State Broadband Capacity Building:

Through the Maine State Planning Office, the state will convene a broadband capacity building task force and manage the creation and implementation of a statewide plan to address broadband challenges. The state will integrate the broadband capacity building activities into existing state initiatives, including the state’s existing Quality of Place, Mobilize Maine, and Health Information Technology projects.

Technical Assistance:

Under the leadership of the Maine Department of Education Adult and Community Education Program, this project will expand the Maine Adult Regional Technology Initiative (MARTI), by providing intensive, ongoing training and mentoring in the use of technology in the classroom to 112 adult educators across the state. Given the limited broadband resources in many adult education centers in the state, limited funds will also be available to MARTI classrooms to improve access to broadband and technology tools.

Data Collection, Integration, and Validation:

This project was originally funded for broadband planning activities and two years of data collection. In September of 2010, this project was amended to extend data collection activities for an additional three years and to identify and implement best practices.

Address File Development:

The State of Maine will conduct a two-stage process that conflates the existing E-911, ConnectME and Department of Transportation centerline files, and then utilizes dynamic segmentation to generate an address file for the majority of communities and a traditional assignment approach for the few communities that did participate in the previous address normalization project.