. And so that's actually significant to make note of there. And so what are we doing? Well, part of our internship experience, like, for instance, over summer, we ran an eight to 10 week internship experience, and the students were generally involved for about 2010, hours per week, and there's about 20 students. And so we are looking for our next internship and externship locations for spring and also for next summer. So if you have a business, or you know of a business that's interested in in hosting a cohort of students on a particular project, or has a desire, please reach out to me. I only I really want to connect, because we potentially have a great number of students that we could match. And through the NSF grant, we actually pay them minimum wage to be able to participate, and the internship experience can be up to about 240 hours long, and so we can tailor that as well. It can be less, but we're looking for employment, employer opportunities to work with, where our students can get more hands on work and more hands on practical experience as an internship. So it's a win win for the college, for the employer, and most importantly, for the student and their future careers. And so this is just a little bit of a an outline of something that we went through for this last summer. And we had a cyber security and we also had an application development internship, where the students actually developed a storyboard application using figma and for cyber security, they were modeling a K 12 School District, and they were modeling a small business. And I'll just jump through that. So as I was saying, with the NSF grant, we certainly looking for employers to be able to place our students. We do have an email account set up. It's WBE that stands for work based experiences at Phoenix college.edu. And feel free to give us a call, or you can contact me, or you can use this email, and we'll try and definitely reach out to you and to make that connection. And so, you know, we all like to do things about changing the digital divide, so I wanted to introduce something a little bit different for you today. So hopefully this will come through. This is a song that I have written and composed with the assistance of AI on closing the digital divide for all. And so hopefully in you, this is a world first. This has not been seen. So I'm going to go ahead and hit play, and we'll see how it goes. And I won't play the whole lot. I'll just play the first minute or so, and then we'll jump over to John. Can you hear it? Can somebody give me a thumbs up? Bridges connect no no audio. Fiber
and wire. This answering the call, satellite, signals and networks. Unit, yeah. There
it goes. This is very low
concept to concrete innovation, craft and soul delicious for a brighter day, round to sky. The future of boats. With each connection, new stories are told, from five bird rides to Wi Fi high satellites soaring in the skies. Innovation sparks were leading away from story crafts and dreams today, we close and go to find the way through shared network shaping today, education and students together, light innovation, start the future to fight, I believe, for towns and streets to progress, realizing dreams, commercial and community efforts combined access to every Skyline while it signals, bridge every gap, rural towns to digital matter, empowered by effort, united and gold for shaping the future, connecting souls. Liberal rights and Wi Fi high.
So I'm going to stop it right there, because it certainly goes on for a little bit longer. It's about four minutes in length. And so I will drop a direct link to the YouTube Music there for you all, but that's a snapshot of some of the things that we've got going on at Phoenix College. And so I appreciate everyone's support and efforts and ongoing questions as well.
So questions or comments for Paul. You know, this is probably just a snippet Paul of what's going on in your brain and in your life.
That would be true
so much with the research that you're doing, projects and stuff. Okay, any other questions, comments or Paul. You have anything else you want to add?
I think that's what I'll stay there for now. But I know that when I do end up having my dissertation all done, it will be, I will be inviting everybody to be part of the defense, to listen to the presentation as well. So I'm just going to open it up, because there will be a lot of information and a lot of data shared as well. And so it will be more of a an experience than a presentation.
Okay, thanks, Paul. We'll definitely be looking forward to hearing more from you next year. Okay, moving on then. So glad to also welcome of course, he's been with us many times, but John Haas, do i pronounce your name correctly? John
basically called Haas, but doesn't matter. I've been called a lot worse.
He is the as a professor of cyber intelligence security at Embry Riddle, Aeronautical University, College of Business, Security and Intelligence, and he's also the director for the Center for the Future, which is a Prescott regional business incubator and accelerator. And John has done a great deal of work, and particularly in cyber security. And so John, I'm going to turn it over to you. I'm going to stop sharing if you have anything you need to share.
So let's see if we can make this go full screen and click. So last week, I think, December 11, Wednesday, we had Homeland Security come and do a community safety workshop, and then they did another one down in Phoenix the next day, I believe. And so I thought it might be useful to just show what they're working on, because DHS funds a lot of different things, and we have as part of DHS CISA, and so they were there. And it's not everyone knows that they do a lot more than just cyber. So Dr Kimberly O'Connor is the director of the Arizona
if I can interrupt black box on your screen, is that me?
