94TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
State of Illinois
2005 and 2006
HB3650

 

Introduced 2/24/2005, by Rep. Constance A. Howard

 

SYNOPSIS AS INTRODUCED:
 
New Act

    Creates the Integrated Telecommunications Outreach, Quality of Service, and Digital Literacy Act. Requires the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity to: (i) establish a telecommunications outreach program in consultation with the Illinois Commerce Commission and (ii) establish a Quality of Service Data Sharing program in cooperation with the Illinois Commerce Commission and the Attorney General. Requires the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, in cooperation with various State agencies and other entities, to establish an Eliminate the Digital Divide Trust Program.


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FISCAL NOTE ACT MAY APPLY

 

 

A BILL FOR

 

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1     AN ACT concerning telecommunications.
 
2     Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois,
3 represented in the General Assembly:
 
4     Section 1. Short title. This Act may be cited as the
5 Integrated Telecommunications Outreach, Quality of Service,
6 and Digital Literacy Act.
 
7     Section 5. Needs and objectives.
8     (a) The daily convenience and necessity of residents,
9 businesses, community institutions, and enterprises calls for
10 cooperation by all to facilitate a range of telephone and
11 telecommunication services that enable all persons,
12 enterprises, and institutions to connect with each other for
13 the basic purposes of life, safety, health, and productive
14 activity and for getting Illinois online in convenient and
15 affordable advanced communication and broadband as a linked,
16 digitally literate set of regions that are competitive in our
17 world today.
18     (b) The safety, health, and social cohesion of all
19 individuals, families, and communities in Illinois, as well as
20 the speed of expansion of voice, data, and visual communication
21 services in many modes calls for multiyear cooperation for
22 systematic outreach to all Illinois residents to understand
23 their telephone and telecommunications options, availability,
24 costs, guarantees, and qualities of service, including
25 advertisement of choices and the availability of consumer
26 protection, the development of means for systematic feedback
27 about the quality of service and its impacts on many kinds of
28 customers, and systematic means for user-friendly ways to
29 continually advance digital literacy to use the increasingly
30 complex electronic and telephone-linked tools that are new
31 necessities of life not only for average residents who may be
32 without the stability and resources of daily access to full

 

 

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1 phone service.
2     (c) The volume of telephone and telecommunications-based
3 personal and mass communication calls for designing telephone
4 and telecommunications choices to enable all residents,
5 enterprises, and institutions to manage and have privacy in
6 communication through consumer service tools provided by many
7 public, private, and community providers, as they communicate
8 with each other for basic purposes of life, liberty, and
9 happiness; which include using telephone and
10 telecommunications tools for more advanced purposes of
11 connecting with the Internet online services for public
12 services, schools and learning, health care, cultural and
13 community arts, employment, economic opportunity, commercial
14 and consumer purchasing, and transportation and local access
15 places in their community dialogs and planning.
16     (d) The many kinds and levels of basic and advanced
17 services and the convergence of provision by converging modes
18 of wireline, cable, wireless satellite, wireless towers,
19 wireless locations, utility lines, and voice over Internet call
20 for statewide cooperation in better data collection and sharing
21 information about current and newly emerging availability,
22 choices, and costs of basic and advanced telephone and
23 telecommunications and evaluation of service quality and use.
24     (e) There are social needs for better information by many
25 kinds of consumers who have limited telephone and
26 telecommunications choices, including needs to understand
27 special programs for basic life connections and assistive
28 services, as well as opportunities to benefit from stable
29 telecommunications addresses and special service designated
30 for universal service connectivity.
31     (f) There are needs for all consumers to better understand
32 how to use public access information services, including
33 call-in and call-out services of 911, use of 411 personal
34 services and electronic directory assistance, 311 local
35 government information, and new 211 public and community human
36 services.

 

 

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1     (g) There are needs for local, county, and statewide public
2 officials and planning bodies to have better information on
3 telephone and telecommunications capacity and usage and
4 digital and technological skills in order to undertake
5 multi-year plans and public infrastructure investments, to
6 communicate the telecommunications readiness of particular
7 facilities or areas, and reduce the costs to local taxpayers
8 for basic infrastructure, as well as for emergency safety and
9 core health connections services, which often require advanced
10 telecommunications for life supporting uses and greatest
11 savings in public and resident costs and efficiencies in
12 network usage.
13     (h) There are needs for all Illinois residents, and
14 especially residents with less than average resources or in
15 lesser connected communities or with special needs, to gain and
16 maintain technological and digital literacy skills to use basic
17 and advanced telecommunications in homes, at work, in schools,
18 libraries, community centers, and health care facilities, and
19 in public agencies and in settings, including at public and
20 commercial information kiosks or information ATM machines;
21 including the need to systematically increase the
22 telecommunications use capacity of the Illinois workforce to
23 reduce unemployment and underemployment in Illinois, which
24 continues at substantially higher levels than national
25 averages and which lags in terms of hiring for professional,
26 technical, and entry-level employment in the face of regional
27 and worldwide employment.
28     (i) There are needs for cooperation among many State
29 agencies, including cooperation among the Department of
30 Commerce and Economic Opportunity, the Illinois Commerce
31 Commission, and the many programs that have responsibility for
32 outreach concerning skill building, public benefit access, and
33 community quality of life planning and implementation.
 
