Inside the city’s $100 million Digital Philadelphia vision

City of Philadelphia Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank, a half-hour late for a meeting, walks briskly to his office and leans into a small room just a few doors down from his own.

“We have to start writing this thing Monday. We have to light a fire under their ass,” Frank says candidly to an assistant before he slips into his office and settles into a cushioned red chair in front of his Apple laptop at a table covered in memos, maps and a half-eaten bag of potato chips.

His candor seems comically theatrical: calculated brush strokes that lend unpredictability and drama to an initiative he has lead publicly since May and which has for 30 days had him hunkered down inside the city’s 18th floor Division of Technology headquarters at 12th and Market.

A Late Arrival, But a Big Vision

It’s a muggy Friday early evening in late July, exactly two weeks before the city is to draft and submit its application August 14 for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s $4.7 billion Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, known as the national broadband stimulus grant.

The grant is an opportunity, Frank says, for a “game reset” on how Philadelphia can implement technology innovation inside government and for the public good over the next ten years. He calls this broader opportunity his Digital Philadelphia vision.

It must be said that Digital Philadelphia is little more than a conversation. The broadband stimulus grant proposal, a frame for that conversation.

Internally, Digital Philadelphia would invest more than $100 million into the city’s internal IT infrastructure. It would put PDAs into the hands of municipal workers who could file documentation and check e-mail from city-owned vehicles. In the public interest, Digital Philadelphia would chip away at the digital divide by putting Internet access closer to people who can’t afford it in their homes and by offering more and better city services online.

Businesses could benefit, too. The city is discussing with the commerce department and Select Greater Philadelphia how to develop enterprise zones where technology businesses would be prioritized.

All of it is based upon Frank’s plans for a hybrid mesh network that utilizes and improves the city’s current IT and public safety networks, which could potentially be funded, at least initially, by federal broadband stimulus grants.

Through the windows of Frank’s office, clouds have formed thick gray walls that will break the humidity and pour on Philadelphia as Frank finishes cruising his email, staying late to tackle his tasks.

It’s a dramatic backdrop for a city now skeptical of grandiose technology proposals. Philadelphia has heard talk of wireless and WiFi, nodes and networks, inclusion and the digital divide since spring 2004, when then Mayor John Street first announced his Wireless Philadelphia initiative. An initiative doomed to fail.

“Just as roads and transportation were keys to our past, a digital infrastructure and wireless technology are keys to our future,” Street said in a press release announcing Wireless Philadelphia, a bold call for a city completely covered by WiFi hot spots that drew international attention.

Today, Allan Frank’s vision invokes similar possibilities when he speaks of Digital Philadelphia.

News of Digital Philadelphia has hardly awaken the city out of a technological slumber. Even media, so in love with tech talking points, seems to dismiss it; An op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer by broadband activist and co-founder of Media Mobilizing Project Todd Wolfson, and a short blurb in Philadelphia’s City Paper by tech beat reporter Morgan Davis, are all that’s been fit to print.

It could be that the plan is so new that it’s hardly a plan at all. Or that Frank’s vision is criticized, off the record by influential members of Philadelphia’s technology community—because his language and plans are too broad, too eyes-wide to be tackled.

But with the conversation open to dozens of public and private organizations, who Frank has solicited for input and as potential partners for Philadelphia’s technology future, it could be said that Digital Philadelphia is posited for success.

The Man at the Helm: Who Is Allan Frank?

After all, Philadelphia’s technology community would like anything but to fail, once again, to create foundations for a 21st century tech economy that thus far, has had little influence in the once Workshop of the World.

Allan Frank’s gray hair, curled and knotty, tumbled in a wisp that makes his head seem light, and scrappy fading facial hair, like an uncaring college student’s, tell little of his demeanor.

In an instant, Frank is either on or off.

Mostly, his expression is static, complimented by his steel-colored eyes and seemingly tamed ferocity. Modest is his thin frame — fit with a black blazer, checkered long-sleeve shirt and tan slacks — and the gold band on his ring finger.

But pressing him, in his favor or against it, reveals dedication.

When asked to talk about his Digital Philadelphia vision, he is passionate. He speaks loud. He leans forwards to rest his arms on his legs, letting his clenched hands hang between his knees like an athlete perched on a bench. Pressed for specifics and clarifications, he becomes temperamental, sometimes stammering, frustrated for words. He rubs his eyes as if kneading away a migraine. When he is unsure, he deflects questions back at the asker. He remains steadfast.