Yeah, let's see if I can just move that out of the way. I should be able to minimize it, hide video panel. Did that do it? Okay? The Post was the Arizona Department of Homeland Security, and the head of that, Kimberly O'Connor, kind of introduced, and then I welcomed everyone to to Prescott and Embry Riddle, David from CISA came and spoke briefly, and then Nicole, who's the Director of Office of partner engagement, spoke just to set the stage, because that's who funded this initiative, and is they're doing this, not just in Arizona, but all across the country as much as they can. So let's see click the first was about no to protect and here's the link, although you guys can't make the link happen, but Steve can send it out. So the Special Agent Austin barrio from Homeland Security Investigations gave us a story about this initiative called no to protect, and I was surprised by the numbers, but 36 million youngsters are victims of exploitation online and in person because people aren't aware. Care that with their mobile phones, with their laptops, with their pads, they can get themselves into trouble, and what starts online can become in person, because they'll tell them, oh, let's meet at the mall. So one of their partners is called neck back National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and it's a real big deal. So if you have kids or grandkids, or know somebody with kids, or if you were once a kid, you may want to find out about this program. And I gave links for it, and there's a special link that is designed for the kids and for teens, and they do a pretty good job of making characters and making it short so that students and kids will stay with it, because they're used to, you know, 15 second and 32nd commercials. So no to protect is a relatively new project of Homeland Security, and they've got a good bit of materials on it, and every school should probably know about it. And as we add all of these broadband people who have not really spent time online, what a great thing to make them aware of before they get online. The next one was you've probably all heard of the fusion center that we have. There's one in every state. Arizona's was the second after California, and it's called the Arizona counter terrorism Information Center, or the ACA, which is mostly what people call it. It's a security operation center, and has all of the different agencies, the FBI, the DPS, tribal representatives from different places. And so when an event happens, they've already got all of the security operations center phone lines and all things like that coming into the center. And so they wanted to tell people about it. It also is the largest computer forensics lab for Arizona. So if there's something that occurs, likely it gets investigated there at the ACA. And all of these fusion centers were established after 911 and now they're morphing. And of course, one of the things that we are looking forward to or concerned about is, what's the fate of these fusion centers now that we are so many years away? My students, of course, weren't even born, and 911 new incoming freshmen. So a lot of people aren't aware of why a lot of these rules and things were created, and sometimes you have to re educate. So physical security is also a big deal for the Department of Homeland Security. So Daniel, I can't pronounce his name, but he was very interesting. As he says he's Italian. He didn't use the mic. He talks with his hands. And he gave us a good low down, along with several videos, short videos that are available. So if you have an an organization, retail, a church, a school or a company, and if you don't have a security planning program, then you can reach out and they will help you create a program. So they talked about, how do you recognize that one of your clients or one of your employees is about to go ballistic. What are some of the behaviors of concern? How do you de escalate something going wrong? And they also talked about the thing that we don't like, but active shooter, which we had one this very week, where up up in the north at some small school, and how do you prepare? And so they showed a video, and run hide fight doesn't necessarily mean in that order. And as he pointed out, you may have to go through it several times. You may have to run and hide, and then they get somebody gets closer and you have to run and hide again. So it was a really good talk to remind us that something can go wrong in an instant, and for us to all be available plenty of resources on that on that site that you can find. Then following that was Curtis Tilley of the branch chief, and you wouldn't know that CISA has an office of bombing prevention. I didn't know. And so there's a link here. You can find all these links they talked about. What they're doing to prevent things and threats, and how to go about it as an organization. Of course, not all of us feel like we have any concern about it, but again, unfortunately, it's too easy to create homemade bombs IEDs, that came out of the wars of the last 25 years have shown people how to make these things, and they may not be very effective, but boy, in the local area, it can be devastating if, if somebody, for some reason, decides they're angry and they want to go online, and they ask AI to help them make a bomb. Now, AI is not supposed to help them, but we all know that you can get around things by asking straight away to to Google or some other search finding resources and creating them. And they said, This is a big concern, because it's usually a lone wolf, very difficult to prevent, finally, closer to us, and why, I thought it would be interesting for us in the broadband education world to think about an initiative where we would tell people as they come online, and one of the 300,000 new families that are going to be wired always on internet. What should they be thinking about to be, personally, best practices