5.1 Current state of government agency networking

The overall state of government agency networking in South Carolina can best be described as uneven. Some agencies have state-of-the-art local area networks and high-speed access to a wide area network and/or the Internet. Other agencies-including most local governments and public libraries and many schools and school districts-have limited network resources, or none at all. State agencies are much more likely to be connected to each other and the Internet than are local government agencies.

State government agencies. Most of South Carolina's larger state agencies that have local offices throughout the state have wide area networks that link these offices to central computers in Columbia. These agencies as well as many smaller agencies that have offices only in Columbia are connected to MetroNet, a metropolitan area network operated by the State Budget and Control Board's Office of Information Resources. MetroNet is in turn connected to the Internet through Info Avenue Internet Services, a Rock Hill-based company that is state government's current Internet access provider. (Both MetroNet and the Office of Information Resources' statewide network services are described more fully in section 5.3 of this chapter.)

State colleges and universities. All of South Carolina's public colleges and universities have campus computer networks that are linked to the Internet. Eleven of these institutions-The Citadel, Clemson University, Coastal Carolina University, the College of Charleston, Greenville Technical College, Lander University, the Medical University of South Carolina, South Carolina State University, the University of South Carolina, Winthrop University, and York Technical College are connected directly through Internet access providers (either BBN Planet or Info Avenue). The remaining fifteen-Francis Marion University and the other 14 technical colleges-are connected to the Internet through the Office of Information Resources' statewide Frame Relay network and MetroNet.

Local governments. Hardly any of South Carolina's county, city, or public service district governments have metropolitan or wide area computer networks that connect their various offices and point-of-service locations to each other; and except for a few county libraries, none have dedicated Internet access. Several city governments and a handful of county and regional councils of governments do have useful World-Wide Web sites, but all of these are hosted by private Internet service providers.

Public libraries. Of the 39 county and regional library systems that serve South Carolina's 46 counties, about 30 have wide area networks that connect their branches to their main library's on-line catalog. However, only seven (Abbeville-Greenwood, Anderson, Charleston, Greenville, Richland, Spartanburg, and Sumter) have dedicated Internet access. All seven of these library systems are connected to the Internet through local Internet access providers.

Public schools. The distribution of network resources among South Carolina's 91 public school districts is particularly uneven. Some of the state's richer districts (most of which are located in urban and suburban areas) have world-class local area networks within individual schools, fiber optic wide area networks that link schools and district offices, and high-speed, dedicated Internet access. At the other extreme, some of the state's poorer school districts don't have any networks-and some schools don't even have computers to network. In between are a large number of schools that have some networked classrooms and one or two dial-up Internet access lines (often located in the school's library or media center).

In June of 1996, the General Assembly appropriated about $10 million for networking K-12 public schools and connecting them to the Internet. However, most of this money can be spent only for "telecommunications infrastructure," which in practice means monthly payments to state telephone companies for high-speed dedicated digital lines that link schools within a district and link districts to a new statewide network and four Internet access points. While these expenditures will definitely increase the number of schools and school districts that have access to SCIway and the Internet, they will also increase the gap between technology rich schools and technology poor schools . . . because schools that don't have computers and within-school networks don't need high-speed connections to external networks. (See section 5.3 for a full discussion of this new public schools networking program.)

5.2 South Carolina's first shared state government data network

Prior to 1990, South Carolina state government data networks were the province of individual agencies. Each agency was responsible for planning and implementing its own local area and wide area networks. However, the 1983 State Plan on Technology (SPOT) recognized that this fragmented approach resulted in higher than necessary operational costs, and it advocated the development of a shared, centrally managed, statewide, integrated communication network that would carry data, voice, video, and radio transmissions. The plan's authors believed that a backbone network shared by multiple agencies would reduce the cost of transmitting data within agencies and make it easier for agencies to access state data processing centers and communicate with each other.

As a result of another SPOT recommendation, the Division of Information Resource Management (DIRM) was established as part of the State Budget and Control Board in July 1983. Its original responsibilities included information technology planning and the provision of telecommunications, data processing, and printing services to state agencies. As part of the reorganization of state government, DIRM's name was changed to the Office of Information Resources (OIR) in December 1993. Its current responsibilities include communications infrastructure planning and the provision of telecommunications, microwave, data processing, network management, and printing services.

