April 18, 2024 AZBSN Digital Access Task Force Recording

3:53PM Apr 19, 2024

Speakers:

Steve Peters

Ilana Lowery

Nicole Umayam

Erin Lorandos

Mala Muralidharan

Lucy Howell

Drew Garner

Vaughn Croft

Jennifer Burns

Barney McCabe

Kenneth Kim

Peter Costa

Michael Holcomb

Kelly Krusee

Brenna Leasor

Tamala McBath

Karla Morales

Keywords:

state

people

arizona

broadband

working

updates

programs

events

grant

workforce

meeting

information

jobs

talk

ntia

announcements

chat

big

discharge petition

tucson

Stop sharing for a moment because I can't turn on stuff here. I'm sharing Okay, now let's share this again

Okay, good morning, everybody. So glad to see you. So first thing is just again to thank our sponsors CareFirst healthplan, Karen Ziegler, consulting services, Valley Telecom Group Kajeet and Triad Wireless. Secondly, we do have at least one new person. So, Brenda, do you want to introduce yourself, please?

Hey, sure. Yes, so my name is Brenna Leasor. This my first week at Common Sense Media. I'm the tech Policy Council will be focusing a lot on Broadband. It also some other tech issues like cybersecurity and AI, I come from the private sector was at Deloitte for about six years doing a couple different types of roles, government contracting, and also their government relations office, but excited to work with everyone. I'm very, very passionate about Broadband. So I feel like I'm

welcome. We have anybody else who's new this morning.

Hello, Tamala McBeth. And I'm actually new. Going to Emma, I'm on my phone. Now I'm going to try to log in through the app. I was just mobile. I am the CEO of Dress For Success, Phoenix, and we work throughout the state. And we have a couple of statewide programs that involve Broadband, and was invited to this meeting and happy to learn more.

Great. Welcome. Anybody else who was new this morning? Andrew Gardner, welcome back. I haven't seen you in a while.

Hi Steve Hi All

And Karla Good to see you too.

Good morning. Good morning, everyone.

So So I want to talk a little bit about the agenda today. I do not have a presentation scheduled. So I want to do a couple of things this morning. And we'll get to it after some of our briefings today. But first of all, we'd like to get some feedback from you about our meetings. You know, do you like the format? Should we do something different? What would you like to see us do? So that's the first thing. And the second thing, if we have time is to do what we haven't done for a while, is to just do a round robin, and have four or five of you just briefly introduce yourselves who you are. Because I know many of you are online. Some of many of you are new. And and people don't really know they hear your name, maybe your organization, but don't really know who you are what you do. And of course, that's one of the strengths of this group is people knowing who's who and who's doing what to who. So that's kind of what I'm thinking for the agenda today. But having said that, let's just jump into the agenda this morning. And Aaron, you're online. So you want to start us off?

Yes, I will do that. Steve. My name is Erin Lorandos. And I am the Digital Equity program manager with the Arizona Commerce Authority. For folks who might not know me, or much about ACA. We are the administering entity here in Arizona for both the BEAD and Digital Equity funding that's coming down through NTIA. And our brief update. As far as our office is concerned. We are in the middle of the challenge process. We've got about a month left with that and I'd be happy to drop links to things in the in the chat if people need those. Yet. We are hosting our webinars this week for our various stakeholder groups to get an update on that challenge process and answer any questions that folks have. We also have a ton of resources on our website about that process. And I'm happy again, you know, to drop that in the chat. As far as Digital Equity is concerned, we are working on our application for the capacity grants. Funding, Arizona was it was anticipated to be awarded just over $16 million for the Digital Equity plan implementation. And so actually this week our approved plan was added to the website and I will share that link as well. So you can take a look at that and see how all of the wonderful public comments that we received. And all of the feedback throughout the process really helped to shape the plan. So so this next piece, the capacity grant application is just at our level just at the ACA. Oh, thank you, Kelly, you're dropping things, I love it, I can just say things and they'll pick up here on the chat. It's fantastic. So, so at this point, this, there is nothing that any of our stakeholders on this call or anyone across the state needs to really worry about as far as the Digital Equity capacity grant is concerned, we do encourage you to read the final plan and see, you know, see what got approved by NTIA. But at this point, we are the ones that are hard at work writing that application. And once we do that, we'll be able to share more about what we actually wrote in that application. Basically, this application allows us to prioritize, you know, the work for the first part of implementation with this with this with this award of the $16 million. So, um, there will be further guidance, you know, shared with our stakeholders, once we are ready to share what potential sub grant process or potential projects might look like in the state. So we will definitely update this group as soon as we possibly can with that. Um, let's see. Other than that, I think I mentioned we're in the middle of the challenge process. You know, we're still on track with the timeline that's been shared previously for BEAD. But of course, if there are any questions, we are always happy to answer them. The team is also holding weekly office hours outside of the webinars that are being hosted. So if there are, you know, individual questions that you'd like clarification on, or if there's any issues that you're having with the portal or anything like that, we encourage you to sign up for those office hours and get that one on one time with our team as well. Um, let's see. I think that's about it. No updates on any of our staffing changes at this time. We're still working through the process on on the open positions. And I think that's that's about it. Unless there are questions for me.

What else is open besides the deputy director position?

That's the one that's open right now.

Okay, yeah,

Good question. Yes, I put a chat. So, oh, I know about the 16.1 million. But can can Arizona apply for more and possibly receive more? Or is that like, the cat so?

