Worked to ensure students are properly skilled
In 2007, shortly after taking office as Alaska’s governor, Sarah Palin took advantage of the Internet to create a online training program for workforce development.
Made health care transparent through the use of technology
Another part of Palin’s record as governor included the Alaska Health Care Transparency Act, which helped state residents access affordable health care. This included tele-medicine and tele-health initiatives for providing care to the state’s most remote municipalities.
Actions on gas pipeline suggest balanced net neutrality approach
An action that defines Gov. Palin’s stand on long-distance distribution of services, was her effort to rework the natural gas pipeline deal forged by her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski. The former governor had struck a deal with major oil companies, prior to commencing the actual pipeline construction project.
She didn’t like that much, and just about everyone in Alaska knew it. So she scrapped the deal, replacing it with one that involves a bidding process. Already, TransCanada has secured a deal with Alaska to build this pipeline which could dramatically improve the state’s economy.
The way Palin approached this particular problem suggests she may be in favor of not having any one provider be given preference to build out broadband pipes to a specific area. While one Internet service provider could end up owning the entire pipe – an approach that would be copacetic with that of her would-be boss, Sen. McCain – that provider would likely need to provide proof of how it would handle competitors.
Transfer the natural gas pipeline affair to the net neutrality debate, and it seems like Palin would not object to companies agreeing on their own about how to handle traffic of competitors.
Broadband speeds lag in Alaska…along with candidate Palin
It does not seem that Palin has taken any substantive broadband policy as governor of her state, and has actually declined to take a position when asked. That failure to formulate an opinion could be telling, especially considering Alaska has one of the lowest median data rates in the country.
Used the Internet to make Alaska government more transparent
Sen. Barack Obama has made government transparency part of his platform. Gov. Palin has indeed taken that a step further by actually taking action in Alaska government. Currently, any check written by the state government over $1,000 is posted to the Division of Finance Web site.
While the service is not yet a requirement under law, there have been attempts to codify this requirement, including an effort to make government information searchable through a Google-like Web site.