In 1989 DIRM contracted with Southern Bell and MCI to provide the core components of a statewide voice and data network. The backbone of this network consisted of eight Southern Bell Digital Access Cross-connect Systems (DACS) linked by multiple T1 lines. The eight DACS were located in Southern Bell central offices in Anderson, Charleston, Columbia, Florence, Greenville, North Augusta, Spartanburg, and York. The multi-channel T1 circuits connecting these offices were leased from Southern Bell (intraLATA lines only) or MCI (state government's interLATA carrier at the time), and they could be split between voice and data and between agencies. Agencies leased local links to the DACS connection points from Southern Bell and other local telephone companies.

One objective of this shared, integrated voice-and-data network was to provide state agencies low cost, reliable intrastate long distance telephone service-including dial-up modem service-through an Electronic Tandem Network (ETN). A second objective was to provide individual agencies a more economical way of connecting their local office data terminals and printers to IBM and IBM-compatible mainframe computers in Columbia.

In early 1990 four state agencies-the departments of Health and Environmental Control, Highways and Public Transportation, and Youth Services, plus the State Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education-began using the data part of this network, which was called the State Data Network (SDN), or informally, the SNA network, since most of the data traffic used IBM's SNA communication protocol. This point-to-point network was South Carolina state government's first shared statewide data network, and it served about 200 agency locations. Today it serves 22 state agencies and more than 1,200 locations. Because (in part) of the economies that result from agencies' sharing intraLATA and interLATA T1 circuits, the per mile charge for using this network has decreased from $3.94 in 1990 to $1.00 today.

In February 1994 the name of this first shared state government data network was changed from State Data Network to South Carolina Information Network, or SCIN. In March of 1996 the SCIN User Council, an OIR customer advisory group that has expanded as OIR's services have expanded, changed its acronym to SCINET.

5.3 SCINET: an array of networks

In recent months the term SCINET has been used to describe an array of networks that the Office of Information Resources provides for state and local government agencies, colleges and universities, and K-12 schools. Thanks to new information needs, technological advances, the lure of the Internet, and the General Assembly's recent $10 million appropriation for networking K-12 schools, SCINET is growing and changing almost daily. It now encompasses six separate but in some cases interrelated networks:

the original statewide ETN/SNA network based on BellSouth DACS nodes

a Columbia metropolitan area network called MetroNet

a statewide SMDS network based on BellSouth fast-packet switches and the company's Connectionless Data Service (CDS)

a statewide Frame Relay network based on the same BellSouth fast-packet switches

a statewide compressed video network based on BellSouth's Multi-point Video System (MVS)

an emerging statewide network that will use OIR-owned routers and BellSouth and independent telephone company fast-packet switches to connect K-12 public schools and other government agencies to each other and the Internet

Each of these OIR networks is described below. In all cases OIR's responsibility is to provide a shared, cost-effective network infrastructure for state and local government agencies to use. However, each user agency is responsible for planning, implementing, and supporting its own local area networks and network applications.

ETN/SNA Network. This is the original shared voice-and-data Electronic Tandem Network/State Data Network described in the preceding section of this chapter. Its primary purposes are to reduce state agencies' intrastate long-distance telephone costs and to enable agency field offices to communicate with IBM or IBM-compatible mainframe computers in Columbia. The network is still based on the same eight BellSouth DACS nodes, which are connected by multiple multi-channel T1 circuits that OIR now leases from BellSouth (intraLATA lines only) or SCNet, state government's current interLATA carrier (see Figure 5.1). About half of the bandwidth provided by these T1 lines is used for long distance telephone service, and the other half is used primarily for SNA data traffic. None of the data channels used by individual agencies exceeds 56 kbps.

Figure 5.1

This network is the only SNA data communications service OIR provides. It is used by the following 22 state agencies:

Agency	Number of Locations
Department of Corrections	49
Department of Disabilities and Special Needs	98
Department of Health and Environmental Control	6
Department of Health and Human Services	30
Department of Juvenile Justice	65
Department of Mental Health	100
Department of Natural Resources	19
Department of Public Safety	67
Department of Revenue	54
Department of Social Services	185
Department of Transportation	89
Department of Vocational Rehabilitation	60
State Law Enforcement Division	234
Election Commission	32
Employment Security Commission	75
Forestry Commission	9
Educational Television Network	17
Protechtion and Advocacy System for the Handicapped	6
Department of Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services - for CDS	6
Commissions for the Blind - for CDS	2
Continuum of Care for Emotionally Disturbed Children (Governor's Office	2
Child Support Enforcement System (DSS) - for CDS	7
Total	1,212

As the ratio of legacy SNA applications to newer TCP/IP applications declines, and as PCs running terminal emulation software replace 3270 terminals, it is likely that the number of state agencies and locations using the SNA network will decrease. And as agencies migrate to more flexible and economical networking alternatives, the per mile cost for agencies that continue to use the SNA network will probably increase.

