Technology

Digital tools aim at increasing access to government information

This story appeared in the fall print edition and was part of the Building a Better Budget package of stories.

Squeezed to the point of cutting vital social services and deferring maintenance, local governments and nonprofit groups are turning to the Internet and other digital tools to increase transparency. Perched on the edge of Silicon Valley, San Francisco can’t help but be a hotbed of this good-government “hactivism.”

An under-performing school in East Palo Alto is working on a new initiative started by a Northern California science education network to boost students’ science comprehension and, optimistically, make scientists out of them. The Bio-Community.org network enables Bay Area biotechnology companies to send visiting scientists to schools, giving kids an up-close interaction with science. Local biotech companies are working with students from middle school to community college to increase the labor pool of workers in research and lab work. The companies want students not only to learn science but also to make it a career option. In the process, the schools and volunteers there hope this focus will increase students overall performance and improve graduation rates.

Advocates argue for ‘open Internet,’ some fear minority redlining

The ongoing, often arcane, battle over whether telecommunications companies may slow certain online services and charge fees to speed up others has morphed into a civil rights controversy.

Many of the country’s leading civil rights organizations are siding with the phone and cable companies in their bid to prevent federal regulations over their broadband, or high-speed, Internet services. At stake: whether to preserve “network neutrality” — the longstanding principle that all consumers can access whatever websites or applications they want on the Internet, at the same speed and without limitations imposed by Internet service providers.