Applying Moore's Law to Broadband and Civic Engagement
Layton Olson
Published: March 12, 2013
APPLYING MOORE’S LAW: Civic cooperation and Business Intelligence (BI) Dashboards Mean Money Saved
What does Moore’s Law (cooperation + competition = faster technology + lower prices) have to do with costs and performance of cities, counties and other public bodies?
Before we begin: what’s Moore’s law? The law was coined in about 1970 for one of founders of Intel, Gordon Moore, who published a paper in 1965 stating that technology capacity increases exponentially and prices drop similarly about “every 18-24 months.” Initially the law applied to the history of the numbers of transistors fitting on an integrated circuit. The geometric “doubling of capacity” formula has appeared over decades in several computer technology fields, today putting a “computer in every pocket” in the form of a smart phone.
See Moore’s Law extensions in many settings on Wikipedia. See Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for application in advancing environmental conservation, scientific research, patient care around the world, and improving the quality of life in San Francisco Bay Area.
Better Government Performance and Civic Environment Together
How does Moore’s Law apply to 2 of the FCC’s 7 National Needs for Broadband: Improving “government performance” and fostering “civic engagement” productivity among public, business, civic and family networks?
While this article focuses mostly on the “public participation” side of civic engagement, it is based on the facts that
- Both public government and public-private governance “cost time and money,” and there are several means for “lessening or relieving” the costs or burdens of government, and technology tools for “digital government” include many ways for saving costs, such as in transactions with citizens and among public agencies. See the annual Illinois Digital Government Summit held in September every year to bring local and state public technology staff together with vendors to focus on most productive, most cost effective technology tools.
- Financial contributions to the costs of government, whether in taxes or in contributions to charities which “reduce or relieve” the costs of government are deductible to the approximately 30% of tax payers who itemize. See recent article citing study results of an average of $4.3 million per congregation of public benefits, including space and volunteer time, from Philadelphia-based research organization.
- Government performance and civic engagement are based on a number of Transparency Tools, whether consumer-friendly websites, community dashboards of daily/trend data, to be introduced in this article, as well as via well-constructed research and feedback from community assemblies and other surveys and analyses, coordinated calendar of outreach events (such as Tech Fairs and Application Expos) and community service networks (such as Community Response networks), and revenue-generation activities to be reviewed in the future.
Monitoring qualify of life of livable environments through active public engagement
Building platforms for Civic Engagement and Economic and Civic Productivity
Using locally-linked national public-private networks for better block-by-block data tools for time and money productivity and better quality of life
Coming soon:
- Civic Productivity from Assemblies and other Social Media in person and online networks, from local blocks to library areas to community college and hospital service areas
- Extension of Technology for All through Civic Engagement: Community Tech Fairs and Application Expo’s in local, county and regional places.
- Revenue-generation to reduce costs of government, through Public Asset use and Consumer-Provider-Business-Public Agency data exchange of Digital Age transactions.
Remember: Cooperation + Competition Means Money and Time For Reducing the Costs of Government, and Private Sector Productivity