Connect SI
Project Overview
Connect SI is a 20-county effort to collaboratively enhance the economic and community development efforts throughout Southern Illinois using greater Internet access and bandwidth to communicate regionally and globally. This project isn’t about broadband internet access. It is about improving the quality of the lives of Southern Illinoisans by changing the way we work, live, and communicate with the world.
This project will affect many sectors of life in the region. Healthcare delivery, business and industry, education and training, government, agriculture, – even our own homes – can benefit from greater accessibility and visibility through a successful Connect SI project. Greater efficiency and access to broadband Internet services can mean more profitability for those who wisely use the increased availability of greater bandwidth.
A successful Connect SI project provides new national and global markets for our goods and services including tourism. By effectively using the Internet as an increasingly important medium for promotion and information sharing, Southern Illinois businesses, industries, and destinations have the potential to gain literally millions of prospective new customers.
In short, by increasing broadband Internet availability and bandwidth throughout Southern Illinois, the Connect SI project seeks to provide a dramatic and positive result for the entire region. For the past few years, we have talked about collaboration – the concept of one Southern Illinois community. Now we are presented with a project that offers not only the opportunity to act collaboratively, but also to see a payoff for that collaborative behavior for the entire region.
Broadband and Bandwidth
What is broadband? Broadband Internet access is the kind of access that provides the greatest amount of utility as opposed to dial-up access. A frequently cited means of comparing dial-up to broadband is by comparing them to water pipes. With a drinking straw, one can get a small amount of water through the narrow pipe over a given period of time. With a water line that is a foot or a yard in diameter, one can get a tremendous amount of water through in a very short period of time.
The comparison here is in terms of data flow. With broadband Internet operating at high bandwidths, a tremendous amount of data can flow between points in a very short period of time. The greater the ability to send high volumes of data in a short amount of time, the attractive a region is to development and growth.
There are a number of ways to achieve broadband Internet throughout the region. Perhaps the best way is by installing fiber-optic transmission lines. Other ways include wireless technologies that continue to emerge.
How does this help us regionally?
The ways broadband can help us are as great as our imaginations. An example might be in the healthcare sector where physicians could view high resolution X-rays at their offices or homes that were taken at a hospital. Emergency room services could be enhanced by the ability to send images of injuries to other hospitals for review by specialist. Ambulances could transmit information and images to waiting ER professionals before they arrive.
Engineers could transmit live images or complicated schematics to other viewers in another country when expensive and crucial equipment breaks down. Economic developers are given a new tool with which to attract new businesses that require high-speed Internet access. They are also able to offer new business and retention strategies to existing businesses and industries.
Rather than travel to other cities or states, workers can access training on new products and services without leaving their homes or workplaces. Retailers can place their goods on informative, attractive websites that reach a global audience of millions. Residents can work out of their homes performing unique services like website development, computer animation, and other technology-based employment opportunities.
Organizational Leadership
Right now there are four leadership dimensions to this. One is the work already being done by Connect SI. This loose-knit group consists of people from education, economic development, elected leadership, internet service providers, healthcare administrators, and others of common interest.
Another is that of the Southern Illinois Coal Belt Champion Community, Inc, a 501(C)(3) organization that originally brought the concept of development via broadband to the regional forefront and will serve as fiscal officer. SICBCC, along with Rural Partners, Inc., sponsored a regional study in 2003 that first demonstrated that enhanced broadband could be pivotal to economic and community development in Southern Illinois.
A third dimension is that of the Center for Rural Health and Social Services in the Office of Economic and Regional Development at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. CRHSSD has provided the organizational dynamic that has brought the various and disparate groups together to make Connect SI possible. Many of the planning meetings have occurred at the Dunn-Richmond Center at SIUC.
The fourth dimension of leadership is our project consultant, Mr. Frank Knott of Vital Economy, Inc. Frank and his group will provide leadership borne of vast experience in rural development leveraged through broadband. Vital Economy, Inc. is an internationally-recognized organization that will guide us as we wind our way through this intricate process. For more information about Frank Knott and Vital Economy, you are invited to visit that website at www.vitaleconomy.com.