So, um, that will and um, maybe I can ask Nicole to give more context after I after I say this part. But um, that is that is the amount that was figured out by the the formula that they applied. So that's the amount we're currently applying for. There will be two additional no foes. But in subsequent years, for potentially more capacity grant dollars. However, we don't know what those dollar amounts will be at this time, there'll be recalculated at the time of those subsequent Delphos. Andrew Yes, that's the first of the three batches. that's those are those second, third nofas. But we don't have dollar amounts associated with those at this point.

What a pain free

indeed,

I mean, at least his job security, I know what I'm going to be doing next year about this time. It was it was a bit of a surprise, you know, for for states to see that when the NOFO came out. But yeah.

Okay. Any other questions for Erin? So Kelly, I see you're online. Do you want to say anything kind of tell us what you're doing? And as I was tired, I want to understand more about the Broadband office people and what you guys do so, sir, say hello.

Yes, my name is Kelly. I am the Broadband Community Engagement Manager and my job is helping to organize our communication and our visits where we're going, making sure that we are reaching all corners of the state's in our visits and sharing information with the community about the BEAD and Digital Equity programs. And right now I am working on setting up visits in southern Arizona. So if there's anyone on this call because I would like to reach specific places. Anybody on this call who is in southern Arizona, I'm looking for Cochise and Santa Cruz counties. I have some contacts working on some things but would love to connect with other people really trying to maximize our reach Come and visit. You know, like I said, all counties in the state. So my focus right now is southern Arizona. And we're going to be doing some traveling probably every month. That's the goal right now. Again, trying to reach every part of the state. So that's what's happening right now. I'm going to put my email in the chat if there is anyone again, in those counties, definitely reach out to me because I'd love to connect with you about a possible visit and where we could do that or any contacts. Anyone might have to help me get those arranged.

Okay, thanks, Kelly, any questions for Kelly? Have questions or comments for Kelly? Going? Well, looking

forward to meeting you. That's all. In person.

We don't have anybody else from the Broadband office on do we. Okay, moving on. So Nicole, I saw that you're here. Glad to have you today.

Hey, good morning,

Nicole Umayam.

I'm the federal program officer for Arizona with NTIA. I work closely with the Broadband office and stakeholders all over and with our federal partners. I did have a few updates I wanted to provide, you know, I think we'll get into some of the conversations around the meeting and cadence later. So I'll save some of those thoughts because I'm sometimes not sure at the the level of content that you're expecting for some of these updates deep and how to pair that to the participants on the call. Because there's there's certainly a lot that we could talk to that makes more sense for the state directly or for applicants. But you know, I think we can get into that later. But I did want to just highlight the a couple of a couple of dates. This seems to be a big permitting month for NTIA, there's been a lot of effort behind the scenes to coordinate at the federal level to prepare states for a massive influx of permitting and environmental assessments that are going to accompany the BEAD awards. So last month, I know we had already mentioned NTIA as permitting and environmental mapping tools. That's the first step for BEAD applicants as well as states in planning out these processes has also been 30 additional categorical exclusions for for the permitting process, which is really fantastic for a lot of applicants who are sort of agonizing about having having to reopen these processes. And all six of these actually are categorical exclusions that are pulled from the FirstNet program. So I know we have a lot of FirstNet fans here. So it's, it's great to see some coordination there. The F D, you know, there's not much I can say about the Digital Equity capacity grant right now as that window is still currently open. end of May is when the states that submitted their plans have to to apply for that capacity funding. There's a separate window for the territories and a separate window for tribal entities that will open later in the year. The FCC on May 15, published their own Broadband funding map. So there's versions of these that you see on the state Broadband maps, there's the versions that you see on NTIA as permitting tool even this is the FCC version that is related to the infrastructure act. So that's what compels the FCC to publish that on a biannual basis. So it's worth exploring for a lot of people who care about what's the most projects that are going on in Arizona. I also wanted to highlight the EDA has an interesting grant that's open. Now, it'll actually be two phases of a grant. And this is to fund tech hubs. So these are community centers that facilitate use of Broadband and digital skills. So that's 15 million to to build out at least 20 tech hubs in the in the country. So maybe worth exploring there. And lastly, I wanted to just highlight the earlier earlier this month, the House Energy and Commerce Committee had an oversight hearing on federal funding for Broadband. The the wonderful leader Angela Seaford, Executive Director of National Digital Inclusion Alliance was on that panel and there's some really great information, a lot of great education for our members of Congress around Digital Equity in the complexities of rolling out those programs. So I want to

I can't tell who that is. We're getting some feedback. So if you all please mute. Okay, I'm sorry, go ahead. And

that's about it for me. So I'm going to drop all of these links to those. Those announcements that I mentioned in the in the chat. Nicole,

can you talk a little more about the tech hubs and who can apply and know

it's with the EDA, so I'll just, I'll send their NOFO. There. I don't have a lot of income information. But you're welcome to check it out. And maybe we can get a temperature check on some of the interest there.

Actually, I do have a newsletter for VBA with the checkups. So I will share that information. Save

there is a consortium, one of which we've let written a letter of intent and support for that his already aggregating some folks. So I'm going to introduce you since you're here in southern Arizona, again, pull this kind of group tangibly into that, and maybe we can get a letter of support from you guys. And it will make Tucson more attractive, at least I'm representing Tucson, Southern Arizona, but they're already applying for that grant.

