Back in March, Gov. Jim Douglas of Vermont addressed the Freedom to Connect conference in Washington, DC. I wrote about his talk briefly in a previous blog post. David Weinberger, Tom Evslin, Steve Smith and others have all written about the talk. It was a pretty geek audience and Gov. Douglas showed that he could keep up with the geeks.

At lunch at the New England News Forum conference, Gov. Douglas spoke to a crowd much more interested in the implications of his initiative to media and politics. Lynne Lupien live blogged some of his talk, and I want to add my own insights here.

Back in 2003 and early 2004, I followed around a previous Vermont Governor as he spoke about his vision for our country. My wife and I heard the stump speech so many times that we could recite it pretty well, ourselves. So, it was no surprise when I heard Gov. Douglas speak about the four doctors from Boston. They needed to be able to get back to their hospital within four hours of an emergency. They went up to Sugarbush to ski, only to find that there wasn’t cell phone coverage there. They said they could not ski there again, until that problem was fixed.

He told the story of a business in northeastern Vermont where there was no broadband access that was now being required by its suppliers to place its orders online. To these stories he added the public safety aspect, mentioning the story of a Brooklyn, NY man who froze to death when is car went off the road in the Adirondacks in an area where there was no cell phone coverage. He spoke of the ‘creative economy’, noting that Vermont has more authors per capita than any other state. Yet artists living in Vermont suffer from having to send images of their paintings to galleries over dialup connections.

He went beyond the issue of broadband and took up eGovernance. A few years ago, Vermont was fiftieth amongst the states in eGovernance. It has made great efforts to make registration of businesses, getting hunting and fishing licenses, dealing with the Department of Motor Vehicles all possible online. Through these efforts, they have climbed to 41st. During the question and answer period, he was asked about efforts to get more records online. He noted that he had been Secretary of State for many years and recalled the excitement about being able to get records on microfilm. He spoke about being able to check legislative bills online as well as press conferences online, but he spoke about difficulties with the legislature in getting addition information online.

He noted that the Vermont Open Meeting and Public Records law starts off with a preamble which recognizes both the difficulty and the great importance of making public records more accessible.

During the questions and answers, issues of regionalization also came up. Gov. Douglas is currently the head of the New England Governors Association. He noted that for the first time in three and a half years all six New England Governors attended a meeting of the association. As I listened to this, my thoughts went back to a former Vermont Governor, who had been chairman of the National Governors’ Association. My thoughts went to the section of Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse, talking about the best presidential campaign reporters being those that show up at the regional governors associations during off years. Does Gov. Douglas have his eyes on something larger? I must say that for a Republican, he’s done very well at the two conferences I’ve attended.

The discussion of regionalization went beyond New England, Gov. Douglas and others talked about the relationship between New England and the southeastern Canadian provinces.

Gov. Douglas spoke clearly and wisely about the need for state governments to embrace changing technology. The devil is always in the details and one must wonder if his proposed private/public initiatives will do more to improve access of the citizens of Vermont than it does to line the pockets of large corporations. One must worry about if he will find the balance necessary to move Vermont forward, yet not do it in the way that West Virginia has by changing the state from ‘Wild and Wonderful’ to ‘Open for Business’. Gov. Douglas’ efforts must be watched closely to make sure that they don’t get derailed and so that we can all learn from and emulate the best parts.

(Cross posted at Media Channel)