Other organizations and agencies share our vision of a fully-connected region. Among those with whom we share this common goal are:
- Southern Illinois University Carbondale
- Center for Rural Health and Social Services Development
- Office of Economic and Regional Development
- Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research
- USDA-Rural Development
- Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
- Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity
- Illinois Lieutenant Governor’s Office on Rural Affairs
- University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service
- Delta Regional Authority
- Man-Tra-Con, Corporation
- Southern Illinois Collegiate Common Market
- Shawnee Community College
- Southeastern Illinois College
- John A. Logan College
- City of Du Quoin
- City of Benton
- Perry County Economic Development
- Franklin County Economic Development Corporation (FREDCO)
- Regional Economic Development Corporation (REDCO)
- Franklin Hospital
- Southern Illinois Healthcare
- Southern Illinoisan Newspaper
- Illinois Telecommunications Association
- Heartland Communications
- Mediacom
- Egyptian Internet
- Frontier Communications
- Mount Vernon Net
- Slingshot Wireless
- Greater Egypt Regional Planning & Development Commission
- Southeastern Illinois Regional Planning & Development Commission
- Southern Five Regional Planning & Development Commission
- The Arthur Agency
- Illinois Coalition for Community Service
- Southernmost Illinois Delta Empowerment Zone
- CHESI
Next Steps
There is still much to be done. We have to evaluate the region in terms of Internet and broadband availability, and to create a detailed map showing where such services are lacking. Frankly, this is an expensive endeavor and we will need to develop additional financial and in-kind resources both to initiate and to sustain this program. Increasing levels of collaboration will be crucial to this effort. The entire region will be challenged to quit operating at local levels and performing economic and community development at one community of Southern Illinois.
As Connect SI evolves, please continue to visit this website for up-to-date information.
Connect SI in the News!!!!
The following news articles have been published by the Southern Illinoisan since January of 2006. For more information about Southern Illinois News & Events please go to their link.
One Region, One Vision: Local Leaders Pull Together for Prosperity
BY JOHN D. HOMAN, THE SOUTHERN
MARION - Southern Illinois leaders are putting some teeth into the "One Region, One Vision" concept by hosting a number of economic development meetings the next several months involving more than 20 counties.
Frank Knott, an economic development expert consultant with Vital Economy in Baltimore, Md., has joined efforts with Connect SI to help individual communities and counties pool their resources and think regionally when marketing their assets to business and industry leaders.
Connect SI is about creating a community and economic development strategic plan that utilizes as a focal point a widely available high-band width Internet infrastructure as its backbone to growing a knowledge-based economy.
On Wednesday, representatives from Williamson, Jackson, Perry, Jefferson, Randolph and Franklin counties gathered at the Williamson County Pavilion in Marion to see a detailed presentation organized by Knott on economic development strategies.
The six counties make up the Greater Egypt sub region. Meetings are also being held at other sub regions, including Southern Five (Alexander, Pulaski, Union, Johnson and Massac counties); Southeastern (Pope, Hardin, Saline, Gallatin, Hamilton and White counties); and Wabash (Wayne, Edwards and Wabash counties).
Healthcare and network providers make up the final two sub regions.
"What we have to do is organize the region into a series of communities of interest," Knott said. "The goal is to develop a plan for economic development that is linked to healthcare and network provider plans."
Knott said the Southern Illinois economy has been "struggling" for several years and that only recently have community leaders throughout the region begun to pull together.
"That’s the way Connect SI is approaching this project," he said. "We need an action plan that is visible - something that is intended to result in a more robust economy for the next 50 to 100 years. We are setting measurable goals. What we don’t want is a plan that gets tucked away in a binder and left on the shelf.
"We need to know specifically how to improve access to healthcare, for example, and how to improve revenue flow," Knott said. "We want to encourage the development of more knowledge-based jobs, and to do that, we must advertise what we have to offer here in Southern Illinois - a great quality of life that includes quality healthcare and educational opportunities."
Knott said collaboration is critical to the success of the Southern Illinois region because rural economies are competing against country strategies. He said collaborative planning efforts provide rural economic regions with the critical mass necessary to compete with country strategies and mobilize emerging clusters of opportunity.
Moreover, such efforts build connections within and between regions, making remoteness an asset. Collaboration provides a more cost effective way to allocate resources and make critical decisions and aggregates demand to increase access to utility, transport and knowledge infrastructures expanding opportunity across the region.
Knott said, that by working together, a critical mass of knowledge creates assets to promote and nurture the development of climates of innovation that grow Knowledge Based Enterprises, which are replacing the historic commodity-resource based industries of growth.
That in turn builds a regional vision that enables a rationalization and alignment of sub-regional regulatory and tax policies that creates an attractive and effective economy for workers and work to compete with unified country strategies.
Rex Duncan, who serves as Connect SI director and works out of the President’s Office at SIUC, said Southern Illinoisans are coming to realize that promoting the region as a whole is much wiser than promoting a separate city or county.