Several individuals involved with the planning process, who asked to speak off the record, believe that Frank’s plan is too broad. They compliment his perspective, but fault his inability to hammer out specifics. One person who asked to remain anonymous said that though Frank may have an idea that is “disconnected from reality,” he is offering the public the opportunity to shape the next ten years of Philadelphia’s technology investment.

The open process is something that Frank is confident about.

“You develop the vision. You develop where you want to go. And then I’m going to say, which of these things will meet the [broadband stimulus] criteria. But we don’t stop there. It’s time to come together about a long-term vision,” he says.

“It’s a long-term play,” he says, banging on his desk in syncopation with his words.

Frank holds a B.S. in accounting, a masters degree in Computer Science and a M.B.A in finance. He’s worked in various accounting and consulting firms throughout his career, notably becoming a senior partner in the consulting department of international firm KPMG Peat Marwick, where he earned tech chops working with its CTO.

In the late 90s, Frank co-founded and took on the roles of President and CTO of Answerthink Inc., a publicly traded strategic advisory firm based in the Philadelphia region. Later, he founded AKA Group, an IT consulting firm.

Frank says that he took on his role as City CTO — and the pay cut that came with it — because he loves the job.

In late July, Frank’s influence in the city was elevated by an executive order from Nutter changing Frank’s title from Chief Information Officer to Chief Technology Officer of the Division of Technology. The reorganization gives Frank a seat at the table as a member of the mayor’s cabinet and puts him directly in charge of the city’s 33 departments and 520 employees. Frank says that overhaul shows that the mayor’s interest in prioritizing technology both internal to government and in the public interest.

“How can you build a sustainable economic environment in today’s world without realizing that technology plays a part,” Frank asks. “The reason I’m able now to do this and the reason it’s a cabinet level position is that it ties directly to all the mayor’s priorities.”

So much of Digital Philadelphia and the broadband stimulus grant is tied to the mayor’s to “protect the city’s most vulnerable,” he says.

Yet, the biggest weight on Frank’s shoulders is completely beyond his control. He’s got Wireless Philadelphia to deal with.

Where did Wireless Philadelphia go wrong?

Wireless Philadelphia is dead.

What was left of the title — once the 2004 promise of a wirelessly-connected Philadelphia — was lost this May when the nonprofit that shared the initiative’s name rebranded itself as the Digital Impact Group to focus on bridging the city’s digital divide. It was once charged with overseeing Atlanta-based Internet service provider EarthLink in managing the country’s first municipal Wi-Fi program, a program that was never fully realized.

“There’s nothing more painful to us than Wireless Philadelphia,” says Frank. “It was a massive mistake.”

In April 2005, then-Mayor John F. Street formally announced the program’s launch, heralded by national media and futurists the world over. By selling commercially and partnering with the city, EarthLink would equip Philadelphia with a series of wireless hot zones. The Wireless Philadelphia oversight nonprofit would give out cheap accounts to low-income families, hoping to bridge the digital divide. Tourists and other residents could also purchase accounts by the day. Philadelphia would be the first city in the country to be completely wireless, and that would happen by 2006 at no municipal expense, the Street administration boasted.

By July of that year the completion date was pushed to the middle of 2007, then to November 2007, then the first quarter of 2008. In December 2007, with Street on the way out and the new Nutter administration coming in, rumors began to surface that EarthLink wanted out of their contract. By May 2008, they were, taking their abandoned 10-year contract to the courts. The next month, a new company, Network Acquisition, manned by a group of local IT consultants, bought out EarthLink’s $16.8 million in equipment, but any hopes of salvaging the dream were crushed by promises never realized.

Fear remains that the broken promises of Wireless Philadelphia haven’t been forgotten, says California-based broadband consultant Craig Settles, considering how much the initiative was touted to a city not known for high expectations.

“You have a difficult road to work through,” Settles says in a telephone interview with Technically Philly.

The responsibility of overcoming the technology malaise burdening the city’s public sector has fallen to that Nutter administration, namely Frank, the city CIO with a Wolf Blitzer-like white beard and bigger, broader technology plans for the region.

“[Wireless Philadelphia] was a commercial thing. That’s all it was. No outcomes. ‘Let’s just wire up the city. Let’s just wire the city and give free access,’ and we got exactly what we deserved,” Frank says. “There is no free lunch. It’s not the wires, it’s what you do with them. We didn’t focus one ounce of energy on what to do with them.”

