General Counsel Rick Mullaney is the chair of the Telecommunications Master Plan Task Force.
Question: What about technology intrigues you so much?
Answer: I think it’s the same thing that interests me in public policy with the mayor. I like innovation, new ideas and possibilities. Technology is a great example of how if your imagination runs wild you can make things happen in a different way. Technology, to me, includes a discussion of education because in this knowledge-based economy, education becomes more important than ever. It includes economic development because this is a new kind of economy in which existing businesses are changing the way they operate. It also includes a challenge for the public sector to modernize. I think technology and the changes we’ve seen over the last decade have been phenomenal. There was a statistic that I heard President Clinton quote once: there were 15 websites in January 1993 and by January 2001 there were over 350 million. Over the last 10 years in particular, I think what you’ve seen in information technology, this dramatic change in technology is changing the way the public sector does business, it’s changing the way the private sector does business.
Q: How?
A: It creates opportunities for thoughtful public leaders to do something dramatic on behalf of the public. I like the notion of taking a look at this new tool, this dramatic tool and all that it brings with it, and trying to put that to work on behalf of the public. I do think this, too: those communities that understand the landscape has changed, economic development has changed, the future has changed, those communities that understand that and have vision and invest and prepare now will be the winners later on economically, have a better standard of living and they will prosper. Those communities that do not, truly may never catch up because it’s a timing question. For the public sector side, we have to look into our crystal ball and we have to look at technology and ask: what does this mean to our future? We need to have the same kind of vision we had in the Better Jacksonville Plan because the Plan represents long term thinking about our future and it represents an investment in our future. It also said, ‘The time is now.’ And, the same is true for technology. We need to take a long term view as to how we are going to compete economically in the future. We need to invest now in a telecommunications infrastructure and other infrastructure that necessary and we need to do it now because we can see what inevitably the future holds. This does bring up a whole separate question and that is the educational question because it truly is the single most important public policy issue facing this community in terms of what the future holds.
Q: Will Jacksonville get wired for the future and if we don’t, what happens?
A: First of all, I think we are bringing this together in a very good way. Our RFP [Request for Proposals] went out a little while ago and we had 14 companies respond, and we hope to have a study back in the fall. We are already wired to some extent. What we want to create, literally, is high-speed connections to every home, business and school in Duval County. And, we think that enormous implications for economic development, for our schools, for existing businesses, for our future. If we don’t, then in the future when other applications become possible, when companies want to relocate, when existing businesses want to perform certain functions like data transmissions or teleconferencing or whatever it may be that we can’t even imagine, we sill simply be out of position as a community and we will not compete as well economically. I think it requires vision and investment and I don’t think it takes extraordinary vision to see that the playing field has changed.
Q: Do we have the vision and will we make the investment?
A: I think we do have the vision and I think we’re going to have to be thoughtful about what the investment is, what those numbers are going to be and how it’s going to work. I think one of the mistakes people have made it that because Nasdaq a couple of years ago was at 5,000 and now it’s well below 2,000 is that technology was a fluke and this was all about dot coms. That is simply wrong. The great information wasn’t about dot coms. I would say existing businesses, old economy companies, have changed the way they operate due to new technology as the high-tech companies. It has revolutionized the way we do business. And, it has changed the way the public sector delivers services now and will deliver in the future. It’s a mistake to think that just because there has been a shake out among technology companies that dot coms have failed and high-tech companies have failed, that meant this was all some fad. This is not some fad. This is a fundamental change in the economy and the way businesses operates and the way people live their lives. Technology, for me, is exciting and for some it’s intimidating. I just don’t let the fact that I’m not a technician bother me. I’m not an engineer and I’m not a technical person, but you don’t have to be to understand how important it is and to see the possibilities.
— by Mike Sharkey