While this stage of the A’oa’oga Aso Nei Initiative is ambitious, it is only the first step in a more permanent change to how American Samoa will prepare students and underskilled members of the workforce for the jobs of the future. 

One major moving part of technology on campus is the large projected investment by the federal government into territory broadband. Currently, the territory is served by a single undersea cable that is controlled by a monopoly vendor, and the resulting prices for broadband are extremely high--with correspondingly low service levels. It is the expectation of the Initiative team that federal investment will dramatically remedy this bottleneck in service and give ASCC access to high-speed, reasonably priced broadband. This will, however, take time; possibly a few years. Thus, the Connecting Minority Communities grant program represents a critical “bridge” from now until the near future when better broadband options are available. This bridge is critical to serve the entire territory as we await improved opportunities.

Beyond the pilot period, the A’oa’oga Aso Nei Initiative will primarily enact the ICT-oriented curriculum plan to be developed and trialed during the two year pilot phase. The team will design and implement full degree and certificate programs using the experiences and–critically–new technologies delivered during the grant-funded period. Additionally, the team maintains several “stretch” objectives for later phases of AAN, including:

• Build out specially-designed “remote only” classrooms in order to offer learning with off-island instructors as efficiently and effectively as possible.

• Partner with colleges and universities of other territories (and Hawai’i) near enough to Samoa Time Zone in order to develop shared remote learning facili

• Partner with the managers of the developing Innovation and Technology Park in Tafuna (Pago Pago) to design joint entrepreneurial and e-lancer programs for degree students and adult learners.

• Engage with platform vendors (e.g., Microsoft, Salesforce, IBM, etc.) in order to specialize programming to offer advanced learners in-depth opportunities to develop expertise on specific technologies with partially-remote or fully-remote careers in mind.

With these and other stretch objectives, the Initiative envisions promoting opportunities for American Samoa’s residents that highlight the unique advantages of the territory. Remote workers based in American Samoa should have major competitive advantages over their peers in other Southern Pacific territories, since they generally have solid English communication skills and qualify as United States residents in cases where remote work requires it. A’oa’oga Aso Nei will give them a third advantage–all the digital equity and development opportunities of workers in mainland USA. It is the opinion of the Initiative team that this equity is the right of all American Samoans, and is critical to the preservation of our population and our culture in the future.