Advanced Communications and Information Technology - Joint
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Speaker 4
0:00
All right, Chair sees a quorum of the Advanced Communications and Information Technology Joint Committee. Appreciate everybody. There. Appreciate everybody coming. If we need a motion to approve the minutes of November 6, 2019, motion by Senator Hill.
We need a second by Senator Sample. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, like sign. Thank you. We're going to start with Exhibit D1. E1, and all those who you want to pick up from here or have any statements on
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
0:59
know, cybersecurity is becoming a major issue that we need to address as a state, and the focus of this study is to look at how protected buildings and other physical assets are across the state.
So we're going to see what kind of condition our buildings and building controls are in, and that's what the study is this morning. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Senator Johnson
Speaker 4
1:25
to call our witnesses. All the witnesses, we have a number. We need to go through them
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:32
one by one. You may call the state agencies up together. I don't know if they've
Speaker 10
1:38
got real long. Okay. I guess the state agency come up and present.
Just state your name and who you're with and your position and you're welcome to proceed. I'm Anne Layvall,
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
2:04
Director of Division of Building Authority for Department of Transformation and Shared Services. I'm Nolan Leatherwood with
Speaker 16
2:12
the Department of Transformation and Shared Services Division of Information Systems and I'm the Interim Chief Information Security Officer.
Speaker 20
2:21
Good morning, Jessica Jones, Director of the Division of Information Systems, Department of Transformation and Share Services. So thank you very much. We got a chance to read the interim study that has been proposed, and of course, you know, due to the critical nature of this topic, and this being a public meeting, I'm hesitant to talk about the specifics on how DIS and other departments are currently protecting the state's data. I would say that DIS, along with other departments, are currently monitoring all executive branch endpoints and emails
for signs of compromise and security incidents across our network. DIS monitors all Internet activity for all systems in the state network for non-malicious activity behavior. DIS' responsibility is to protect the state network. The reality of it is, is that risk will always exist. How we manage that risk is where the focus shall be. Today, we know that employee negligence and accidental loss is the root cause of most of the recent data security breaches.
Cyber hygiene is extremely critical, and the state currently provides cybersecurity awareness training to all the state employees. While we agree that an assessment needs to be done, we also know that we can engage federal partners that can do this type of work at no cost. The state can engage with the Department of Homeland Security and all departments can reach out to the Department of Homeland Security for a cyber infrastructure assessment to evaluate the the effectiveness of industrial controls of state buildings, for a cyber resilience review
to evaluate the state building's operational resilience and cybersecurity practices, these two assessments at no cost. Thank you. As part
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
4:26
of the Division of Building Authority, of course, we are a property manager for the state of Arkansas. We manage a portfolio of 1.6 million square feet. So within our portfolio, we're very much aware of the opportunities that are created for these risks associated with building automation.
More and more today, we're moving to smart buildings and smart systems, which require access through Internet addresses. So our division has been working very closely with DIS as well as the Office of Information Systems to ensure that we're putting in place the safeguards necessary to reduce those risks. And I can say that over the last four or five years that what we've done to make those upgrades to provide that additional security has increased significantly to the point that I understand from our operating folks
that it's even difficult for them at times to get in to do what they need to do to monitor our system. So we're very much aware of the risks associated with the systems, and that's why we're taking the steps we are to provide the, see the securities in place, working with our vendors who are providing those services to us. They do not have access into our systems. You actually have to be within the state network system to access our building systems. So we're very intentional on what we require and request of our vendors as they work with us to provide the services needed for us to maintain those systems.
But we're very much aware of the risk associated, and we feel like we're doing our part and hand-in-hand with DIS and the Office of Information Systems to see that that happens. Representative Layla.
Speaker 28
6:14
Brown. Representative Brown. Sorry. Sorry about that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Speaker 31
6:21
I don't know that I have this number exactly correct,
but in the news recently there was a report that the state of Texas, and I don't know if that also included private industry or just the state agencies, was experiencing 10,000 attempts to break into their system per minute, I believe, maybe second, but just a horrendous number of attempts to break into their systems. Are we experiencing a similar onslaught? We
Speaker 35
6:53
experience that on a daily basis.
However, with the current political arena between Iran and the
Speaker 20
6:59
U.S., we have not seen an increase as of today. The cybersecurity office and other departments are currently monitoring, being more diligent about what is happening today, and we have not seen an increase as of today. That is not to say that we do not see attacks on a daily basis from those countries. That's just the norm. but we have not seen an increase today. Is that correct?
Speaker 30
7:24
Correct. Could you tell me about how many we receive per day?
Speaker 16
7:30
You know, I don't have those numbers off the top of my head, but it's in the hundreds of thousands from across the world. And we can provide those. Thank you.
Senator Ricky Hill
Unverified
7:47
ago about the cyber security that y'all are offering doing the training and stuff. Can you put a little color on that? Who are y'all offering the cyber training to? And just put a little color on what you're doing to prevent the cyber attacks.
Speaker 20
8:02
As far as the training? Yes. Okay. So we received a grant through the Department of Homeland Security, and we are providing security awareness training to all executive branch employees. So that's through a module. It's a non-line module
Speaker 47
8:16
that they have to do on a monthly basis, and each department manages the completion for each module for their employees. Go ahead, Representative.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
8:32
So you had mentioned that, of course, the Department of Homeland Security offers the opportunity for system testing, and I've actually spoken with them about that in the past. And, of course, they, like everybody else, have limited resources. And I guess the question that I have as far as it relates to this topic, have you all worked with Homeland Security to test some of the building systems that we have? I'm sure they've looked at other systems, but specifically in this issue, have we done any cyber drills or testing on how the system is hardened?
And the second question I have is, obviously, this is an ongoing issue. Do you feel like we are in a good place, or are there still properties that have little to no security that we still need to get to? As far as what
Speaker 20
9:30
we're working with the Department of Homeland Security today, we're engaged with them to do vulnerability scanning for DIS.
And we want to expand that to the rest of the departments. And we have reached out to them in regards to this, to assessments. And it's just a
Speaker 47
9:47
matter of reaching out to them and see where we fall on their
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
9:52
priority and where they're working on. Okay. So as of right now, they haven't done any
of the buildings or anything like that? No, sir. Okay. And then for Ms. Laidlaw, where are we at as far as is everything, as far as you know, Are all of our buildings fairly up to date, or are there still areas where, obviously we can't go into specifics here,
but just generally speaking, is there still work to be done in
Ann Laidlaw
Unverified
10:20
specifically to the portfolio for the Division of Building Authority. Right, and that's what I'm interested in, right. I was talking this morning with Office of Information Systems, who has been managing that for us, and we're in very good shape within our portfolio. We have, like I said, over the last few years, we've gone to quite an extent to see that security is in place to protect those. They're running scans regularly to see if there are any places of breach.
And from what I was told this morning, we're in very good shape. Like I said, even my building operators tell me that sometimes they can't even get in. So I think we've come a long
Speaker 60
11:04
members have questions? I'm seeing none, or Representative Love. Thank you,
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
11:09
Mr. Chair. I wanted to comment on a few things, but let me, I guess, begin by saying, I know that we're just looking, and I came in late,
but we're looking at the infrastructure for the state.
Is there going to be any, and this is just a question to the Chair, is there going to be any information in regards to what we're doing as a whole? municipalities, counties, because they also interact with the state. So I guess that's the first question I want to ask before I
Speaker 65
11:42
direct questions towards the IS. I'll let the co-chair direct that
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
11:47
or have that question. So this ISP
is specifically focused on buildings, control systems for buildings,
so HVAC, elevators, things like that, to make sure that that infrastructure is secure. As far as the other question, later today, the data task force has been meeting over the year, and one of the recommendations involves exactly what you're talking about. And so when we get to that point on the agenda, I'll tell you what that
Speaker 10
12:20
you, Mr. Chair. Any other questions? Seeing none, thank you for your input.
And we'll go on to the Intelligent Buildings. We have
Speaker 70
12:29
three persons to come, Mr. Fred Gordy, Scott Langan, Tom Shercliffe. Okay. If you guys would, just go ahead and introduce yourselves and your positions, and you're welcome to proceed. Yes, Mr. Chairman. SENATORS, LEGISLATORS, LADIES
Scott Landing
Unverified
12:52
AND GENTLEMEN, MY NAME IS SCOTT LANDING AND I'M WITH INTELLIGENT
Speaker 72
12:57
BUILDINGS. MY CURRENT POSITION IS GENERAL MANAGER OF GOVERNMENT SERVICES. ONE OF MY MAIN CLIENTS IS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, GSA, WITH THEIR CYBERSECURITY AND SMART BUILDINGS PROGRAM. I'M
Speaker 73
13:09
TOM SHERCLIFF, I'M A PRINCIPAL, AND JUST A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT THE COMPANY, BRIEFLY FOR FRED, IS THAT FOR 15 YEARS WE'VE DONE ONLY THIS, AND THAT IS CONSULT A LARGE PORTFOLIO owners on smart buildings and building cybersecurity issues, including corporate, commercial, government, utility, college campuses, and military, and that includes the GSA for the U.S. government,
Canadian House of Commons, Fort Bragg, Fort Jackson, Fort Benning, Kirtland, Maxwell Air Force Base, and so a wide variety of government commercial types of clients. Fred.
Speaker 78
13:42
Fred Gordy, Director of Cybersecurity. I've spent the past 20 years specifically in the building control space and cybersecurity. We're ready. Mr. Gentlemen, you're
Speaker 80
13:54
welcome to proceed on whoever wants to go first. Thank you, Chairman. On the first
Speaker 74
13:59
page of the deck, there are three things that we want to keep in
Speaker 72
14:05
mind as we kind of go through this discussion.
The state of Arkansas building systems does have vulnerability. in their building systems. Like most of the rest of the industry, the challenge is you don't know everything that you have across the state and all the details around that. And finally, you know, it's not really IT's area to address this. They do a good job. They're partners. They're important to it. But it's not necessarily the type of vulnerabilities
that they're used to dealing with. we've already covered this the chairman covered it but uh systems when we
Speaker 81
14:47
talk building systems we're talking hvac elevators parking life safety meters and those kind of things
Speaker 82
14:54
yeah and also another point is that it sounds really simple but they're they're
Speaker 73
14:59
since the 1980s they became digital which simply means they work on computers and uh that's that's where things started to So I wanted to clarify, this is not a smart building problem. This is a 40-year problem since building systems became digital or computerized.
Speaker 72
15:15
Yeah, and because they're computerized, they're now, a lot of them can be connected to the Internet, and they require a very significant management, even below the IP level, of how those are done. Um,
Speaker 81
15:29
just in a very basic 30-minute, uh, search, Fred here, uh, identified many,
Speaker 72
15:35
uh, vulnerable points for entry into the DIS system, and in fact, there were multiple where when you went into the IP, there was no log in.
