Metaverse Regulation, Broadband Funding and Data Sharing

All right, welcome back to In Case You Missed It, GovTech's weekly technology news roundup where we take a look at some of the biggest GovTech news from the past week and give you our thoughts on what it means for government citizens in the market. I'm Dustin Haisler, and I'm joined again by Joe Morris and Jed Fresco. This week we're going to take a quick look at the metaverse and how governments can prepare for it, as well as rural broadband. It's hot right now. It's been a hot topic on many of our conversations, and another state has announced a big initiative. And finally, a data sharing initiative by the Justice Department seeks to break down data silos. But first, a little housekeeping. The 2022 Beyond the Beltway virtual event is coming up soon, so you're going to want to make sure that you register. This annual event brings together analysts and government leaders to share their insights. This year's speakers list is a who's who of CIOs and CTOs, plus Joe and I will both be there, so you don't want to miss out. You can visit events.govtech.com for more information. All right, guys, everyone seems to be talking about the metaverse nowadays, so let's go ahead and talk about it as well. Joe, you found a recent article that was pretty interesting, a comprehensive regulatory outline by Bradley Tusk. And Tusk is a venture capitalist and political strategist. Joe, what are your thoughts on how government can avoid maybe the same mistakes that it made with social media?

Yeah, I think this was an interesting piece, right? And Tusk is also a former lieutenant governor, so he's been there and comes from, from this space. across both state and local government. But the metaverse is obviously something we're paying attention to in our personal lives, and Tusk presented a framework, or at least the beginnings of a framework, to understand how to potentially look at regulating the metaverse. And how do we learn, to your point, about the lessons learned from Facebook and all the other social networks? Obviously, it goes by defining the metaverse and helping people understand what it is, but looks at some of the important questions about data privacy. We know from tracking the legislation, states like California and many others have firmly planted some legislative policy in place around protecting our data as residents, but how does that translate into the metaverse? How do we look at things like public safety? We identify terrorism, data privacy, data ownership. So really trying to surface some of the big questions that we're talking about as conventional internet, but what does that mean when we look beyond that into a world of augmented reality and virtual reality?

Yeah, I think this is super fascinating because, you know, we hear it all the time. I mean, heck, Facebook rebranded as Meta in response to this emerging dynamic that's taking place. But, you know, it's going to be interesting to see, and I think there's a lot of important things that are kind of framed in this overview that we need to think about from a regulatory standpoint. I mean, you know, we know digital equity is hot, making sure that we don't leave people behind, but I think the rights dynamic is really big, right? We've seen the impact of GDPR, on state legislation with user privacy and rights. What does that mean when you take it into a digital sense and you have a virtual avatar that's going around? What level of control do you have? How can your data be monetized? How do we put in place safeguards for children and for, you know, others? So I think, you know, there's so many questions to answer here, and I think this is also one of those examples of an emerging technology that has a big shiny object name, but like what it means at a practical level sometimes gets lost on people, right? Is this a, I put on a VR headset, I'm transported in a 3-dimensional world that's owned by Meta, and I interact with businesses in new ways? Or, you know, is this a series of multiple metaverses that allow me to interact in a more immersive environment or maybe an augmented environment over my current reality? So I think there's a lot to unpack here from a regulatory standpoint. Jed, any thoughts on this from your standpoint as well?

You know, I'm going to look at this from a broader angle while keeping regulation in mind. Anyone who watches sci-fi movies or reads sci-fi literature should know that the metaverse has a lot of troubling potential. Now, I'm not saying it doesn't have any good potential, but let's go back to the social media point. Let's look at some of the negative effects of social media. You know, we're all aware of the misinformation and disinformation. That's something that governments are trying to get a grip on right now. And then going beyond that, you have to look at the emotional turmoil that people have experienced, you know, when people dogpile them on social media. You can also look at the psychological effects. You know, you could go beyond these studies that show that social media definitely has negative effects on young people when it comes to mental health. But I think that could go for anyone. You know, for example, when I was spending a lot more time on social media, I would often feel mentally ill after a session or perhaps during a session. So that's just an information feed. That's all that is. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, it's just information feeds. This is like something a lot different. This is like a world that is not really our world, but perhaps we could become convinced that it is really our world. And so that's why I think regulators really need to jump the gun on this. This is a bigger deal than social media, in my opinion.

