Thank you for participating in the Digital Needs and Readiness Assessment for your community!
You will shortly be receiving an emailed summary of your responses to the assessment questions, with the intention of providing a valuable reference for your preparations toward addressing the digital needs of your community. Our goal is to help you and your community transform your local economic opportunities, quality of life, and access to essential services through broadband and digital infrastructure.
We recognize that elected officials and local leaders may need different types of assistance at various stages of their journey to avoid pitfalls, save time and money, and maximize community benefits. Below are the key questions and steps as you move forward through a digital infrastructure and transformation process:
Strategic Networks Group and Next Century Cities are pleased to offer lessons learned and steps and guidance through a digital infrastructure and transformation process – please see below some examples of how we can help.
Also, we would love to hear from you on what will help you the most in achieving your success!
How we can help
Next Century Cities offers extensive free resources to our members on a wide range of topics no matter at what stage you are in your digital transformation journey, including our newly released Toolkit for Communities.
In addition, Strategic Networks Group and Next Century Cities will be pleased to work with you to tailor a number of other activities to meet your need, including:
Webinars
We can provide webinars on a number of relevant topics to help get your team, partners, and local collaborators on the same page toward a shared vision and set of goals. Topics include:
- Why Broadband Matters – Broadband is more than better and faster connectivity. Learn how broadband delivers meaningful community benefits beyond the business case.
- Getting Ready – Digital initiatives can be complex and long-term, involving many organizations. Being ready to achieve successful outcomes requires early and effective engagement of partners and stakeholders aligned to shared goals.
- The Economics of Broadband – How does broadband drive economic growth, and what can you do about it?
- Owning Your Broadband Future – What can communities do to address their broadband needs when incumbents don’t step up? What models of municipal ownership, such as open access, can succeed, where others may fail?
Webinars can be scheduled on request. Additional webinar topics can be provided as needed.
Broadband Workshops
On-site broadband workshops can be provided that align with your current stage of preparation for a broadband initiative. Workshops are an effective way to engage your team and stakeholders by getting them to work together on practical solutions to address your unique community needs.
We work with you to define the goals and scope of the workshop and bring experts to facilitate practical working sessions.
Digital Economy Demand Checkup
The Digital Economy Demand Checkup service provides SNG’s industry-leading digital economy metrics and data collection tools for localities considering broadband and digital infrastructure projects. The service is designed to be a practical and cost-effective way for localities to assess whether they have enough of an addressable market by gathering demand data directly from residents, businesses, and organizations. Assessing broadband demand is one of the first steps a locality can and should take as they decide where and how to get started.
Economic Feasibility Assessments
You know you need to do something for your digital future, but what can you, or should you, do? How do you know that investing in digital infrastructure will pay off for your community or region? And how do you answer that question without blowing your budget?
SNG’s Economic Feasibility Assessment can quickly and cost-effectively assess up-front whether community benefits outweigh the costs of investing in broadband and digital infrastructure before, and often instead of, investing in costly feasibility studies.
Community Readiness Assessments
Whether building-out broadband, digital infrastructure, or a smart community initiative, there are critical factors for readiness and sustainability that lead to successful outcomes. You need to get ready in the right way. Whatever strategy and plan you choose to address your community’s digital future needs, actually making it happen requires consensus and collaboration.
Engaging stakeholders across your community in this process gets everyone on the same page, builds buy-in, and avoids unanticipated issues before they happen. Your leaders and elected officials will want to be assured that your project is ready, your stakeholders are in alignment, and your community has what it takes to get your project across the finish line.
SNG’s Community Readiness Assessments enables local leaders to understand if they have the right resources, skills, commitment and support to efficiently and successfully complete their projects.
Broadband Impact and Market Assessment
You have a strategy and plan for digital infrastructure that makes sense and should achieve your goals. Investing in digital infrastructure is a major undertaking. Planning for and ensuring the outcomes from your investment is essential. Having solid data on market demand ensure that you know how, how much, and when you should invest so that your investment is sustainable.
SNG’s Broadband Impact and Market Assessment builds on decades of experience in collecting the right data from your market so that you can move forward with confidence that you have the demand to achieve your goals and a baseline for measuring outcomes.
About Next Century Cities
Across the country, innovative municipalities are recognizing the importance of leveraging gigabit level internet to attract new business and create jobs, improve health care and education, ensure civic participation, and connect residents to new opportunities. Next Century Cities is committed to celebrating these successes, demonstrating their value, and helping other cities to realize the full power of truly high-speed, affordable, and accessible broadband. Next Century Cities believes that there is no single pathway to a smart, effective approach to next-generation broadband. What matters is meaningful choice, dedicated leadership, and smart collaboration.
About Strategic Networks Group (SNG)
Founded in 1998, Strategic Networks Group (SNG) helps communities and regions address the economic, social, and connectivity challenges of broadband, digital infrastructure and smart community services. Today SNG is globally recognized as the leader in helping clients assess the value and then drive economic and community benefits from investing in digital infrastructure. We work with communities and regions across North America and internationally, as well as agencies at a federal, state, and regional level working on advancing economies in a digital world.
SNG is recognized as the world leader in the econometrics of digital infrastructure and maximizing the benefits from online applications, which include smart community services. Applying our expertise and proven methodologies across the globe, we help countries, states, counties, and municipalities maximize the impacts of investments in digital infrastructure and service transformation.
Research Findings
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