Speaker 86
15:47
You were directly into the system. Which one, just add to the point that Scott made. It's not just that Iran
Speaker 73
15:54
and other bad actors would want to, uh, get to this from the outside. they're computerized, a lot of the issues are from the inside in terms of how the systems are configured, whether they're backed up, whether they have passwords. That's more of an internal problem than an external problem. So you have both
Speaker 72
16:09
sides of it. So if we go to the building control cybersecurity risks, I think a lot of people are familiar with this. Life safety incidents, one of the big things that the federal government's worried
about and one of the reasons why they worry about protecting their data is if a bad actor can get to your data, they can start to understand when people are in buildings when they're using them, and that makes them a more vulnerable target. That's just an example. Productivity loss, obviously, we've heard about the cities and counties around the nation that have had buildings and their systems hacked, and they've lost the ability to do their job and shut down the buildings. Obviously, legislative non-compliance, if you can't service your people,
then you're not in compliance with what you're trying to do. They can rev up equipment. There was a situation where a system was actually air-gapped and it still got penetrated by somebody bringing in a laptop with some type of malware on it, and they destroyed the equipment. That's actually very common. That is one of the biggest risks. Finally, if it is on the state network that your data resides on, if you have one gap then you can end up getting to that data and that's obviously a bad bad
situation and finally if any of these happen obviously that's not something that you want to have happen in
Speaker 89
17:32
your constituency that and really again there we're not laying blame the
Speaker 72
17:38
real blame here is just the way the industry grew up, right? Building control contractors, this is not, though they try, these are mechanical engineering people that are coming in and trying to do digital and cybersecurity and work with computers, and that's just not where their skill set is. And honestly, until recently, a lot of
customers weren't asking for that, so they never worked on that skill set. Yeah,
Speaker 82
18:04
also there's this issue of fragmentation, and unlike IT, specifically even in a
Speaker 73
18:09
building like this, you have multiple different contractors that report up differently. So, for example, the parking control contractor doesn't manage your HVAC system, and your lighting control contractor doesn't manage the elevator system. So the fragmentation is tremendous. So
Speaker 72
18:27
the way, they have personnel turnover or as contracts,
and those companies leave and you get new companies in. And so they don't really have any policies. Contractors don't create the policies. If you don't have a policy around this that is dictated across the state of this is how we're going to do this, you end up with some pretty significant issues. Sometimes it's just the type of users, how many users, what their access is, passwords. There are situations we've seen multiple times where a vendor will use the same login information across multiple customers and buildings.
It's just the way they do it
Speaker 81
19:06
makes it easier on their technicians. Outdated software. Yeah, I mean, a
Speaker 73
19:10
good example, just like your iPhone or your smartphone, the software updates periodically. The same thing happens in building control systems. And if you have a multiple generations old software, you can have problems, again, internally, not just externally. And one of the real issues
Speaker 72
19:23
we see a lot of times, if they do get in, how good are your backups? When are your last backups done? Because if you have to go back two to three weeks, that may be a problem for the way you've set up your building.
On the next page, and again, this is really the point that we want to make. It is not IT's problem to fix. They are a partner in doing this, but it really is a different culture. Between the way that facility management and those building controls operate, they use different protocols, they use completely different technologies, they use different hardwares. It's just a different
Speaker 73
20:01
realm. Just to clarify, IT plays a very important role, certainly for the remote access and the things that are IT.
What we want to clarify is that at some point they cross over from traditional IT into the building system itself. And in addition to the culture, it is literally different technology. IT tools cannot see inside if there's a password on your elevator control system. It crosses over a different realm. And, you know,
Speaker 81
20:28
these are managed from a procurement standpoint and from a management standpoint of how you manage these systems is completely different. A lot of IT systems have about a three-year refresh cycle on them.
Speaker 72
20:40
Building systems may have a 15-year. And so how do you keep those up to date? How do you keep them running and make sure that you're patched and ready? To that point, the National Institute of Standards and
Speaker 81
20:57
Technologies, which is the governmental agency that provides guidance around this type of technology, came out with a recent
Speaker 92
21:06
statement. Yeah, Fred, you might. So this year, well, in 2019, around mid-year, What
Speaker 78
21:11
you see in this handout are the exact words from NIST or the National Institute
of Standards and Technology. And if you would, bear with me to read them just so this drives home the point. Many IoT devices and IoT, building control system technology, is inside that. Interact with the physical world in a way conventional IoT devices usually do not. Many IoT devices cannot be accessed, managed, or monitored in the same way conventional IT devices can. The availability, efficiency, and effectiveness of cybersecurity and privacy capabilities are often different for IoT devices than conventional IT devices. And the final
statement, for some IoT devices, additional types of risk, and this is important, including safety, reliability, resiliency, need to be managed simultaneously with cybersecurity and privacy risk because of the effects addressing one type of risk can have on the other. In In other words, sometimes, and we see it all the time, it is IT types of solutions actually inject risk and failure. So you have to be careful with that. Fred,
Speaker 73
22:20
can you briefly describe a recent example where an IT testing tool was put on?
Speaker 78
22:25
Yes. A large media group in New York City we did work for. We went through and did the commissioning of their building control devices. We worked with IT, great department, good partner, but we explained to them how you needed to go in and do your scans because these devices are sensitive. And so they went in, did a Qualys vulnerability scan, and there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 devices in this one building. They knocked off 60% of them, which required the vendors to come back in and manually restart all these devices.
And it was simply because they were just doing a Qualys vulnerability scan. And if, so these devices felt that those particular scans were more like an attack than they were anything else. They just can't take that
Speaker 95
23:15
amount of information. So, again, this is a very brief kind of deck, but the
Speaker 72
23:22
points we wanted, sorry, the points that we wanted to get through with this brief deck is there are vulnerabilities. We found them, you know, and there's obviously could be dire consequences behind those,
more than people think other than somebody flipping your lights on and off. You know, and like the entire industry, the challenge is this is a big animal to handle. You just, it takes a concerted effort to figure out all the different pieces and parts that are there and what you have and how it's configured and how they're connected. And then finally, we don't, there's no blame here. This is because the industry changed and didn't grow up the right way and put the right pieces and parts in place.
IT is extremely important in supporting this, but it goes past where their skills need to go. And the facility management side, they're trusting a vendor that just doesn't have the skills to
Speaker 82
24:20
help them overlap with IT. I just want to emphasize that this
Speaker 73
24:26
is for 40 years, just to replay that, these digital building systems have been designed, installed, configured, and maintained by a value chain that is not IT skilled.
So architects, engineers, contractors, property managers, facility managers are, again, designing, installing, and maintaining millions of digital systems. So that is an industry-wide condition, and that's why we've been focusing on this in our business because you just have to go find out everything that you have and then create policy that you historically have not had for these building contractors and start turning the battleship. Thank you.
Speaker 57
25:09
We're working finished if there are questions. Got questions from members. There's a lot of
Speaker 100
25:25
Brown. On I forget which screen, the one that the screen that
Speaker 31
25:30
says no policy requirements. And I see here on the list, no log trail of access.
I think that's a really big problem when you don't know who's accessing your system. And I'm curious, are you considering doing a systems and organization controls report, or have you already done that? So process and controls
Speaker 73
25:58
type reporting is very common in IT, and that is something that is not very common in facilities and building systems. So what we do a lot of in the industry for those government and military organizations we spoke of
is to go in and look and see what is there and how it's configured and get all
Speaker 103
26:21
that information sort of manually the first time and then work with
Speaker 31
26:28
those organizations to create policy requirements that might include a log trail of access. Follow-up. So you would be looking at how, I think, third parties would be
Speaker 73
26:39
interacting with our state-owned systems? Yes. So every building control system presumably has a contractor that manages
and maintains and configures that system. And part of what we would want to know is who is it and what have they done to it and then create Arkansas policy going forward for how every single contractor must configure and maintain their system internally.
Speaker 31
27:04
So are you suggesting then that these third parties should provide the systems and organizations' control reports to the state before we
Speaker 73
27:13
hire them? They form of that.
Again, that is not a very common thing in the building controls world like it is in the IT world, but I would suggest strongly, and we have done this, is to create a policy that you have that is a requirement to bid or to get contracts to maintain state systems.
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
27:37
Thank you. Representative Love. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I think Representative Brown kind of covered some of what I wanted to cover, but I wanted to go back to the point where you all
said IT cannot fix this. So I guess, are we talking about, you stated policy, so we're talking about a policy in
Speaker 110
27:58
place when we do procurement. Is that what you were referring to as far?
Speaker 73
28:03
Certainly, I would have requirements for procurement, but you have a lot of systems in place today. What would be best is to create a policy and start working with even your existing controls contractors to do these basic things on the no policy requirements checklist there so we can start right away, even for those that
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
28:24
are in place. Okay. Now, have you all already done this assessment as far as or? No, not for the state. Gotcha. Okay. And then, so I guess if we put the policy in place, I'm just trying to follow some reasoning as far as who, if IT is not going to be, I guess, the one that's going to be the, I guess, the clearinghouse for this, who would you suggest
Speaker 113
28:52
would be the clearinghouse or in other states, how is this handled?
Speaker 73
28:57
If I could just clarify again, IT, we may have misstated that, IT plays a very important role, particularly for remote access, very important, and this has been the experience with all of our government experience that IT plays a very important role in the external access, the remote access, but what is typically not something IT does is get into the building controls, contractor system configuration policy. That's a mouthful, but literally every single system, elevators, HVAC, lighting, parking, meters, everything,
every one of those systems can have separate passwords, too many users, too many super users, backed up or not backed up. Every single one of them has those elements to it. So apart from the remote access and the important role of IT, we want those all to
Speaker 72
29:50
be set up the right way. Gotcha. Okay. And real quick to your question, generally, the way we've seen it, at least at the federal government, the people that share and enforce that policy is the facility management group, IT,
but it's a very close partnership between IT and facility management to manage
Speaker 117
30:06
that piece of the puzzle because it's a significant overlap. Okay, I
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
30:25
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Gentlemen, you said you've done this work for GSA, and obviously GSA is big, and they're everywhere all over the country.
Could you kind of walk us through a typical, I guess we're talking about study analysis or whatever of a situation? And, again, without giving away your proprietary things or all the hackers that are watching us on the live stream figure out where to go, could you kind of walk us through in an overview, 30,000-foot view of process, of what we, the state, would need to do to begin implementation of this particular level of building security?