Do you want it stranger if you want to tell us?

Oh, I'm so sorry. I know most of the people. It's Lucy how with the force for help. And based here in Tucson, Arizona, but we have a global program to gamify healthy city healthier citizenship on platforms. But what I'm saying is that that's already in process. You know, it's this, the great thing about this meeting is open communication. So we're not like stepping on anybody's toes here. So there is a group. And it's led by Eagles, and it's Arizona flourishing communities. And he's kind of brought in some key players here in southern Arizona. We went for a grant like this about a year ago, we didn't get it. He is the former State Director of the Economic Development Office of the State of Washington, he actually laid out the tech network across the state of Washington. So we're in good hands here. So if anybody is here in Tucson, and we'd like to participate, perhaps in that consortium or letter of intent for that, to position Tucson strongly, then let me know.

Thank you. So any other questions for Nicole? If not, I'm going to change the agenda slightly. And have Drew and Brammer if you guys would kind of talk about we haven't seen you in a while, kind of give us an update on what's happening. And of course, is there any latest things with with ACP?

Do you still there

I am. And Brenna you jump in to share too because I saw I think you were on the agenda. Main thing is just the discharge petition in the house. So I think maybe I'm not sure if he's discussed that before. But essentially, the representative Clark's refunding bill, which we've been talking about for a while the ACB Extension Act, has enough votes has enough supporters to pass if it is brought to a vote. The problem is getting it through leadership onto the floor so it can be voted on. So Representative Clark is working with a congressional procedure called the discharge petition, which if that gets to 218 votes, then it would essentially force the Extension Act to the floor for a vote where it would hopefully pass. So right now this week, today, we're trying to get as many signatures onto representative Clark's discharge petition as possible. Yeah, as long as you have discussed before, but that's still going on. And there's still reason to, to be working on that bill. Otherwise, though, everything else like ACP is still on track to end a couple days, basically.

Okay, Brenna, do you want to add anything?

I think we pretty much covered it. I mean, the only thing else with that, I'd say with the discharge petition is that it was supposed to be filed this morning. But since the members gonna be sticking around into the weekend for the foreign aid supplemental. It'll come out in the next couple days, it seems. So a lot of the coalition's that we work with are targeting specifically the House Republican members trying to get their support or word that they'll sign on immediately just to kind of gain momentum through the petition but that's pretty much all

any questions for for Drew or runner? Okay, I'm glad to have you guys haven't seen you in a while. So It's good to Good to have you. So a couple of quick things. And I know there's all kinds of events. And again, I want to remind you that I tried to put it in the newsletter, I've actually changed the format a little bit to put the calendar of events towards the top of my newsletter, so that you can scan through those. But if you want to know about what's happening, at least the one things that I know about, I'm sure there's lots of others, that that's the place. And so I know a lot of times people mentioned things in the in, in the meetings, and I tried to get all that stuff in the in the newsletter. So I really encourage you to we scan through and see if there's any things that are of interest to you. So speaking of events, and again, I know there's a number out there. But Barney, you're online, I believe you got a big event coming up an AI event if I'm not mistaken, or do we miss it?

Yeah, you caught me by surprise. Yeah, we have an AI or a privacy and law law privacy event coming up tomorrow. Not tomorrow, Monday. Sorry. That will be and I don't know if I've got much more information at the tip of my fingers on that.

So Barney, can you just introduce yourself real quickly and, and your organization?

Yeah, I'm Barney McCabe. I'm the executive director of the Institute for computation. And data enabled inside here at the University of Arizona. We're really focused on sort of bringing together a lot of the different things that are going on in campus and community around AI in emerging technologies.

Hey, Ash works for you with you to you.

Asha, black, and many of you know isn't involved in the team and he runs a the industry affairs or AI and industry group for the for the institute, mostly trying to get students involved in industry and opportunities across the city in the state.

Thanks, Barney. And Karla, I know you get the tech Council has hundreds of events. But one in particular is the cybersecurity event coming up in a month or so. You want to say thank you. Are you still there? Yeah,

absolutely. Actually, there's two events that are coming up. And I apologize. I'm on any computer and my camera will not turn on. So I promise I'm not being rude. I just cannot get it to turn on. But yeah,

just a large Benoa watching

quiet. Hi, Aaron. Aaron, can you do me a favor and put yourself on mute? Thank you. As I was saying, we do have two great events coming up. One of them is the cybersecurity Summit. But we also have the med tech conference, which I thought would be of great interest to this group as well. That is here in southern Arizona to the med tech conference has now been in existence for about six or seven years. And for the first time ever, it's actually moving down to southern Arizona. We are scheduled to be at the I'm going to call it it's the College of Medicine, but it's the former entry into Banner hospital. They have a beautiful atrium in there. And so they're hosting us this year, we have a great panel of presenters lined up focusing on med tech devices, med tech, med tech, biotech and research. And academia University of Arizona is going to be heavily involved. We have a lot of great companies coming from Phoenix as well. And one of the conversations that we talked about, when you talk about med tech, you talk about healthcare simultaneously. And we talked about access. So again, May 21. One o'clock in the afternoon, the old manor hospital or the now called College of Medicine, atrium building, I'll send more information. I'll put some more information in the chat as well, as well as our cybersecurity cybersecurity Summit coming up and also in the month of May in Phoenix, and I'll put that information again on the chat for for the sake of giving you all a snap a summary of the both of those events.

