Five months after Comcast was mandated by a federal agency to institute a sweeping program to substantially improve Internet adoption rates for low income families, only 463 Philadelphia families have activated the service in the cable giant’s hometown, where more than 150,000 families are eligible.

A screen capture of the Internet Essentials report showing activations in top regions.

An internal report on Comcast’s Internet Essentials program issued last week shows 41,000 total activations across the U.S. from Aug. 16 to Dec. 22. The program, which launched in September, resulted from a mandate by the Federal Communications Commission as part of the company’s deal to acquire NBC.

Yet in Philadelphia, where 41 percent of citizens do not have access to the Internet at home — according to a 2008 report from the Knight Foundation — advocates are concerned about the program’s progress, and some experts say that a lack of support by the School District of Philadelphia is slowing its potential.

Because Internet Essentials provides discounted Internet access to families of students who qualify for free lunch at schools, the program appears to be seeing more success in cities where there is more school district buy-in, says the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition‘s Arun Prabhakaran, who is Director of Government and Strategic Partnerships. [Prabhakaran wrote about poverty and the digital divide here in October.]

In the Chicago region, for instance, where the Mayor Rahm Emmanual controls the school system, the Internet Essentials program saw more than 5,000 activations during the same period [pictured above].

“The mayor does not control the school system in Philadelphia,” Prabhakaran says. “When the school district is run by the School Reform Commission, and the SRC doesn’t necessarily report to the Mayor, you’re not getting that kind of system push.”

The School District of Philadelphia did not return a request for comment.

The Urban Affairs Coalition is working with the City of Philadelphia under the $25 million Freedom Rings Partnership funded by broadband stimulus grants intended to improve digital adoption in the city. The coalition advertises Internet Essentials to its constituents, but it does not not receive funding from Comcast.

Words from a local advocacy group that fights for low-income families were more critical of Comcast. Action United, which was formed in the state by former members of PA ACORN, last week called the Comcast program a “gimmick without real substance.”

“The simple fact is that there are too many hoops and obstacles still for anyone to believe that this program will address in any serious way the digital divide as it exists in low income cities across America,” the group said in a statement.

“Especially because this is Comcast’s home town, it’s kind of embarrassing,” says an Action United organization program director Elly Porter-Webb.

Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas pointed to the program’s significant progress across the U.S.

“This is a new program, but the digital divide has been around for a decade. We’re still really facing the challenges of relevancy and digital literacy. A lot of Americans don’t know what the Internet can do for them and why they should have it in their homes,” he said in a telephone interview last week.

Action United presented a nine-point proposal to Comcast in an early January meeting, before staging a protest in front of the Comcast Center later in the month, after Porter-Webb says the company failed to address those points.

The group proposed that Comcast institute specific goals and metrics for the program, a more active outreach strategy and a look at long-term viability for the program.

Comcast has so far committed to run the program for a total of three years, but Porter-Webb is worried that at its current rate, Philadelphia’s results will not add up to substantial change. “It’s only a three-year program and after first five months, we are a sixth of the way there,” she says.

Along with the report, Comcast announced several changes to the program last week, including expanding eligibility to students who receive reduced-price school lunch, which the company says makes 300,000 more households eligible across the country. It is also implementing a streamlined, instant approval process for students who attend schools with a high percentage of free school lunch provisions, which could help more easily connect Philadelphia citizens, Prabhakaran says.

The company also plans to increase bandwidth speeds for Internet Essentials customers, provide bulk purchasing for community partners, and expand its training efforts. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski praised the changes in a statement issued last week.

“We’ve met with nonprofit partners and listened to all kinds of feedback from them, our customers and elected officials, and more. We’ve made a number of changes to the program from the initial launch,” Douglas says.

“We can’t solve the digital divide all by ourselves. We need as many other providers and community partners to get involved to help connect more Americans,” he says.

Porter-Webb hopes to see that the metrics match the message.

“Their take is that ‘we’re the biggest, most comprehensive program that’s ever happened,’” Porter-Webb says.

“We acknowledge that, and that’s great, but let’s make it real. Let’s really do this.”

As you might guess, most teenagers in Philadelphia are, quite simply, not violent, flash mobbing ne’er-do-wells.

Like their counterparts elsewhere, they’re students, who like clothes and sports and friends. And they care a lot about how others see them.

So it might make sense that when organizers of the University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia, a youth leadership nonprofit housed at Temple University, were looking for a new outlet for the nearly 15-year-old group that its students wanted to create a news program to fight negative perceptions of themselves.

Not enough positive youth voices are being heard above the din of violent exceptions, the group argues.

Meet What’s POPPYN, a quarterly, half-hour online news show about teenage issues in Philadelphia: produced, starring and featuring the group’s participants. This month, the show’s sixth episode launched, focusing on global issues and how local kids are getting involved, and shorter segments are being produced every couple weeks.

“We highlight how young people are positively contributing to their schools, communities and organizations and their voices on local and national issues,” said Natalia Smirnov, the initiative’s media productions and communications manager. “Ultimately, we hope that POPPYN helps to change the perception of young people in the city as criminals, drop-outs, violent flash mobbers, poorly educated.”

Founded in 1997 by Temple political science professor Barbara Ferman, UCCP began as a community-based research project, adding youth programming in 2001 and beginning to focus on leadership development in 2006 and has done a lot of work to connect young leaders.

This year, with a small grant from the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development, Poppyn started with four college-aged young people who had been involved in past UCCP programming, said Smirnov.

“The original team had been frustrated with representations of youth in the media and wanted to create their own positive alternative,” Smirnov said. Each episode is created, produced and starring six to 10 young people, including students from public and charter schools and a smattering of college volunteers, many of whom have been involved with UCCP programming for years. The group, which finds its members through its own programming, is often seeking other interested young people.

