By Daily Press staff
Santa Monica is dialed in and wired up. The Public Technology Institute (PTI) recently recognized the city of Santa Monica for its “Institutional Fiber Optic Network” entry at its 2005 Congress for Technology Leadership, an annual event bringing together local government technology leaders and practitioners.
Santa Monica won the award in the small government, telecommunications and information technology category for its Institutional Fiber Optic Network (I-Net). The I-Net connects a total of 43 buildings in Santa Monica including 24 city, 13 school district, and six college facilities. The city of Santa Monica, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, and Santa Monica College share equipment costs and ongoing costs for maintenance and operation of the I-Net fiber optic cable and equipment.
All three entities had maintained independent networks to support voice, data and video communications. The high cost of leasing individual circuits from telecommunications carriers, limited bandwidth, and concern over the reliability and security of leased data lines made many new technology projects difficult or impossible to implement, officials said.
The city, school and college districts now have a secure and redundant emergency communications loop connecting the three agencies, officials said. Having eliminated the need to lease voice and data circuits from local carriers, the three agencies are now self-reliant. Costs for voice, data, and video communications have been significantly reduced and data rates have significantly increased, officials said. The I-Net eliminates the need for wide area network servers, enables centralized storage area networks, allows for server backups over the network, and supports large data transfers. It also provides the infrastructure to support future technology projects, officials said.
Santa Monica was one of several city and county governments cited in PTI’s 2004 Solutions Awards program. Solutions is the annual, national competition that recognizes city and county governments that have demonstrated how — through the use of technology — they have improved the delivery of services to constituents, reduced costs or generated new revenues. PTI is a national non-profit technology research and development organization charged with bringing the benefits of technology to local governments.
Entries were judged with other jurisdictions of similar size in the following technology categories: Energy, environment, public safety, telecommunications and information technology, and transportation. A panel of judges from local government associations and industry selected the winning entries.
Public Technology Institute is a national non-profit technology research and development membership organization created in 1971, based in Washington, D.C. PTI’s mission is to help bring the benefits of technology to local and state governments. Through research, task forces, focus groups, pilot projects and other initiatives, PTI works with industry partners to keep pace with advances in technology and forge innovative solutions to the challenges faced by local governments. More information on PTI can be found at www.pti.org <http://www.pti.org/>. Pursue a career this summer
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 18, 2005. Read the original PDF.