So that’s why his Digital Philadelphia plan — only bigger, bolder and less direct — may seem crazy.

And no matter how determined Frank is, if any lesson is to be squeezed from the Wireless Philadelphia stone, it’s that when big city governments dabble with innovation, it takes more than active bureaucrats.

Settles says that, for all the complaints about Mayor Street and the “perceived faults” of his CIO Dianah Neff, they both made clear that the focus of their big plan was to help increase access and moved ahead quickly with their strategic plan.

“They did a 90-day business planning exercise that I thought was totally awe inspiring. Government doesn’t move that fast, but in that ninety days, they had focus groups, town meetings, went out to communities and wrote up a reasonably respctable plan,” Settles says now. “If that was to be replicated — a clear vision stated from the mayor’s office and people sign off on that vision, they’re halfway there.”

Street was unavailable to offer Technically Philly a comment on Wireless Philadelphia.

“But one of the biggest downfalls there, is [the thought] that we can get something for nothing, that we can rely on one organization to solve the communication needs of Philadelphia without really recognizing that government has to play a role, particularly in serving the poorest residents which aren’t a profit center for corporations,” says Beth McConnell, Executive Director of Media & Democracy Coalition, a broadband inclusion advocacy group.

“It was a mistake to essentially rule out and eliminate government investment and involvement. It’s easier for us to avoid that mistake now when there’s federal money available, but I also think that in terms of vision for economic development, what means for the city looking in investing in technology is something the city should do whether the times are tight or not,” McConnell adds.

Of course, Digital Philadelphia is meant to solve all that, by utilizing federal dollars to combine the missions of municipal advancement and social equity through technology. But that’s just the fear, some warn, that Digital Philadelphia is just a bigger, bolder vision from a city that is still dealing with the failed expectations of Wireless Philadelphia.

“[Digital Philadelphia is] a broader technology strategy for public safety, city services and economic development, with no emphasis on wireless access and connectivity,” Frank says.

“I’m looking at a strategy that leverages all the assets of the city.”

A Race Against Time—and the NTIA Deadline

On July 9, the Rural Utilities Service and the NTIA issued a Notice of Funds Availability (NOFA) regarding broadband initiatives set forth by the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Split into three rounds — the first with a pressing deadline of August 14 — the grants will fund projects that expand broadband infrastructure that would stimulate “long-term economic growth and opportunity.”

The 32-page manual further requires that applicants provide connectivity to “unserved” and “underserved” communities, enhance broadband capacity at public computer centers, and promote sustainable broadband adoption projects.

The first, the connectivity portion of the grant application (and the largest pot of money), puts $3.9 billion on the table to help bridge the digital divide by building or extending a network. It’s where the City of Philadelphia plans to focus its efforts throughout the funding rounds.

The second and third options, smaller pots which make up the remaining $700 million, focus on implementation and adoption of the network. That is, setting up computers in public spaces and creating projects that promote broadband demand and affordability. Though the city will submit a proposal in the first round for the adoption projects, it will wait until the second round to focus on public implementation projects, like putting building computer infrastructure in recreation centers, public schools and libraries.

Of particular concern for Philadelphia, though, is the language with which the guidelines were written, says McConnell, the head of the broadband inclusion advocacy group.

A week after the stimulus guidelines were published, McConnell and Media & Democracy Coalition issued a letter to the NTIA on behalf of their clients—which include Philadelphia’s Media Mobilizing Project and 24 others across the country—protesting stringent definitions of “unserved” and “underserved” citizens.

McConnell, who lives in the Philadelphia region, says that the guidelines exclude parts of the city’s community that deserve a fair shake at stimulus funding.

“The way the NTIA describes ‘underserved’ is that we have to prove that fewer than 40 percent of consumers in an area do not subscribe to cable or phone company service. It’s extremely difficult to prove because the [incumbent broadband providers] won’t give us that information,” McConnell says.

In addition to the language barriers, there’s also competition that the city must worry about.

“There’s two ways to look at this. What other cities are doing and what other cities should be doing,” says Settles, the California-based broadband consultant who grew up in Philadelphia.

“Some cities and communities have been planning a network for a while. [Some have] been planning for 18 months and now they’re adjusting their plans. Other cities saw the light Feb. 17 and are racing like lunatics to figure out how to plan,” he says.

If Philadelphia isn’t racing, it sure seems like it. In May, two months after the Recovery act was signed, the Division of Technology announced tentative plans publicly at a meeting of Refresh Philly, a local group of designers and developers dedicated to bettering the city, as reported by Technically Philly.