No one involved in the project had TV production experience, but rather took an interested group of young people and found partnerships, including strong support from PhillyCAM, said Smirnov.

Smirnov offered a few ideas to help support their cause:

• Submit comments on Youtube, Facebook and Twitter: “It means a lot to our youth producers to to know that the show is being watched and liked and would be great to get some more public feedback.”
• Pitch ideas: Organizations that are supporting youth-led projects and activities can pitch their stories to us on whatspoppyn AT gmail.com.
• Host a screening: “We’re looking for teachers to host screenings in their classrooms,” said Smirnov. “We’ll come and do a workshop for free with them. We also had a lot of fun covering a Philly public school graduation last year — we did South Philly High School — and are looking for schools that want to have their school’s graduation featured on POPPYN.”
• Offer expertise: If you have background in video production or in dissemination, get involved by emailing whatspoppyn AT gmail.com.

A Pennsylvania advocacy group that fights for economic justice for low income and working families says that Comcast’s new, federally-mandated digital access program has too many barriers to entry.

Action United, the group which was formed in the state by former members of PA ACORN, cited in an email an informal survey intended to measure the application process of Comcast’s Internet Essentials program:

Applicants found a lengthy application process and disqualification for a number of reasons not clear at the outset. ACTION United’s survey of the program rolled out in Philadelphia in August of this year found either 1 or none of the roughly 150 parents polled have had success in accessing the program, despite initial press by Comcast estimating that 150,000 Philadelphia Children and 2.5 million nationally would be eligible.

Internet Essentials provides Internet access at $9.95 per month to families that qualify for the National School Lunch Program, as part of an agreement with the Federal Communications Commission to provide affordable Internet options, a mandate that resulted from Comcast’s deal to acquire NBC. We covered the launch of that program, which also provides affordable hardware and training opportunities, this September.

According to Action United program coordinator Elly Porter-Webb, of a phone survey of 100 parents in Philadelphia who met basic eligibility for the program, 62 percent had not heard about the program though 73 percent were interested in signing up.

Porter-Webb said that in one example, a parent who was eligible for the program had signed up for Comcast’s Internet service, but didn’t know about Internet Essentials. Porter-Webb suggested that the parent should have been screened by Comcast for the more affordable offering.

“It was an informal survey, but it demonstrates the problem,” Porter-Webb says.

Action United had planned a holiday caroling rally at the Comcast Center this morning to raise awareness about the issue, but has since canceled the rally after Comcast scheduled a meeting last night with the organization for January, Elly Porter-Webb says.

“We’re glad that Comcast is willing to sit down with some parents to hear why it’s not working the way they want it to,” she says.

Another point of contention seems to be the program’s billing history eligibility requirement. Comcast customers applying for the program must have no back-due bills and must have no unreturned equipment.

Comcast says that its following industry standards, pointing to the FCC’s Connect to Compete program which has the same requirements on billing and equipment return.

Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas tells us that it’s too early to assess data that is being collected by Comcast about the program, since it launched a little more than three months ago in September. He says Comcast will remain committed to the program for at least three school years and will adapt the program as more is learned.

“In Philadelphia, approximately 150,000 low-income students are eligible to participate in this program. Comcast is partnering with scores of organizations to raise awareness, level the playing field and get those students and their families connected,” Douglas said in a statement.

He encouraged interested citizens to contact 1-855-8-INTERNET to learn more about the program.

Evettia Harden took advantage of the computer access available thanks to the YES program.

From PhiladelphiaNeighborhoods.com:

The Strawberry Mansion Neighborhood Action Center helps more than just the community. It also has a positive impact on the individuals who walk through the door. The YES program, also known as the Youth Empowerment Station, located in the center at 2829 Diamond St., offers computers to all residents who do not have one of their own. There are currently six computers available for use.

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Bruce Marable is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Defined Clarity. Photo by Brian Dzenis

When TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien ‘I don’t know a single black entrepreneur,’ the snippet of the fourth installment O’Brien’s “Black in America” documentary set off a firestorm of debate about race in the cradle of America’s tech community, Silicon Valley.

In Philadelphia, among some black entrepreneurs in and around technology, Arrington’s comments were not a surprise.

“Something could be so normal or commonplace that you don’t even know something is wrong,” said Tayyib Smith, the founder of two.one.five magazine and Little Giant Media. “I don’t begrudge him for saying that because that’s how he feels, it just proves the lay of the land in Silicon Valley, so it was a good thing and it got people talking.”

The documentary, which originally aired on Nov. 13 and was screened locally soon after, followed eight black entrepreneurs: their struggles and perspectives in developing investment and user interest in the competitive world of high technology.

“Personally, I think it’s an accurate depiction of what the technology scene looks like, especially here in Philadelphia,” said Bruce Marable, the co-founder and chief marketing officer for Northern Liberties web development shop Defined Clarity. “When I go to any local organization meetings, happy hours or anything going on within the technology community, it’s primarily young Caucasians, some Asians and maybe an Indian person. There’s hardly any African Americans.”

“There’s a lot of times when I’m the only African American around,” he added.

Tayyib Smith is the founder of two.one.five magazine and Little Giant Media. Photo by Brian Dzenis.

While the documentary posed questions as to whether or not Silicon Valley was a true meritocracy, Marable said there simply is not enough black presence in the tech community of any city to determine if institutional bias exists one way or the other.

“Honestly, I don’t know if there’s enough African Americans who aspire to be technology founders or aspire to create technology startups,” Marable said. “As far as I’m concerned, outside of myself, my partners and other individuals that I know, I can’t say there’s been any bias, especially within one race.”

