[Air-L] Deadline Extended: Is it Working? Assessing Broadband Policy

[Richard Taylor]

Call for Paper Proposals (extended to July 25, 2012)

With apologies for cross postings.

Is it working? Evaluating and assessing broadband policy


A by-invitation experts' workshop

New America Foundation

September 19-21, 2012


With broadband becoming the central means for providing information services
in the 21st century, policymakers struggle with choosing the best model to
ensure universal access, adoption and usage. Broadband policy choices range
from massive government investment to total deregulation and everything in
between including various combinations of regulatory regimes, limited
government investment and public-private partnerships. Debates regarding the
right path to follow often tend to reflect ideological convictions or
stakeholder interests. It is thus requisite to provide analytic scholarly
input into the debate, delivered through the evaluation and assessment of
broadband deployment policies that have been adopted in recent years.


The Institute for Information Policy at Penn State University and the New
America Foundation are pleased to announce this call for paper proposals
discussing the assessment and evaluation of broadband policies and their
implementation. Proposals based on new research data and analysis are
especially welcome.


Authors of the selected papers will be invited to present and discuss them
during a three day by-invitation-only experts workshop designed to bring
together up to a dozen American and international experts to be held at the
New America Foundation in Washington, DC between September 19 - 21, 2012.
This workshop is part of a series of events focused on "Making Policy
Research Accessible," organized by the IIP, with the support of the Ford
Foundation and the Media Democracy Fund. For programs of previous workshops
see: https://blogs.comm.psu.edu/iip/?page_id=24). Presenters at the workshop
will be invited to submit their completed papers for review by the Journal
of Information Policy(www.jip-online.org <http://www.jip-online.org/> ).


Topics of papers may include, but are not limited to issues such as:

. Methodologies for the assessment of broadband projects

. Case studies of assessment of broadband policy implementations

. Assessment and evaluation of specific BTOP projects and of the BTOP
process

. Assessment and evaluation of state-level broadband policy implementations

. Case studies of other public and private broadband initiatives

. Theory of policy evaluation and its application to broadband

. The opportunity costs of delayed reforms and regulations

. Impacts of the rate of progress of broadband policy

. Comparative studies of broadband policies and their implementation

. Proposals for a meaningful set of metrics for broadband evaluation

. Identification of a uniform set of indicators for successful broadband
policies

. Evaluation of broadband training and capacity-building programs and
activities

. Evaluation of broadband programs for historically unserved or underserved
communities

. Assessment of broadband initiatives directed at community and civil
society institutions


Abstracts of up to 500 words and a short bio of the author(s) should be
submitted to pennstateiip at psu.edu by July 25, 2012. Please write
IIPNAFIIWWS: YOUR NAME in the subject line. Accepted presenters will be
notified by July 31, 2012.

Prof. Richard Taylor
Penn State University