Collaborative Governance: The Case of WNC EdNET

<p>Rick Morse is a School of Government faculty member.</p> <p>To effectively address today’s public problems there is an increasing need to work through partnerships across multiple boundaries (organizational, jurisdictional, sectoral).  “Collaborative governance” has come to be the term of art for this idea of working together across boundaries to solve public problems. There are many fascinating examples in North Carolina of collaborative governance creating significant public value. Here we’ll look at a particularly noteworthy example, the Western North Carolina Education Network (WNC EdNET). Through multiple levels of partnerships, schools in the westernmost part of the state are gaining access to the latest broadband technologies, enabling area students to compete globally in ways not previously “available or imagined.”</p> <p></p> <p>WNC EdNET is a partnership made up of the six westernmost counties in North Carolina, the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians (EBCI), two community colleges, a four-year college, two regional agencies, and several grant-making organizations, to bring broadband access to the 70 schools in the region. The story begins in 2003 with the formation of BalsamWest FiberNET, LLC, a public-private partnership formed by Drake Enterprises Ltd. and the EBCI to develop a fiber optic backbone connecting the six westernmost counties of the state. Drake and EBCI initially invested $14 million in BalsamWest with the idea of leveraging those funds with additional private and public investments in the future. But the costs of connecting specific locales to a backbone can be a major barrier, particularly in rural areas—the so-called ‘middle mile’ problem—and even more so in mountainous regions such [...]</p>