Telecommunities Canada
4252 Commerce Circle
Victoria, B.C.  V8Z 4M2

July 3, 2003

Professor Andrew Clement
Faculty of Information Studies
University of Toronto
140 St. George Street
Toronto, ON, M5S 1A1

Re: Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN)

Dear Prof. Clement:

Telecommunities Canada (TC) is pleased to act as co-applicant in the CRACIN grant proposal to the INE Research Alliances program of SSHRC. Established in 1995, TC promotes the Canadian community networking movement at the national and international level and acts to share knowledge about changes in community networking practices.  This has recently included participating in the August 2002 PrepCom for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and research for the Office of Learning Technologies on the role of community networks in providing employment assistance and skills training.

As a member of this alliance, TC is interested in developing tools to measure how public investment in connectivity is impacting local learning, relations in and between communities, and local social and economic development. We will lead a team of national and international researchers in preparing a unique survey instrument to assess the goals, structures and outcomes of community networks. To ensure that this survey will gather information that will be useful to community networkers, researchers and policy analysts, we will seek input from the policy and research staff linked to the CRACIN government partners, i.e. Industry Canada’s Broadband Program Office and visit the case study sites annually to validate and evaluate the instrument. Our interests, in addition to the survey, will focus on communications and outreach activities – e.g. liaising with case study sites and encouraging community networks that are not directly involved to participate through on-line discussion groups.  We will also explore innovative ways in which the survey results can be packaged to help both community networks and policy analysts to use the information to their best advantage. 

I have read the proposal and agree to TC’s role and degree of participation. Because we expect this project work to yield important information on sustaining community networks, we are ready to play a leading role in this alliance.  We have worked with a number of the CRACIN partners in previous projects. The TC Board of Directors is pleased to confirm that our contributions will include the collective expertise of the board, a group of respected community networking advocates, and the community networks that they represent.  One of our members, Marita Moll, an experienced internet researcher, has agreed to co-ordinate our role in this project, which is estimated to require approximately fifty days per year of her research time. 

Sincerely yours

Gareth Shearman, President