"We have to make things work out together to be successful," Duncan said. "The mindset is changing through the region. And The Southern Illinoisan can take some credit for that by promoting, ‘One Region, One Vision.’ You’ve created the climate for everyone to collaborate in creating an economic plan that will benefit the entire region.
"Of course, creating a plan is not good enough; we must also implement that plan or put it to practice once it is developed."
Duncan said Southern Illinois is not so much in competition with neighboring states for a bigger slice of the business dollars pie, but with foreign countries like China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Japan and more.
"The global economy is driven by broadband," he said. "If this area is going to succeed in the 21st century, we have to be a connect economy. And Connect SI gives us access to billions (of potential clients)."
SIUC President Glenn Poshard said the university is proud to be taking a leadership role with Connect SI.
"We volunteered to do this because it is the most important economic development project I’ve seen in my lifetime in Southern Illinois," he said. "It’s the very essence of regional cooperation."
Poshard said competing in a global market can only be done through a broadband effort.
"It’s a difficult concept for many people to understand right now, but as it is all processed and we all work together, the benefits will be many. The international market economy is where the competition lies. We’re in a different world today and the only way we can survive and compete is to build technology that makes us competitive."
Possible five-year goals:
- Create 10,000 new jobs paying $43,500/year plus health benefits$435 million/year
- Raise average wage by $3,400/year for regions workforce$571.6 million/year
- Reduce region poverty rate to state average of 10.7 percent from 16.4 percent affects 22,000
- Reverse health service revenue migration to increase revenues by $100 million/year
- Reduce regions real unemployment rate to state average6.1 percent
- Increase broadband penetration rates by 50 percent to finance ubiquitous broadband access
Projected five-year goals versus Vital Economy client history:
- Job creation goal is 40 percent of average client experience for comparable employment base
- Average wage goal is 52 percent of average client community experience
- Annual wage creation is 42 percent of average client community experience
- Healthcare revenue creation goals are 20 percent of average client community experience
- Unemployment rate goal is 50 percent of average client community experience
john.homan@thesouthern.com
(618) 351-5056
Published on: Sunday, June 25, 2006 6:34 AM CDT
© 2006, Southern Illinoisan
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SIU Considers Online Rural Health School
BY CALEB HALE, THE SOUTHERN
Officials in the Southern Illinois University president's office are exploring the possibility of opening a virtual school of rural public health in the near future.
SIU President Glenn Poshard has asked university vice president for academic affairs, John Haller, to determine whether the system can use existing components of its medical programs to set up an online accredited school, focusing on medically serving rural areas like Southern Illinois. Setting up the virtual school would not require moving any of the programs from their current campuses, but the idea does rely heavily on another region-wide initiative being pushed by SIU, Connect SI.
Connect SI, a project aimed at bringing broadband Internet access to all of Southern Illinois, is an integral part of rural health care service Poshard wants the university to facilitate in the future. Haller said discussions about using the university's medical school assets for rural health care have been in the works since the early 1990s, but it wasn't until technology got better that such a model was workable.
"We had noted that SIU's capacity in the area of health and health care-related programs was very extensive. The problem was they were distributed from Carbondale to Springfield to Alto to East St. Louis; you didn't get to see the strength of it because they were spread out," Haller said. "Now the university is involved in a major broadband initiative and looking at ways in which we could create a virtual school of rural public health."
Haller said there are very few public health schools focusing specifically on rural medical services. He added part of SIU's mission has always been to serve typically underserved regions, so bringing broadband to Southern Illinois and a network by which people can obtain degrees in providing service to rural region fits the system's goal.
Haller will present the virtual school initiative to the university board of trustees next month, with the help of SIU Connect SI coordinator Rex Duncan.
The project is looking good, Haller said, but it isn't a guaranteed thing yet.
"Now, it may be it won't happen, but I have confidence that what we have in terms of talent, courses and programs will allow us to do this," he said.
Duncan said the broadband initiative goes beyond a virtual school for rural medicine; it extends into the local established medical community.
"With the model of an enhanced and widely available broadband system, I tend to believe health care is going to be one of the early beneficiaries of that," Duncan said. "In terms of rural health care it could be very important in terms of accessing specialties that could not be available physically but virtually."
Duncan said he's already seen a demonstration of similar systems in Tennessee, where the example of a boy suffering an earache in a remote area of the state got online access to a pediatrician hundreds of miles away, who was able to accurately diagnose his condition through a fiber optic-equipped audio scope that transmitted images via computer screen in real time. Duncan said that kind of information requires the space made possible through broadband cables.
