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Civics and Government


Google Fiber could change the way our citizens and our government interact. A more direct line between the home and our city's leaders would bring the city of Huntington closer to its constituents, resulting in a 
more informed, more engaged citizenry as well as a more effective and efficient city government. Citizen and community involvement in the stewardship of our city could reach new heights with the powerful new set of communication and connectivity tools Google Fiber would catalyze in Huntington for both individuals and civic groups like Create Huntington or the Huntington Community Gardens to strengthen their arms and expand their reach into the community.



Here are some ideas we were able to come up with for how Google Fiber in Huntington could improve the quality of our local government and our civic groups. Maybe they'll inspire you to submit some of your own ideas!

  • Cameras and dedicated two-way communication channels between emergency responders and hospitals could allow us to triage patients and begin treating/preparing to treat them before they even arrive at the hospital.

  • Families connected with Google Fiber would have better access to healthy living/eating/etc. advice and community support networks (including those for drug and alcohol abuse and other illnesses)

  • Tools that facilitate high-yield discussion like Google Moderator would provide a more visible, more effective way for students to ask questions in class. The discussions wouldn't have to be limited to single classrooms, either, allowing for a more consistent quality of education from school to school.

  • It should absolutely be up to citizens like you and me how much of our private/personal information we want our government to have access to (like email, library records, tracking and other data about our vehicles or mobile phones, etc.). The information age is going to demand that many of our laws -- particularly our privacy laws -- be updated, and much of the early debate on that could be shaped right here, in our brand-spankin' new online city hall! I'm pretty sure that's how the Framers would've wanted it.

  • "Off-line" data services like telephone, public access television, and aradio won't be necessary when next-generation devices inevitably evolve from ubiquitous high-bandwidth connectivity. Our economy would benefit from having that start here, AND we'd get to be the lab from which all the cool new experimental models of broadcasting data (to new things, like your TV, your car, or your microwave...). Even if our contracts for any of these public services are still in effect, we are ABSOLUTELY free to encourage people to try new avenues like Skype, Google Voice, Hulu, or YouTube, which I think would outperform their ancestral counterparts by leaps and bounds with Google Fiber in the Home.

  • City council meetings and all other public discourse between the government and its people should be happening "in the cloud", or, as I like to call it, in the "sociosphere". Live online participation in city council meetings should be a thing of simplicity. Google Moderator provides an acceptable model for how to keep that participation on task, but it could certainly be developed further.

  • If we moved all of our public records-keeping onto the cloud, we could benefit from drastically-reduced organizational costs while affording us all the many benefits of the information processing tools of said cloud. This would also serve to simplify and in many other ways continue to improve the interface of processes and services between the city and its constituents. That's right.... improved services at reduced costs!

  • City service workers (all workers?) (all services!) could leverage the fiber to stay connected to whatever information they need to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively. Who hasn't seen the strides made by Government services like the DMV already with our limited bandwidth! Overhead could be further reduced with the enhancement of intra-department and department-to-public communications and information sharing.

Some featured videos:  (click to see more)

The City of Los Angeles goes Google

Public Data on Google