There have been efforts to address what is seen as a relative lack of black entrepreneurs, particularly in a city of 1.5 million, half of whom are African American. University City incubator DreamIt Ventures has piloted a minority entrepreneur program funded by Comcast Interactive Capital. Since 1989, the Enterprise Center in West Philadelphia has quietly connected minority business leaders with capital and business planning, and the City of Philadelphia, like other municipalities, has committed to boosting its use of black-owned businesses. Locally, other examples persist of success among black entrepreneurs, including the ever-growing SEO-shop SEER Interactive led by Wil Reynolds and niche cable provider Wilco owned and operated by a black father-daughter pair. (Women, too, have gotten into the act of welcoming faces other than the white male norm.)

When it came time to start Defined Clarity, Marable and his co-founders had made enough connections from past work experiences that they more easily overcame many obstacles familiar to low-income and minority entrepreneurs.

“The industries we came from were predominately white, so we came in knowing a lot of people. We didn’t feel like outsiders trying to get into a club. We were leveraging a lot of relationships we already had from working with previous organizations,” Marable said.

But not everyone in the African American community is as inclined toward tech entrepreneurship as Marable or Smith and both said education is a good place to start for bridging the digital divide.

“I think it needs to start in the K-12 process, there’s a large initiative now to teach students regardless of their race, about science, engineering, mathematics and technology,” Marable said. “With that being said, if African Americans focused in those areas, I think honing in on those skills, they would be more prone to starting a technology startup.”

Last week, the Technically Philly series State of STEM focused on the shortcomings of the city’s public education system around science, math and technology offerings — something that disproportionately affects black youth, who make up more than half of 150,000 public school students.

“You need more engagement in terms of giving opportunities with tech and our school system just to open the door,” Smith added. “There definitely needs to be a concerted effort in the United States to offer more tech opportunities to a socioeconomically diverse group of people, because I think that gets lost a lot in the discussion of race.”

It is not just a matter of focusing more on math and science, but doing so in a manner that is more engaging to young people. One example Marable gave was asking students if they knew who made Facebook or Twitter and starting from there.

“Some people would say a developer or programmer, some may say ‘I don’t know, it’s just some guys who built it,’ you could say ‘do you know what they need to understand?’ They need to understand math and this is why it’s important and you need to engage these students in learning more about these subjects,” Marable said.

There also needs to be role models in the tech community for youth to follow.

“I think we need to represent a lot more of the pie. There needs to be more African Americans [in the tech world] and the ones that have succeeded, they need to be highlighted more and I can’t necessarily say it’s the media’s fault because there’s tons of white startup founders that you’ll never know,” Marable said. “For the African Americans that do become successful in the tech startup world, they need to come out and glamorize it and say ‘look, this is cool, I can do this and you can do it too.’”

Watch below a video report that accompanies this story.

Will Daniel had two babies in 1977.

One was launching Wilco Electronic Systems, the now Fort Washington-based, black-owned cable operator that focuses on serving low income Philadelphians. The other, of course, was his daughter Brigitte Daniel.

Though Will remains president and chairman of the company, it’s been Brigitte, 34, officially the company’s executive vice president, who has taken up much of the company’s vision and regulatory affairs — heavy lifting in the regulation-crazed cable industry. Recently named to an FCC committee on digital diversity, Daniel is hungrily taking on the digital divide and couching that as a fundamental of the company’s future.

Since 2001, Wilco, which employs about 45 people, has been the primary cable and internet provider for Philadelphia Housing Authority projects, while it continues to offer mainstream offerings at more affordable costs for low income Philadelphians in other ways. Brigitte was one of the driving forces in bringing together the Freedom Rings partnership that won federal broadband stimulus funding to trial ways at increasing broadband access and awareness in poorer communities.

“Wilco helped frame the conversation,” Brigitte said. “The city put together the [new computer] centers, we did the infrastructure. It was important to have the partnership. It isn’t easy to get everyone to play together in the sandbox.”

Brigitte seems the perfect heir for her father’s business, perhaps even more so when she mentions she hadn’t planned on ever joining the company while growing up in Abington. An alumnus of Spellman College and Georgetown’s law school, she found herself gravitating to the impact telecom has on communities while in school. After graduating from Georgetown in 2002, she did policy work for USAID in Ghana, West Africa, where mobile technology conversations were already stirring. She was hooked.

Now living in Fairmount, Brigitte is currently on leave from her role in the day-to-day management of Wilco, as she serves in the prestigious Eisenhower Fellowship program. Traveling to learn about how the digital divide is being handled in south Asia, Daniel landed in New Delhi in late October, traveled elsewhere in India, including Hyderabad, then Sri Lanka, Singapore and will move on to Malaysia before returning in mid December. (See her blog on her travels here.)

In a phone call from Mumbai earlier this month, Daniel talked to Technically Philly about Wilco’s relationship with Comcast, what’s the future of Freedom Rings and more.

Edited for length and clarity.

Tell us about Wilco.

We’re a really unique company. We’re one of the last African-American owned cable operators in the country. Many were bought and merged through the years, with all the consolidation in cable and telecom and security systems for the last 34 years. My father started the company in 1977, the same year I was born, so my father had two babies that year. We focus on buildings with multiple units, since we’re a PCO [private cable operator], not a MSO [multiple system operator] like Comcast.

Because there aren’t as many restrictions on us as a company like Comcast, we can customize offerings that are very focused, since we’re private, we can provide services at varying prices, so that’s why we’ve focused on affordability and low income communities. We got into [the Philadelphia Housing Authority] in 2001 as the primary service provider, though we have been there since the 1980s. We were there when it wasn’t trendy to talk about access because they were our communities.

Wilco has developed a niche around broadband access issues. Was there an interest before internet service was a part of what Wilco offered?

Technology changes every year, we were always for our poorer communities.

TV for a low income person serves as entertainment and babysitter. It means more than it does for someone else. That gets criticized sometimes but with fewer options, technology — and TV for much of our company’s history fit in that category — is a chance at impact and cost cutting. We’ve always meant to have a social service aspect to what we do. We’ve always focused on offering the most to those who have the least.