MetroNet. MetroNet is a Columbia metropolitan area network (MAN) that connects state agencies' local area networks (LANs) to each other and to the Internet. Its backbone includes state-owned fiber optic cabling, a Cabletron concentrator that serves as its FDDI hub, six Cisco routers, and leased line links to several agencies that cannot connect their routers directly to the state-owned fiber. MetroNet is also connected by T1 lines to Info Avenue's Columbia Internet access router and BellSouth's Columbia, Charleston, Florence, and Greenville CDS/Frame Relay clouds (see below).

MetroNet supports five types of network connections (Ethernet, FDDI, Token Ring, ISDN, and serial) and four communication protocols (TCP/IP, IPX, DECnet, and AppleTalk). It also has two SNA gateways that support TCP/IP and IPX access to state government mainframe computers.

Even though MetroNet did not connect its first customer until January of 1994, it now links offices of 45 state entities:

Governor's Mansion

Governor's Office

Office of Lt. Governor

Attorney General

Emergency Preparedness Division (Adjutant General)

Department of Commerce

Department of Disabilities and Special Needs

Department of Education

Department of Health and Environmental Control

Department of Insurance

Department of Juvenile Justice

Department of Mental Health

Department of Natural Resources

Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism

Department of Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services

Department of Public Safety

Department of Revenue

Department of Social Services

Department of Transportation

Commission for the Blind

Employment Security Commission

Commission on Higher Education

Commission for Minority Affairs

Educational Television Network

Budget and Control Board

Retirement Systems

Office of General Counsel

Office of Internal Operations

Financial Data Systems

Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations

Office of General Services

Office of Information Resources

Office of Local Government

Office of State Budget

Office of Human Resources

Office of Research and Statistics

Executive Institute

Legislative Information Systems

Legislative Printing and Information Technology Resources

Court Administration

State Housing Finance and Development Authority

State Library State Museum

Continuum of Care for Emotionally Disturbed Children (Governor's Office)

Workers Compensation Commission

State Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education

Given the concentration of state government offices and facilities in Columbia, MetroNet is likely to be in business for a long time. It is an exceptional case in which it makes good economic sense for state government to own rather than lease network "pipes."

OIR has also installed state-owned fiber optic cabling in peninsula Charleston. Some of this fiber is being used for an Ethernet backbone that links The Citadel, the Medical University of South Carolina, and the College of Charleston. This backbone is the lower leg of Coastnet, a cooperative metropolitan area network that also includes T1 links to the Charleston County Library, Trident Technical College, and Charleston Southern University.

CDS Network. In 1994 OIR contracted with BellSouth to provide switched multi-megabit data service (SMDS) to South Carolina government agencies. SMDS is a connectionless, cell­switched data transport protocol that enables organizations to interconnect LANs, MANs, and WANs through the public telephone network. Because SMDS does not require pre-defined network paths between sites, it is ideally suited for any-to-any (full-mesh) networks in which each site needs to be able to communicate with all other sites.

In South Carolina SMDS is provided by BellSouth and some independent local telephone companies. BellSouth markets its version of SMDS as "Connectionless Data Service," or CDS. This service is provided within six CDS/Frame Relay clouds located in the Charleston-North Charleston, Columbia-Orangeburg, Florence, Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson, Charlotte-York, and Augusta-Aiken areas (see Figure 5.2). A CDS/Frame Relay "cloud" is an SMDS/Frame Relay network service area that typically encompasses most of BellSouth's territory in a particular LATA. Customers located within this geographical area have local tariff access to a metropolitan area data network that links BellSouth central switching offices within the LATA. (BellSouth and independent telephone company customers outside the cloud can access this network through more expensive long-distance lines.) One of the central offices houses one or more fast-packet switches, manufactured by Cascade Corporation, that route data to host computers and local area networks connected to the local cloud-or to other clouds through interLATA lines. Customer sites can connect to CDS/Frame Relay clouds through T1, 56/64 kbps, and other fractional T1 lines.

