Mission Statement


The key aspect of Arizona State Public Information Network (ASPIN) is not the technical network wiring and terminal units. The most important thing about ASPIN is Arizona's people and organizations who will be able to accomplish many important tasks that cannot presently be done. This means the relatively new, and struggling state of Arizona will be able to continue to grow along side other competing and cooperating states, which are publicly installing statewide electronic public networks.

The vision is, a 21st century Arizona whose prosperity will continue to develop. Networks will play a key role in the future. Some other states have already begun to move forward with the data superhighway. Most are discussing it. It's time now, for Arizona's leadership to act.

The next stage of our state's growth, in both quality of life and economic development for jobs and services, will depend on the "State Network" (ASPIN). ASPIN will provide statewide high speed electronic links to the rest of the world and to our own in formation technology-based education, public services, and 21st century commerce.

Some examples of the utility of such a state network are:

  • Statewide Economic developers collaborating efforts and sharing data;
  • Librarians' using local, state, and national information from the remote sites on ASPIN and network connections outside it;
  • Business leaders interaction on joint ventures around the state;
  • State officials' meetings and conferences via the network;
  • Local government representatives from all over the state discussing policy issues and seeking input;
  • Face to face two-way TV citizen access to Legislative Representatives;
  • State provided job training can be delivered through the network;
  • Technology transfer can occur from the universities to individual businesses throughout the state;
  • Teacher training and certification at remote locations;
  • Public instruction from all over the world brought to the state through the network;
  • Continuing education for nurses, CPA's, real estate brokers, social workers, and other professionals;
  • Consulting from experts at remote locations to organizations all around the state;
  • Teachers sharing classroom teaching ideas;
  • K-12 students on a multiple school project;
  • Remote instruction (a teacher transformed into the locations of three classrooms of students);
  • Doctors in consultation;
  • Business leaders from industry clusters talking how to attract new businesses;
  • Government agency meetings on the network avoiding travel;
  • Library patrons getting help selecting and finding maps;
  • Economic development leaders in cooperative meetings;
  • Nobel Scholars placed electronically into university classrooms and;
  • Two-way town halls with politicians delivered live to a home district via the network.

The examples of the utility of ASPIN are not all mentioned here. There are numerous additional benefits and uses for a network of video conferencing equipment, computers, and network connections, that will be discovered by the users, themselves as they grow more familiar with its capabilities.

The state of Arizona has many community pioneers who have identified the urgent need to have a state network. One such statewide effort is the Governor's Strategic Partnership for Economic Development (GSPED), which has called for ASPIN to form in order to properly use the national network and for the state to grow economically.

As mentioned in the ASPED report, 

"The State of Arizona cannot afford to become a 
state isolated from the information age by not 
becoming a member of the new global network (NREN).
The NREN will shrink the world around us and allow 
Arizona to compete in many new global markets.  
The state must be part of the globalization of 
communication to remain an economic force in the 
United States and the world.  This is essential 
to the prosperity of the state.  Otherwise, the 
21st century Arizona will be terminally crippled, 
become an information "have not" and become isolated 
from the social and economic opportunities of the 
world."[1]

Universal access to ASPIN will allow anyone in the state to gain entry to global, national, state and local network resources. The globalization of information will be available to all Arizonans via the data superhighway.

Who Will Use and Benefit From ASPIN?

Prior experience here and in other states confirms that a surprisingly broad cross section of people and organizations quickly learn new tools to accomplish more of what they have been trying to achieve. Time savings, value-added information, and access to resources the network provides that would otherwise not be available are the benefits of ASPIN.

The ASPIN network is not important because of its technological innovation. It is important because of the many diverse individuals and organizations in the state who can begin to achieve much greater success with their most important goals. "ASPIN" is the code word for a network. But, it also means more people accomplishing more of their information objectives, more quickly and more easily.

How will people discover what they can do with ASPIN? How will they gain access?

How will they learn how to use it? There is already defined a three-tier national structure of "Network Information Centers." The National Science Foundation established the national Network Information Center (NIC) center. ASPIN is establishing a state Network Information Center, which will be supported by the national NIC.

A key component of ASPIN is the establishment of a "community Network Information Center" at each ASPIN node in the local libraries. These community NIC's will be supported by the state NIC's and the national center as well. A "NIC specialist" will be designated and trained in each of the community NIC's. These NIC specialists will make up a statewide association, which will be the foundation of the annual statewide ASPIN conference. It is hoped that in addition, each local NIC will organize a crew of volunteers, such as retirees and/or interested high school students, to answer routine inquiries and to help the community gain access to ASPIN.

The state and community NIC's will help local people and multi-city groups discover opportunities for using ASPIN by: public (press) reports of demonstration sessions; periodic newsletters; an annual ASPIN conference sponsored by Arizona State University; and by direct referral of new services specific to individuals and groups.