Dial-up Internet, he added, can't handle the information. "It's too much information, and an example of this is imagery," Duncan said. "To be able to transmit cat scans in readable images, that takes a tremendous amount of bandwidth. By and large the hospitals are already on a network¦that allows them to do this. Now, to share it with a physician at a doctor's office or at his home, those are the kinds of things that are prohibitive without broadband."
Haller said the rural public health school, if established, will work in tandem with the university's Rural Health Care Center and it separate plans for a rural medical transportation network. The end goal is to get all of the SIU campuses' programs cooperating to bring new services to Southern Illinois.
caleb.hale@thesouthern.com
(618) 529-5454 ext. 5090
Published on : Sunday, June 18, 2006 6:50 AM CDT
© 2006, Southern Illinoisan
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Southern Illinois
Attempting to Conquer the Wireless Frontier
BY BECKY MALKOVICH, THE SOUTHERN
Published on: Sunday, June 11, 2006 6:30 AM CDT
If the mission of the Connect SI broadband initiative is accomplished, a colony of interconnectedness will be established that will greatly enhance the region - and the region's ability to compete in a global marketplace.
It may also serve as a model for other regions in the state and the nation who are watching the effort closely in hopes of replicating the region's successes as it expands its economic horizons via connectivity.
In other words, said Southern Illinois University's Rex Duncan, executive director of the initiative, "Southern Illinois is the tail wagging the dog. We're leading the state in the development of a rural strategic economic plan that takes into account the importance and potential of broadband."
The initiative grew out of a study ordered by the Southern Illinois Coal Belt Champion Community, an economic development organization serving parts of Franklin, Perry and Williamson counties. Duncan serves on the SICBCC board along with Pat Bauer, former mayor of Benton and now Franklin Hospital's director of physician relations and public relations. Bauer said the initiative had to broaden its scope in order to take full advantage of an economic strategy program pioneered by Frank Knott and ViTAL Economy, a consulting firm in Maryland.
"We sat at a table and asked what could we do to make a difference," she said of SICBCC. "We liked ViTAL Economy's economic development program to create a broadband-enabled regional economy. We knew that Franklin County, for instance, didn't have the resources by itself to compete in a global economy, but if we combined the resources of the region, we would have a much better shot. Now, the initiative has grown to include 20 counties. We are communicating, collaborating and hopefully, realizing the opportunity for growth in our own backyard."
Knott said his approach is grassroots-based.
"In order to take control of the economy of the region, everyone has to get in the game. It takes an extraordinarily deep community involvement where everyone's job is economic development," he said. Working together is also key, he said, community by community, county by county and business by business.
"One of our requirements is a willingness to collaborate and understand that what benefits one community benefits them all," Knott said. "Look at Maytag. The people who work there come from all over the region and they are spending their money, not just in Herrin, but all over the region. They are buying cars in Du Quoin and paying property taxes in Carbondale," he said. Broadband infrastructure is the backbone of the initiative which now has network providers as partners along with Southern Illinois University and area community colleges, healthcare providers, city and county governments, business and industry leaders, workforce development groups and others.
The initiative also wants partners to "have some skin in the game," Knott said, so monetary and in-kind donations are required by each partner to support the endeavor which has a budget of about $1 million. The initiative aims to link together, via broadband, all the resources in the 20-county area. By doing so, Bauer said, not only will the region improve on its abilities to serve its residents, but at the same time, make the area more attractive to potential business and industry as well as increasing and enhancing its abilities to compete in the global marketplace.
For instance, she said, linking health care resources is a priority of the initiative. By linking together the health care resources, whether hospitals, clinics, doctors' offices or the SIU medical system, patients can be better served.
"We're a pretty mobile society here," Bauer said. "If a patient moves from Benton to Murphysboro but doesn't bring his medical records, the doctor in Murphysboro could access the information online and see that the patient had x, y and z done and is on this type of medication. Being able to access that kind of information saves time and money and is far more accurate. You don't have to rely on the patient's memory, but would be able to access actual records."
Also she said, given the region's current nursing shortage - and the shortage of nursing instructors - Internet connectivity could help alleviate the problem.
"We could have an instructor online in Edwardsville teaching students all over the region," she said. Broadband could also allow local physicians to consult in real time with specialists from all over the country in an effort to provide patients with the best medical care possible. The bigger picture, Knott said, would include a better health care delivery system for residents and a stop of the exportation of patients across the bridges to Cape Girardeau, Paducah, Saint Louis and elsewhere.