Figure 5.2

Because BellSouth is a regulated carrier and cannot provide long distance service between LATAs, OIR has formed a statewide CDS network by using T1 lines leased from SCNet to connect BellSouth's four major CDS/Frame Relay clouds-Charleston, Columbia, Florence, and Greenville-to one of its MetroNet routers (see Figure 5.3). Agency offices located within the Aiken and York clouds can connect to this statewide CDS network by leasing point-to-point lines to the Columbia cloud. (These areas do not yet generate enough traffic to justify dedicated T1 circuits between their local clouds and MetroNet.)

Figure 5.3

OIR's CDS network supports a number of network protocols, including TCP/IP, IPX, and DECnet. Eleven agencies are now using this network; these agencies have a total of 111 CDS connections to BellSouth's CDS/Frame Relay clouds.

Agency	56/64	256-384	T1	Total
Department of Education (Math and Science Hubs)	8	5	0	13
Department of Health and Human Services	1	0	0	1
Department of Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services	63	0	0	63
Department of Public Safety	2	0	1	1
Commission for the Blind	9	0	3	12
Public Service Commission	1	0	0	1
Office of Information Resources	0	1	0	1
Retirement Systems	1	0	0	1
Continuum of Care for Emotionally Disturbed Children (Governor's Office)	14	0	0	14
Hughes Academy (Greenville)	1	0	0	1
SC Municipal Association	1	0	0	1
Totals	101	6	4	111

South Carolina state government also leases a second statewide CDS network that serves the Department of Social Services's Child Support Enforcement System (CSES). This network, which is managed by Unisys, is used to locate absent parents in child support cases. It duplicates OIR's CDS network in that it uses SCNet T1 lines to connect BellSouth's Charleston, Columbia, Florence, and Greenville CDS/Frame Relay clouds to a Cisco router located at the Department of Human Services in Columbia. Sixty-nine locations have 56 or 64 kbps connections to the CSES CDS network, and 15 have T1 connections.

The reason for this duplication is that the CSES CDS network is funded by a federal grant that has a mandatory response time performance requirement. The only way South Carolina could guarantee the specified response time was to set up a separate Child Support Enforcement System network. When the federal grant that supports this system ends, the CSES network connections will likely be moved to OIR's multi-agency CDS network or its emerging public school network.

Frame Relay Network. OIR has also contracted with BellSouth to provide Frame Relay Service to South Carolina government agencies. Frame Relay is a connection­ oriented data transport service that, like SMDS, enables organizations to connect LANs through the public telephone network. However, Frame Relay is best suited for "bursty" traffic in hierarchial, many-to-one wide area networks-for example, centralized state agency networks in which most data flows from local field offices to the agency's headquarters in Columbia. Because Frame Relay requires pre-defined data paths ("virtual circuits") between every pair of network locations, its cost increases significantly as customers move toward any-to-any networks.

Agency	56/64	256-768	T1	Total
Attorney General	1	0	0	1
Department of Health and Environmental Control	97	0	7	104
Department of Revenue	4	0	0	4
Department of Transportation	7	21	20	48
Continuum of Care for Emtionally Disturbed Children (Governor's Office)	3	0	0	3
Santee-Cooper	6	0	0	6
Clemson University	53	0	1	54
Francis Marion University	0	0	1	1
Lander University	2	0	0	2
State Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education	0	17	0	17
Totals	173	38	29	240

BellSouth provides Frame Relay Service in South Carolina in the same six metropolitan area "clouds" in which it provides CDS, and Frame Relay packets are routed to their destinations by the same Cascade switches that process CDS packets. But OIR's Frame Relay network differs from its CDS network in two ways. First, the Charleston, Florence, and Greenville Cascade switches are connected by leased T1 lines to Columbia's Cascade switch rather than to an OIR MetroNet router. Second, the Aiken and York switches are connected to the Columbia switch by 768 kbps lines (see Figure 5.4).

Figure 5.4

OIR's Frame Relay network supports several network protocols, including TCP/IP, IPX, and DECnet. Ten agencies are now using this network, and these agencies have a total of 240 connected locations.

Compressed Video Network. In July of 1996 the Office of Information Resources implemented a combination Frame Relay and interactive compressed video network for South Carolina's 16 technical colleges and the State Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education's office in Columbia. The video part of this network supports two-way video and audio and is used for transmitting distance education courses and for video conferencing.