34     Section 10. Telecommunications outreach cooperation. The
35 Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, as part of the

 

 

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1 Director's responsibility for regional planning, technology,
2 industrial competitiveness, and workforce skills, and for
3 communication with telecommunications carriers and others in
4 relation to the Eliminate the Digital Divide Law, shall
5 establish a telecommunications outreach program within the
6 Division of Technology and Industrial Competitiveness, in
7 consultation with the Illinois Commerce Commission. The
8 telecommunications outreach program shall do all of the
9 following:
10         (1) Convene a working group of all public agencies,
11     telecommunications providers, and community and consumer
12     enterprises or institutions that have substantial outreach
13     programs concerning educating residents, especially
14     low-income, less connected, and special needs residents,
15     to catalog telecommunications outreach and marketing
16     programs, audiences, communication processes and potential
17     means cooperation.
18         (2) Undertake an expanded outreach and marketing
19     process among telecommunications providers and others to
20     secure contributions to the Eliminate the Digital Divide
21     Trust Program, in order to highlight the locations of
22     public access community technology centers and services,
23     linked with all State departments and offices, and to
24     encourage the acquisition and maintenance of basic and more
25     advanced technological and digital literacy skills linked
26     with Internet and other telecommunications in underserved
27     communities.
 
28     Section 15. Telephone and telecommunications quality of
29 service feedback and data sharing. The Department of Commerce
30 and Economic Opportunity, in cooperation with the Illinois
31 Commerce Commission and the Illinois Attorney General, shall
32 establish a Quality of Service and Data Sharing program. The
33 Quality of Service and Data Sharing program shall:
34         (1) Convene a local-State-federal telecommunications
35     cooperative data collection and sharing working group to

 

 

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1     make recommendations on State-federal cooperation,
2     including on basic and broadband telecommunications data
3     from FCC for 477, to assist decision makers, planners, and
4     consumer protection parties at the State and local levels
5     to gain better data to make decisions concerning all modes
6     of telecommunications and information infrastructure.
7         (2) Undertake a regional-local telecommunications
8     planning process in cooperation with 7 to 10 regional
9     telecommunications service areas in Illinois, regional
10     planning councils and their member public officials, other
11     parties within multi-county areas, nonprofit community
12     development, technology and media networks, and
13     telecommunications consumer groups in these regions, along
14     the lines of using an RFP process to provide grants to
15     community telecommunications planning processes.
16         (3) Undertake demonstration telephone and
17     telecommunications quality of service feedback assemblies
18     in a number of local access places in areas of 5,000 up to
19     60,000 residents in each telecommunications service
20     region, with an initial focus on low-income or otherwise
21     lesser connected communities, with a purpose of bringing
22     together a cross-section of consumers of all modes of
23     telecommunications to provide systematic feedback on top
24     priorities for telecommunications infrastructure or
25     services to improve the quality of families and
26     communities, and specific improvements in the quality,
27     availability, costs, and information about each
28     telecommunications provider or service. The assemblies
29     shall be hosted by non-profit, educational, community, or
30     public agencies or enterprises that are not substantial
31     providers of telecommunications services and that shall
32     work closely with regional planning councils and related
33     community development and consumer services networks in
34     the area.
 
35     Section 20. Technological and digital literacy trust

 

 

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1 grants and outcome tracking. The Department of Commerce and
2 Economic Opportunity shall establish an Eliminate the Digital
3 Divide Trust Program in cooperation with other State agencies,
4 community technology networks, consumer representatives,
5 education and higher education agencies and extension
6 services, regional planning councils, local public agency
7 officials, and public, nonprofit, and business institutions or
8 enterprises that provide grants and other resources for
9 telephone, telecommunications and related quality of life
10 services, training, or infrastructure and in consultation with
11 the advisory committee on elimination of the digital divide.
12 The Trust Program may receive voluntary contributions directly
13 from members of the public, including any entity, and from the
14 voluntary contribution programs of telecommunications
15 providers.
16     The Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity shall
17 do all of the following:
18         (1) Provide "Train the Trainer" grants, other
19     professional development grants, and evaluation-linked
20     grants to determine the outcomes and the impacts of digital
21     literacy and technology access programs of the Department
22     of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and other State
23     agencies and significant regional or statewide programs to
24     entities or consortia that are region-based or
25     statewide-based community technology centers or networks
26     that participate in the broadly-based annual
27     Telecommunications Conference on Economic Development and
28     telehealth sponsored by the University of Illinois
29     extension program and others.
30         (2) Co-sponsor an annual statewide community
31     technology center professional development conference and
32     any regional professional development online resources and
33     calendar activities recommended by the advisory committee
34     on elimination of the digital divide.
35         (3) Convene a stakeholder conference on resources to
36     eliminate the digital divide.

 

 

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1         (4) Administer the resources in the current Eliminate
2     the Digital Divide grant program, with interest on funds in
3     the program to be used by the program and with funds
4     received by the program from contributions from residents
5     and stakeholders in digital literacy not subject to
6     reduction or use by the general treasury.
7         (5) Propose a formal Eliminate the Digital Divide Trust
8     Program that has the capacity to bring resources from State
9     and local agencies, telecommunications providers, business
10     and charitable entities, and cooperation among those
11     parties, including opportunities to apply for federal and
12     other public, business, or charitable grants, funds, or
13     revenue sources.