Yeah, I agree. And I think your point around, you know, the internet being a platform to maybe consume and create, the metaverse is a platform to experience, which has a whole other set of, you know, context that we have to really think about from a regulatory standpoint. But also, you know, kind of as we were talking about, it's not new. I mean, you look at the metaverse and it has deep roots in a lot of things that have happened previously. You know, even today you've got Roblox and you've got all these other kind of companies that are building their own augmented versions of reality, although you play it on a TV or you play it you know, on your phone, you know, going back, you know, quite a while back to when I was in government, we had Second Life, right? And, you know, kind of the ability to go and, you know, buy property using real money, build houses, you know, exchange and buy and sell digital goods. This is all pre-NFT. You know, one kind of funny blast from the past, I remember working with the IRS and they had a kind of a Second Life presence in where you could go and drive repossessed vehicles and kind of try out some of the things before you bought them in the real world. And this is a decade ago. So, you know, it's gonna be interesting to see how government jumps into this, not just in terms of the regulatory side of things, which is important, but also how do we deliver services differently in a metaverse, you know, going forward? What does that look like? How do we make sure we don't leave anyone behind? And, you know, can this be a new form of civic engagement? Can this be something that, you know, allows people to partake in government in a different way where they can experience it outside of being in a public meeting and signing up to speak for 3 minutes? So I think there's a lot of potential here, but Jed, you know, to your point, you know, the sci-fi, you know, kind of examples give us a good view at where it can go if we don't have the proper safeguards in place.

What I liked about it too, metaverse is a sci-fi concept, I think, to a lot of people, but going through this memo, there were some real-world examples about where you could see it having applicability. To your point, Dustin, you talked about digital government services, something that we know states and localities have prioritized and we've talked about on past episodes. Presented some examples here about what the metaverse could mean to delivering a digital, an improved digital experience in the metaverse, and that he anticipates that some forward-thinking jurisdictions are going to jump at that opportunity. And he, I think, in fact, he closes the memo out saying we should all want a DMV in the metaverse or some, some form of experience. But I think if you're sitting, you know, reading through this and you're an elected official, it's going to give you a lot of things to take away from this that are thought-provoking in terms of looking at what it— what this could mean to your to your state and to your communities. And if you're on the industry side too, there's a bunch of takeaways about what this could mean to your organizations as you look forward in terms of further development in servicing the GovTech market.

And I think, you know, the last kind of piece that I'd add to this is it shows the need for, you know, thinking about our digital rights and our, you know, portability of digital identity and the data that we create and having additional ownership of that. I mean, the same conversations that we're having over our digital data today as it relates to how we interact with sites like Facebook and others, has to be a part of this conversation as we think about the metaverse and the interactions that we're going to have. Because, you know, what is— what do we own from a digital sense today? And, uh, and how do we protect that and ensure that it's not, you know, misused? So I think there's so much to kind of unpack here as we think about it, um, and this topic is such a big topic to cover. But we're going to continue to bring on experts to kind of peel back all the different layers of this onion as we go forward. So if you are a metaverse expert, if you've got some opinions on it, reach out to us at icymi@govtech.com. We'd love to hear from you and bring some of your perspectives to the table. Heck, maybe one of our future episodes will be in the metaverse, and, uh, and we can, you know, go to Jed's place, uh, and, uh, and hang out. So up next, we're going to talk a little bit about rural broadband funding. We know this is a hot topic. Uh, we've got a great roundup over at govtech.com right now that outlines some of the latest funding news, including From the Commerce Department, the state of Georgia, and the state of North Carolina, the FCC is sending $1.2 billion for broadband across 32 states. Now, Jed, this is a topic that is near and dear to your heart, and you've got a deep passion here. We were just talking about this in advance of the meeting, but, you know, tell us a little bit about some of the things we need to keep in mind as we look at this broadband funding going forward.