Speaker 73
31:08
Yeah, actually, the beginning process is not that complex. It is very important, as simple as it sounds, to have an inventory of exactly what systems and what revisions and models, and then what contractors, because that tells you now what you're going to apply your policy to. The other thing is that in these inventories and site assessments, you are also looking for network connections that you may not have been aware of. Because, again, a 40-year situation, there are DSL lines and telephone lines and all kinds of leftovers.
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
31:43
So you're also looking for that. Okay. I assume that, I'll try to say this without insulting anyone. Some vendors are not equal to others as far as how well they handle security. And I'm not saying that it's not to criticize any vendor. and it could be someone sold a state-of-the-art system to the state 10 years ago, and obviously that's not state-of-the-art in 2020. Is that part of the thing, is your familiarity with the systems and the vendors
and how, hey, back 10 years ago this was really good, but the hackers have gotten smart and it's more vulnerable now. Is that part of the process? Yeah,
Speaker 73
32:28
and that's important, and that's why the partnership with IT is so important because they know the networks and the remote access and companies like ours understand many, many different control systems and vintages and history. So you can look at a system that's 10 or 15 years old and say this is running on a server that uses a Microsoft operating system
that doesn't exist anymore and it's still sitting there plugged in. So if you try to upgrade it or unplug it, the whole thing is going to collapse. So it is important to understand the history and the vintages and the different types. Okay. Great.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
33:16
other questions? Chair? And this may be more of a comment than a question, or maybe I'll figure out a question and throw in there. Y'all had mentioned during your briefing that you just did a 30-second trial, if you will,
and you found vulnerabilities within our systems. And obviously, we just heard testimony from Arkansas Building Authority, but one thing for us to keep in mind is the buildings that the Arkansas Building Authority operates is actually a very small portfolio of all the buildings. So we're talking about all the universities and the schools, municipalities, county government, so state agencies. please. So when we as a state are looking at, you know, this is not just one or two buildings. I
mean, we're talking literally hundreds of buildings here. What is the best way for us as lawmakers to try to approach this? Do we need to be, I don't know, I guess that's what I'm asking. What should we be saying, what questions should we be asking? What steps should we be taking to lay out the statewide policy that you all are recommending that we evidently do? Do we need to start with an inventory? How do we proceed from here?
Speaker 73
34:32
Is that a question for us? Yes, yes. So typically it's a simultaneous process. You have to do this inventory because you don't know what you're going to be applying policy to, and it's just chopping wood. You've got to get out there and do the right kind of inventory. And at the same time, there are, again, that slide with the checks, the X marks on it. A policy that is even the most basic policy is a great starting point. Because if there's no policy that says you have to have passwords, you have to limit the number of authorized users, you have to back it up, I mean, these very basic things,
that is a place to start with policy. Now, of course, it can get much more sophisticated as you make it your own, and we work with IT. The inventory and the policy can come simultaneously because very quickly after the inventory, you're doing a reasonably low-cost thing, and that is asking and requiring the contractors to just adhere to the policy for these basic things. So simultaneous is the answer.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
35:26
Okay. All right. And any of you that have served on the audit committee know how challenging just the backups and the passwords can be. Representative Aziz.
Speaker 132
35:40
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In one of the first key points here, it says the state of Arkansas building systems are highly vulnerable. Have you scanned the buildings? I mean, do you already know that? Yes, sir.
Speaker 103
35:53
How many did you scan? Well, let me be really clear. We have not gone into any systems. I'm afraid
Speaker 78
36:01
you can just describe how you can do it. So the approach that we used would be just like any hacker would do. We used some, let's just say they're like Google-like search engines, and we ran some scans across the world, basically, and found hundreds of your buildings, hundreds of devices.
And to something that Scott said earlier, not to get in the weeds, but there are devices that do not require a username and password, and we were able to hit those. Now, what we do is called knocking on the door. We don't go any further down. But those devices were exposed as well. And underneath those devices can be thousands of devices. How much
Speaker 132
36:42
would it cost to do a, if we were to do this deal, how much would it cost to scan all of the state's buildings? How much
Speaker 72
36:50
money are we talking about? So real quick, one thing, because in preparation and talking with folks,
one of the things that we're going to have to figure out, first of all, is a complete inventory of all the buildings. We were not able to get that type of list. What we could do is kind of give you an idea, like just a general building, whether it's big or small, you know, a deep assessment, going in, taking a look at everything, coming back with reports and helping to develop the policy off that. Somewhere around $25,000 building, but obviously the more buildings that there are that we do, we can create economies of scale and spread that.
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
37:30
Representative Love, you have a question? Okay, so, yeah, I think I get, all right, so about a couple of months ago I went down, or several months ago I went down to Georgia and we talked about cyber security at the
Georgia cyber security system. And so what you all are talking about or referring to, I know that let's set policy aside, but are you a group, because I'm trying to figure out what you do, I haven't kind of Googled you.
So are you all testing systems to see where there are issues and then reporting them back to us? Yeah, that's correct. And then you're going to do ongoing testing, correct? That's correct. And
Speaker 82
38:15
maybe just a descriptive phrase, rather than cyber security, the things that we've
Speaker 73
38:20
talked about with the control systems and the contractors might be called, better called vendor risk management. Yes. Okay. I got you.
Speaker 10
38:32
All right. Thank you. I got a question. You're talking about two different things. building
Speaker 70
38:42
systems is your HVAC and your elevators and your lighting and things like that. You're not talking about your online presence, but there can be crossover in those systems in their hardware and software, correct?
Speaker 73
39:04
That's exactly right, and it's a very important point because, as we were saying, there are two worlds, you're describing a building control system, let's call it the dirty fingernails, right, the HVAC system that is computerized and it runs in its own world and its own technology, and that's important for the policy and the configuration. Then, as you were indicating, that can be connected now to a network to get you to the Internet. Now you've gone into the IT side of it, so you've got both to deal with, if that was your question.
Speaker 70
39:35
So it seems to me the simplest way is to have those independent of each other's own servers. I'm not a computer. I mean, you know, whenever I went to school, it was green screen, so that was our computer and a pencil and a calculator. But, I mean, why would we need you guys to tell us that we
Speaker 73
40:01
need separate servers for those systems? MR. Yeah. Really, every single system, as we mentioned earlier, can be configured
by every single separate contractor. So some may have different passwords. Some may think 123 or admin, admin is fine. Some may have a complex one. Some may be backed up. Some might not be. Some may have 50 authorized users because nobody has ever taken anybody out of the system. That happens in every single separate system with every single separate contractor. So it's not just putting them on another server. It's how they're set up, every single one of
Speaker 10
40:38
them. Now, are you talking about on the internet
side or are you talking about on
Speaker 73
40:47
question. So on the building system side. So let's just suppose for a second, the Internet just went away. If we have all these thousands of state-building control systems that are not backed up, do not have passwords, have old software, have servers that are about to fail, you have an operational risk just that way. Forget Iran and China. Most of
Speaker 148
41:12
those are, I mean, most of those systems are manual. They have a manual possible
Speaker 70
41:18
override in their systems it's not all controlled on a computer is that not correct i mean maybe we need to get our people back up here but there's some there's some separations and you guys are the sky is falling and i'm not buying
Speaker 78
41:34
it okay i understand so very quickly to answer your question their system some of the older systems are running pneumatics and then with some electronics that have been put in place and you're absolutely right those systems could be run manually
The newer systems have what they call a supervisory controller, or the brain, like a York chiller, you know, anything in a central plant. And those devices are the ones that you need to worry about. And those are
Speaker 70
42:03
the ones that can... I'm getting... Hang on a second. I'm getting some feedback. Somebody down there
Speaker 92
42:11
closer and the other two... Is that better? Yes. Okay, sorry.
Speaker 78
42:16
So, anyway, there's the supervisory controllers that have brains in them, basically.
And those are the ones that can, if someone were to get into it, they could turn a boiler into a bomb. They could wreck a piece of equipment. It costs you hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that's the ones that, it's not just about do you lose control. It's do you lose control and do the people, or people inside of there that are going to do damage to the system. And Fred, that's since the 80s, right?
Speaker 70
42:57
to here? All right. Thank you, gentlemen. Seeing no more, we appreciate
Speaker 4
43:11
driver's test scheduling, if you could come forward. just uh just go ahead and
Speaker 158
43:35
you're welcome to proceed i'm bob sanders i'm the general manager for the information network of Arkansas. And thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. We appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning and talk about the services and fees that INA has launched in the last two quarters of 2019. As you know, INA is a public-private partnership that's primarily funded by transaction fees that are paid by citizens and businesses who choose to use the online services that we publish. And all those fees are approved by the INA board. The INA board
is primarily appointed by the governor. It's made up of both private sector and public sector members. We do provide fees or services for fees that don't include a fee, that are free to use, and those are also approved by the board, and they're in your report as well. And today we're presenting 25 of those new services that have fees, five that were provided at no cost, and one changed to a fee that was approved by the board. And this morning I'll give you a very short summary of what those are and point out a couple of highlights.
First, I want to show you one of the services that launched last week that we're particularly excited about. A few months ago, we met with Secretary Jamie Cook. She is the Secretary of Public Safety. And she told us one of the first priorities she had that she wanted us to look at was the experience that Arkansans have going in to take the driver's test. And if any of you have been through this recently, if you've got young people in your house who who are studying for the test or trying to get their driver's test, you've experienced this. And to say, to put it mildly, the experience is not modern today.
Arkansans go in, they find the location they need to go to. It is not uncommon to wait one or more hours to take the test. And it's not uncommon to wait those hours and then not be able to take the test, depending on the number of people who have showed up that day, the number of testers who are available. So this is obviously, thank you. It's obviously not acceptable in 2020, so we worked with Secretary Cook and the Department of Public Safety to launch a reservation system for the driver's test, and I'll show you
really quickly what that looks like. Arkansans can now, as of last week, go online using their phone or their PC. They can pick the type of test that they want to take. They can choose the date, the location, and the time that they want to take the test, And then they get a reservation number, just like you would if you were doing something at retail or making a reservation somewhere. They'll get a text message to remind them of that appointment. And then behind the scenes, the staff at the state police can completely administer this process.
They can choose the locations where those tests will be available, the days of the week they'll be available, and the hours of those days. and they can even do things like if someone calls in sick that day, if a tester calls in sick and they have less capacity, that they can cancel some of those reservations so those citizens don't have to come in and waste their time. They can notify them via text or email. We just launched this last Tuesday. There have been almost 600 reservations in the system since it launched, which we think is a great initial, great start for the system.
We've got some great initial feedback from Arkansans about it as well. We launched this as a pilot with DPS at no charge to them. They looked at many different systems around the state, around the country, and chose one in New Mexico. And on the private side of the relationship, our parent company, NIC, has a relationship there in New Mexico. We're able to get that code, bring it in with minimal cost and minimal changes, and stand it up for DPS. So this is going to reach over 230,000 Arkansans once the second phase is released and the written test is available.
