Olympia Updates

The state "K-20 Telecommunications Policy and Oversight Committee (TOPC)" voted unanimously in Olympia Monday to seek proposals from private telephone carriers and communications equipment vendors for the backbone of the proposed "K-20 Telecommunications Network" that WSU intends to utilize to teach additional students. While not directly represented on this committee, WSU officials have been participating in technical subcommittees and other deliberations related to telecommunications to try to maximize the benefits of the proposed Washington system. President Sam Smith, who chairs a nationwide university commission on information technology, recently met with Gov. Roy Romer, D-Colorado; Governor Michael Leavitt, R-Utah, Gov. Mike Lowry, D-Washington, and others in Olympia to discuss a Western States distance learning strategy.

Though many serious issues remain unresolved, Monday's vote was the first major development by the committee that could lead to relieving serious technological bottlenecks to serving additional students. The action appears to keep the state moving slowly toward the concept that WSU first proposed to the Legislature more than a year ago: a telecommunications network that would allow distance education and Internet services to be delivered by all of the state's public four-year institutions and community colleges to each other and various new locations around the state. The proposal would be a major state expansion of the WSU "WHETS" System, which currently provides educational programs to hundreds of students in Seattle, Wenatchee, Pullman, Tri-Cities, Vancouver, and Spokane. It also would provide a backbone for a one-way satellite program which may serve WSU Learning Centers and the Extended Degree Program. The Legislature was supportive of the concept and extended the proposed system to K-12, proposing a seamless educational delivery system now known as the "K-20 Network."

This first "Request for Quotes (RFQ)" will seek bids from private firms for an estimated $20 million in equipment for the "phase 1" telecommunications backbone, a "backbone" which should link all of the public universities, community colleges, and K-12 Educational Service Districts. The committee has also directed "Requests for Proposals" from private telephone companies and other firms to lease the fiber optics cable to connect locations. The RFP costs are estimated to be around $3.5 million per year. But these are only estimates, and the actual bidding by private firms may demonstrate substantial economies of scale for a project this size. The transmission costs could be below estimates because of special educational leasing rates have been made possible by the passage of federal telecommunications legislation. But the slow-moving and highly bureaucratic process has yet to answer many significant questions that apparently will be the topic of further deliberations by the oversight committee, the state Information Services Board, the state Department of Information Services, the Office of Financial Management, the Higher Education Coordinating Board, the Superintendent of Public Instruction's office, and others.

Among "policy" issues expected to be addressed at a July 22 meeting of the committee:

• Will WSU and other users be charged fees for using the system? How might this impact students?
• Who will own and govern the system? WSU has maintained that programs, not technology, should guide the system. The system should be governed by persons whose responsibilities are to academic programs, not technicians.
• Once the backbone is completed, how soon can institutions like WSU obtain the necessary classroom equipment to utilize the system? This first phase of this project will allow expanded telecommunications channels to our branch campuses but WSU is concerned that the RFP does not immediately provide WHETS-style classrooms to use that additional capacity at locations like Tri-Cities, Vancouver, Pullman, and Spokane where more than 12 degree programs could be provided once bottlenecks in the system are eliminated. There also is no timetable for construction of requested new electronic classrooms at new locations like Puyallup, Longview, Prosser, or Everett, places where WSU had hoped academic programs would be in place by Fall, 1997.
• Should the existing "WHETS" microwave system now operated by WSU be expanded as part of the K-20 backbone or should lines be leased parallel to the WSU system?