We can’t do what we can do if our people can’t benefit from what we offer. We didn’t do it because we got a merger, we do it because we want to do it and always have done it.

We’re in between technology upgrades ourselves, but where in a unique place as an industry and it’s exciting to be here.

We sense there’s some criticism of Comcast, noting that its low-cost broadband package Internet Essentials rolled out as part of its FCC deal to approve the NBC acquisition.

No, we’ve partnered with Comcast for a relatively long time. My father knew [Comcast co-founder] Ralph Roberts from 10 to 15 years ago. They were smaller, the whole industry was smaller, and all the owners knew each other. Ralph and my father have been friends for years. We buy programming for them, and we resell that programming at an affordable cost. They’re federally regulated so they can’t price differentiate. PHA residents are getting mainstream programming but they are getting it more affordably from Wilco.

Comcast [Internet] Essentials is awesome, it’s a great step to getting more people online. At least it sets the bar for what market providers should be doing, even if the FCC is approving it, the mandate or encouragement is making it clear that our country needs to be connected. The speed is going to be issue, the issue will always be bandwidth. The low income groups, they’re going to adopt to the technology and love it, and they’ll connect with people, but they want to connect with things like Skype and Youtube first, to catch up with everyone else, and those services take up bandwidth, so with more people using that capacity, I think it’ll be hard for the Essentials program to keep up. The speed is just an entry level, just a start.

So what’s the next step?

What we’re trying to do and what we proposed in the broadband stimulus grants was to provide high speed access, to layer on applications around health and jobs skill training and software and development. To have impact like that, you’re going to need more than what is being offered by the Comcast Essentials program.

Those days will come and we’ll find ways to get the speeds up. For a national platform, it’s a great way to get underserved people online. What we’ll almost immediately see, well, it won’t be a digital divide gap, it’ll be a bandwidth gap, between those who have it and those who don’t. I applaud Comcast and Cox and Time Warner and the FCC for making it a priority because before it wasn’t.

My biggest recommendation for the FCC is that this is great and kudos for making it a national program, but they have to be sure to not ignore the services that have been providing these services for low income people for years. If not, we’ll see minority-owned companies getting pushed out of the way. We need the encouragement of partnership, and that should come as we ask ‘how do you measure success of a program like Comcast Essentials?’ What is success? I don’t think that has been determined yet.

You’re currently traveling abroad as an Eisenhower fellow. Tell us about it.

Yes, so I’m a 2011 Eisenhower fellow, and the fellowship, which has been around since 1953 and is based in Center City, sends emerging leaders from this country abroad to find ways to collaborate and create dialogue about what you’re doing to find and share best practices.

So for us at Wilco, it’s technology. We’re spreading our wings globally: how often does a small cable operator get the chance to do that? You get to go wherever you want to go, and so we’re in India and southeast Asia because technology and innovation are skyrocketing here, particularly mobile and wireless infrastructure. The innovation is skyrocketing, the population is young and interested. We support low income communities and that’s the exact challenge that’s being dealt with here.

In many of our conversations here, we see a focus on new mobile deployment to reach across rural poor communities through fiber and wireless. That’s what we want to learn about because the problem with Freedom Rings [here in Philadelphia] is the infrastructure didn’t get funded [by broadband stimulus], so a lot of [Philadelphia Housing Authority] housing doesn’t have internet connectivity.

Everyone is going through the same issues, a low income population has needs for access for opportunity to learn and grow like the rest of a population. You look at the scale — India has 1.5 billion people, Philly is 1,5 million — and everyone is seeing that without access, you’re not a participant in government.

It’s a whirlwind fact finding mission so we can learn and provide the best access to low income Philadelphians. We have to implement what we’ve learned, so we’ll look at what systems could be used and partner with the city to make change.

I’m proud to say that I’m one of the first U.S. fellows to be focusing on technology from a service provider role. We are on the front lines of providing service to low income Philadelphians, and so we can use what others are doing abroad. And what helps is that once you’re in the fellowship, you’re always in, no matter where you travel, you have a network. Really, I’ve learned more about American technology companies here than in the United States because you can get a meeting wherever you travel.

We’re bringing the best ideas back to Philadelphia.

You also have one of those fancy federal appointments: being named to the FCC’s re-charted Federal Advisory Committee on Diversity in the Digital Age. What does that mean?

It’s about recommending policy for diversity for training and broadband and lowering barriers, ensuring universal access and adoption. It’s policy action, and recommending steps to the commissioners.

I think started with Michael Powell, when he was chairman, and while some of his policies were conservative, this group is very progressive. The point was that content was diverse and so diversity in providers mattered. When [new Chairman Julius] Genachowski came on, the role has become really focused on broadband, making sure it’s available and affordable for everyone, and providers are partnering with the governments for it. Genachowski’s legacy is trying to bring access to as many Americans as we can, particularly the underserved. That gap is widening and widening.

They’ve had a lot of the same big players, but there is some new perspective. They wanted someone to come to the committee with on-the-ground, in-the-trenches experience who can also speak FCC language. It’s a new cache for the company but also a chance to get in on these big conversations.

OK, explain something: in the cable industry, why can the small players like Wilco have a lower price point than a company at the type of scale of a Comcast?

Yes, so we’re a private cable operator. We have less regulation, less federal regulation, so we can sell something at a variable price that we determine that covers our costs.

We can only provide to specific communities, so it forces us to have a niche. Smaller cable operators have to focus on vary narrow communities that the big players aren’t hitting. We don’t just provide to PHA residents, but also to commercial business. We partner with other entities, not just providers but educational organizations. Our niche, as I said, is that we sell affordable.

Of course, there aren’t a lot of Wilcos because it’s very capital intensive. Customer acquisition takes time and relationships.