So we're really proud of that, really excited about it. We'll be helping DPS with marketing and getting the word out. If you all would like to let your constituents know about it as well, I think a lot of Arkansans will be happy to have the service available. One of the other services that we published in the quarter was a Real ID checklist. So you're probably aware that Real ID, the deadline, is coming up this year. It'll be really confusing for Arkansans which documents they need to get their Real ID. So this is a website they can go to. It'll walk them through, step by step, which documents they need so they can be prepared when they go into the Revenue Office.
Speaker 160
48:03
In the third and fourth quarters, we launched 30 new services, serving Arkansans in
Speaker 158
48:08
six cities, seven counties, and providing services for three, state agencies. These are services that allow citizens to do things like make a payment with a credit card when they go in person to a city office or to make a payment online, make court filings or several of those in there, make trucking permit payments online, register for training classes with the Department of Labor, and submit crime tips to the Arkansas State Police. We do
have one fee increase included in these two documents that you have, and I wanted to call attention to one of them. Fee increases are very rare in INA's 22-year history. This particular fee hasn't been changed since, well, it's been nine years since this fee was increased. This is a fee that businesses pay, it's an annual subscription fee for the ability to have a monthly invoice to pay for their transactions. So businesses that have a lot of high-volume activity with us, rather than having to type
their credit card or recheck information in every time, can log in, they can conduct business with us, like buying crash records or doing a criminal background check, and then they'll receive an invoice at the end of the month. So, we're increasing that annual fee from $95 to $150, and that's going to go to offset some of the increasing costs associated with the invoicing system, as well as upgrading the self-service system for those businesses. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. MR. Representative Love.
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
49:35
MR. Mr. Chair, I was just asking, because since we brought up fees,
Now, are you saying that your board approves the fees? Because, I mean, you're bringing this before us, and I'm trying to figure out, are we going to be voting on these fees? I mean, like, or the board votes on these fees? You've already kind of implemented this?
Speaker 158
49:56
That's correct. The INA board votes on those fees and approves them. And Act, what is it, 550 of 2015, has us, requires us to come and present those fees to this committee after those board meetings.
Speaker 80
50:14
just presenting the report. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Is there any other questions? Were you finished with your presentation? Yes, sir. All right. If there's no other
Speaker 70
50:45
questions, I appreciate your time. Thank you. move on. We are under Section F, the Arkansas Broadband Managers Report, Exhibit F in your
Speaker 4
50:52
packet. Nathan Smith, just go ahead and state your name and your position and who you're
Speaker 166
51:03
with, and you're welcome to proceed. Hello, I'm Nathan Smith, the Research Director of the Department of Commerce, and also state broadband manager and as state broadband manager then it's my part of my obligation to prepare report twice a year and the statute says mostly that we should talk about our activities
as the broadband office but this is report has been produced for several years and it tends to have a lot of informational content describing the situation of broadband in the state. So I wanted to meet those expectations while playing to the strengths of my own team. So you've seen the report, and I guess I'll just go over a few of the points of it, and then you can ask me questions, and I'll expand on anything that is of particular interest. We used a lot of American community survey data in order to shed light on broadband use.
and interestingly there are still a fair number of people who don't have home internet access because they don't feel they need it it's especially older people sometimes but the vast majority do have it by now and there's notable generational change where especially people who are under 40 unless they're quite poor almost always have it we did a particular focus on families with children because we've heard a lot about the homework gap about students
not being able to do their homework because their teachers give them assignments where it requires some kind of internet access to write a report or something like that. So this is sort of an important pain point in the broadband space. So we were interested in the question, do parents seem to perceive a homework gap? And are they more eager to get internet if they have kids at home than people who don't have kids? And it turns out that seems to be true. And we looked at it in a lot of different ways. So across all income levels, if people have kids at home, they're more likely
to have internet. Across all of the different geographical regions of the state, if you have kids at home, they're more likely to have internet. They're more likely to have any internet. They're more likely to have high-speed internet. So parents do seem to perceive that need and respond to it to the extent that they can most of the time. High-income people almost always have internet access. High-value properties almost always have internet access. So it seems like it's especially in poorer households with lower incomes and living in cheaper residences.
That's where you see people still lacking it. And satellite internet, we don't usually talk about very much because it comes from outer space and it's kind of available everywhere, so there tend not to be a lot of urgent policy questions around that. But it was interesting as we were looking through this data that it's important. There are quite a few people who rely on that, so I just thought I'd highlight that. Looking at the supply side, we have a lot of maps and charts in here
that highlight this general point that access is correlated with population density. And it's easier to deploy broadband, to make a business case for it, if you have a lot of people concentrated in one area, and that shows up again and again in the number of people served. And so a very important point, but probably everybody's heard before, but Arkansas is currently ranked 50th in digital connectivity in the country. and we see a lot of different versions of basically Arkansas's, sorry to say, weakness in
broadband coverage at present. 10% of the census tracts in Arkansas have less than 20% of people having access to 25.3 broadband and that's the second worst in the country that's a little bit ahead of Alaska by that metric but you know still. A couple things we noted, there's a lot of market fragmentation on the supply side. Arkansas has lots of ISPs, but not a lot of consumer choice. So sometimes you have a lot of ISPs with sort of a small footprint, but it doesn't amount to sort of blanketing the landscape and getting coverage everywhere.
And while I've tended to stress that rural areas, underpopulated areas, have the most severe problems, the county with the most people that are unserved by Broadman is actually Jefferson County. So there are some problems in urban areas too. Um, sometimes it's associated with apartment buildings. There seem to be some difficulties about who owns the inside wiring. Sometimes it's, it's harder to get it to somebody who's deep inside an apartment building. Um,
so that may be a factor. Um, uh, a couple of policy takeaways might be broadband is far from being a perfectly competitive market. Um, so it's, this isn't the type of market where you can apply your kind of classic market efficiency arguments. This market doesn't really look like that. And people do a lot of things using broadband, which are things the government likes to help them do. So they get health care with the help of the Internet. There's substantial numbers who are either downloading medical records
or consulting with physicians or sometimes even have devices that are constantly monitoring their health that are interacting with the Internet. So for health care, it's important. For education and training, it's important. For job search and then for telework. I mean, all of these affect minorities, but substantial minorities. And so these might be reasons that, you know, more than just Netflix. It's a lot of things that are pretty critical needs that are being met by broadband
or not being met by broadband if broadband is not available. So I guess those are some points I'd like to highlight. So I'll be happy to expound on any of those points. And also, I'd be happy to get general feedback on what you would want to see in these as we do another one a few months from now. Does this meet expectations, or do you have other questions you'd like us to answer when we present these
Speaker 169
57:25
reports? Since I'm from one of those rural areas, I'll start and ask you a question, I guess.
Speaker 4
57:31
the competitive nature and who governs, like, areas. I mean, I know our towns have franchise agreements, but is it an estate agency, is it the FCC, or who's the one that sets policy on coverage areas? Is it locally, or is it in the state, or is it federal?
Speaker 172
58:02
So that's a really good question, and it depends on what technology is being used to
Speaker 166
58:09
provide it. So the telephone companies are regulated by the FCC, and they provide a lot of broadband. The cable TV companies are in some ways regulated by the FCC, but not in the same way and not to the same degree, and they provide a lot of broadband, especially in urban areas. The satellite carriers are not really regulated much by anybody.
They're pretty important, especially in some of the more remote areas of the state. Mobile data is important and they would be regulated by the FCC, but not in the same ways as landline telephone companies would be. And then electric co-ops that are starting to move in and provide some broadband. They're subject to regulations through, especially the State Public Service Commission, but those regulations are designed for the electric space. And most of this is legacy regulation for some other space that has not necessarily
been all that updated to reflect the particular character of or serve the policy goals appropriate to the broadband space. So if that's, I'm not sure if that was helpful, but feel
Speaker 4
59:24
free to follow up if. Well, one of the things is the first rider
Speaker 70
59:30
refusal on, like, those local franchises. I think that was in, was that your bill, Brianne, the first rider refusal on broadband services in areas
that the local provider has to, you know, refuse to provide increased services before somebody else can move in. And so, I mean, after that happened, I was looking at it, and the regulatory agencies are all different, and they all step on each other. And, you know, you have a telephone that has a franchise, and then you have a cable provider,
and just like you're talking about all the different deals. And trying to get those into the rural areas is the problem. We had a half a billion dollars, and I don't know how much was access. in the state of Arkansas because of all the moving parts. And, you know, how do we make that happen since you're, you know, our commerce and you're the – how do we get that into where we need to do it? I think that's, you know, what's most important.
The reports don't mean anything if the broadband don't get to the areas. Yeah, that's
Speaker 172
1:00:50
a really good question. What should the regulatory framework be for broadband? And I don't think
Speaker 166
1:00:55
anybody knows the answer, and there are a fair number of people who have been thinking about it. Yes, you have different regulatory frameworks that sometimes step on each other, don't necessarily play well together. You get counterintuitive results that emerge from this. And we could go into this in more depth. I mean, my office could, if it's deemed appropriate by the powers that be,
try to study this in more depth. I think we've focused more on developing the Governor's Broadband Grant Initiative that we'll be talking about later today, but especially as we move towards the session, maybe that would be appropriate. It's very difficult questions. I don't think anybody knows the answer really to what the best framework should be, but it's probably a discussion worth having, and there's a lot of people I'd want to bring into that discussion so we can get as much knowledge at the table as we can. But thanks for raising that question.
Speaker 70
1:01:50
Any other members have questions? Go ahead, Senator Mark Johnson. Thank you,
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:01:57
Dr. Smith. And although we had about a 45-minute conversation about this issue, I won't bore my colleagues with all of the – we got off in the weeds on a few things, but something that has come up I have learned more about since our conversation. Elon Musk and SpaceX are deploying a thing that they're calling Starlink.
And it is a, let's just say, a very large constellation of satellites with the idea of reaching areas that have been, well, not just the areas we're talking about on trying to get broadband in rural areas, but really a bigger blanketing of, I guess, the whole world, but certainly the United States. I think back to when, in the 80s, when third world countries that did not have telephone systems,
they kind of leapfrogged us. They skipped the landline phone system and went straight to a cellular network, and that's why now we have third world countries where everybody has a cell phone, which, I mean, I guess that's a good thing. Maybe it's not. But is it a possibility that we're looking at a similar thing where we don't need to be thinking about running fiber all across Arkansas at expense, and we have vendors that, frankly, I think they'd rather not do it because without a major subsidy it may not be cost-effective.