It would also allow the region to boast of a health care system that would better serve any potential businesses or industries looking to locate here. The initiative will also give the region a competitive edge in the global marketplace.
"Our competition is no longer Missouri or Kentucky, or even California or Arizona, it's India, Pakistan and other places who have built their own broadband-based economies," Duncan said.
SIU President Glenn Poshard was so taken with the aim of the initiative that he decided to throw the weight of the university behind it.
"This is so important," he said. "If you can imagine, right now our capacity with respect to Internet technology is the size of a straw. We want to expand that and its capabilities to the size of a large pipeline and with that kind of trunk line in place, we can do all kinds of things. We can connect and access the whole world."
Poshard points to the need for broadband technology in today's cutting-edge factories and plants.
"We have to have the expanded broadband capacities in order to compete for jobs," he said. "If you want to be competitive in getting plants to locate in your region, you have a greater chance with increased connectivity. I can't imagine anything more important we could do than develop this broadband initiative. It will unify us in a way nothing else could."
beckym@onecliq.net
(618) 927-5633
© 2006, Southern Illinoisan
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News
BY CALEB HALE
Date: June 1, 2006
Page: 6A
THE SOUTHERN CARBONDALE - Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard is adding two new people to his office's staff.
Rex Duncan and Michael Ruiz will be joining the university system staff as executive director of Connect SI and as communications director, respectively. Duncan, who currently serves as a research project specialist at SIUC, will earn $65,000 a year coordinating the Connect SI project, an initiative designed to bring broadband Internet connections to all of Southern Illinois. Duncan's appointment becomes effective June 5.
As the president's communications director, Ruiz will earn $63,000 a year and be responsible for helping Poshard with community events and coordinating public relations between SIUC and SIUE, said university government relations officer David Gross, who has been partially responsible for communications at the system level. Ruiz's appointment becomes effective July 1. He currently works as the director of admissions, media and community affairs for the SIU School of Law. Ruiz's appointment marks the first time a communications position for the SIU president has been open since 2003, when then-President James Walker had to cut it for budget reasons.
The SIU board of trustees is expected to approve both appointments next week at its meeting at the SIUE School of Dental Medicine. Board members will also approve a general 3 percent salary increase for all employees in the university system, effective July 1.
caleb.hale@thesouthern.com
(618) 529-5454 ext. 5090
© 2006, Southern Illinoisan
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Region's Leaders Begin to Work Toward Common Good
Date: February 26, 2006
Section: News
Page: 4E
There's an air of something different throughout Southern Illinois these days, and it's not the approaching fresh breezes of spring.No, that something different is actually the air of a new and fresh cooperative approach toward regionalism by the communities and leaders of the region. The world economy is quickly and continually changing and Southern Illinois is taking steps to catch up - and then keep up - with the global society. Thank goodness, for all of us.
For years, our region was like most other non-metro areas where communities competed with each other - not only on the football fields and basketball courts, but also in the areas of jobs and economic development. Individual communities and counties literally fought against each other in a game of one-upmanship in which no one really came out a winner in. It appears those days are over, thank goodness, for all of us.
For the past couple of years elected officials, community leaders and citizens in general have adopted the idea that Southern Illinois is one region and its future is dependent upon everyone moving forward together with a common vision. An appropriate theme of "One Region, One Vision" is now the common mantra for all of Southern Illinois, and good things are starting to happen.
This past week at John A. Logan College, a meeting was held in an effort to work toward a cooperative effort for economic development. Frank Knott, president of ViTAL Economy, which specializes in "the development, implementation and financing of fully integrated economic and community development strategies" explained the importance of broadband connectivity to this region in order for Southern Illinois to be a player in the global economy. It's a complex project with a big investment price tag, but also one that our communities, counties and leaders cannot fail to adopt.
The job make-up of the Southern Illinois region has changed greatly in the past 30 years, from when we were once dependent upon the coal mines and other long-gone industries. Knott told the group the job make-up will change again and again in the next five, 10 and 20 years. And so, too, he said, will the people who will be needed to fill those jobs.
The region must adapt to stop the exodus of our young people who now go off to other regions to find good jobs and for what they believe is a better quality of life.
All of this won't happen overnight, but the region's leaders have started in the right direction. All indications are that Southern Illinois is on the right track to practicing the concepts of regionalism and not just giving it lip service, as has been done for many years. We applaud those who are visionary and who are stepping up to the plate, so to speak, going to bat for the betterment of the entire region. Thank goodness, for all of us.
© 2006, Southern Illinoisan
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