Why can’t Comcast just charge less? And if you are cheaper but providing similar service, why can’t anyone become a Wilco customer?

[laughs] Everything is regulated by the FCC and everything has a territory.

In Philadelphia, Comcast is the incumbent service provider. So you have to apply for a franchise from a municipality, to get council approval, to be the incumbent, to be able to offer service [using the city's broadband infrastructure] As a PCO, we do not have to do that. But because it’s by territory, we can’t provide everywhere. Well, at least today, broadband is not regulated in the same way, but cable is. So in your average single-family home, only cable operators that have a city franchise can offer service. [Satellite providers are a separate option altogether.]

So why does Wilco provide service where it does?

Our big client is PHA. We provide to those homes because in 2001 the agency put out an RFP to get a contract to provide those services. Before 2001, there were various partners private and small offering services, and we were one of them. We can’t go into a residential home because we can’t cross what are called ‘public rights of way.’ MSOs [like Comcast] pay a lot of money for a franchise, but they get to wire an entire city and get all those customers.

Wilco can only provide to private communties, in a building or in an enclosed campus, so PHA fits, or places like condos, multiple dwelling units. So as a small cable operator, you find your niche, what existing communities you can add value for. You pitch those communities and get a contract.

To close out, because Wilco and yourself particularly were involved in bringing together Freedom Rings, what’s the latest there?

As part of the fellowship, I’m learning lessons there too. We have to make sure that Freedom Rings is sustainable, after the funding is gone and the training is gone, we need to find new, affordable ways of doing what we do, improving access and awareness. We can’t exclusively depend on grants. We need to find new ways. Mobile phone development is a big part of being sustainable, as every phone will soon have browser capabilities and we can find cheaper solutions of training and making low income Philadelphians aware of what is out there. That’s the next big hurdle.

It’s still a good partnership, which is good, because it’s going to take a village to make sure this program will continue to be a success into the future.

Two and a half weeks before Election Day, freshman Councilwoman Maria Quiñones Sanchez has effectively already earned a second term.

After soundly beating challenger Dan Savage, who held the seat and lost it to Sanchez,  in an at times bitter primary, the Inquirer-endorsed Sanchez is running unopposed in the general campaign for the seventh council district.

So now she can focus a bit more on her legislative work.

Representing largely poor and blighted neighborhoods like Kensington and portions of North Philadelphia up to Frankford at the foothills of the Northeast, Quiñones Sanchez has taken an interest in digital divide issues and tax reform policy to try to retain what manufacturing remains in the broken heart of the Workshop of the World.

The first Latina on council, Quiñones Sanchez, 42, was born in Puerto Rico but raised in Hunting Park and now lives in Norris Square with her husband and two sons. A Mastbaum High School and Lincoln University alumnae, she worked for council members, including former at-large Councilman Angel Ortiz, and is credited with having brought life back to Latino education-advocacy group Aspira, along with leading other Hispanic-focused community organizations.

In 1999, she lost to incumbent City Councilman Rick Mariano but after he went to federal prison in 2006 and Savage was chosen by ward leaders to replace him, she beat him in the 2007 primary. Full bio here [.doc].

Below, Technically Philly speaks to Quiñones Sanchez about taxes, computer literacy and how city data helped clean up her district.

Photo by April Saul for the Inquirer.

As always, edited for length and clarity.

What is the status of the tax reform legislation from Councilman Green and yourself? We reported earlier this year that it was in a working group.

We have now reintroduced the legislation and are holding a hearing on Monday, Oct. 24 to hear outside perspective on it.

The legislation we introduced this session is a little different than what we have pending. What we have pending is a total transformation, this one [that will be discussed in Monday's hearing] comes from the working group with the administration and the work that has been done over the past couple of years.

There were two items that we thought we had some general agreement about across stakeholders: one was the $100,000 tax exemption, both on the gross and net, for small businesses, and the second is single source piece that would help manufacturers offset their competitiveness [by cutting income tax on products and services sold outside of the city, to help exporting businesses]. We beleive that we can get the support the two pieces, two of the pieces in the bigger piece of legislation.

Has the Chamber of Commerce supported these changes? They’ve been among the most critical of your efforts around tax reform, saying it creates ‘winners and losers.’

We’re going to meet with the Chamber again before the hearing and have met with them before the summer. Bill [Green] and I met with their executive team and heard their concerns around some of the legislation.

I think we can get some support, if not complete support, from the Chamber because this represents a higher tax reduction than plans for a gross receipts reduction. And this is more targeted because the beneficiaries are overwhelming Philadelphia-based businesses.

This represents anywhere from a 12-15 percent tax reduction versus such minor reduction in the mills on the gross receipts.

More than ‘winners and losers,’ Councilman Jim Kenney said the legislation was a ‘dangerous experiment,‘ that wasn’t worth taking. Has he come out to support your changes?

I think this is better. We met with Councilman Kenney. He agreed to support us on this $100k part in a more complete way, so we’re both going to be supportive of some of his legislation and get a hearing ourselves [on the tax reform].

Into the first half of the last century, your district once had one of the densest collections of manufacturing jobs in the world. From the 1950 to 1980, that industrial half of the city lost 300,000 jobs, as the Inquirer reported. So for you, the export help for what remains of manufacturing in Philadelphia matters.

That single source part [where businesses would only pay net income taxes on income derived in the city, not non-City sales] is a little more difficult in that it costs the city a lot more over the five year roll-out plan. That’s what we’re talking to the administration about.

It’s really important though. There are still jobs to lose. I met with two manufactures in my district who were, like, ‘I’m out.’ Now, the [business privilege tax] was one element and storm-water management [fees from the Water Department] was another, and we’re working with them, but I feel very strongly that we have to send a message — even if we postpone implementing that a year away — so at least that manufacturers know some relief is coming.