Thanks, Carla. Again, it's good to see you again. So again, I know there's lots of other events. And by the way, Carla, if you just want to mention, the tech Council sends newsletters sends a news announcement of events coming up every Monday morning. And if you want to be on that list, you can go to the tech Council website, I believe. Carla, do you want to comment about that? Yeah,

I'm actually I'm actually putting that on the chat right now. Because there's actually a lot of great events coming up virtual tech series that might be of interest to you all. And the beauty about those is that You're able to participate or record them in or get the recording later on and listen at your leisure. So I put in the link now.

Great. Thank you, Karla. Okay, so are there any other big events coming up? Oh, I just wanted to mention, so the governor's interagency community Broadband Advisory Council working groups are coming up April 22 23rd 24th, and 25th. And again, all that information is in the newsletter, with the links and so forth. So, are there any other quick announcements before we move on? And we'll get to other updates here in just just a little while. Any other quick announcements? Okay. So, as I mentioned earlier, I'd like to get some thoughts from you about, about the meetings, is this a good format, that we get updates and presentations? Something we should be doing different? What any thoughts comments that people might have?

All right.

Oh, no, I just wanted to say that this has been a really great tool for me both, because all the people I'm looking for are usually here, and I can build a relationship. And also I, you know, with all the things that get dropped in the chats, I'll often, you know, reach out afterwards or look up things, you know, I just sent the one of the items that was put in the chat, I sent it over to my team and I said, let's start taking bets. If you know, ACP is gonna get extended, or you know, that that sort of thing. But it definitely is very informative in a in a format that seems less formal.

Okay, any other thoughts? And won't be insulted if you got some feedback of some things we should do differently. So I'm certainly glad to hear any comments.

I think major kudos to you, Steve. I think the leadership and the role that you take in facilitating this on a weekly basis, the cadence of this, I think Nicole said earlier, you know, the fact that there's this weekly connection, and I have dropped off this past quarter, and I pop on because I know some things are starting to happen. And it's just, it's so rich, it really is a rich conversation. And I'm challenging other states to see kind of what their strength of, you know, free collaboration is you're not charging for this. I mean, this is that hybrid, you know, the nimbleness that people need to get stuff done, quite frankly. So kudos to you, I think that you go by. Not much. So,

so Kirk thinks we should serve bacon eggs for breakfast. Okay, so any other thoughts comments about that, Carl,

for me, I, you know, the weekly meetings is, you know, is a great touch point, to me, is just not possible to attend meet weekly, and it seems like we hear you know, updates from the same individuals, every single week. I think a monthly cadence or bimonthly cadence makes a little more sense, because it's not, you know, it's not often that it's, you know, just in time information or that we need to meet every week, but it seems like it is a good, a good touch point for a lot of folks to just convene, because we do have that informal element of, you know, stakeholders connecting with one another. But for formal updates, like we're we're asked to do and are put on the agenda. Showing up every week is a little difficult. So I just want to manage that expectation. Well, I

always tell people, that you'll be here when you're here. And I don't mean you, Nicole, I mean, everybody, when they, when people are here, they're here when they can't be they can't be. And that's and that's certainly life but appreciate the thought. Aaron, you have your hand up

Yes, so Nicole's point, I think that you know, for me the the weekly presentations and everything are really helpful. And you know, as many people have noted, the, the connections that we make here are fantastic, but I wonder if you know, to kind of balance both of those, like let's say, if you continue doing it every week, the first meeting of the month could be all updates and then the subsequent meetings could be you know, guest speakers and things like that so that if you had to prioritize one, you know, and you wanted the updates, let's say then you know, the first one they are first Thursday of the month is Um, you know, the updates meeting, and it might help for, you know, those folks who can't come to every single one to know which ones they they could prioritize.

So one thing I do have to do when Erin? Oh, well for me, because it gets trying to get a speaker every week, which is one of the reasons we don't have somebody today. But I think have four or five scheduled, and who's speaking when on what dates might be really helpful to address what you were just talking about. So I will be working on trying to do that. Okay, any other thoughts or comments?

Yeah, I like both Erin's ideas, as well as Karla's, you know, in in that sometimes the cadence of a weekly meeting. And providing weekly updates is difficult, because things don't happen at that pace or that on those days. But at the same time, if you do schedule, one of us to do something at a particular time, then we can put our updates together and bring it to the team. But I do like the weekly informal meeting networking, because that gives me a chance to meet people that I haven't met and to link with them off outside our meetings. And it's really brought about great partnerships for us at the State Library. And for the programs that we do. So I know it's hard, you're striking, trying to strike a balance, you know, between formal presentations and having formal updates. But the weeks that you don't have formal presentations, maybe it's a good idea for you to get formal updates from one of us, you know, we may not always have enough updates every week. But if you schedule it, we can try to put things together.

Okay, any other thoughts or comments? I think one thing I will tell you is that doing that newsletter takes me about two to three days a week, just to get everything, take all the stuff out of the chat. And everything else, it is hugely time consuming. But there's just so much happening so much going on. That I kind of think that's important. If you have any thoughts about that, like I said, I move the calendar of events coming up to to the top of the list rather than at the bottom, hopefully, that people will, will catch those.

