KEY POINTS:
As part of a flurry of budget-setting this month, Auckland City councillors bumped up the funding associated with our largest city's commitment to bolstering broadband.
Councillors voted $600,000 for operational expenses plus $2 million over two years in project funding for what has been labelled the "Digital Auckland" initiative.
The aim of the ratepayer-financed initiative is two-fold: first to increase Aucklanders' access to fast, affordable broadband and second to use technology to make council information more accessible.
Depending on your perspective, a little over $1 million a year could be considered either a woefully inadequate investment in encouraging vital technology or a gross waste of ratepayer money.
Those in the latter camp would argue the broadband cause should be championed by central Government or, even better, the private sector.
Around the world, however, a number of municipalities are digging deep to build citywide broadband. Amsterdam plans to have all its 420,000 homes linked to a high-speed fibre network within seven years at a cost of $580 million. The city of Brisbane and the Queensland Government are spending $550 million on a similar project.
City authorities are increasingly looking at effective broadband networks as a powerful way to attract new business and wealthy migrants.
Like their Auckland counterparts, Wellington City councillors have been thinking about network investment.
A report prepared for their strategy and policy committee recommended a policy of ensuring all Wellingtonians had "affordable access" to high-speed broadband by 2012.
"Broadband is fast becoming an essential infrastructure for cities that compete globally," the report said.
"Businesses, investors and skilled workers will soon expect that a city has affordable, high-speed, universally available broadband in much the same way they expect cities to have sound water, sewerage, energy and transport systems.
"Like these underlying infrastructures, broadband will be considered a given and residents, visitors and businesses will be focused on the range and cost of services that are offered over this new layer of infrastructure."
This is a pretty indisputable message and one that all councils need to take on board quickly as they ponder economic development strategies.
Back in Auckland City, councillor Richard Simpson, a key advocate of technology investment, says that while the city's $2.6 million commitment is "on the light side" it is a big step for the council.
"As the largest city, Auckland has to be a player in this whole space," says Simpson, whose technology credentials include co-founding internationally successful computer graphics company Cadabra and working as an international telecommunications consultant.
As well as wanting to see an open wireless broadband network set up in short order in the CBD, Simpson's vision is to use the council money to create a world-leading "geospatially indexed" web portal for council data and other information about Auckland. The idea revolves around the type of technology initiatives embraced by delegates at last year's international Digital Earth summit, held in Auckland.
"Council is awash with data so opening up the council's information silos and releasing this data tagged to places on a digital map - a geospatial clearing house - will provide a greater transparency to governance [and] empower ratepayers with information relevant to their homes and places of interest," Simpson says.
"People prefer to see things affecting them in maps, not hidden in legal documents or sound bites."
Simpson's concept takes in "splogs" or spatial blogs which would "allow people to dump ideas on to maps and share dialogue with others".
The result of this mash-up of maps, council data, community input and subsidised internet connections? "Empowering people through affordable access to broadband, and providing live information about the decisions of council will help Auckland evolve with greater participation," says Simpson.
Is splogging really going to change the way councils interact with their citizens? It could well do, in the same way that blogging has influenced politics and society in general.