One part of the problem is keeping what businesses we have, but another part is the training a new workforce. How have you taken on the issue of digital divide in your district?

It’s very challenging, but we’ve done really well. We have close to a dozen of the digital labs through the stimulus package. Just last week, we did a grand opening at Prevention Point, which is my controversial needle exchange program in West Kensington. It’s already heavily used by their clients.

We’ve tried to partner with the city’s IT department and Philly Fight to get to underserved constituents. We’re trying to open one more.

Opening up computer centers in poor communities is a good first step, not a solution. What are you doing to engage these underserved communities?

The way we’ve located the centers and the partners we’ve had are choices to focus on the constituents we’re tring to reach. The homeless man may not go into the library because he doesn’t feel comfortable there, but, because he is a client at Prevention Point, he might get online there. Once there, we’re focusing on real training on computers and use for job searches.

Now, at our library at 6th and Lehigh, we expanded their computer center through one of these grants because of increased volume, but it’s about trying to meet people where they’re at, rather than just having them come to us.

Because libraries are usually small, we try to find new places, and we can interact with new people there too. Some of the steps we need are just education and awareness of what computer services are out there and what you can do with online access.

Is reforming tax policy to retain and attract business and reaching out to the poorest and most vulnerable fellow citizens around technology enough to connect people with jobs in your district and the rest of Philadelphia?

I still believe we have a ways to go to put together a comprehensive workforce strategy in the city. We had hearings a few weeks ago of the [City Council] Committee on Commerce and Economic Development with the Philadelphia Workforce Development Corporation as they merge with the Workforce Investment Board. We’re concerned with what we heard.

What is concerning?

There have been huge cuts at the state level, so I think the city needs to get smarter about how it uses its labor force development money. You’re going to see us, through the Committee of Commerce, more engaged in that public discussion.

What are the drastic cuts at the state level — for the Workforce Development Corporation, they lost 90 employees and are down to 120 staff people — going to do to how we work, how are we engaging employers to get involved in our programs?

The move at the state level is to subsidize private businesses more,. by saying, ‘let people hire them and let the subsidy go to the business.’ It could be helpful if it’s being targeted to the innovative businesses. So part of the discussion is how we make that connection happen.

The Workforce Development Corporation — and I worked there in a previous life — tends to follow kind of the traditional, larger firms. How do we ensure small businesses can tap into that, so those subsidies touch our re-entry community and other places that could be missed?

When I was at Prevention Point, I talked to the clients. Even the hotels ask housekeepers to log into work with handheld computer systems so we need to give our people the basics, just familiarity with computers. Social media has helped tremendously, to get people aware. You may not have a home, but you have an email address. You may not have a home, but you have a Facebook page.

But then taking that to the next level, you need those skills, if you’re a cashier or if you’re a housekeeper. The very basic understanding is important.

With the maturing of the web has come a need for greater performance tracking. While the technology community is embracing the open data movement, an overwhelmed city seems to still be lagging behind. Do you see that? Is it unavoidable?

Part of the challenge in the city is that while we want to embrace transparency, we have not put out the resources necessary at the table. 311 was off the shelf technology. 311 is still operating with Hansen [database system] on one side from L&I and the Streets Department technology on the other. That’s kept them limited, and I know that’s something they’ve looked at.

I know on the capital side, IT has a lot of money, and I think we have been slow – to put it nicely — to utilize those resources to get a more comprehensive 311 PhillyStat program, where the data drives the performance. I think 311 has gotten much better, once it figured out how the data could interface, but we’re still dealing with limited technology. Apparently there is an RFP out and I’m looking forward to seeing talk of its new design.

You’ve taken steps to bring the performance management data into City Council.

One of the things I’ve proposed in Council that didn’t move and hope we can push the new president of City Council to push would be to introduce a CouncilStat like New York, that would allow us to interface with the city’s data through our eyes. One of the things I hear when talking to my colleauges in New York and Chicago and other places is that they really use their CouncilStat to drive their budget conversations.

So that if the Streets Department says ‘We’re going to have the capacity to fill 10,000 potholes,’ but there is a 30,000 pothole backlog, we can say ‘that’s not enough.’ Right now we don’t have that. We are totally beholden to the city on the data.

What I’d like to see in Council — this could be done cheaply, the Council piece in New York, the setup costs were maybe $100,000 to $150,000 and maintaining it was $40,000 a year — is the ability for us to be able to be sure that the departments are dropping the data to us, that we could check in on that and use GPS and other ways to measure success, that’s huge.

Whether that data is being shared publicly and real-time with you, the public or the Managing Director’s office through PhillyStat, there needs to be real buy in. We’ve found the biggest problem is sheer workflow problems, not having the people to get this data secure, stable and out in an API or something like it.

That’s not true. We have deputy commissioners of administration who have fought to give up this territory.

I think the Mayor is creating more political will to say ‘we have to have this call for transparency.’ There’s no reason that we can’t see this data in his next term, and see it in real time. Even if he doesn’t want to see it all out there, to see more of it in a public platform. We need to see in real time that we’re missing our goals in real time.

In the initial conversations about 311, a department can say it’s going to take 72 hours, but there’s no way of knowing if that’s true. Unless it’s a performance management tool, what does it matter? It needs to be real time.

Collecting and sharing data in a real-time fashion, like a dependable API, is an absolute priority, particularly because there are people in the technology community who want to build interesting tools and visualizations on their own with it. There’s some interest but it seems like each agency is waiting for someone else to be the first.

Yes, we haven’t had a lot of progress because we can’t get the departments on board early, because once you put that data out there, they have to stand by it. One of the things I learned very early on is never ask a question you don’t have an answer to. I hate, too, whenever you have to put it on the record for building the record, so I understand, but we all need to do a better job of explaining why this matters.

Things like the OpenDataRace and the recent SEPTA hackathon should help that cause. What helped you see the value of releasing data in malleable formats?