Well, and I think, maybe a cadence of like, first week, executive updates, right, second week, maybe a themed roundtable, because I think that there's diversity of thought when some of the part of the meeting can also be like other people coming in, and like lending opinion on something. And then maybe the third week is, you know, featured presentation. And then the fourth week could be whatever I'd like if he kind of like put it out in that type of cadence, it might be easier to plan for and, you know, facilitate.

Well, I'll take your feedback and kind of play around with what, what we might want to do a little bit differently. Hey,

Steve, I have a question. Would it help you if maybe this group created a subcommittee that can help you coordinate some of the meeting and some of the arrangement of information because I know it's a lot of work for you. And even the few changes that makes it make it easier for the rest of us? Or make it more accessible? Or more adaptable for for our schedules? I know it's it means a lot more work for you. Are you interested at all and maybe getting some support from the group to create the type of meeting structure that we're looking to modify?

Oh, it's an idea, Carla, and I kind of liked that idea. I don't think it needs to be a nongroup ongoing group necessarily. But I have a couple of meetings and and get feedback would be definitely helpful for me. So I appreciate that suggestion. Any other any other thoughts? Comments?

Yeah, I would say and I did mention in the chat, like the newsletter is so good and has so much information. But it is I know it's takes you a long time to do and it's it's very time consuming. So what if you did it twice a month. And then in in between if there's events or if there's announcements or things of real importance, you can send it to the group. But for your you know, for your own sanity, would it be something that you could do you know, just twice a month and really just hone in on the super important things that need to go in there.

And that's that certainly is a possibility also Elena, the one thing that I do try to do and it's really been struggling Well, excuse me is to do summaries of the meetings. And I've been cutting really cutting down on how much summary stuff and making it available in the chat and the chat the the attendance list. And, and, and the city now about a little brain fart this morning in the summary of a meeting so that I don't have to do so much of that, because it just takes too much time.

I can say that I use a tool called Source scribe. And it is an add on to zoom. And it gives you the full transcript. But the thing about it is that it saw all the bullet points and you're very structured meeting so the notes on this would be very good. And then the transcript is actually a link to the part of the video that they're talking to. So that the recap of the meeting, you could send it out. And if somebody wanted to see what Ilana said, you know about common sense, you could go right to that and see it. And so then what I do is I take all of those notes, and I pop it into AI, and I tell it to summarize it, and then pop it out. So there's some interesting, and I'm happy to work with Carla, Carla, maybe you me, Ilana, and whoever else wants to get in and help Steve here on a couple of things that would be that'd be

awesome. Yeah, that would be awesome. Because I would like to, because one of the things I would like to do is to look at us taking some more action kind of oriented meetings rather than just just updates. But that requires then having some subgroup meetings and all of that stuff, which is a whole nother set of challenges. But I definitely there's a couple of things like cybersecurity and, and several others that have been kind of languishing, that I would definitely like to do that.

So your virtual boardroom is already set up, it's a force for health. So anytime we want, we can make all of our lives easier, but that's okay.

Sounds good. Okay, any other thoughts or comments?

This is Jennifer I'm I'm on the edge of this in large part watching to get noticed on the grants, because I'm not reading all this stuff, and so forth. One thought might be is when those really really big announcements, you're gonna have you know, that that the Arizona grants get released, things like that would be to update the invite, because then that's going to show up on our calendars. And that'll get our attention, because we have to take action on that for that update, and so forth. So that might be something that just goes on and puts an announcement that says something a little different, or something just as a thon awesome.

And I do want to do more updates, more calendar dates, because I know that people, I send it out, and then they don't get it in the calendar. And I have to remind people and, and stuff. So but Thank you, Jennifer, appreciate that thought. Anything else before we move on? So what I'd like to do now is to just do our updates real quickly, with a couple of our folks and then get into some informal introductions from from some of you that we we don't really know very well. So with that Mala. Do you have any? Any updates?

Steve, I just wanted to bring your draw your attention and our team's attention to the OIG report. It came out a couple of months ago, but we kind of discussed it with some with a sub team. Shelby, let me put the link in the chat.

You want to tell speak to the topic? What all ideas or

ideas the Office of Inspector General, it's a department, it's in the Department of Commerce. And they Yeah, I got to LinkedIn. And they actually identified some Broadband deployment challenges and wrote a letter to NTIA. And based on that, and, you know, it's a very interesting report. And I, I highly recommend that this group, at least read it because it identifies barriers to infrastructure deployment. It's based on feedback from stakeholders, and it's kind of like a management alert, you know, about the challenges to Broadband deployment that we would that we might face. Not all states face it equally but the that we might face for the BEAD deployment. And just some of the challenges that they are talking about. Is the technology to be used in high cost underserved communities. You know, because there are the no four does state that does To threshold to determine where to draw the line for locations that are just too costly for fiber deployment. And so they they're drawing attention to that extremely high cost per location threshold. And, of course, we can standardize that. But it's going to depend on how rural the area is, and what kind of technologies we are willing to make available for those areas. But this is just like a management alert, but good to know. Then, the second thing that they mean, something that I want to highlight from the report that I read was The labor market and the supply chain concerns. The labor market concerns are we you know, we addressed it, I think some time ago, and talked about, you know, Nicole had a beautiful example of how many technicians we might need in different categories and those kinds of things. And they highlight that and file asked, asked that the states be prepared for it. And they talk about how you can't get a person trained, you know, overnight, and have them be available to do all of the jobs that need doing. They talk about things like even the availability of trucks and truck drivers to deploy the fiber to places that that needed. And then they talk about the supply chain concerns the cost and availability of fiber, especially about a waiver for the build America by America. waiver. And they ask that we be prepared for those kinds of things, how we can prepare, I don't know. But this is an alert, and maybe we're talking about they also talked about the lengthy permitting process that could lead to delays. And they want the states to identify those, the delay factors and see if those can be standardized or, you know, addressed before the BEAD deployment. And I think, yeah, those are the kind of top notch things that i i culled from that report, but it's worth looking at it, and maybe worth discussing as well, at a future meeting.