as far as cyber hygiene and Kelly had materials, and there's a website called shields up guidance for families and kind of the headlines we all know, but most people don't, you know, make sure you're using multi factors, so just loss of your password isn't enough to take money from your account, keep your software updated, particularly browsers, because they are always being updated and they're always vulnerable. There's a contest every year, and last year, a group up in Vancouver won it, and it's a million dollar prize every year, though every single browser gets breached, and every time somebody wins money to do it so that it's coming up in February, and we're going to try and put a team together to see if we can win some of that money. Think, before you click, did you really buy something from PayPal? Did you expect this Amazon package? Because they're getting so clever with the new assisted fishing that sometimes it's difficult to tell, especially during the holiday season. They were pointing out that every season has the special fishing. So for instance, we just had open enrollment for met for health care. So there were lots of fishing around health care. Finally, use a password manager and unique passwords. You know, we all laugh at this, but there was an ambassador for Lebanon, and his password was 123456,
hmm. Anyway, it's a big opportunity for the broadband initiative. It would be great if we had a team of people that went around and helped people. And I think that this is something that is worth funding. And I think a group of us that meet monthly are looking at going ahead and applying for some funding to help do this in the new families that are coming online. I think that was basically the story. And if you want, there are lots of resources available. This is my other job, and center for the future. We're an incubator, accelerator, and we have started, I think we've got 24 little companies started and 30 new jobs, which isn't big for Maricopa County, but for Northern Arizona, if we get a new a new high paying job, it's a big deal. So hope everyone's having a great holiday and season, and I'm going to stop sharing.
Thanks, John. So John, do you want to take a minute to talk about I guess Microsoft's are really pushing people to go to pass keys rather than passwords, and I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that, MFAs and all that kind of good stuff.
Yeah, there are a lot of different ways. You know, we've had IBM in 2014 said the death of the password, and that was 10 years ago now. So there have lot, been lots of initiatives. What has happened is that there was a standard now for having a device. It looks like a USB drive, which acts as a fob. The government already uses what's called a CAC, an access card, and for a lot of government agencies, you don't have your card, you don't go to work because you can't get into the building, you can't access your computer, you can't do anything. So the private sector and the world is realizing that having a third factor, which is something you have a device like a fob or a card makes things more secure, and Microsoft is one of the participants in this new standard, and there will be many companies that are going to have these standards based fobs or keys, but multi factor authentication, there's typically three, something you know, which is the password, something you are, like your eyeballs or your fingerprint, or something you have which is a fob or a pass key. If you have all three factors, the odds are that a bad guy can get all three of those factors is minuscule, so you are safer online.
Okay, any other questions so, Ilana, you want to share the comment that you put in the chat?
Yeah, hi. No, just that. You know, a lot of what John just talked about is work that common sense is doing with organizations across the country and trying to work here in Arizona to provide a lot of this information to schools, to families, because you got to start. You know, we focus on kids and families. And you have to start young kids need to understand from day one what all of this means as far as digital footprint and identity and all of these things, identity theft, how to, you know what it is, how to avoid it. Because, you know, obviously, cell phones aren't going away, social media is not going away, so they have to learn young. And so our, you know, with our digital citizenship curriculum, that's what we do. So that's all I was saying, is that we're, you know, it was great, John, to be at the event. It was really nice to I didn't get a chance to talk to you, but it was really nice to connect with the local folks that are working on this stuff. So I was really glad that I went and we have some meetings set up already. So yeah, so that's all I was going to say.
That's what we love to hear, because there are great networking events because we oftentimes work in our own little stove pipe, and yet, there's many people working on similar or related things. So thanks for sharing.
John Jerry is still with sister, isn't he? Or not?
Jerry,
what? Can't remember his last name, off hand.
Oh, okay, you know, I don't know. Representative, yeah. So see, the Arizona is part of region nine, and we had different people there. We used to only have like one person as the head of the Arizona CISA, but now I think they've got a whole team. They must have a dozen people working in different areas. For instance, there was a guy's worries about chemical another person works. Kelly Hills was there. She's the cyber person. So like many agencies, They've really grown up. And Jen easterly was here in the in Arizona about two months ago, and they're going to come back in the spring and do another road show. I guess she's the director of CISA nationwide, and so they paid attention to what we're doing here in Arizona, because of the growth and a lot of the effort with chips and semiconductors and all this.