Video bridging services for OIR's compressed video network are provided by BellSouth. Each of the 16 technical colleges has a T1 connection to the nearest BellSouth CDS/Frame Relay cloud. Half of this T1 line (a 768 kbps channel) is used for Frame Relay data traffic, and the other half is used for compressed video. Video traffic originating from a college travels through one of the 768 kbps channels to the nearest BellSouth multi-point control unit (MCU) video bridge, then on to OIR's compressed video network backbone. This backbone consists of three SCNet T1 lines linking BellSouth's Charleston, Florence, and Greenville DACS with its Columbia DACS-and two 768 kbps TI circuits linking its North Augusta and York DACS to Columbia (see Figure 5.5).

Figure 5.5

At present the State Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education is the only agency using this compressed video network. Network usage must be scheduled with BellSouth in advance.

Public Schools Network. In June of 1996, the South Carolina General Assembly appropriated about $10 million for networking K-12 public schools and providing them Internet access. This legislation was proposed by Governor David Beasley and promoted by BellSouth lobbyists. State officials expect a similar amount to be appropriated for public school networking for at least the next three fiscal years.

This $10 million is being used by the Office of Information Resources to connect individual public schools to school district WANs-and to connect these district networks to a new statewide network and the Internet. In accord with a Budget and Control Board proviso associated with this appropriation, most of this $10 million can be spent only for telecommunications services provided by BellSouth and other South Carolina local telephone companies and their joint ventures. (About 80 percent of the funds will likely be spent on intraLATA services while the remaining 20 percent will be used for interLATA backbone lines, Internet access charges, and OIR-owned equipment.) None of the money can be used to buy personal computers and software, local area network servers and software, routers, and DSU/CSUs-all of which are equally essential for connecting schools to SCINET and the Internet.

OIR is helping school districts establish wide area networks by paying the installation and monthly lease costs for dedicated lines that connect individual schools to a district hub. In a majority of cases this hub is a one of BellSouth's six South Carolina CDS/Frame Relay clouds-located in Aiken, Charleston, Columbia, Florence, Greenville, or York. But in some cases it is an independent telephone company's SMDS or Frame Relay switch, or a district-owned backbone router.

The Aiken, Charleston, Florence, Greenville, and York clouds are being connected by leased SCNet T1 lines to a new OIR backbone router in Columbia; and the Columbia cloud is linked to this router by a BellSouth T3 line. In addition the Charleston, Florence, and Greenville clouds have been connected by BellSouth T3 lines to OIR-owned backbone routers recently installed in these three areas. Each of these four OIR routers is in turn connected to an adjacent Info Avenue Internet access router by a 10 megabits per second Ethernet link. (OIR's and Info Avenue's routers are located in the same SCNet facilities.)

School district WAN hubs that are not part of a BellSouth CDS/Frame Relay cloud are being connected by T1 lines either to the nearest cloud or directly to one of OIR's four backbone routers-depending on which approach costs less and is easier to manage.

In short, OIR's public schools network has four major hubs, or aggregation points: Charleston, Columbia, Florence, and Greenville. Each of these hubs has a high-speed Internet connection; and the Charleston, Florence, and Greenville routers are connected to the Columbia router by leased T1 lines. The Aiken and York CDS/Frame Relay clouds are also connected to the Columbia router by leased T1 lines (see Figure 5.6). The network will support several network protocols, including TCP/IP and IPX.

Figure 5.6

By the time this network is completed, about 1,200 schools in 91 school districts will have been connected to SCINET. Schools that have 75 or more personal computers that can support graphical Web browsers are being connected to district hubs via T1 lines. Schools that have fewer high-end PCs are being linked with 56 or 64 kbps lines. OIR is also connecting one administrative building in each district to the district's wide area network.

While this new SCINET network will definitely increase the number of schools and school districts that have access to SCIway and the Internet, it will also increase the gap between technology rich schools and technology poor schools (many of which are in rural areas) because schools that don't have computers and within-school networks don't need high-speed connections to external networks. These have-less schools will receive low-speed, low-cost dial-up connections instead, at least until they obtain the resources necessary to justify a dedicated connection.

On Saturday, October 19, 1996, the State of South Carolina, BellSouth, and other local telephone companies sponsored SCINET Day. Volunteers were encouraged to contribute time, money, or materials to help install computer network wiring in local public schools. As a result of this effort, one or more classrooms were wired in about 50 schools. This was a modest but helpful step toward connecting all of South Carolina's public schools to SCIway and the Internet.