So, we can connect SEPTA routes to the litter index. My litter index — tracked by Neighborhood Services at the Streets Department — has been reduced tremendously in my district.

[We did that with data.]

So we looked when I first started, one of the things I found was that I had 50 public trash cans [in my district], now we’re close to 400. We did an overlay for the placement of trash and bus routes. Where did the most trash happen? In the congruence of bus routes and mass transit. So taking streets data and SEPTA data and learning that can teach us things [to govern better].

From Front to Second Street, we’ve learned that we don’t need a bus stop because we can’t put a trash can there and people can walk that half block either way. If we’re sharing data from all of our agencies, this can happen in more ways. I wouldn’t have been able to see that if I couldn’t ask for and see a combination of data.

We looked at where SEPTA sold tokens, and they didn’t in my poorest communities where people could afford the full price the least. We need to have all these quasi departments and all the agencies offering the ability for us to crunch data and better leverage the limited resources we have. We can get smarter about how we’re doing things.

Lastly, in our redistricting coverage, your district kept being named as among the worst irregular, how do you feel about the change?

The district is going to look a lot better. I think we had some real challenges that the data showed us around the shift of populations,

We saw where the city has to do a more focused job of repopulating the community, and areas where I’m busting at the seems and the Northeast is too. I think we’re at a better place, but I’d like for Council to utilize its ability to redistrict at any time to be willing to shift these lines as necessary.

One thing I told folks is that a more compact district also means a more concentrated district in terms of poverty, so I didn’t get an easier district. As much as the political pundits spoke about getting an easier district, I got a more challenging district.

I looked at the census, and the median income, I’m sure, was reduced. I already had 44 percent of my district under $20,000, and with the loss of the more stable parts of my district, with the demographic shifts — I picked up some large African American communities which was also helpful in the changing areas — this is more work.

…And we learned that with data.

Philadelphia residents prepare for a basic computing class at VICA Technologies LLC at 42nd Street and Lancaster Avenue in West Philadelphia.

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods program, the capstone class for the Temple’s Department of Journalism.

Elaine Skoczylas said she knows how to type. It’s just the other things that are tricky.

“I’ve never really learned Microsoft Office. I don’t have a computer at home, but I had one in my job that I was using, I really didn’t need to know that other stuff,” Skoczylas said. “I knew how to type on our own system, so I got let go and now I’m trying to apply for jobs and I haven’t applied for jobs in 39 years.”

She’s trying to find a job now and has realized that just knowing how to type isn’t going to be enough.

“That’s why I’m trying to learn this.” she added.

To try and rectify her situation, Skoczylas signed up for a free Microsoft Office training course at VICA Technologies LLC, which is located near 42nd Street and Lancaster Avenue. She was able to take part in the class thanks to the Freedom Rings Partnership, a collaboration between 16 different community organizations, nonprofits, universities and city government officials charged with the mission of giving Philadelphians access to computer technology and the Internet while also training them in its use.

Below, watch a video on the partnership.

“The Freedom Rings project is actually the leveraging of two different federal grants as part of the federal stimulus funding package the City of Philadelphia competed for and won,” said Ashley Del Bianco, a program manager from the city’s Office of Innovation and Technology. “It’s two grants used for providing broadband technology opportunities to Philadelphia and they’re mostly focused on access and adoption.

The question is being posed: can we tackle poverty here through technology?

“Of the two grants, one is held by the City of Philadelphia, which is the lead partner and the other is held by Urban Affairs Coalition, which is a large nonprofit in the city,” Del Bianco said. “Between those two grants are a lot of key nonprofit partners and those nonprofit partners are really the strength of the partnership, which is the way we’re going to implement and enact this.”

Using the stimulus grants that total out at $11.8 million, Freedom Rings will open 77 public computing centers, provide 200,000 hours of training, distribute 5,000 computers to public housing residents, generate 5,000 broadband home subscribers and 50 small business subscribers. All the above implementations will be done through various local nonprofits and other entities. The centers are spread around Center City, North, South and West Philadelphia, and they vary from being housed at community centers to existing training centers like VICA to homeless facilities. Four of the centers rotate locations, opening at certain facilities certain days and moving elsewhere other times.

Comcast’s newly announced Internet Essential program is a supplement to the partnership, members say.

A computing class agenda is written on the board at VICA Technologies LLC.

“The interesting thing that we’ve done with this and the city has done well is to build an external base of stakeholders or partners, so when we wrote the grant, it was written in conjunction with the Urban Affairs Colition on the adoption side of the grant, so we wrote the grant so that they would appear linked but were careful not to link them so closely that if one got funding and the other didn’t, it would be useless,” said Andrew Buss, the director of public programs from the city’s Office of Innovation and Technology.

The partnership has attracted other attention, like funding from IBM. The issue of access is core to the city’s broad Digital Philadelphia initiative, and the public-private partnership model was an accomplishment touted by former city Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank.

“There are some other cities that have a similar model that they’ve received public computing center stream of funding as well as the broadband stream, however I think this model is somewhat unique in its structure of utilizing the community base of nonprofit organizations as the means to make this work,” said Lindsey Keck, a program manager from the city’s Office of Innovation and Technology.

Since winning the grants in September 2010 and centers have started becoming operational, a common type of clientele has begun to emerge: the job seekers.

“I guess it’s fair to say that among the adults, a lot of them have been focused on workforce development, and they want to come in and develop their resumes and so on and so forth, but also just learning how to use the technology,” Del Bianco said. “In many cases, they didn’t have access to it earlier in their lives and in school, so they’re just interested in learning the basics.”

What has provided Freedom Rings a foundation to grow on is the strength of its partnerships, Del Bianco said. Because community members are already familiar with many of the participating nonprofit facilities that the computing centers occupy, they are more inclined to use the centers.