Is this Starlink or similar satellite-based coverage for broadband, is that something that maybe we should look at going straight to that and having Mr. Musk send up a few more satellites over Arkansas so we can fill in the gaps, or is that too far in the future for us to really be looking at right now? Well, you're right. So Starlink's a very
Speaker 172
1:03:54
exciting initiative, and it might help a lot of rural areas get broadband.
Speaker 166
1:04:00
I don't know how fast, I don't know whether it will succeed. I don't know how fast it will be rolled out. I mean, I'd be surprised if it's, you know, sooner than two, three, five years out. I mean, we'll see what happens. We probably can't influence it much, so it'll kind of be a windfall if it comes. But certainly it could be reasonable for decision-making to reflect this. Now, satellite connections currently are available all over the place, but their big weakness is latency.
So you have to shoot a signal out into geostationary orbit about 20,000 miles out, and then it has to go back down, and then it has to go back up again, and then back down. If you're just streaming a movie, it might be okay because it's all one-way traffic. But if you're trying to edit a document in the cloud, then this can get very annoying. And if you're trying to do a voiceover in a protocol or trying to do a teleconference or something like that, it's probably not worth even trying. Now, with low-Earth orbit satellites, such as Elon Musk is wanting to launch, that would
be closer in, so the latency wouldn't be nearly as bad as with the geostationary orbit, and that could meet a lot of needs. It's not as good as fiber. I think that's clear. They're just not going to have the capacity to move the kind of data that fiber does. Fiber has incredibly high capacity to move huge amounts of data, and fiber may become more important in the future because of serving as backhaul for 5G networks as those get rolled out. So I think it's hard to predict what will happen on the demand side. It's hard to predict
how successful this new technology will be. It's hard to predict what the pricing might be. There's a lot of unknowns here and how soon it comes. I think in the meantime, we have some pretty urgent needs that we want to see met. But that's
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:05:58
certainly something for us to keep our eye on. Follow-up, Mr.
Chairman. Dr. Smith, the chairman mentioned the right of refusal that the existing carriers or Internet service providers have in certain areas.
In other words, that if this area wants the service and you get first dibs on doing it, is that anti-competitive? Is that hurting competition and therefore
Speaker 182
1:06:32
hurting consumers? that's it's tricky because there is a kind of an inherent natural monopoly character in most of the technologies by which
Speaker 166
1:06:41
broadband is deployed it doesn't make sense to run
multiple sets of telephone lines to the same address it's duplicative it might be physically infeasible because they'd end up tripping over each other and crossing each other cutting each and so forth. So the whole regulatory
Speaker 182
1:06:59
framing that's been developed to landline telephony is largely designed to deal with this issue. How do you regulate a natural monopoly? And so, I mean,
Speaker 166
1:07:11
is it anti-competitive? Sure, kind of. But is it efficient? That's a difficult
question. And the answer may be one thing for landline telephony and a different thing for broadband. I think this is, it would be, while we're digging into this and examining, I think in general the regulatory frameworks that govern the different broadband technologies, if you sort of lump them together and say this is how we regulate broadband, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's certainly not the best way of doing it. There's a lot of legacy regulation here that hasn't caught up with the times, but it's really tricky to figure out what the best solution should be. And it hasn't been our focus because, you know, the session's two years off, so it would
take a while to, we wouldn't be able to implement anything
Speaker 183
1:07:55
right away anyway. Whereas the grant initiative, that's something that we
Senator Mark Johnson
Unverified
1:07:59
can do now. Well, let's don't tarry too much because 2021 will be here before we know
it. But thank you very much, Dr. Smith. Thank
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:08:14
you, Mr. Chairman. Go ahead. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for letting me ask some questions. And I'm not sure if I really want to ask questions about your report or later on with Exhibit H. I do appreciate the
information, the amount of information that you put in your report. I think it's very important. I do, though, however, I mean, to Senator Johnson's point, if we move and utilize this money and then two years later we find out we shouldn't have used this money because of technology and how it's advancing. I, you know, the FCC, I find it hard to think that it's not regulated by the FCC at the federal level, especially when they're putting in so much federal dollars into this.
And so I find that statement a little perplexing. And then I, furthermore, I just, how how in in tune are you with what what SpaceX is doing and and I would say other companies I mean I know that they just recently like last week launched 60 satellites into space I mean are you and my daughter was there and witnessed it she works within the space industry so I mean that technology is moving so fast and it's being I mean it is it's being implemented right now
so i mean how how familiar familiar familiar are you actually with what's going on in the satellite arena because i mean if you look at the map of arkansas it makes complete sense where we it's probably easier to lay fiber where it's flat but if it's unnecessary then we shouldn't do it if we can actually get the same bang for the buck in a cheaper method of technology which maybe satellite. It's harder, and I understand, you know, the providers out there, they want to
lay that fiber, if it's subsidized, where it's easier, and not necessarily where it's harder, which is up in the mountain areas. But that's actually where the fiber needs to be, because the satellite issues with the topography of the state of Arkansas are more challenging. So I
question, you know, who's driving the bus here? Yeah, so thanks
Speaker 166
1:10:41
for the question. I'll keep it in mind.
Now, there were two sections of the agenda here. So this is related, as you mentioned, to Exhibit H. Chair, would it be all right? or should I wait until maybe we're addressing Exhibit H before speaking
Speaker 70
1:11:02
up with this, and then we're going to – H will require a vote, so we're going to
Speaker 80
1:11:08
move on to that. If it's okay with the members, we'll just go ahead and move on to that.
Anybody got any objection to that? So we're going to move on to Exhibit H. If you want to proceed with your statements, we'll go with that. Sure. Absolutely. Mr.
Speaker 10
1:11:35
Chair, can he answer my questions? Yes. He didn't want to step over into the other realm, so if you can answer her question, then you can go on with Exhib H.
Speaker 179
1:11:49
Yeah. Okay. Well, okay, so in answer to that, yes, we're watching the developments at Starlink. I mean, it's very exciting. It's a great initiative. I mean, I think people do have some pretty acute needs right now. We hear about them
Speaker 166
1:12:03
a lot. So to say maybe new technology will solve your problem a few years down the line, you know, you could do that. I think Governor Hutchinson wants to be a little bit more proactive
Speaker 179
1:12:13
than that. So I think that's – I don't think that's what I'm saying.
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:12:19
What I'm saying is how are we spending this money and who's driving
Speaker 179
1:12:27
the bus? Okay. Well, how we'll spend the money would be the whole topic of the rules that would explain that. As far as who's driving the bus, Governor Hutchinson is setting the agenda and we're implementing it. If you like, I could talk in general about the Governor's Broadband Initiative to introduce, say, Exhibit H.
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:12:49
If I can come back to more questions after he presents, I would appreciate it.
Speaker 166
1:12:57
Thank you. Absolutely. Yeah, so I'm very honored to present to you today the new rules for Arkansas Rural Connect, Governor Hutchinson's broadband initiative. And we presented a first round of rules, and we were very appreciative of the thoughtful feedback that was submitted by a lot of people. We were very heartened by the level of interest that there was in that program.
And based on the feedback that we got at the last meeting of this committee, then we've made some substantial changes to the program, and we're confident that we've got a better policy now, and we hope that you'll find that it has met the objections that you previously had and now deserves your support. Senator Irvin asked
Speaker 172
1:13:48
me a question yesterday, so I had just preparing in response to that.
This kind of is a new government program. That was a
Speaker 166
1:13:59
question that I got yesterday at the meeting. And I know that a lot of you are conservatives, and you're reluctant to introduce a new government program, and Governor Hutchinson is also conservative, and he would have those same instincts, but there's a very acute need here. There are, you know, kids who can't do their homework. There are people who can't do job search. There are difficulties sometimes even accessing public safety. Then the need is just getting escalated as society shifts.
There are generational changes where broadband becomes more and more of a need rather than a luxury. We could wait for the feds to get it done. It's true that there's a lot of money that's coming down from federal programs in the coming years. I think the biggest part of the solution to Arkansas's rural broadband gap probably is going to come from those large federal programs. The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund that has been some major announcements related to that have been made recently,
is expected to spend about $20.4 billion over a 10-year period through a reverse auction, similar to what was done with the CAF 2 auction 903 the summer before last, and Arkansas did pretty well out of that. So if you take Arkansas's population share, then we might be able to expect to see $200 million from that program over 10 years, but we have a larger share of the unserved population than of the whole population, more like 3%. So we might get $600 million if we get our fair share
for all of the unserved population. USDA Reconnect is also expected to spend about $550 million a year over several years to come. So there are a lot of federal monies coming. We can't take them for granted. They're competitive processes. We may get more. We may get less. And there isn't necessarily a lot that we can do to leverage that. Well, there may be. We'll do our best to find that. but they're not structured so that we can pull more of those monies down with some kind of a state match. And it'll take them a while to roll out and take them a while to deploy.
And so Governor Hutchinson doesn't want to just wait for that to happen. We want to be a little bit more proactive. We are 50th in digital connectivity, and there's things that the state can do to really move the ball right away. um so um so we're very excited to get some programs launched um and that's why we'll be hoping to get a good vote today um so that we can move forward um and this is a very complicated space we'll do our best to educate you about any aspect of it that you want certainly we have an
open door uh and we we welcome we welcome your questions um and sometimes they'll push past my knowledge. Quite honestly, this is really complicated, and I don't know as much as I would wish in some respects, but I know a lot more than I did recently, and I wanted to thank a lot of the people who've helped me get to where I am, I guess. Larry Frazier from Central Arkansas Telecom has been very helpful in helping us to learn about this. Jonathan Chambers, former FCC economist who works for Connexon, has been very helpful in sort of, you know,
a while back sort of tutoring us through this, and he's also a big force trying to help the electric co-ops get federal money to deploy broadband in the state. So he's a very exciting, valuable player in Arkansas broadband. Bill Vogt of the USDA has been very helpful. Ted Thomas of the Public Service Commission has helped us out a lot. And especially I think I'd give a shout-out to Martha Hill. She really lit the fire. She's the first one that we met with who was getting us inspired, I think, to move the ball on this, and so lots of thanks to all those people.
The biggest change we've made is that we've expanded the areas that can apply for Arkansas Real Connect funding. That was what we heard coming through the most loudly from the last round of feedback is that we had at that time limited to incorporated municipalities, and we've now expanded it so that unincorporated communities can apply through county judges and counties can apply through the county judge. So we hope that sort of satisfies the ask that we got the last time around,
not just at that session, but we followed up with a lot of the people who had brought some of those criticisms forward. And I think we've heard people, and at this point we hope this is the program that
Speaker 179
1:18:36
you were looking for and that you want to support. I wanted to mention there was a bit of a
Speaker 166
1:18:43
misunderstanding last time about the role local public officials play. Salem County Judge Jeff Airy came in and said, local public officials aren't in the broadband business. You should be working directly with the ISPs. Well, we agree with that. That's absolutely right.
