No Place but Home

The Network and The New Normal

FINDING HOLISTIC COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS

Governments and public sector entities around the world are searching for solutions to care for those in need, secure economies, maintain and grow jobs, facilitate access to education, and continue core service delivery. TJ Costello, Global Director, Cities and Transportation at Cisco wrote about this.

“In the fall, I had the privilege of joining the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) as they wrapped up their series No Place but Home: How Communities are Dealing with COVID-19. In this final episode, we discuss the imperative role of the network and the expanding capacity of technology to repair the social index.

It’s never been more apparent that now is the time to build trustworthy, mass-scale infrastructure that can solve for the needs of today while keeping an eye on the future.

There is a need for a new network model that fits our new reality. The Internet must be viewed as a core utility and a critical public service. Mass-scale network infrastructure enables government resiliency and operational continuity, digital inclusion, flexibility in changing social demographics, and opportunities for economic development. Our communities and countries can build efficient connectivity that can solve the access problem with modern, flexible, and scalable solutions for telehealth, education, job growth, and more. For example, in the United States, Cisco is helping build new opportunities for the rural Internet.

We must remove barriers to access now or face a future where students are unable to acquire the skills needed to join the workforce; individuals are unable to obtain or maintain jobs; seniors and those with disabilities are unable to get required care and support; and small businesses are unable to turn a profit and help build thriving local economies. As Cisco SVP for Corporate Affairs Tae Yoo observed: An internet that only serves a portion of the world’s population during a crisis only reinforces the disadvantages of the digital divide and constrains our ability to create a more sustainable, inclusive future for everyone.”

Source: https://www.govtech.com/network/No-Place-but-Home-The-Network-and-The-New-Normal.html  by TJ Costello, Global Director, Cities and Transportation, Cisco.  Published in GT – Government Technology/ Govtech.com