“People will go to these centers because they’re already a known and trusted place to them,” Del Bianco said.

“I think one of the challenges is having this initial client base with some of these organizations. After you run through those people, how do you build the population of the people that you’re serving through the grant?” Buss said. “It’s about reaching that next group of people.”

The First PHA Graduation Ceremony for the Freedom Rings Computer Training Program, held Aug. 11, 2011. Each graduate to complete the program walked home with a free Dell netbook computer. Courtesy of GPUAC.

Arun Prabhakaran is the Director of Government and Strategic Partnerships for the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition. The group has taken an active role in fighting digital divide issues in Philadelphia.

Our economy has taken a sustained pounding. Unemployment is out of control and the economic outlook for the next decade looks questionable, at best.

With a quarter of all Philadelphians living in poverty, many fear that we may be entering a new down-graded reality that is structural and permanent.  However, we can use technology and training to get us on the right track again.

We must address the major gap between the skills people have and the skills that the available jobs require.  Many of the jobs that are open now require at least functional literacy, a high school diploma or GED, and some training.  In an increasingly digital world, even the lowest skill, entry-level positions require a basic level of literacy and digital literacy. Even to apply for a job at McDonalds, you need to go online, which is a real challenge when 40 percent of households in Philadelphia are without internet access.

This is challenge that we, as a city, can overcome, as has been discussed on Technically Philly before.

There are 77 public computer centers being launched this year across the city as a part of the Freedom Rings Partnership, a $25 million federally funded partnership that aims to create a new wave of technology adopters in the city. By just taking advantage of these free programs, people can gain access to a range of training opportunities to further their educations, gain valuable skills, find jobs, and participate in the economy. By linking up to these resources, people will have the chance to participate in the classroom, workplace, and in the world on their own — anywhere, anytime via technology.

Arun Prabhakaran, Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition

In March, Mayor Nutter announced that IBM would send as much as $500,000 in technology and consulting to create a strategy for more innovative workforce development in Philadelphia. Internet Essentials, the low-cost broadband access program from Comcast announced last month, is leveraging the Freedom Rings partnership to offer training to low-income Philadelphians.

It’s important that people get connected as soon as possible.

Those of us who follow tech trends know that the digital world will change dramatically in the coming decade.  As we move deeper into the 21st Century, much more of the infrastructure of life – bills, purchases, communications, entertainment, work and play – will happen in the digital space.

We need to inspire all Philadelphians to make it their job to help others to learn how to read, get trained on how to use computers, get connected to the internet and to find opportunities to do even more. Technology can’t and won’t solve every problem. However, applied correctly, technology could dramatically change the factors that fuel unemployment and poverty. By doing our part, we’ll be on the right track to tackling our largest problems, like poverty, one step at a time.

Technically Philly does not necessarily agree with the editorial content in this guest post. Submit your own by pitching us here.

Mayor Michael Nutter and Comcast's David L. Cohen tape an edition of NBC 10's @Issue with Steve Highsmith, discussing access to the internet in Philadelphia and the new 'Internet Essentials' program. Photo by Mitchell Leff for City of Philadelphia.

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods program, the capstone class for the Temple’s Department of Journalism.

Forty percent of, or at least 230,000, Philadelphia households are without Internet access, according to a speech Mayor Nutter gave last week, introducing the Comcast Internet Essentials low-cost web offer to the city.

That disparity is concentrated in very specific areas: for example, just 10 percent of Kensington homes have Internet access while in Society Hill, the number is beyond 90 percent, Nutter said.

When the majority of residents in a given area do not have Internet access, the entire community is at a disadvantage. Web-enabled computers are among the most overwhelmed resources at Free Library branches, as residents seek and apply for jobs, students research and do school work and everyone tries to keep up with normalizing communication patterns.

For years, this divide has been on the minds of both city government and businesses both local and national, and a variety of initiatives have taken root recently.

On the city government side, around $25 million in federal stimulus money has been spent toward bridging this divide, largely put under the broad FreedomRings initiative. Those funds have been earmarked for 77 computing centers around the city, many of them set to be mobile and 30 of which are currently operational.

These centers provide free Internet access to children looking to complete homework assignments and adults who are seeking jobs or educational opportunities. If a person using any of these centers does not possess the knowledge of how to use the Internet or a computer in general, the staff at these centers hold classes to educate people on how to use the Internet as a tool to educate themselves, improve or create new ways for people to earn a livelihood. Mayor Nutter has touted these centers for both educating the public and providing jobs in the city.

The Free Library has sought to expand its online offerings through a new Knight Foundation-funded service called Free Library Hot Spots, where residents can go to use free Internet. The Hot Spots are equipped with computers and printers, and computer assistants oversee the Hot Spots to provide any information and help to users.

Additionally, wireless Internet access has been rolled out at all library locations. Users can bring their own laptop or wireless device to any Free Library and utilize the Internet connection. This provision of web access offers those who cannot afford to have wireless Internet in their own home to stay connected.

Like the federally funded computing centers, the Free Library also offers a number of computer training courses, including classes that cover the basics of computers and the internet, intended for individuals with little to no experience with technology.

Businesses are getting in on the act as well, most recently noted with the Philadelphia launch of Internet Essentials from Comcast, a low-cost Internet option the company is rolling out in all of its markets as part of its deal with the FCC to gain approval for its bid to acquire a majority stake in NBC Universal.

The program, for qualifying families with children who are receiving free school lunches, can receive monthly Internet access with up to 1.5 Mbps for around $10 a month and a $150 voucher for what Comcast calls “a low-cost computer.”

Verizon Wireless and AT&T have both been upgrading their mobile network connections, often pitching the advancements as a way to make smartphone connectivity an answer to the digital divide. Notably, Pew research has shown that mobile phone web-usage in some black and Hispanic communities can outpace that of white users.