VII. Lessons Learned
Telephone surveying
· The survey was a great way to engage the region. Some respondents asked if they could help out or continue to get further information. Some respondents asked if they could donate to the cause.
· There has been a lot of frustration in the region and the surveyors had to deal with respondents who were angry about the situation and wanted to express their frustration to the surveyor. Since the survey was random, the surveyors did not have a specific info/frequently asked questions sheet to manage this.
· Surveyors were community volunteers, not professionally trained surveyors. Though this could have been a concern, the phone surveyors were actually perceived positively since they were part of the community.
· The data cleansing was quite a tedious process, particularly for the data input and cleaning of the open-ended questions. This would have been improved by professional surveyors or additional training/testing before and during the surveying.
· The survey was biased toward those who had telephones which may have missed some of the more rural community members who are a critical part of this surveying.
Survey methodology
· CSC used online survey tool SurveyMonkey.com. This is an excellent choice for this type of survey, analysis and reporting. The greatest benefit was the ability to post self-select results online automatically and real-time after someone took the survey so that they could see the results.
· It was a challenge to determine which type of survey sampling to use (self-select versus random) and an expert opinion was useful in making the decision. Also, after speaking to the local community there were additional questions it would have been helpful to answer through the course of the survey, had it not been limited to a questionnaire already created by another collaborative. It would have been more productive to have known up front that the questionnaire could not be expanded to be more relevant to the region.
Overall survey lessons learned
· Asking questions sets expectations.
· New technology adoption is difficult to assess in populations who do not understand the new technology.
· Every survey touchpoint is an opportunity for engagement.
· Consistent comparisons across regions difficult due to lack of maturity on process and regional differences.
· Community coalition building is ESSENTIAL for the whole process to works smoothly and provide insightful results.
The CSC group initially utilized the work of Redwood Coast Connect (RCC) as far as the data analysis, data gathering, mapping and distribution of data. Due to the high cost of ArcServer, CSC instead implemented Geoserver data server and MapFish browser client to distribute the results of the study.
The mapping of broadband aggregation and demand had some challenges especially in the areas of data gathering, replication of existing data and definition of standards. Data gathering efforts were difficult as broadband service providers were reluctant to distribute information to CSC. This constraint coupled with the ambiguous definition of “unserved and underserved” created a challenge in identifying unserved and underserved residents and business. It was also necessary to recreate certain GIS layers after they were distributed to CSC in a non-GIS format. The project focused on seeking public input and compiling information available from other sources to help finalize layers and assist in the analysis.
In the initial stages of the CETF project, the CETF team pulled together the service providers to draft a collaborative CASF grant application. Since local ISPs have expertise in various markets and technologies, it was hoped that a collaborative solution could be viable for the region. CSC met with the ISPs in a room together and separately, to discuss and brainstorm alternative scenarios. Service providers are widely measured on business returns and are accountable to their shareholders as is normal for commercial operations. This made collaborative agreements quite difficult, particularly due to short grant application timeframes. But as a result of these discussions, two of the ISPs did end up developing a business understanding resulting in a CASF grant application and eventual award