With a few exceptions, local governments usually aren't in a position to deploy broadband. And so that's why we expect ISPs to do the deployment and we'll be giving ISPs the money. But the role that local public officials play in this vision is that, first of all, they would represent the interests of the local constituents in negotiating with the ISPs. They would rank the projects that ISPs offer in terms of what serves their constituents' needs best.
And then we're going to need to lean on them at the back end to help us monitor the program, because we don't have staff on the ground throughout the state to see whether ISPs are actually doing what they said. We'll do our best to come up with other information means, but part of the design of this is that if you're in an Arkansas Rural Connect footprint, a couple years down the line, deployment's been certified to be complete, but the company won't give you broadband, you can call your mayor, your county judge, and complain about it, and that would get forwarded back to us, and we could bring that up with the ISP and make sure that that got done.
So you'd really get a right to get broadband if you live in one of those footprints, And local public officials are crucial to kind of helping us realize that, helping us to enforce that. I think that gives us a program that's a little bit more intuitive. People can understand whether they do have a right to broadband or whether they don't and why. And it also gets around some of the kind of gerrymandering of service areas that some of the federal programs have. So I'm sure we'll learn a lot along the way. We can adjust course. If we have future funding rounds, we can make rule changes in response to what we find works well, what doesn't, what's needed.
I met with Stephen Meeks a little while ago, and he mentioned that some of you may be aware of the idea of a reverse auction. This is a pretty smart way of allocating funds, and this is kind of what we're doing here. We're prioritizing it based on who can get the most people connected the most cheaply. So this is a lot like a reverse auction. We don't have some of the fancy features like second price, and I can explain why if you're interested, but we
Speaker 179
1:21:06
are kind of designing this like a reverse auction. There was some criticism before of the population 500 rule.
Speaker 166
1:21:13
So we still have that in there in a form. We do want to make sure that we don't get overwhelmed with really small projects. At some point, we may push the limits of our own capacity. But at the same time, we've set it up so that unincorporated communities and small towns can get together and jointly apply so that we'd have a population
Speaker 179
1:21:37
of 500 in a footprint that consists of several towns. So hopefully that's a satisfactory workaround.
And, yeah, other than that, we'd like to get a good vote. We're excited to get started. Go ahead, Senator
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:21:56
Irvin. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for allowing me the questions. I think that, I think there's a
couple of people you left off your list to thank. That would be the members of the General Assembly. You do realize that this was an initiative that came from this body, that this was an
initiative that was driven by Senator Breanne Davis and Representative Deanne Vaught. and because of their hard work, and I believe all members of the General Assembly voted for that piece of legislation, is why we are here today. So we in the General Assembly fully understand the needs. We fully understand the fact that we're 50th in digital connectivity. We understand that, which is why we started working on this last fall.
So the criticisms to the way the rules and the regulations were then promulgated or created was because it really didn't fit the legislative intent of the legislature's intention. This is absolutely, we partner with the executive branch, but this was driven primarily by those two women and the members of the General Assembly that really said, absolutely, we've got to do something about this, because previously we had legislation on the books that made our state the fifth most restrictive in the
United States of America when it came to the regulations. So I would just caution you to make sure that you understand that this is a priority from the General Assembly and that this program, although you work in the executive branch under Governor Hutchinson, which we are grateful for because we presented this to him back before the legislation was even finalized, and he supported what we were presenting. So I want to make sure that I remind you of that because it's really important that you
work with those members of the legislature who drove this initiative, and that would be Senator Davis and Representative Deanne Vaught and many other people. And so I think my question for you is the approach and the process. The approach to this that I think you are presenting is to create a new state program that would basically pick the grants. Is that correct? Because I'm questioning that because yesterday there was an intergovernment contract between
Economic Development Commission and UAMS and I question that because it's $250,000 and so I and in the text it says that they would review 34 applications for the Arkansas Rural Connect grant program for two main purposes and so why is it 34 programs like why are we deeming that it's only going to be 34 applications.
Do you already know the projects that you want to fund? And so why is it 34? And why are we being asked to review this contract for this before the final rules
Speaker 172
1:25:28
and regulations are approved? Okay, so yeah, you're absolutely right. I would also want to
Speaker 179
1:25:33
extend thanks to members of the General Assembly, especially Senator Brianne Davis and Diane Vaughn for spearheading Act 198.
That definitely opened the door to this. I think not only that,
Speaker 166
1:25:46
it also gives scope for municipalities, towns across the state to apply for federal programs. So I think that was a great step forward. And, yeah, thanks for that. and um yeah certainly we would love
Speaker 179
1:25:57
to meet with i mentioned earlier we you know we do want to have we have an open door and again i mean any anytime you're interested in this like my phone number's available certainly give me a call um set up a meeting we we
Speaker 166
1:26:13
love to get your insights we love
to you know explain what we're doing and so so yeah absolutely um so you're right um now let's see um so okay so question about process um why did we um get the contract approved or ask for the the contract uh to be approved before we had the rules finalized um we we want to move fast so once the rules are finalized we want to be able to you know hit go right away um so we wanted to sort of get our ducks in a row if we could now the 34 applications um that was we don't know how many
applications there will be there might be five there might be 200 if there's
Speaker 179
1:26:56
200 it will be in a tricky situation because um we we might run out of money to to pay them to to review contracts and i i'm not sure what'll have that probably won't happen i guess we'll cost that bit when you come
Speaker 166
1:27:10
to it there's a lot of uncertainties i think when you're standing up a new program um they needed to schedule their workload so if they think okay we've got these these network engineers um we've We've got project managers, we've got to book everybody's time
and figure out if we're undertaking a commitment that we can't actually do. Well, we're going to need to make some assumptions for our own planning. If it turns out there's more applications, then we'll have to adjust somehow. If it turns out there are fewer, then they just won't be able to put in the work and they won't bill us for all the money that we have budgeted for that. So we'll just have to see. um and um i'm
Speaker 179
1:27:51
not sure i answered everything that you asked so if you could um ask again if
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:27:55
there's anything i missed but no i i i appreciate it i mean it says we will review 34 applications for the arkansas rural connect grant program so it doesn't say 200 or 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 it says 34 so to me that that makes it sound like you already know where this money's going to go and And so I have a hard time with this because it's an approach and a process. And I honestly don't understand the need to contract with UAMS, which I don't understand why UAMS.
I don't understand that at all. So you'll have to explain that one to me. But I don't understand the need to spend $250,000 when I feel like, I mean, I work closely with a mayor, okay, of a small town. And just because it's a small town and just because it's the mayor of a small town doesn't mean that there are people out there that are not capable of being able to perform this task on their own and pull down that federal money. What they need is the seed money to be able to use to hire the engineering design that they need, to hire the different types of components that they need to qualify or to apply for that federal grant funding.
But there's a lot of small towns and county judges that are fully capable of doing that. So I don't understand the need to create a state program that's going to then direct, you know, who gets the grant money and who doesn't get the grant money. So that is my question, because I feel like your rules and regulations, I mean, you did, and I appreciate that you responded to the input that we gathered to match the rules and regulations with the legislative intent of the legislation we passed.
And so, I mean, the point is, you know, we are policymakers, and so we expect when we write a bill and we pass a bill, we expect that we partner with the executive branch in a meaningful way, a meaningful way. That's the point I'm trying to make, to create the program so the policy can match up and we partner with that because we're policymakers. So it's not just the executive branch that are policymakers. makers. We are. So we are, we work incredibly hard on this legislation. We have in our head,
this is the way it needs to go. And then we try to partner in a meaningful way with the executive branch to create that program, to implement it so that it benefits our citizens. Okay. So my question though is, I mean, we've hit some stumbling blocks because the first rules did not do that now you've responded and i appreciate that but this threw me for a loop which was this contract and so i again i don't understand this and so if you can ask those answer those
questions that i just asked you that would be great um
Speaker 179
1:30:52
if you dig into the text there it says in places if there's more applications we'll spend more if there's your applications it'll spend no i can give
Speaker 166
1:31:02
you i can give you a copy of it sure i mean Right. I didn't bring that today because that wasn't on the agenda for today.
Speaker 193
1:31:14
No, you're here. It relates to these rules and regulations. Right. So why UAMS, you asked?
Speaker 166
1:31:23
Well, UAMS has the capabilities to do this because there's something there called the Institute for Digital Health and Innovation, which is a successor to, or I suppose the administrator of, the e-link program, which was stood up with federal grant funds several years back. And they've been running a telemedicine network throughout the state. They're within state government, which I think is an advantage because they're going to stay here. They're not a fly-by-night consultant that's going to come in and out. You know, sometimes, I mean, some consultants are very reputable,
and I don't want to say things against them in general. But there are some advantages to doing business with somebody who's already in state government and has the public interest of Arkansas in mind as part of their founding mission. They have the communications engineers on staff. At the end of the day, if somebody submits a project and claims that they'll lay fiber to such and such homes and they show their network designs and so forth, should I be the one who's judging whether they can actually deliver? No, I'm not a communications engineer.
I'm more of a policy guy. So that's why we need to outsource that to somebody with the relevant expertise, and UAMS is able to do that. I mean, I think we'd probably spend more if we tried to get somebody who was outside state government who was new. But also the procurement process would be more difficult. It's a long story. So that's why UAMS, again, the 34, Before, I apologize if the draftsmanship of that contract wasn't clear. We don't know the number of applications beforehand.
That was just an assumption that was made as a basis for writing a budget. And, you know, sometimes you have to deal with uncertainty somehow. Thank you. And I don't want
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:33:09
to just continue to be combative. And I'm so sorry. I know that there are members of this committee that may want to answer questions. But when
you say 34, it's not like you said 20. I mean, 34 is a pretty specific number. I mean, you don't just, and so I'm sorry. I do appreciate that. We definitely don't know how many applications. I don't know why we need a procurement.
I don't know why we need a whole, I don't know why we need a procurement. I don't know why we need to even hire a consultant to be a gatekeeper of this program unless it's going to be directed to just telemedicine projects. I don't know. And then that goes against what the intention was and everything you put in your report. So I am suspect. Thank you. Mr. Chair.
Speaker 80
1:33:54
Thank you, Senator. I have a question, and then we'll go to Representative Whitaker.
Speaker 70
1:34:01
Logically, to me, the Department of Information Systems, how many counties does the State Department of Information Systems, how many counties does that department go into?