Okay. Well, while we're talking about workforce, so one of the people I see Peter is online today. Peter, do you want to share anything? Because if anybody knows what's happening with the workforce, and workforce training in the state right now is Peter. Thanks for putting you on the spot. Peter. Oh,

great. I was Thank you. I was just at a the big education technology workforce event all week, it's ASU GSB. And so definitely got a lot of insight on there's a, there's a small community of people that are in the Broadband space. So this is definitely a national topic. And I think Mala was bringing up a lot of the big concerns that around, like our systems that are going to get overwhelmed because of you know, normally when, when there is these types of supply and demand event events that come up from a workforce angle, the most of the contractors, and ISPs will resort to recruiting agencies. And they'll usually go into an out of state markets to leverage labor. But the big challenge with BEAD is that all of this is going to hit every state at once. And so that model that these recruiters have, these contractors and ISPs have of finding people is going to be really strange, because they're not going to be able to use the same model they have for bringing talent in, which is, you know, finding people like sending people from Nebraska and Indiana, out to Arizona to do the construction work or to do the install work. But this is a great opportunity for folks that live locally and in these local communities. Because

yesterday Yeah, you and Ryan Ryan just went down the hallway here. So you're also

Vaughn you're, you're not just okay. So, from a from an opportunity, lens of opportunity, it's a great it's a great opportunity for folks to to have access to these high quality jobs and you know, fiber technicians, they start anywhere from 2025 bucks an hour. And, you know, if you're an independent contractor, I know folks that are making, you know, 7075 bucks an hour. So. But that issue really is around that scalability factor. And, and so I think, for me, the the two primary things that we try to look at is around that accessibility. A lot of people, you know, are working two jobs, they don't have the they don't have the transportation to go to the colleges. You know, they have childcare. And so how are we facilitating ways to make training more accessible to those populations? And then, and then I think it's just the delivery mechanism. A lot of a lot of people are, you know, I think the hat like the in person, everyday classroom style is, is definitely becoming outdated, or at least outdated. But it's, it's a challenge for a lot of people to go through that type of learning. They need that more hands on. And then I'll just comment, one last thing around. A big topic that always comes up is around awareness. And, and so I can talk a little bit about what we're doing and the awareness vein. A lot of people have no idea about what these jobs are. They don't know what they look like, they don't know what a career path looks like. They don't know what the pay looks like. And so there's not there's not interest from a lot of people. And so, so what we've done with and this is where I think we're looking for support in the near term for some of our efforts, we have a really close partnership with Chicanos Por La Casa. And with their Director of Workforce, de Pinkston, and about a year two years ago, they Chicanos Por La casa, also known as CPLC received a large grant, they have about 300 VR headsets. And those VR headsets are being distributed across all the schools in Arizona. And, and so they contracted us to build a VR experience that just shows what it's like to work in these next generation jobs. So right now we have a simulator, it's like a simulation, or like a video game of working inside a semiconductor fab. Because people have no idea what semiconductor manufacturing is. And so, you know, when we asked them, what comes your mind, when, you know, when I say semiconductor manufacturing, they still say, Oh, I see like, a big dirty warehouse. And I'm like, on an assembly line, assembling circuit boards. And that's like, so far from what the reality is, you know, when we show them, when they go inside of the headset, and they're able to see these jobs, you're like, Wow, this is amazing, I could totally see myself working here. Looks like Star Wars. How do I how do I get those jobs? So one of the things that we'd like to do is, inside of this program that we already have is, can we do, you know, career career navigation for these different Broadband jobs, and we could just easily add on to the experiences that we've already built. And, and, and distribute that immediately to all the headsets that CPLC has. So CPLC was the funder for this initial one. So there's, we usually partner with them on grants and other things. So if anybody has any, like, any idea on the funding mechanism on that, we have that VR side, and then we are starting in the next three to six months. We're starting a big marketing campaign for the efforts we do around our, our upskill program. And so that upskill program is around free training. It's really around a big marketing push to get people aware of these jobs, and they go through an initial training. And then we connect them basically with an employer will continue to do this training for these Broadband jobs. So I can give like maybe a formal presentation of like the whole work we're doing, Steve, but I guess the we're an impromptu response. Kind of like talking with everything on my mind right now around workforce. So

yeah. Thanks, Peter. I know kind of put you on the spot there. But I know you love to talk about the work you're doing anyway. But you want to just tell people who you are, what your company is, please.

Yeah, our company has bought two technologies BLT. And the mission of our company is really creating alternative pathways to high skilled jobs. So how are we increasing access and opportunity to these spaces?

