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Mayor Gray Congratulates District's Technology Office on Selection as Computerworld Honors Laureate

Wednesday, March 27, 2013
OCTO awarded for DC Community Access Network

Mayor Vincent C. Gray today congratulated the District’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) for being selected as a 2013 Laureate by Computerworld’s Honors Program. The magazine’s annual awards program honors visionary applications of information technology that promote positive social, economic and educational change.

“I commend OCTO for receiving this prestigious honor,” said Mayor Gray. “This award highlights the District’s position not only as a national leader in municipal broadband, but a global leader as well. It also spotlights our ongoing efforts to empower community anchors to fulfill their mission, expand business opportunities and ultimately transform communities through affordable broadband services.”

OCTO won the award for its subsidiary DC-Net’s DC Community Access Network (DC-CAN) in the area of economic development. As the nation’s first 100-gigabyte-per-second municipal network, DC-CAN is bringing affordable, value-added broadband services to health, educational, public safety and other community anchor institutions in the District.

The ultra-high-speed network also allows last-mile service providers (who provide Internet access to end users) to take immediate advantage of low-cost services via DC-CAN – thus enabling them to bring affordable broadband services to residents and businesses in underserved areas of the city.

“The DC Community Access Network is an important part of Mayor Gray’s economic-development agenda, and it represents our effort to provide both a platform and a process in the area of technology inclusion,” said DC Chief Technology Officer Rob Mancini. “It lays the foundation for public-private partnerships in broadband services and hastens the delivery of next-generation services in all sectors of the economy—health, education, public safety, economic development and e-government services.”

Funded through a National Telecommunications and Information Administration infrastructure grant as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, DC-CAN brings middle-mile broadband services to areas of the city with broadband-adoption rates of less than 40 percent. Upon its completion in June 2013, the project will have deployed over 150 miles of new fiber and connected 291 community anchors.

“Technology continues to play a pivotal role in transforming how business and society function. For the past 25 years, the Computerworld Honors Program has had the privilege of celebrating innovative IT achievements,” said John Amato, Vice President/Publisher of the magazine. “Computerworld is honored to recognize the outstanding accomplishments of the 2013 class of Laureates and to share their work. These projects demonstrate how IT can advance organizations’ ability to compete, innovate, communicate and prosper.”

Laureates’ case studies become part of the Honors Program’s Global Archives, available to researchers, students and scholars through www.cwhonors.org and through records housed in archives in over 350 universities, museums and research institutions throughout the world.

The Computerworld Honors Program awards will be presented at the Gala Evening and Awards Ceremony on June 3, 2013 at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, 1301 Constitution Avenue, NW.

About the Computerworld Honors Program

Founded by International Data Group (IDG) in 1988, The Computerworld Honors Program is governed by the not-for-profit Computerworld Information Technology Awards Foundation. Computerworld Honors is the longest-running global program to honor individuals and organizations that use information technology to promote positive social, economic and educational change. Additional information about the program and a Global Archive of past Laureate case studies, as well as oral histories of Leadership Award recipients, can be found at the Computerworld Honors website.