Speaker 10
1:34:11
Does anybody have a clue here? We had some here earlier. i'm not
Speaker 182
1:34:19
a representative of dis but i believe that's all 75 counties
Speaker 70
1:34:24
okay how many how many do uh the uams and how many do they serve i mean and go into how many of those i'm not sure how
Speaker 166
1:34:35
many um counties are served by by e-link um they certainly have locations throughout the state In a sense, we're just working with them for their technical expertise. It's not a telemedicine contract. They just have communications engineers, and so they're going to help us assess whether new network designs are. In that sense, it's not relevant to our purposes how
Speaker 179
1:34:57
many counties exactly they have a presence in, but I could certainly
Speaker 70
1:35:02
look into that. I mean, it's more logical to me to have the DIS to have that purpose,
Speaker 209
1:35:08
but go ahead, Representative Whitaker. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Dr. Smith, just to follow up on Senator
Speaker 210
1:35:19
Irvin's question, and I'm hoping we can just peel this back to its rawest form and you can give us as direct an answer as you can. Is there anything magical about the number 34? Is there a basis for that number? What was the logical basis to put that number out there? Was it derived from some best guesstimate of how many might apply?
Please let us know why that number is in there. And if it's not important, please assure us of that. Yeah, it's
Speaker 166
1:35:56
don't know how many projects are going to be proposed. We have had a bunch of conversations with people. Sometimes we've had signals about, I mean, we asked when we did the provider survey for the state broadband manager's report, we asked ISPs to say whether they were interested in participating in Arkansas World Connect.
And we got, I think, eight yes and six maybe. That's out of 16 responses. There's 133 ISPs in the state. But there's many a slip twits the cup in the lip, as the saying goes. It might be that they're interested now, but when they look into it, they'll find, yeah, we can't actually make a business case for any of the towns that, you know, look like they'd be eligible or for any of the counties that look like they'd be eligible. Um, it's, it's up to their business judgment. Um, and so there's just a lot of uncertainty here and yeah, no, absolutely nothing magical about, about 34. We, um,
Speaker 210
1:36:54
if I may follow up, go ahead. Can you give us some idea of
Speaker 172
1:37:08
how that number was arrived at? well um idhi uh proposed that number um and i they made that assumption
Speaker 166
1:37:16
i mean what we what we focused on more was the um the per application cost um and i mean the key is that we need the
service we have the professional services budget and uh if it's less than 34 we'll still have it our professional services budget and we can use it for something else and if it's a little bit more than 34 we'll still have the professional services budget for that and if it's you know five times as many then we'll have to think about some kind of triage or you know see how we would do it i doubt that it will be especially in the first round because there's not that much money available um so um so that's how that was done and i mean i've never negotiated this kind of a
intergovernmental services contract before it. So, I mean, in that sense, I guess I'm
Speaker 179
1:38:01
kind of a rookie. And so any advice you can give would be
Speaker 70
1:38:08
welcome. Thank you, doctor. Appreciate you answering those questions on the contract, but members, if we can stay with the rules and
Speaker 80
1:38:15
questions about those rules. Go ahead, Senator Davis. Thank
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:38:22
you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple questions um one is i was wondering if wireless is included um in these rules and if not why
um and then also um the intent for the legislation that we passed this session um part of it was to really allow communities to be eligible for some of this federal funding because there's just so much on the table and based on our current laws they weren't even eligible to apply for that funding. So by making it, you know, less strict here in the state, we were hoping to empower those communities to go after that money. So my question is, in light of that, what is your office doing to help empower those communities, reach out to them, let them know what's available,
how it's available, and put together a plan so that they can successfully apply for, you know, these billions of dollars that are available at the federal level. I'm kind of curious as to what your office is doing to help empower our communities across the state to be able to
Speaker 166
1:39:23
do this? Okay, well, so to the first question, the answer is yes, wireless is included. To the second question, we would love to help with USDA Reconnect. We offered technical assistance for applicants last year. We're planning to do the same thing this year. We're a little bit
bottleneck at the moment because um usda won't tell us why they made the decisions on the last round it was somewhat disappointing um we did get um at least one project i think is known to be publicly approved and i'm trying to sort out what i've heard and what i'm allowed to say but um but two big projects that would have been very great to get um with arkansas valley electric cooperative and South Central Connect, which would cover large territories, get a lot of money to deliver great fiber-to-home projects, got rejected.
And I've spoken a little bit with Jonathan Chambers about reasons for why, and the key is that it hasn't really been made public why. So we've been sort of trying to reach out to the congressional delegation and stuff and try to get more information on why so that we could come up with a good strategy for the next round. Because, you know, I don't want to waste ISP's time and say, hey, we've got technical assistance to offer if we don't know how to put together a good application.
And it's hard for us, or even for Connexon, who knows more than we do, to put together a good application if we don't know how the USDA is assessing projects. We don't know more than we do now about how the USDA is assessing those projects. So I'd appreciate any help that anybody can give with, you know, trying to tap into federal representatives and find out and maybe get the USD to release a little bit more of that information. Go ahead, Senator Davis. Sorry, a few follow-ups.
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:41:18
Have you worked with David Branscom at all? Have you been working with him to try to understand some of that stuff? And, I mean, it's my understanding other states are, you know, successfully qualifying for some of this funding. Like money's already been distributed. So, you know, I would think that there would be some kind of way to find, you know, what has worked for those other states rather than just reinventing the wheel. Have you reached out to other states to see how they're doing it
Speaker 172
1:41:44
successfully? Yes, we've worked with David Branscombe, and we, I think in general,
Speaker 166
1:41:51
electric co-ops didn't do very well in this round. and so that's I guess that that's the key we need that's what we would want to figure out why it goes back to just what I said before I mean we want the data from the USDA in order to try to figure out why were the applications that were put in last time rejected if we could improve those applications and and get those through that would be a great win for the state but right now it's kind of a black
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:42:22
Thank you. Also, in regards to the wireless question, I'm seeing in the comments that you received that, is this saying that you guys provide a higher score to networks that deploy fiber, or that was just a comment that they were saying you should score higher? Are we scoring higher to people who are deploying fiber over the wireless? that was that was a comment somebody
Speaker 176
1:42:46
said that they should that we should give a higher score to fiber projects um and and
Speaker 166
1:42:52
we're not but local public officials can so in the way we've written
the rules local public officials can rank the projects that are being proposed and we'll fund the one they like best as long as our budget allows it um so um i'm probably not going too far out on a limb here to say that if somebody's offering a fiber to the home project for your area and you can choose between that and a fixed wireless project that somebody else is offering, probably the fiber-to-the-home project is going to be more appealing. I mean, I don't want to prejudge that too much, but it's a pretty well-known feature of these different technologies. The fiber has higher capacity
and is longer-lasting, lower operating expenses after deployment, and so forth. So if somebody is offering you a fiber project, that's likely to be the best project and the one that you would want to rank first. And so in that sense, there may be some favoring
Speaker 179
1:43:43
of fiber, not directly, but through the preferences of local public officials. Thank you. I
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:43:52
certainly don't want to be too harsh. I know that you and your office have spent so much time on this.
But it is frustrating just to see, you know, a creation of a whole new program when we have something at the federal level that is passing out literally hundreds of billions of dollars. And I would just love to see focus and even, you know, money put towards being able to get these resources and information out to communities, you know, however that looks. But really spend time and resources behind that to really enable our communities, our counties, people that don't have coverage to understand how they can get funds for that rather than spending state dollars on that and creating a whole new program.
And it just I don't understand that. And I just think that it was really important to us to allow our communities to have a hand in this and be able to partner up where they needed to with ISPs to be able to provide broadband to their communities when providers refuse to provide it and counted as provided by census blocks and not bring it out to certain homes or places that they just didn't want to. And so it's just, you know, I guess I just don't fully understand why we've created a brand new program.
It is frustrating to see something that I know several of us, you know, the Republican women worked so hard on to pass something like this, to lift some of those regulations. And seeing it twisted in a way that we didn't really intend, it's just hard to sort of get my mind around and fully understand. And I certainly want to do what's best for people across the state and get broadband to them. So like I said, I don't intend to be harsh towards you or your office. I know, like I said, you guys have put a lot of time and energy into it. I would just like to see time and energy into something that will yield results at the federal level
and bringing some of those hundreds of billions of dollars our way to get broadband to our people here. Thank you. Sure,
Speaker 193
1:45:49
and we would love to work with you on standing something like
Speaker 166
1:45:53
that up as well. I mean, we've tried to do some of that. Well, before my office existed, but my team
Speaker 179
1:45:59
worked on challenging the maps for the Mobility Fund 2 that the FCC had, which is
Speaker 166
1:46:05
now being called the 5G Fund and is eventually going to be rolled out. That would be another reverse auction focused more on the mobile data space.
Sometimes opportunities like that come along where something state government can do may be able to effectively influence the federal government and bring more dollars into the state. We're on the lookout for opportunities. Now, usually those programs are not designed to encourage that. It's more a dealing between the feds and the ISPs. And so you may have ideas that we're not seeing about how we could help ISPs tap into federal funds. And if so, we would absolutely love to hear more about those.
I don't think this would be either or. We can do a grant program at the state level and also develop a better strategy for tapping into the federal money that's involved. And certainly I could understand resistance to standing up a new government program. As I said, I know a lot of you are conservatives. Governor Hutchinson is also a conservative. But I think we're really moved by the acuteness of the need in many areas and the fact that we are 50th. And yes, these federal programs are there. They've been around for a while, but they're pretty hard to apply for.
And sometimes it's very opaque why you're getting refused when i mean arkansas valley cooperative put a lot of work into that application it was a pretty cool application and we don't know why it got turned down and that's that's a lot of times what you run into dealing with the feds and so governor hutchinson wants to be more proactive than just to wait for that to work out any other questions from members
Speaker 147
1:47:47
Seeing none, I'll make a motion to adopt the role for none of the discussion on it.
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
1:48:01
has a question. Okay. Representative Barry, if you want to go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a quick question I was reading here. No Arkansas company has been named as Wardees. awardees, however, approximately $375 million left, that money is available to whom? And
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
1:48:26
I guess my question is, just simply, who is that $375 million, who is eligible for that? Is that the U.S. or is that Arkansas? I think that has
Speaker 172
1:48:38
been allocated between the time when we put together this report and now. We wrote the report when the USDA results were being gradually sort of trickling out.
Speaker 166
1:48:47
And so, I mean, in that sense, this is already obsolete because at that time we thought maybe Arkansas Valley Electric Cooperative might get
Speaker 179
1:48:54
it or South Central Connect might get it.
It hadn't been said that they wouldn't. And so we
Speaker 226
1:49:01
know more now than we did then. Well, these, uh, Arkansas Valley and some of the
Representative Stan Berry
Unverified
1:49:08
other co-ops have, there are some figures here that, but they, they have not been, uh, granted any money. No, unfortunately not.
