The goal of the workshops will be to promote an open dialogue between the FCC and key constituents on matters important to the National Broadband Plan. Key constituents will include service providers, equipment providers, applications providers, community groups, and other groups that have a stake in the future of broadband. Workshops will consist of meetings held at the FCC. The public will have the opportunity to suggest meeting topics and questions for the workshops. All meetings will be broadcast over the Internet when possible, and archived for viewing at a later time to ensure that everyone has access to the content.

The goal of this workshop is to evaluate how broadband can improve the performance of government specifically in terms of transparency and citizen participation and more generally in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. The workshop will consider various ways all levels of government, as well as governments in other countries, have used broadband to improve its performance in these ways and how those lessons might apply for purposes of developing the national broadband plan. The workshop will also consider the potential benefits of universal broadband in enabling various government operations to move to a digital platform in terms of improved performance, cost savings, and strategic benefits to the communications infrastructure.