SCINET Tomorrow. Once SCINET's router-based public schools network is well established, the Office of Information Resources intends to migrate its multi-agency CDS network to this same backbone. It is likely that the Department of Social Services' Child Support Enforcement System CDS network will also move to this backbone, as may some Frame Relay and SNA network customers. As in-state traffic volume expands, OIR expects to replace the leased interLATA T1 lines connecting its Charleston, Columbia, Florence, and Greenville routers with T3 lines.

In the long term OIR would like to channel government and school voice, data, and video traffic through local or regional ATM switches-as opposed to fast packet switches and routers-and then merge this traffic on a single integrated, interLATA T3 backbone network. However, it appears that it will be several years before South Carolina genuinely needs a network that is this sophisticated; and the potential cost savings that would result from developing such a network pale in comparison to the savings that would result from finding a less expensive way of connecting individual government offices and schools to any type of local or regional communication hubs. The real opportunity for reducing government telecommunications costs is reducing first-mile costs.

5.4 Recommendations

4.1 In most cases South Carolina state government should continue to lease metropolitan and wide area network services from private companies. It should not develop a state-owned statewide network. (However, it is cost-effective for state government to own and operate extended local area networks in areas like downtown Columbia and peninsula Charleston, where there are high concentrations of government offices and facilities.)

4.2 State and local government agencies should implement the TCP/IP communications protocol on their client and server computers as soon as economically feasible. This will increase their ability to share information with each other and provide information and services to state citizens.

4.3 State and local government agencies should purchase and implement electronic mail software that uses the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) as soon as economically feasible. This will increase their ability to communicate with each other and with state citizens.

4.4 State and local governments should take advantage of increasing competition among network services providers (telephone companies, cable television companies, electric utilities, wireless communication companies, Internet access providers, etc.) by procuring network services through open, competitive proposal processes.

4.5 Because communications technology and pricing is changing rapidly and the future is so uncertain, state and local government agencies should buy and lease only the network products and services they clearly need in the near term. More advanced and expensive technologies such as ATM switching and fiber to the desktop should be avoided until they are more cost-effective and until agencies have a clear and immediate need for them.

4.6 Because of the rapid technological, regulatory, business structure, and pricing changes that are occurring in the communications industry, state and local governments should enter into only short-term network services contracts (two years at the most).

4.7 The South Carolina General Assembly should continue to appropriate funds that enable K-12 public schools to connect to SCINET and the Internet. However, school districts should be able to use these funds to purchase personal computers and network equipment (routers, DSU/CSUs, local area networks and servers, etc.) as well as telecommunications services and Internet access. This change would enable poorer schools and school districts to obtain the resources they need to make good use of dedicated external network connections.

4.8 Unused funds from the FY 1996-97 appropriation for public schools networking (which will likely be significant) should be used to purchase routers, DSU/CSUs, and local area networks and servers for schools that do not have them.

4.9 All school districts connected to SCINET should provide e-mail accounts to all of their students, teachers, and staff. These accounts should be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If they are only accessible during school hours, their usefulness will be limited.

4.10 The General Assembly should establish a special technology improvement fund for the use of school districts that have property tax bases (resources) below the state average. The costs of this program should be funded by annual legislative appropriations for five fiscal years, beginning in FY 1997-98. If such a program is not approved, South Carolina's have-less schools will fall even further behind on the information highway.

4.11 OIR should rigorously re-evaluate its networking strategies at least once every two years. As technology and the communications industry change, it is quite possible that what was the most cost-effective approach last year is not this year.

4.12 State and local governments should closely monitor the development of cable and various "wireless" communication technologies. As these technologies develop, they could significantly reduce the principal cost of connecting government offices and schools to SCINET and the Internet-monthly "first mile" telephone service charges.

4.13 All South Carolina county governments should connect all branches of their county libraries to SCINET or the Internet as soon as possible.

4.14 The State of South Carolina should establish a one-time grant program that helps county governments pay the start-up and first-year communications costs of connecting all of their library branches to SCIway and the Internet. This program should be funded by a single legislative appropriation for FY 1997-98.

4.15 State government should carefully monitor the ongoing development of Federal Communications Commission regulations concerning reduced Universal Service rates for schools and libraries. Once these rates are approved, the state should make sure that South Carolina schools and libraries receive the maximum discounts to which they are entitled.

4.16 Government agencies and schools should connect (and be connected) to SCIway and the Internet in the manner that provides them the fastest, most reliable, most convenient network access for the lowest cost. Exactly what this method is will vary by level of government and by geographic location-and at least for the next few years, it will change constantly. State and local governments should be alert to these changes and flexible enough to take advantage of new approaches quickly.