IMPLEMENTATION
Climate Change, urban congestion, the urban –rurlal divide, the budget deficit and so many more issues are seemingly impossible to resolve in today’s political environment. The Smart Region concept sees them all as variants of the same issue: the Community has atrophied and is no longer engaged. The Community must establish a long term vision and reassert itself into the policy making process. At the core, this is a governance issue and the government is not working. To transform, to collaborate and to integrate is a complex challenge embracing many elements. Smart Regions.US is hoping to start a dialogue that resolves the unresolved.
Nearing the end of the Industrial Age, it continues to be true that the more complex the problem, the more microscopic thesolutions are and they are developed by an infinite number of uncoordinated special interest agendas. The major challenges we face are systemic and we need a systemic solution.
Our goal is to revitalize small town America; all of the Smart Region components must reinforce each other to achieve that goal.
We believe that the SmartRegion concept requires a comprehensive and collaborative approach to be applied; we have refused to challengethe status quo.
As the Information Age dawns change must occur on so many fundamental levels.
At the federal and state levels there is no vision! The budgets are political assemblages of social media priorities and uncoordinated agency programs. Duplication and ineffectiveness is all too common and sometimes these programs are actually counter-productive. The Smart Region Initiative offers a beginning for a critical discussion. Born from our year-long Community Dialogue Process it seeks to overcome several challenges that have thus far eluded solution:
- Re-establish community as the fulcrum that balances public – private sector excesses
- Integrate and revitalize Urban – Rural economy
- Distribute broadband and the Suite of Telecommuting Applications to even the smallest of small towns
- Strategically deploy telework to create Freedom of Residential Choice, support employer fiscal and operational condition and address Climate Change concerns
Our goal is to save small town America and all the Smart Region components must support that goal. Our sequence of activities has been developed based on: Meeting a perceived need, supporting the outcome of a prior activity and to enable the next activity to begin. We believe that the SmartRegion concept requires a comprehensive and collaborative approach to be applied at a scale that achieves critical mass. But all of this is just the beginning. The concepts must evolve to keep pace with technology and community We do not have all the answers but we have at least developed one answer to most of them. Your engagement will help determine what are the best answers.
ACTION REQUESTED
For more information, request the SmartRegion.US concept paper or an introduction to any of the following components:
- Redefining our “Community” – Urban Rural Integration
- Economic Diversification- Equal Skills, Equal Access
- Service Access- The Suite of Telecommuting Applications
- Service Access- Technology, Support and Mentoring
- Establishing a Vision- Implementation through Community Governance
- Workforce Virtualization- Creating the Freedom of Residential Choice
Join the effort /
INTRODUCING SMART REGIONS
Establishing a Vision- Implementation through Community Governance
Tele-Commuter Resources, a 501(c)3 organization
© August 2019
Just as the geographic definition of the Smart Region changes, so too must the policies and funding priorities of the government. Freed from government’s “silo-funding’ of the status quo, it is hoped that the private sector’s response to the Community Vision will become more responsive as well. The public, private and community must collaborate to collectively advance the viability of the six community types that constitute the Smart Region and to enhance the freedoms and quality of life of their inhabitants.
Restructuring Jurisdictions
Government jurisdictions are defined by pioneer surveyors and geologic features; physical communities are defined by economic, social and cultural orientation. Whenever it is cost-effective and supported by the residents, jurisdictions should be brought into a greater alignment with each regional trade center. The governance of the Regional Trade Center must incorporate the needs of the smaller communities within its trade area. Our research has defined but six types of communities based upon function and scale and their analysis indicates that they are vastly different in terms of viability.
Restructuring Leadership
Our Smart Region approach addresses this situation but in order to successfully implement the concept, the Community must get organized and reassert its role; the government works for the community. Our institutions have failed the Community and the Community must take back its role..
Supporting Community
e-Consensus
Our Concerns:
Agencies are operating without community vision or implementation coordination:
- Commerce-broadband policies are devastating small towns
- Transportation-travel demand policies deny reality
- OPM- telework policies are stagnant and ineffective
- EPA-climate change rhetoric is out of sync with actions, and
- Smart Cities maintain data silos that prevent community engagement
Establishing Vision and Accountability
9/11 says disperse your assets
Tele-Commuter Resources’ work plan of the past 25 years was developed using a smart conferencing tool that we adapted to bring consensus to challenging questions. The attributes of the e-Consensus Forum® are unique and powerful.
Using this format, the community governance process incorporates several forums that are integral to the process:
- Supporting the Accountability Forum
- Convening the Smart Region Leadership groups and sub-groups
- Developing an issues statement for legislative action
- Developing the Tech-Trek agenda and evaluating the various proposals
- And many more…
It is also used in other key processes in the Smart Regions concept:
- Regional Virtualization Action Plan,
- Annual Tech Trek Process
- while supporting the Regional Monitor development
Today’s political choices are too often binary; democrat or republican, liberal or convservative. There is a third choice: Community or Civil Society. As pointed out by Jeremy Rifkin’s book The End of Work, America has three sectors the public, private and community the latter of which he tasks to be the fulcrum that keeps the other two sectors in check.
If you examine the organization charts for the three sectors, you quickly realize why the Community Sector has been so totally overwhelmed by the other two; this must change and technology is critical to that task in our society; I have adopted that approach. Our efforts balance two opposing forces, i.e., the decentralizing impacts of the Information Age and the bureaucratic commitment to the status quo. The question is both macro-economic and political: Is society better off forcing continued urban centralization or enabling rural-urban integration? We believe in the latter and are developing a national prototype / pilot to prove our concept.
Three Critical Factors
The inevitability of Virtualization graphs commerce others?
Policy makers are people-people, theycannot comprehend that some/many would rather live away from the noise and congestion graph
CommunityResidential Choice
Community Sectors- Fulcrum to balance the public and private sectors
The very structure of the government, federal, state and local, is such that it cannot systematically address the challenge: How do we preserve small town America?
Small towns are a critically important element in the infrastructure that supports the agricultural industry. Representing about 30% of the population, they produce food for 100% plus. Demographically, technologically, economically and socially they face issues that challenge their very viability.