So with this FCC money came also the announcement from the FCC about basically creating a rural broadband accountability program. And so based on my understanding of this so far, it would just be making sure that the money that they give to people, you know, actually results in tangible connectivity, you know, solid connectivity in the places where it's supposed to be. And this is a, this is a very important topic because there are a number of people over the years who have felt that some of the people who have gotten federal dollars from the FCC they, they feel like some of these areas are not really that well connected. In fact, I've had a conversation with Brandon Presley from the Public Service Commission in Mississippi. He has personally expressed to me this idea that some of the FCC winners have just not resulted in great connectivity for people in rural places. So I think this accountability program is great for that. There definitely needs to be someone making sure that taxpayer money is spent in the right way. I mean, Dustin, if you're a whiskey distiller and I ask you to distill for me 10 jugs of whiskey and I pay you, you know, let's say $10,000, I want to make sure I get those 10 jugs of whiskey. So same thing here. If we're going to spend, you know, a billion here or a few million here, we want to make absolutely sure that there is accountability for that money.

You know, along those lines, I think one benefit is we're seeing people get appointed that have been there and done it. So just this week I saw the NTIA, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, appointed the former Chattanooga mayor as a special representative for broadband. So if you've all been following it, Chattanooga obviously from over a course of whatever it was, I think 7 or so years, rolled out digital equity programs, connectivity programs, technology training. So we are seeing representatives from state and local government that have done it and been there and, you know, actually delivered real tangible results, be and will have a role in the administration of these funds going forward. So I think that's a net positive.

Absolutely. And I think, you know, similar to what we've talked about previously, you know, outside of the core infrastructure investments, and I think it's going to be important to see how this funding is utilized for change management, getting people to utilize the infrastructure once it's in the ground so that they can unlock new capabilities and possibilities with it as well. But such a critical topic. I mean, you know, digital divide is definitely one, you know, as we were talking about the State of the State addresses last time, I mean, broadband is one of those priorities that continues to pop up and be, you know, really a driver of economic development and economic opportunity. So we'll continue to kind of follow this and break down developments as it happens on the broadband side. Now, lastly, we're gonna shift gears and talk a little bit about a data and public safety initiative. The Justice Department recently announced a new program called Justice The program is designed to help aggregate and standardize public safety data from across all 50 states that provide the data to local and state policymakers as a kind of an afterthought. So thoughts on this, guys? If the— if this works as planned, how could this help state and local government agencies?

Well, we've seen efforts like this before. I mean, whether they're out of DOJ or through companies or organizations that aggregate public safety data, whether it's ballistics data, I think there's been a large effort over the past decade to combine these important data sources together and then bring them to law enforcement officers at the fingertips in the streets. This looks like one of those efforts, but I think it's also not just on some of the ballistics data. This looks like also a tool to help more so on the policy and budgetary front.

Yeah, and in terms of policy, I do wonder, like, how far this can go because, you know, right now data is becoming a bigger and bigger topic in public safety, especially in law enforcement, because we're not just talking about things like ballistics and crimes and things like that. We're also talking about officer interactions. In other words, departments are becoming more and more interested in getting information on everyday officer interactions, whether they be good or bad, because they want to be able to— they want to be transparent about the good things and the bad things. And so it'll be interesting to see if this effort and perhaps other efforts will, you know, be able to give policymakers ideas about how can we make law enforcement better. And of course, that's just one public safety component there, but that's just something that I'm very familiar with just from reading and talking to people.

Yeah, and I think this is like a warm-up act to what we should be doing across the board. I mean, you look at data standards, I mean, you know, we've been talking about data standards for a long, long time and we're still struggling with it today. You know, when it comes to who's responsible for doing it, how do we actually operationalize the data that we have? I mean, a lot of this was very evident in the pandemic, but I think, you know, this is going to be solved one of two ways. You're going to have government have to start to embed standardization requirements into procurements as a mechanism of ensuring that we don't have to have these subsequent secondary initiatives to standardize data, or the vendor community and industry community will step up and create a standard for how we do that. I mean, we've seen similar things with building data, for example, But I think so much is needed here, even outside of the public safety implications of this data. We have so much data in the state and local market. How do we start to standardize it and connect the dots across the board?

All right, solid point, Dustin. Jed, I think it's all the time we have for today, but we wanna thank everyone for joining us and make sure you join us next week at 12 o'clock Pacific for more GovTech news and insights and some interviews. Have a wonderful weekend.