So Peter is really very actively engaged with community Colleges, nonprofit organizations and all around the state. Like I said, he's probably knows as much as anybody about what's happening workforce in the state. So thanks, Steve, I

just want to follow up on that, Peter, if I can. Sure. Yep. Peter, great, great information, you just gave us an eye, as you're describing that I just came back yesterday from Pima Community College, downtown campus. And you really have described exactly where that that training program is going. In the whole new facility they built down there, you probably have been there, but it's just fabulous. And also just want to make a backup comment that, as far as our Job Corps programs are concerned, I'm not trying to market or sell it to anybody, but you can certainly take it in. But we have an we have an electrical wiring program that goes into the direction of cabling, and, and, and solar and, and all the stuff that that Peter thinks you're describing. So we're monitoring very closely what's going on with what you're describing, because the train that we're engaging in is probably going to shift a little bit to match up with what the direction and the needs and in that workforce area you're describing. So thank you for bringing that to our attention. Thank you, Vaughn.

So Peter, I don't know if you've ever connected with Ron with fine, Ron, with Bob, and his program, but you may want to do that.

I definitely will. Thank you. I learned learning more about different people and different programs all the time. So thank you.

And Nicole, you were saying something about wanting to know more about the workforce programs? Do you want to put that in chat?

Is that the governor's office inter agency, and community Broadband Advisory Council has, I think four working groups now one of them is dedicated to workforce. So this is where stakeholders can meet with some state agency partners and representatives from the governor's office and Broadband office around workforce specifically for Broadband. So that registration link is in the chat. And Steve sends it out in in his emails for all of those working groups as well.

And they have been having, there's several community community colleges who were also working on some of this training. I'm sure Peter could probably talk to those. But I want to move on. So

Steve, I just had one suggestion before, number one, and that is if we can schedule one of those meetings, one, one of the Monday morning meetings, for workforce development, that might be really good. You know, we can bring everybody together who's got some programming on this? And you know, have us all take notes and be sure to, you know, take this forward. Yeah, let's

just leave, I've got a short announcement around that line, that information tomorrow, Mala? Here, Job Corps, we're going to be hosting and presenting a workforce summit on June 26. And they're going to be some really high end players in that whole, that whole, that whole topic area. So that also be coming out and get it to you see, if you want to circulate it. Yeah, absolutely. It's going to be quite an event, son corridor here locally will be involved, the chambers will be involved, the workforce developments from the seven counties we serve will be involved. And so it's it's going to be quite an event. And it's not it's not just a selfish event on our part. It's a disclosure and an awareness of information for for any and all that are there that are attending.

Well, thanks, God. Yeah, I could definitely get that to me, as well is the date.

June 26, it'll be a morning start. It'll go all the way to the lunch hour, we're going to serve lunch, we don't know, we'll have 30 or 300 people there. And we'll be ready for it. And our campus will be open for the review in our programs if people aren't here to take time to do that. But, but the big thrust is what does this workforce picture look like?

Cool. Oh, definitely. We'll get it out. And maybe we can schedule some additional time fine for you to talk more about that. So moving on, Mike Coco, you want to give us a quick update, please.

Yeah, to be quick, I really don't have updates today. If anyone has colleagues that are interested in the course on developing a telemedicine program, we're offering that three hour course on Tuesday, virtually for free. Just telemedicine. Arizona. edu You can get the information there but no other updates state thanks so much.

Mike and you want to just introduce yourself real quickly.

Sure, I'm Michael Holcomb I'm the Interim Director for the Arizona Telemedicine Program. The coach medicine Tucson University of Arizona.

Thank you. Any other announcements that people want to make?

I just wanted to let Mike know that Yavapai County is started a telemedicine program. And they're planning events, the first event is likely to be on May 3, and on May 10, and I will be contacting you about those soon. You know, I know that it's a short time run between now and then. But they're not planning anything, a major event, it's just to kind of let people know that they have the equipment and they are ready to go. So a small event but something that maybe you would like to participate in. And I can't. And Lucy probably might want to participate. I'll get that with the Lucy.

Yeah, that's great. Points. Really great. Thanks. Okay,

I'm just gonna make a very quick announcement, we launched a statewide app for the sickle cell foundation of Arizona, it was a HERSA funded grant. And so that includes free training. So as we roll out, you know, access and education awareness on how digital health connectivity, I mean, digital connectivity, impacts health. We're offering free community health worker training, or if anybody knows of anybody who is frontline with sickle cell patients like school nurses, we've connected with the school nurse organization of Arizona. So sickle cell new free resource for statewide app and digital health application.

Great. Thanks, Lucy. Any other announcements? So we have just a couple more minutes. And of course, we can always have early. But as I mentioned, we do have a some people, we have never really gotten acquainted with Austin, do you want to introduce yourself real quickly, please? Yeah,

this is Austin Adams. I'm Christina. I work with Greenlee County, I'm the Deputy County Administrator. I've tried to clue into these meetings, I think there's a lot of really good information. And I appreciate everybody and what they put out in these meetings.

You want to say anything about what you guys are doing up there?

Um, you know, we were kind of a tiny County, right, where the littlest County in Arizona. You know, we're we're working through some of these nuances for Broadband. You know, a lot of working with our current providers that we have here locally, again, just just really trying to get funding to help support the residents. We don't have any other big initiatives out right now. I wish we had a lot more than full stuff. You guys are talking about VR headsets and that kind of stuff. And maybe one day, we'll get there, but we're just trying to get people access.

Thank you. See what we've lost. So Jennifer, you meant you introduce yourself? Briefly. But can you tell people who you are and what you do?

