Making Connections in Northwestern PA

Northwestern Pennsylvania is making serious inroads in the area of information technology by providing technology, training and education, to connect its citizens, local governments and other interested parties.

Link-to-Learn Training Center

Crawford County is an active participant in the Northwest Pennsylvania Regional Planning and Development Commission (RP&DC), an Economic Development Administration (EDA) funded district serving eight counties. Through the regional Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy process, solutions are found to area economic development problems. This regional approach results in highly effective and innovative projects to leverage federal and state grants.

The Crawford County Regional Alliance (CCRA) saw a need for improved computer and technological literacy, in order to encourage local business retention and attract new opportunities. In response, CCRA developed the Regional Link-To-Learn Training Center (L2L Training Center). The L2L Training Center is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art facility that meets the educational, economic and cultural needs of Northwest Pennsylvanians. The center also offers a fully functional interactive user-friendly environment with all of the necessary equipment available for meeting the most demanding training situations.

The most recent EDA-assisted project, supporting a great deal of manufacturing, developed the L2L Training Center, a state-of-the-art technology center that has been in place for approximately one year and is already reaching nearly every community sector.The total project cost, $1,450,000, was covered by grants.

The L2L Training Center is located in the Crawford County Industrial Park (CCIP), a 1,400,000 square foot facility (35 acres under roof), a former acetate yarn manufacturing plant under redevelopment by the Crawford County Development Corporation since 1989. The redevelopment of the CCIP into a multi-tenant facility has emerged as one of the most effective development projects in the rebuilding of the employment structure of this distressed community. EDA grants of over $3,000,000 since 1990 have leveraged more than $15 million in public investment and between $50 million and $75 million in private investment. The CCIP now employs over 1,200, with 19 industrial, educational and service related tenant companies and a daycare facility for employee’s children.

The CCIP has positioned itself at the forefront of new telecommunications technology by being one of the first to provide fiber optics cables within its facilities. Videoconferencing and distance learning capabilities are available to assist new and existing companies.

The Precision Manufacturing Institute (PMI) is a nonprofit corporation which operates and maintains a facility for development, teaching, training and transfer of state-of-the-art management and manufacturing technologies at the CCIP’s Technology Center. Small and medium-sized manufacturers in a 14-county region of Northwestern Pennsylvania are the target group for the institute. Computer training for a variety of software programs is offered. An amphitheater and classrooms have been completed for business and educational uses.

A Tele-Business/Education Center with access to full telecommunications linkages around the world is a basic component of the L2L Training Center. The center provides a training facility, capable of supporting local, regional and global state-of-the-art requirements for comprehensive interactive communications, such as distance learning, video conferencing, electronic data interchange and e-commerce. The region’s available media technological resources have been combined with professional service providers in a unique alliance to both grow the region financially and retain and educate its youth and displaced workforce. The center offers every facilitator/ trainer/user the ability to communicate through a myriad of media formats, any or all of which can be used independently or jointly to form a simultaneous transfer of data, image and sound which will ultimately prove to be almost like being there.

According to Paul Raetsch, EDA Philadelphia Regional Director, “An exciting, fun-filled training environment will produce greater learning results and lasting rewards. The L2L Center exemplifies this fact.”

For a modest hourly fee, anyone can use the training center with or without technical support. Furthermore, experts can customize the center’s hardware, software and support components to ensure a productive and successful training session.

The L2L Center allows training with a link to or from another facility or two, Tele-Video Marketing using headsets with boom microphones, and allows students to have a digital copy of the session or their work on disc or tape or the choice to have it transmitted live over the local cable network or over the Commonwealth’s Pennsylvania Cable Network. The L2L Center is a choice in training today for tomorrow’s requirements.

NWPTI, also located in the Technology Center, is a college without walls that coordinates training/education classes between providers (universities and trainers) and businesses in Crawford County.

In addition to this project, Northwest Pennsylvania is also working with other Pennsylvania development districts on ways to improve local technology access for local governments.

Connecting Local Governments

At the end of 1998, over 40 percent of American households owned computers, and one-quarter of all households had Internet access. However, it is common for municipalities operating on multi-million dollar annual budgets to not have computers or Internet access. In fact, less than 20 percent of the municipalities in Pennsylvania have computers. The Pennsylvania Local Development Districts (LDDs) wanted to remedy this situation.

At the end of 1998, over 40 percent of American households owned computers, and one-quarter of all households had Internet access.

The Pennsylvania Technology Investment Authority (PTIA), with the help of the seven Pennsylvania LDDs, is beginning its work on extensive computerization services to municipalities throughout Pennsylvania. Chris Beichner of the Northwest Pennsylvania RP&DC began this endeavor in August 2000 by giving, with the help of representatives in the eight counties the planning agency serves, 11 computers the commission replaced in an upgrade of its own system. Beichner is now looking for donated machines from individuals and businesses and government funding for a proposed three-year program aimed at making computer technology an important tool for local governments in Pennsylvania. Through the Municipal Computer Donation Program, the seven regional planning agencies are soliciting businesses, schools, health care providers and citizens for used computers, in exchange for a tax-deductible charitable donation.

Training classes are in the works as well. Beichner offers a short one-on-one training session when he delivers computers to a municipality; with more funding, he hopes to offer 45 training workshops statewide by March or April 2001. Courses will address basic computer and Internet literacy in the first year, with more technical courses being offered in the second and third years of the program.

Other objectives in the first year of the program include placing the Municipal Secretary Desktop Reference Manual — an informational guide created by the Southwest Pennsylvania Commission in 1997 and distributed to each municipality — online and in CD-ROM form; connecting municipalities to the Internet and creating municipal web pages. Second and third year goals include continuing the computer donation program, offering intermediate computer training programs and creating more advanced web pages.

Beichner, having recently returned from the US Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration conference on the digital divide, explained what he learned, “The perception that I learned at the conference was that the solution to the digital divide is not necessarily hardware but more social acceptance and relevance of the technology. People need to be educated that these technologies are relevant to their lives, and then they will go about acquiring them. PTIA is an entity that regions and municipalities can come to for help in accepting the fact that this technology is needed.”

The PTIA has already received $605,000 from the state Department of Community and Economic Development to begin implementing the program. The project is also seeking a federal grant through the Technology Opportunities Program, administered by the US Department of Commerce.

By Melissa Levy, Digest Managing Editor

For more information, contact Maryann Martin, CEO of CCRA, at (814) 337-8200; and Christopher Beichner of Northwest Pennsylvania RP&DC at (814) 677-4800 or visit them on the web at www.nwplan.org.

December Index | Back Page | Next Page