John, are you hearing anything? I haven't seen anything. But that doesn't mean anything about what, what's on the horizon next year with the new administration regarding CISA and security, we're hearing any any rumors or anything at this point.
Well, the only thing that's true is that I think we are recognizing, and will continue to recognize with the new administration, the importance of cyber security, and particularly for critical. Infrastructure, and that means water, power, electrical, natural gas. These things are so important. And Arizona, of course, is a leader in this, in that talk about a state that cares about water, we do and we also care about electricity, because in the summertime, I've heard it gets hot in Phoenix and and that takes a lot of power to cool down all those houses and buildings.
Okay. Thanks, John. Any questions or comments? Barney, how does this sync with what you guys are doing
upon my mute button? Yeah, so obviously it will connect into what Paul has been working on in the cyber security and the general education aspects of what we're working on. Barney,
just want to tell people quickly about who you are and what you're doing.
Yeah, so I'm Barney McCabe. I'm executive director of the Institute for computation and data enabled insight here at the University of Arizona, we've got a couple of programs that we're working on. One we've heard about, excuse me, on AI core. And that is getting some students background in some of the AI technologies, and then getting them out into the community to demonstrate how those technologies can advance businesses locally and some other areas around that. And then Paul Wagner, who works with us also is at the College of Applied Science and Technology does a lot in cyber security. He's got some Google funding primarily aimed at education, as well as some consulting work for businesses and communities around just sort of how to shore things down.
Okay, thanks. Thanks, Barney. Anybody have anything else that they want to share, going once, going twice, actually, let me check something here real quickly. Oh, so just a just a quick a mala is not here today. She is on vacation, but if she was here, I'm sure she would share with you that John winhausen, who has been the executive director of Shelby, the school's health and libraries broadband coalition, is leaving, and so they will be looking For a new director, and for the next year. So he's been a tireless advocate at the national level for all broadband and security related issues. So we're I'm disappointed to hear him leaving, but I'm sure Mala would have shared that if she was here, and then we're going to hear next week or not next week, but our next meeting from from Shereka about the stem grant that they received. So any other Ilana, you want to just bring people up to date again, just a reminder about the net Inclusion Conference coming up. I
you there? Ilana, yeah, I just can't find my mute button because I'm on my Yeah, just a reminder. We're in the process right now. I'm on the local planning committee with some other folks, I think, on the call, and so we're in the process of whittling down the final proposals for all of the presentations and all of the panels and conference sessions, etc, so that will be decided on and finished. We're working with ASU and Lev gonick. For those of you that don't know Lev, he's the he's ASU CIO, and we want to do a little something with him and Angela siefer, who is the Executive Director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, NDIA, for those of you that don't know, the conference is going to be held in Arizona In May. Unfortunately, it was cheaper then. So we have about they're expecting about 14 to 1500 people. So it will be the largest conference, and it'll be the first one. This one is in the Gila River Indian Community. This will be the first one on Indian reservation land. So we're going to really the theme is really going to highlight and focus on Native American culture and some other opportunities that we'll have. It'll be at the Gila River wild horse pass Casino and Resort Conference Center. So, yeah. Mean, there's a lot more information that I could share. Steve, just, you know, go to the NDA NDIA website for for all of the basic information on registering. Unfortunately, the early bird registration is close. Is over already, but it's a great conference for anybody who is involved in, oh, Thanks Kelly, for anybody that's involved in Digital Equity, Digital Inclusion, closing the digital divide, all of those things. There's going to be a lot of focus from looking at the proposals, because I was on that committee, there'll be some focus on AI and some other areas that we've not looked at before at ndia. So yeah, thanks, Kelly, she just put the the link in for the information on on the conference. So yeah,
thanks. Ilana, okay, I think we're about done for today. Anybody have anything else that they would like to share, if not. Obviously, we've got the holidays coming up, so we will not be meeting again until January, the ninth. Long time away, long time break for us. But I wish you all healthy and safe holidays and look forward to seeing you in the new year. I guess, since we've got just a couple more minutes, I'd like to hear any thoughts people have about how we can what we what you'd like to see us do with AC BSN, any new ideas, thoughts that I can take into account and planning for next year.
Thoughts, comments,
okay, well, then I guess we're done. So Happy Holidays again, safe and happy holidays, and we'll see you in the new year.