Greg Zickau, chief technology officer for the Idaho Department of Administration, after recounting the history of the now-defunct Idaho Education Network, told lawmakers, “There are a few things I would do differently if we were doing this over again.” Among them: The focus on a statewide private network. “Frankly, most of the schools weren’t taking advantage of what a private network brings,” he said. “So I would only roll out a private network to those schools that are sharing curriculum with other districts.” Other districts would get public internet. “A private managed network, you really only wring the full benefit out of it when the districts are sharing content between the two,” Zickau said. “I think that’s a valuable use of the technology, but it’s up to districts to decide whether they’re going to share it or not.”

In addition, he said, he’d rethink the focus on providing video teleconferencing equipment and capability to all high schools. A state audit this year showed much of that pricey equipment goes largely unused. “I would only roll out VTC’s for those districts that affirmatively say they’re going to actually use it,” he said. “The current IEN legislation, it implies a private network, and states that every high school will have a VTC.”

Rep. Greg Chaney, R-Caldwell, told Zickau, “In a couple places it seems like we were working to pump out bushels of apples to some places that only needed oranges.” Zickau responded, “Yeah, in some cases, I think that’s correct.”

Zickau said he doesn’t know if there’s a real advantage one way or the other to individual school district contracts or a statewide contract, but said a statewide contract allows for up-front infrastructure costs to be amortized over time, then end. “You want to watch those,” he said. “That is an advantage of managing things centrally – it makes it a little easier to do that, but in terms of raw cost savings, it doesn’t show up one way or the other.”

Zickau acknowledged that the school districts’ individual contracts with vendors now for broadband service are showing significant savings over the IEN. He estimated that 10-12 percent of the savings is because the IEN contract included long-term payoff of up-front infrastructure costs to establish the network.