Did you meet me? So I was gonna say normally, there's more than one, Jennifer. But yeah. Um, so I'm Jennifer burns, I'm in the Arizona alliance for community health centers. And so we have over 200 sites across, we have actually just went up to 25 members, but they have over 200 sites and serve over 817,000 patients in Arizona. So the largest network of primary care providers across the states, and that includes in rural areas, and so forth. So that's part of what kind of looking for these grants in some of these areas where they can be that anchor institution. And, and I'm on it, I do the I'm the Senior Director of Legislative Affairs, so I'm tracking this from having when the infrastructure of Act passed, and so forth. I'm aware of it and we've just gotten a Grants person back in the office. So we may be able to flip it over to them in the near future, but I'm monitoring it so I can share the info with our health centers. Once that information comes out for them to apply and so forth, as well.

Yep. All right. Thanks, Jennifer.

I will add I add really quick Digital Inclusion because we have I think we're at one in five Medicaid patients are ours. And that's often a population that either because of the rural or just because they are often low income, the the Digital Inclusion and some of that equity aspects play into our our, our population is often the population you all are trying to connect with and so forth on those aspects. So yep, thank you,

Jennifer. How are your Senators doing in terms of understanding what's happening, and how they can get people connected? I,

some of them I do believe are engaged in working with their local county folks and so forth, which I think is one place to do it. I don't know that they've all I don't think we've broken through on all of them through recognizing the opportunity. And what's here. I'm thinking when that far the reason I was asking about when the grants actually get released, that might make it more real, because then it's not, you know, not planning and other stuff in it, that they're not, you know, they're not planning for the community, that kind of thing. But that would be real, of actual have something tangible to apply for, and so forth. So that's kind of I'm hoping that we'll get more and I want to be able to brief them when that does happen. So

thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. And one last one, and I know people are dropping off. Can Kim, you've been here pretty regularly. You want to tell people who you are?

We're not hearing you kind of.

Can you hear me okay, now? Yes. Okay. Hello, my name is Kenneth Kim. I am with Arizona Department of Education, specifically the adult education services. I am a specialist here. And so we work with the adult education population, and we have several programs across the entire state, some of them are rather rural. And Digital Equity is definitely significant problem for those communities and serving those adult education populations. Okay. I'm sorry, services. Do you offer cannon? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm specifically the Department of Education, we basically monitor a grant that is for each of the programs for each of the workforce areas. And then the services provided are, there's about three primary services. And so the first biggest one is for individuals that lack a secondary diploma. And so they would need to pastor there's a couple of different pathways. The most common is the GED Testing pathway where they just take the GED assessments, they pass them to take their as an a success, they submit their application and then they get a high school equivalency diploma, which is it's effectively a high school diploma exibit comes from the state of Arizona instead of a specific school. The second big population we have is English language learners, if you are an adult in Arizona and need to learn English, any one of our programs is a fantastic location to start. And we have English classes across every workforce area. And that is irrespective that is that is not related to educational level. And so that is we have people that are coming into our programs that have in some cases doctorates, and they just need to learn English and or improve their English speaking capabilities. And so that is another service you provide and the last symptom but so you minor is occasionally we get people that, you know, they, they graduated high school, they kind of coasted through, and now they're like 27, and they want to go back to school, or they need to elevate themselves and learn additional skill sets. But they lacked some basic skills. And so maybe it's been a long time since they've had to do any sort of critical analysis with reading texts, or technical texts, or maybe they don't remember how to do fractions, and they want to become an electrician. These are examples where somebody is lacking a basic academic skill set. And so then they can also come to our programs even though they have a high school diploma, they can still come to our programs and get trained in those basic academic skill sets. And of course, these are free to the general population and public. Awesome, thank you. Any other questions?

Okay, let's do one more real quickly since we still have a couple of people on Tamala Victor actually new to us

that I pronounce correctly.

It's Tamela. Okay.

So you want it?

Sure, sure. I'm Pamela. CEO, dresser success. Phoenix we are workforce development organization and we serve marginal communities, either by economic situation or also location. We actually serve in the state from from Tucson to flag. We have clients even in Bullhead City and some of the outliers and we are located in Phoenix we have most of our satellite and our mobile. Our mobile locations are in Maricopa County but we are expanding we We just launched bank on Arizona, which will encompass the state, which is one of the reasons why we are definitely focused on Digital Equity and Digital Inclusion for these financial resources and financial wellness and programs for the people that we serve, and that, you know, that will need them going forward. And to Peter's point earlier, it is about awareness and especially in this area, as we expand in the state from an IT perspective is having programs to show women and also to expose women and teens to some of these jobs that do provide a livable wage. And we also have an education program called educate her well, we have MOU with ASU with Maricopa Community Colleges and, and soon hopefully to be in Pima as well, where we sponsor and and provide scholarships, childcare stipends for single moms and for women who want to upskill rescale or continue their education throughout the state. So I'm really excited about being a part of this coalition or task force, and all that I can learn and hopefully to contribute to all of you as well. So thank you for having me today.

Great, maybe we'll put you on and be one of our programs and talk more about what you're doing. Absolutely happy to collaborate with you. Thank

you. Okay to do that. Thank you so much.

Any any other announcements for today? Anything I've missed? I'm going to stop recording. And although I guess we've been kibitzing, but I'm going to stop recording and if anybody wants to stay long, stay on and chat some more. You're welcome to do so. And if not, we'll see you hopefully next week.