(NOTE: More information about the TOP collection, which is part of the TOP Data Archive, can be found at the following link: http://www.si.umich.edu/toparchive. Included at this website are electronic documents, web pages, and datasets created by the Technology Opportunities Program as well as related documents created by researchers and students at the University of Michigan School of Information.)
The TOP Data Archive was initiated in 2004 by the University of Michigan School of Information. In addition to TOP itself, partners include the Community Informatics Initiative at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science, the Educational Development Corporation, the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, and the U of M Special Collections Library.
The TOP Data Archive is distributed, with physical materials in the U-M Special Collections Library and electronic materials online at one or more locations. As of 2006, the electronic materials are still being processed.
This idea behind assembling this data archive was to preserve important records concerning how local communities are entering the digital age, and create a foundational dataset for the emerging field of Community Informatics. This field examines communities and information and communications technology. It emerged in the 1990s from experiments with technology in communities which have been carried out worldwide, at the grassroots level and/or by means of national and international funding initiatives.
The TOP Data Archive includes 1) information assembled in the course of a federal agency managing its projects, 2) that same information re-purposed for research use, and 3) new information brought in for research purposes. The federal agency is the Technology Opportunities Program (TOP) within the National Telecommunications and Information Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce. TOP funded projects from 1994-2005, and is expected to continue managing already-funded projects into 2007.
The records in the TOP collection--that part of the TOP Data Archive which is in the holdings of the Special Collections Library--represent grant proposals submitted to TOP and project materials created by TOP and its grantee organizations, known as TOP projects, during the period of 1994-2005. The collection is not inclusive of all 606 TOP projects. TOP was able to locate and provide for the collection project documents and Audio/Visual materials for about 88 TOP projects. These were materials that the projects submitted to TOP over the years. The TOP project materials are represented by many different formats, including paper, multimedia compact discs, floppy disks, cassette tapes, and video recordings.
The records of the TOP collection are arranged into eight series: Proposals, Project Documents, Project Reporting System, Project CDs, Project Floppy Disks, Project Cassette Tapes, TOP and NTIA, and Video Recordings. Later additions may be found in Proposals, Project Documents, and Video Recordings in Box 17.
Congress established the Technology Opportunities Program (TOP) in 1994 as a part of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in the Department of Commerce. The name of the program at that time was the Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP).[1] TOP was eliminated from the fiscal year 2005 federal budget. This action reduced the staff of the TOP administrative office, but did not interrupt the current projects either in financial terms or in terms of their reporting requirements.[2]
TOP functioned to promote the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) by providing matching grants to community based organizations to help them use or provide telecommunications for new opportunities, especially for unserved or under-served groups. These organizations covered a wide variety of organizations in the public and non-profit sectors. These included community development groups, state, local and tribal governments, health care providers, school districts, libraries, universities, public safety services, and other non-profit organizations. Between 1994 and 2004, TOP funded 610 grants in 50 states, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Washington D.C., totaling $233.5 million, matched by $313.7 million from local communities.[3] (Four of the 610 grants were repeat grants, so TOP funded a total of 606 projects.)
TOP requires a project to focus on measurable outcomes and works with a project to develop these outcomes and certain milestones during the life of the project. Projects are evaluated against these milestones on a quarterly basis and require independent evaluations of the projects. TOP used evaluations in order to promote continual improvement, assessment of short-term impacts, and development indicators of long-range impact. In applying grants, TOP evaluates a project's purpose, innovation, community involvement, evaluation, dissemination, feasibility, budget and future sustainability. Community involvement is an especially important aspect of TOP projects. TOP requires projects to work with partners outside their community. [4]
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Notes:
1) Amy Borgstrom, Don Druker, and Judith Sparrow, "The Technology Opportunities Program (TOP): Networking Our Nation - A Decade of Lessons Learned," Community Development: Journal of the Community Develoment Society. (need publication information, volume number), 2005, p. 103 2 Anthony G. Wilhelm, "TOP Eliminated from the FY2005 Budget," The Technology Opportunities Program (website), available at: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/top/whatsnew/whatsnew.htm#elimination_of_TOP, accessed December 15, 2005.
2) Anthony G. Wilhelm, "TOP Eliminated from the FY2005 Budget," The Technology Opportunities Program (website), available at: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/top/whatsnew/whatsnew.htm#elimination_of_TOP, accessed December 15, 2005.
3) Borgstrom, pp. 103-104
4) ibid. p. 104