As this Friday’s Aug,. 14 deadline approaches, members of Frank’s executive planning committees have been putting in 16-hour workdays to wrap things up. After it’s done catching its breath, the city will need to hold its breath, as it awaits the announcements that will pin ribbons on the winners of the first round of funding. The number of recipients or specific disbursements will be decided by the NTIA.

Fortunately, even if the city doesn’t benefit from stimulus grants, Frank’s once soft vision will be as sharp as it can be after three months of planning.

Seeking Stakeholders: The Network Behind the Network

The heart of Frank’s broadband stimulus proposal and ultimately, his Digital Philadelphia vision, lies in plans for a city-wide mesh network that connects city assets and ultimately bridges the Internet to unserved and under-served communities by proxy.

The philosophy of building the network is predicated on a common sense notion of linking already built-out elements like the city’s IT infrastructure, the public safety network and fiber backbone and wireless high sites completed for the former administration’s Wireless Philadelphia initiative. With a wide, collaborated network, the city could then push net access to potential partners like schools and recreation centers, nonprofits and businesses, hospitals and universities, and could utilize the network’s reach for its own municipal purposes. The city is even in discussions with Network Acquisition, the group of investors that bought out equipment from the failed Wireless Philadelphia initiative, to purchase some of its infrastructure.

A spokesman for Network Acquisition failed to return repeated calls for comment from Technically Philly.

Sustainability is vital. As part of the NOFA guidelines, the network must pay for itself. Though he believes that the use of the network will be underwritten by municipal-operation use, Frank seems unsure when he says that full details of a sustainable business model “will develop over time.”

One thing is absolute about Frank’se vision for the business: Gone are the days when a municipal network could provide headline-making, free access, like Wireless Philadelphia once tried. Creating a government-owned Internet utility that offers service to residents for free is not in the City of Philadelphia’s future, he says.

“Fifty percent of our households have an average income of less than $35,000. It’s a very difficult thing to create a sustainable infrastructure with an economic model that’s lighting up half of a whole city,” he says. “Are you suggesting today that we should be deciding between spending millions of operating dollars on that versus the issues we’ve had in the city right now?

“It is a very, very tough time for us in the city. The financial crisis is real.”

Then, equally important is getting other organizations on board, “stakeholder” groups that offer support, and ultimately, revenue. Frank has been in discussion with dozens of these stakeholder organizations. He invited members of the business, education and nonprofit communities along with members of the city and state to a June 23 meeting at the Community College of Philadelphia to discuss Digital Philadelphia.

The roster was lengthy, but still was only representative of a small cross-section of the discussions taking place.

The business community was represented by Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Boathouse Communications (members of which have a stake in Network Acquisition), Xerox, Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation and others. Nonprofits attended, like Philadelphia Fight, which is a leading HIV/AIDS advocacy organization, Philadelphia Student Union, Team Children, Philadelphia Public Notebook, all of which have a stake in getting technology in the hands of children. Digital Impact Group, the new incarnation of the Wireless Philadelphia nonprofit, also participated in the conversation.

Larger public organizations showed support, like Temple University, the School District of Philadelphia, the Free Library and the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The city’s Health Department, Department of Public Safety and Department of Recreation were also in attendance.

The plan for a mesh network and the drive for stakeholder support is crucial to the opportunity to net stimulus grants, and the DOT’s tactics are not unlike some postured by other cities, like Oakland and Boston, for their own applications, Settles, the California consultant, says.

“[A number of cities] are looking at city infrastructure in places that they can tap into, coupled with plan for a mesh network. Philly has a huge university population, a high number of hospitals, a research community and the government is also a huge institution,” he says.

“If [the city] markets effectively to those institutional organizations, than they have a good shot for the future.”

Frank realizes that the opportunity for broadband stimulus money is by no means an end-all solution to his technological plans. Instead, he calls it a “forcing function” that has framed the conversation around Philadelphia’s technology future.

“It’s a wonderful thing that we have an opportunity to get this money, but from a national perspective it’s a drop in the bucket. I don’t believe that any of this broadband stimulus money is sufficient to drive a long-term strategy for this city, but it forced us to come up with a strategy. This is the first step to start the conversation,” Frank says.

“You need to have an advocate to keep pushing this. This is my job now. This is my love and my passion. Maybe I’m on a fool’s errand, but I don’t so.”