An individual or group will gain access to ASPIN and the global Internet by registering for an "ASPIN User Registration Number" and then taking a short training session at their local community NIC. Prior experience assures us that the most help by far will be provided by word of mouth, once a minimum set of routine users are established in each community. Currently, ASPIN has over 500,000 users and potential for over 1 million.

ASPIN is about people, employment, rural community strength, statewide equal public education, cultural traditions, and a statewide economy to support necessary public services. This is a list of some of the individuals and groups who will certainly benefit right away when ASPIN is completed.

  • School Teachers and Students
  • Librarians and their Patrons
  • Medical Centers: Doctors & Nurses
  • Business Leaders
  • University Teachers, Researchers, Students and Global Scholars & Libraries
  • Public Agency Offices and Served Citizens
  • Economic Development Leaders
  • Government Leaders and their Hometown Constituents
  • Anyone needing access to the globally networked world community

What Specific Things Can We Do With ASPIN?

The functions that are available as ASPIN is completed is limited only by the imagination of the community in which it operates. Some of the benefits of ASPIN for the communities are:
  • use of intrastate, national, and international electronic mail;
  • access to state and regional economic development information;
  • access to high performance computing tools;
  • ability to log in to remote data banks;
  • access to supercomputers;
  • use of specialized research facilities, such as the National Science Foundation;
  • educational technology programs to use in classrooms;
  • two-way video conferencing (i.e. multisite meetings via line TV without a need to travel) for network participants;
  • enforced network standards to navigate through these resources in a standard, intuitive, and consistent way;
  • forms of file sharing for universal data like Census information for community analysis and planning and;
  • user training and education for using different computer mediated communication.

What Is Unique About ASPIN?

What does an data superhighway offer that is unique? Could these same things be done without the network? Some examples may illustrate the unique network offerings and what would occur if the citizens did not have a network in place.

Education: An unique offering the data superhighway can provide is for students in small communities. These communities have difficulty in attracting teachers better prepared to teach modern courses and would normally have to do without. But, with a net work in place they can get live interactive instruction just like any child at any of the wealthiest suburban public schools. This electronic network can reduce situational gaps of "information haves" and the "information have nots" with open access education.

Medicine: Networks can provide access to remote specialists and experts in their respective fields.

Business: One unique business offering is the automated patent system (APS), where Arizona State University is one of 14 libraries nationwide selected to tap into the Patent and Trademark Office's $100 million dollar database. The system provides free on -line access to the main database and allows an inventor or somebody researching an idea to see who's basing their technology on yours, who's working in a similar area or very similar area, or who might be infringing. Arizona inventors can now quickly file patent applications by computer.

Jobs and Retraining: A very unique and helpful service is a jobs database for the citizens of the state. A job seeker simply views on-line the job announcements and finds one of interest and sends his application and resume to the employer electronically . Instead of a job seeker having to call many job hot lines and driving to all the human resources departments to get an updated weekly list of all federal, state, and local government jobs, it is available twenty fours hours a day via the network.

To take advantage of some of these unique offerings, some states have passed legislative bills and state appropriations to construct a state network. These states have physically installed cable and the state will own the network, from the equipment at the end nodes to the network operating centers and the cable itself. A few states have a state network over a "public network" by leasing fiber optical lines to form the statewide network. Still, other state networks are formed around existing networks and simply add connections and piggy-back off the existing reworks. Many states use a combination of the above methods for forming a state network. The remaining states, like Arizona, have a defacto state network like ASPIN, but they are directly funded for state-wide use.

ASPIN Development Phases

The overall objective of the facility-development aspect of ASPIN is to install a collection of independent standard ASPIN nodes around the state. The nodes should be compatible and fully interoperatable to connect with the national/global information inf rastructure of computers, databases and televideo networks. These independent state nodes would be able to receive statewide coordinated support, training, and volume purchase pricing. The functionally of the network connections and the standard ASPIN nodes should be flexible to accommodate new technology development and meet individual end user and community demands.

The key aspect of the ASPIN network is not the communication lines between the communities; rather, the functionality in the communities. The key resource is sharing. Networking increases collaboration, the rate of learning, and technology transfer for the state.

Phase I - Urban Areas ( Data Network) (Completed in 1991, but Still Growing)

ASPIN Phase I has resulted in a computer network interconnecting the cities of Flagstaff, Phoenix, and Tucson. The network includes several universities, community colleges, agencies of city, county, and state government, plus several high tech industrial sites within these urban areas. The result is: the interconnection of thousands of offices via electronic mail; the exchange/transfer of expensive computer data files (such as economic development data); and the availability of specialized computers and supercomputers to thousands of potential users.

The primary uses are electronic mail, data sharing, and remote computer access between existing university, public agency, and high technology industry's computer networks. The potential of each node connecting to numerous other local and regional networks and in turn to the larger ASPIN exists and is anticipated to occur many times over (known as network piggy-backing). The data communications aspect, phase one ASPIN, will continue to proliferate and growth many seamless connections statewide for a strong foundation for a state network.

