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06/20/2006Portal Power: Making a Splash in Van Nuys
In the working-class community of Van Nuys, about 25 miles northwest of the Los Angeles downtown core, the “ExperienceLA” Web portal has been incorporated into an existing Wi-Fi network that was launched as a pilot project a little less than two years ago. Terry Halberg, Telecom Planner for the L.A. Information Technology Agency, and Charity Tran of the Civic Resource Group, described the development of ExperienceLA from a splash page providing free log-on access to city directories to a full-scale portal with 1,600 cultural-organization subscribers.
 Terry Halberg: The project began in the last part of 2003 with a Los Angeles City Council directive to look at what could be done with Wi-Fi to help extend services. The pilot was launched in October 2004, offering the first free Wi-Fi access district in the city. The ExperienceLA portal page was launched this past April.
The initial phases of the pilot focused on the network itself and looking at how the technology could be supported. We were interested in the ongoing maintenance and support issues, to understand who the users might be, and to gauge community interest. Some people didn’t think Van Nuys would be an ideal location, but there has been interest and feedback from users. The project was also an opportunity for the city to get some experience with the metro-scale Wi-Fi and understand how it could scale to other locations.
Service DeliveryThe idea was to have 24/7 Web-based access and extend that into a wireless environment. A number of e-government initiatives were already under way, and the question really was how suitable the network would be to support and deliver those services. We knew there was potential to deliver some location-specific information, but at the time really we were relying on information that the city managed, such as basic city services directories, and the focus was more on the technology.
Within Los Angeles, there are almost 80 neighborhood councils regionally dispersed and involved in advising the city and dealing with local issues. They’re very active at the Van Nuys Civic Center. We were trying to understand how best we could deliver those services to every council, and Wi-Fi looked like an opportunity to be able to deploy these networks in a way that would be available any time to these neighborhood councils.
Van Nuys Civic Center is a very busy city hub. Any construction services in the San Fernando Valley basically need to be requested and managed through that location. Since the launch, there’s been interest in how to extend this to the campus environment and incorporate an education component.
The outreach for this was key, and included making people aware of the service and what could be done with it. There was some attempt to conduct workshops to encourage people to use the service as much as possible. We took advantage of the local municipal access channel and the Web page itself.
Public-Private PartnershipA public-private partnership has made it happen. The city’s Information Technology Agency wasn’t in a position to deploy a public-access wireless service, and we were looking to the private sector to show us best how to do that. Also within the city, there are multiple entities involved with access to Rights of Ways, so any we had to work those entities, from installing equipment on rooftops to street poles.
Information Technology Agency was the project lead. The Department of Water & Power in the City of Los Angeles controls a significant amount of dark fiber, so we’re utilizing their network to connect the wireless network and backhaul it downtown to where the city’s Internet service provider is.
The Bureau of Street Lighting allowed access to the street light poles. The Department of General Services controls access to the buildings themselves, so we worked with them to install the indoor and rooftop radios. Aiirmesh Communications’s work in Cerritos got their attention to do something on a small scale in L.A. FiberQuest is the ISP. Civic Resources Group, through the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, has supported on the content side everything you saw on the content page and Web development and access to the information their partners is providing.
To give you a sense of the campus network and the Van Nuys Civic Center itself—as a follow-on phase, we’re trying to extend the service to the campus, which is half a mile to the northwest. There’s an opportunity to extend to a transportation line through the MTA.
We need to understand how that will affect the content piece, and what that mix would be in terms of the educational piece, the city, and how that might play in.
Content and Portal DevelopmentOn the content side, this was launched initially as a splash page, where users would agree to terms of use. There was some basic info about the project itself. We did have a survey for users to provide user feedback, which has helped us improve the service. There was no registration; it was pretty much an open network. The effort was interoperability and the need to make this as easy to use as possible.
As we got some experience and understood what the on-the-ground support needs would be, we integrated some of the other features through the second phase, which is location-specific information. We also have better tools now for monitoring use of the network.
As users connect to the service we use a walled-garden approach where the ExperienceLA Wi-Fi Van Nuys content and the city and MTA’s content is all available without having to go through registration. If users are interested in going out to the Internet, they then set up an account through a registration process (managed by WISP Aiirmesh). We’re looking for future applications: local, municipal, educational, campus, etc.
Charity Tran, Civic Resource Group: We had a full launch in April 2004, but June 2006 is the official launch of the new design. Some 1,600 arts and cultural organizations have registered for ExperienceLA accounts, and through these they are able to log in to individual profiles and submit their events. Pictures and information are included, and it’s all put into an ExperienceLA database. Once it’s in there, we can use it on the Web site, for a weekly cultural e-newsletter, calendar RSS feeds, and the official cultural calendar. Podcasts are in development.
From this database, in addition to the ExperienceLA Web site, we work with the Big Museums Roundtable (museumsla.org), a partnership with Santa Monica City TV, and ExperienceLA Wi-Fi for Pershing Square and Van Nuys. CRA/LA issued an RFP for public Wi-Fi at Pershing Square, and Verge Wireless was selected in November 2004. Pershing Square Wi-Fi debuted in April 2005, which coincided with then Mayor Hahn’s proposed five-year broadband Wi-Fi plan.
The features of Experience LA are seamless integration and advertising banners. You can register and log in, there’s a model multi-agency collaborative on the Wi-Fi portal page, and it leverages externally resources and applications.
Terry Halberg: There’s an opportunity to test a sponsorship-funding model. It’s problematic with a City of Los Angeles splash page to put ad banners on, and the portal allows us to do this at arm’s length. We don’t have a sponsor yet, there is now a working portal page to show potential sponsors.
Finally, it’s important to know who your potential users might be. About security policies, privacy concerns, and content filtering, having common understanding are helpful. We continue to look at these areas and want to address them as soon as possible.
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Related Items:
• Macon (GA) Deploys Municipal Wireless
• Curtis Gibbs, Senior Resource Dev. Officer, CRA/LA
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