Speaker 70
1:49:24
Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Is there any other questions? Co-Chair has made a motion to review, and we'd like to have discussion on that motion.
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:49:36
Go ahead, Co-Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I made the motion to go ahead and to adopt these rules, and just a little background. Back when I became a member of the General Assembly, I attended a lot of meetings discussing the broadband issue, and there was a lot of discussion, a lot of discussion, a lot of discussion, nothing ever got done. Back in 2015, Speaker Gillum at that time assigned myself and the technology committee to begin looking into this issue to find how we could actually start making progress on this issue.
So beginning in 2015, the IT committee traveled around the state. We did a lot of work on broadband to try to figure out how we could get broadband out into rural areas. In 2017, I actually proposed legislation with the help of the committee to try to move the state forward, to try to actually begin setting some things up back in 2017. Unfortunately, the legislation failed. There's a lot of powerful lobbies when it comes to this industry, and so we couldn't get it done.
In 2019, I'm very thankful that the initiative by the ladies got passed and and helped remove some of the hurdles that we were trying to get rid of in 2017, but were unable to. And so now we've come to a place, and as we did our survey around the state, unfortunately, broadband comes, it's a money issue. There are just some places of the state that you cannot make a business case to get into.
The state of Kentucky decided that they wanted to set up and start getting into the broadband business themselves, made a 30-year commitment to do so, and unfortunately, because of changes in technology and administrations, that program has fallen into chaos. What we decided the best route here in Arkansas was to do was to, A, try to work with the federal government and those grants. The state, our folks here have received hundreds of millions of dollars over the last couple
of years to get broadband deployed across the state. This is a, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars issue. And so the $25 million that we're talking about here is actually, it's a lot of money, but to the scale of this problem, it's a very small drop in the bucket. In 2019, I carried the legislation to create the Broadband Manager's Office because one of the concerns I had, like Senator Davis just mentioned, was there's a lot of small ISPs who would love to be able to serve out in some of these rural areas,
but it's a matter of getting a hold of those resources. I actually worked for a small ISP, and they spent months trying to get access to some federal monies. And unfortunately, you know, small company, they just didn't have the expertise, and unfortunately their application failed. I am extremely encouraged by what's happening in the Broadband Manager's Office. Obviously, it's very new. They're just starting out, so I'm encouraged that they are working on trying to leverage federal dollars. I'm encouraged by the fact that they are trying to reach out to the local ISPs.
I think that's one of the problems, is getting that expertise out to those small mom-and-pop internet providers across the state. There's almost 80 internet service providers across the state. The majority of them are small. The efforts with this program, again, $25 million, $3,000 a household. You're only talking about connecting 10,000 customers at most with this money. So are there going to be problems with this program?
Are there going to be learning involved? Obviously. I think that's going to be the case. But we've been trying, or at least I know I have, been looking for years to try to find state money to try to help improve this situation. We've got $25 million on the table to begin looking. The SpaceX initiative that the two senators brought up, I've actually been talking with SpaceX. I've been following that development for the last almost two years now.
They have launched the first 180 satellites in order for the system to become operational. They're going to have to, I think 800 is what they're saying before they can begin to get the bases. But eventually they're talking 12,000 satellites to get in orbit. That's going to take time. Once those satellites get in orbit, I've actually asked them to come present to the committee. They're not actually to the place yet where they're willing to do that because there's still a lot of unanswered questions. But from what I've been reading, only 1,000 customers roughly per satellite.
So I think it will help the issue, but I don't know if it's going to be a cure-all. The other problem that they're facing is each customer has to have an antenna installed on their house. Last I heard, that equipment is going to run about $1,000 per subscriber, which is going to be very problematic. So until that problem gets solved, hopefully they will get it solved so that those folks who are out in rural areas that this can be a potential solution for.
But until that happens, that could be two years down the road. It could be five years down the road. I hope it's sooner rather than later. But I think in the interim, it would be good for us to go ahead and approve these rules, go ahead and let's start getting out there. Everyone may not like exactly what's fully in here, but what has always happened in the past is we sit around as a legislative body and we squabble over the details because each one of us wants to get our way in it,
and nothing ever gets done. If we don't pass this today, ALC doesn't pass it. It's another month that goes by where we're doing nothing to try to solve this problem. So with that being said, I would encourage the committee to approve this so we can move forward and see how it goes. And, you know, potentially as we go down the road, there's probably going to be tweaks that are going to need to be made to it. But let's go ahead and start doing something instead of talking about it all the time. So with that, I would appreciate a good vote.
Speaker 57
1:56:02
Any other discussion? Anybody have questions? Go ahead, Senator. So just process
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:56:12
question. It goes from this committee and then to ALC rules and regs committee. Is that correct? Okay, thank you. It'll go full. It goes here, but then it goes to the straight ALC, full ALC? Just ALC, yeah. The full body?
Yes. When? This Friday? Friday. And when were these rules
Senator Missy Irvin
Unverified
1:56:49
posted. Yesterday? Yep. So that is, so today's Wednesday, and then there's
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:56:57
Friday. Okay. So let me follow up on that, Senator. The rules were actually available late December, and all the committee members,
you mailed them to all the committee members late December, right? So the members of the committee have had this
Speaker 70
1:57:24
for two weeks roughly now. Do you have any other questions? Any other points of discussion? Go
Speaker 31
1:57:31
ahead, Representative Brown. I'm just a little confused. What does UAMS have to do with these rules?
Speaker 242
1:57:38
And why would UAMS be a consultant on this? They're medical people. They're not broadband
Speaker 70
1:57:46
people. I think that has to do with the contract part that was in discussion earlier.
Speaker 70
1:57:57
be the contractor? MR. No, that's a separate contract deal that will be in AOC Friday. That contract was probably in procurement, peer
Speaker 70
1:58:13
will be Friday. MS. It's very strange. MR. If there's no other questions, this motion would require a second.
Speaker 70
1:58:41
the members. So since this motion did not get a second, we will extend this into next month, I guess.
Speaker 70
1:59:05
G, the data-sharing and data-driven decision-making task force report. I think that's the co-chairs. You're welcome to proceed. All right, colleagues. I won't be
Representative Stephen Meeks
Unverified
1:59:15
real long on this, but we had legislation passed this last session that set up the data task force to look at how the state is utilizing data across the state.
You've got a copy of the final report in front of you. I just want to focus real briefly on the recommendations that the task force made. On page five, you'll see a list. There's nine different items that are listed there. And the recommendations include everything for agencies to continue working towards creating a centralized data hub so that state agencies are sharing data and making the data available to each other
to create more efficiencies and simplicity in state government. We also are second recommendations, the Arkansas Research Center continue to assist the agencies. The legislature should consider and pass legislation requiring the agencies to negotiate and enter into those data sharing agreements with DIS. As we go forward, my co-chair, Senator English, and I are going to try to make a presentation to LC. I think it's next month, and we'll have more information about that.
One of the things that Representative Love talked about is that we need to look at our cybersecurity requirements across the state. One of the issues that we found is when there's a cybersecurity breach, there is very little to no reporting of that to, say, legislative audit. So it makes it difficult for us to get a full grip on just how big of a problem this is across the state and to encourage the executive branch to come up with basically a statewide policy on how we're going to do cybersecurity.
We've also recommended that the Senate should create a technology-specific committee in that we've also talked about maybe here in the House looking at expanding the role of the Technology Committee. As you all know, technology is becoming more and more of an issue with cyber or broadband infrastructure. The Data and Analytics Division within DIS, if you look on the back page,
and again, I'm trying to rush through this. What page is it on? On the very back page of the report, you'll see where we have recommended the creation of a data division with NDIS under our chief data officer and privacy officer. And what these divisions would do is work with these various government agencies to create business cases for data use across government. And then we talked about cybersecurity process.
We've also looked at requests of the legislative council created data sharing and data-driven decision-making subcommittees. The purpose of that is the data committee task force that we created was dissolved at the end of this year. and the subcommittee will allow that work to continue and to make sure that ALC, which is, of course, our legislative body when we're not in session, to stay apprised of what's happening in the data arena. And then finally, that we need to work towards creating a citizens portal
that would allow citizens to have better access to what's going on in state government. So, for example, imagine a future where you, as a citizen, You either pull out your phone and open your Arkansas app or you log into a website. And there at that one location, there's all your information. You've got to renew your driver's license, your taxes, your voter ID, hunter registration. Everything where you interact with state governments, all in one nice, easy location. Makes it simple and easy for you to interact with your government. You want to pull up your sample ballot, all in one location.
So with that, again, just to report, let you know what the outcome of that was. So please read through the report that's provided. If anyone has any questions, please get with Senator English or I. And going forward, we'll try to expound on these ideas. But at
Speaker 80
2:03:41
least give you a preliminary look at it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Representative Meeks. Is
Speaker 70
2:03:46
there any other points or things that can be brought before the committee? If not, we will be adjourned until the next committee time.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Comments from the Chairs
1. Senator Blake Johnson
2. Representative Stephen Meeks
C. Consideration to Approve the Minutes of November 6, 2019 [EXHIBIT C]
D. Presentation and discussion on Interim Study Proposal 2019-144 -- Conduct a Study to Create a
Current Inventory of State Government Buildings, Building Systems, Supporting Technology and Data
[EXHIBIT D1]
1. Comments by Sponsor Representative Stephen Meeks
2. Ms. Yessica Jones, Director, Department of Information Services
3. Ms. Anne Laidlaw, Director, Arkansas Building Authority
4. Mr. Fred Gordy, Director of Cybersecurity, Intelligent Buildings
5. Mr. Scott Lanigan, Senior Manager for Government Services, Intelligent Buildings [EXHIBIT D2]
6. Mr. Tom Shircliff, Principle, Intelligent Buildings
7. Committee Discussion
E. Legislative Report on Fee Changes and information on Driver’s Test Scheduling [EXHIBITS E1-E3]
- Mr. Bob Sanders, General Manager, Information Network of Arkansas
F. Arkansas Broadband Manager’s Report [EXHIBIT F]
- Dr. Nathan Smith, Research Director, Arkansas Department of Commerce
G. Discussion of Data-Sharing and Data-Driven Decision-Making Task Force Report [EXHIBIT G]
- Representative Stephen Meeks
- Dr. Nathan Smith, Research Director, Arkansas Department of Commerce
I. Other Business
J. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Speaker 4
Speaker 5
Representative Stephen Meeks
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Ann Laidlaw
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Senator Ricky Hill
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Representative Fredrick J. Love
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Scott Landing
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Senator Mark Johnson
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Senator Missy Irvin
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Senator Breanne Davis
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Representative Stan Berry
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