Strengthening the ASPIN project around the Phase I networks allows the state to draw upon a network backbone that is already robust and functionally proven. Nearly all colleges and universities in Arizona provide some level of access to the many converging worldwide data networks on the NII and the Internet such as BITNET, CSNET, and the NSFNET.

Phase II - Rural Community Colleges

ASPIN Phase II involves the expansion of the current urban connection to Arizona's rural communities via eight rural community colleges. Each rural community college will be connected directly to the Internet through one of the three major urban universities and hence to the world. These university connection allow many benefits. The first is that it provides Arizona's rural communities with close and cost-effective connections to WESTNET. Second, it allows them to take advantage of the knowledge base th at each of the universities has in the field of networking.

ASPIN Phase II has maximized these benefits by establishing a Network Information Center (NIC) at each of the three universities. Each NIC is providing the urban and rural communities in its respective area with a ready reference desk for direct assistance to the Internet end-user as well as providing Yellow and White Page services. This state-wide system of NICs will disseminate information and create a knowledge base at the local level, allowing these communities to be self-sufficient as well as being a reference center fort their local communities.

Phase III - All-Communities Equal Access

Phase III brings ASPIN one step closer to Arizonans' work, schools and home. by focusing on the domain specific needs of the individual communities. The standard ASPIN node can be placed in the grade schools, middle schools, high schools, and retirement communities. The locations for phase III ASPIN are not specified to just schools, but any community group. A few ideas of some of the locations that might have a standard ASPIN node are:
  • Any size school;
  • Economic Development Centers;
  • Chambers of Commerce Buildings;
  • Community Centers;
  • Municipal Libraries;
  • Private Businesses;
  • Airports;
  • Churches;
  • Government Offices;
  • Political Offices;
  • Hospitals;
  • Telework Hubs (Locations where employees work remotely) and;
  • Any Community with a desire or need.
ASPIN Phase III connections will be made using a variety of techniques: dedicated lines, frame relay, or dial-in modem pools. The goal is to employ the method of connection that allows the greatest deal of flexibility to the ASPIN node. In addition existing ASPIN nodes will act as an "Internet Point of Presence", able to provide information and guidance to new ASPIN members.

The primary objective of phase III ASPIN is electronic equal access for all people in Arizona's communities. Arizona would have a globalization of communication to all citizens. This will create a window to the world and ensure all state communities are a "information have " rather than an "information have not."

Financial Benefits to the Arizona Economy and to Arizonans

The large financial rewards will not just be the cost cutting like travel reduction or revenue making from the video conferencing, computer teleconferencing, and audio teleconferencing. But, the financial benefits will be indirect economic spin-offs, spillovers and linkages. For example, the network will help public schools teach better and students learn more due to open access to knowledge, which did not exist before. It will increase the collaboration among economic developers, researchers, and all citizens. The rate of technology transfer to the state will increase along with the rate of knowledge of the entire citizenry.

Arizona because of a state network will be able to secure for its citizens federal funds from the High Performance Computing Act of 1991. This state network will be a positive draw for government labs to come to Arizona. The state network will foster economic development by empowering the citizens of Arizona to information that was not available before. The distant markets will emerge via the network for Arizona.

We can not be sure exactly what the full benefit will be from ASPIN. Marcel Proust stated, 

	"The real act of discovery consists not in 
         finding new lands but seeing with new eyes."
The ASPIN network is the new eyes for the state for discovery of economic and social enrichment. It is believed that if only these three benefits are realized, the network will pay for itself many times over. The three anticipated benefits associated with ASPIN are:
  • removing constraints of location; time, cost and distance;
  • access to supercomputers and;
  • enhancing Arizona's competitiveness and productivity in research.
ASPIN phase one will provide the first successful linkage and interconnecting of several universities, community colleges, agencies of city, county, and state government, plus several high tech industrial sites in Arizona. This phase will be a learning exercise to build network linkages and network capacity planning. Still, many successful things are expected to come from this data only network of mostly email use.

The second phase of ASPIN will be a tool for Arizona to compete with the other states who already have a network in place. The state will be competitive for federal dollars available in the wake of the High Performance Computing Act of 1991. The spillovers and linkages to accomplishing this second phase of ASPIN will enable Arizona to compete equaling with other states in economic development, federal dollars, improved support of rural communities, and improved education.

The ASPIN phase III will solve problems of remoteness and elitism in state networking. The network minimizes sector differences and relationships based on geographic location to information resources. Possibly generation, occupation, and situation gaps will be reduced to enhance access to information at the individual, organizational, and national levels. Information for education, training, and support for the network will began to spread to all of Arizona initializing many productivity increases and other related benefits.

[1] -----, (November, 1991). Creating a 21st century economy: Arizona's strategic plan for economic development. Volume II: ASPED Advisory Committee and Expert Reports.

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