Welcome to the ASCENT Project.
The ASCENT or Alaska Stakeholder and Community Engagement Network was developed in response to the growing number of capital project initiatives and the challenge faced by agencies and local stakeholders in prioritizing their selection and support of initiatives that would address gaps and opportunities created by the funded projects.
The question that served as the starting point for ASCENT was: How do we create positive, sustained long-term community, economic, and workforce impact after capital projects are completed?
This led to the development of our hypothesis: With access to funded project information combined with local knowledge of projects and assets, stakeholders can identify, connect, and coordinate opportunities created by the projects. Alaskans can collectively create long-term sustained community, economic, and workforce impacts across the state.
The project’s focus has been to learn more about how agencies and communities could prioritize and support opportunities for local business expansion, new venture creation, and career-oriented workforce development.
The goal of this work is to increase the local community benefits and economic impact from capital projects that continue after projects are finished.
While there is significant complexity within the infrastructure development sector, it represents the single largest opportunity for the transformation of Alaska’s economy. For this to be successful, we must look past maximizing and spending the money available to our state. Instead, we must focus on investing what we already have, and that which we will receive, in ways that create a growing, competitive, equitable, and resilient future for Alaska.
By effectively harnessing the energy and potential that lies within a new economic sector created by the massive public infrastructure development spending, we can reignite the growth of our economy and fortify the resilience of our communities.
The ASCENT database and tools were developed and designed to engage and support Alaskans to identify and explore “Constellations”, a group of selected projects, local assets, and organizations that have the potential to induce short term and long term economic activity and increase community capacity.
Deliverables of this project included:
Inventory of organizations and key actors,
Pilot database of selected Alaskan projects that are funded by the Denali Commission, State of Alaska capital appropriations, and Infrastructure Investment and Job Act (IIJA)
Analysis of the projects and network of actors and development of tools for accessing the organization and project data
Community engagement
Recommendations report and handoff
The team identified a multitude of findings that were synthesized down to analysis areas and key recommendations. The following topic areas were identified and included for further discussion and potential action:
- Infrastructure Sector Fragmentation
Access to Information & Resources
Community-Centered Approach
Entrepreneurship (Business Expansion, Venture Creation, Workforce Development)
Cross-Sector Collaboration and Coordination
From these findings, the ASCENT team identified three key recommendations:
Improving Data and Access to Information,
Supporting Regional Collaboration Efforts, and
Funding Access & Restructuring.
The work of the ASCENT project was made possible thanks to the support of Alaska Works Partnership (AWP) and the Denali Commission Grant; “Rural Workforce Apprenticeship, Outreach and Project Assessment” Award #1684-00/CFDA #90.100. Alaska Version 3 (AKv3) is a non-profit community and economic development organization that seeks to accelerate the economic activity of Alaska through connecting, convening, and catalyzing community action.
What's Next?
The ASCENT project taught us that there are currently efforts to track grant opportunities; and in silos, project awards including bundling projects. There is, however, little being done to support those in a community where the projects will take place to learn about the projects and be supported in developing the opportunities they identify. Simply asking the question of those who are aware of multiple infrastructure projects in an area about business expansion, new venture creation, and career-oriented workforce opportunities always resulted in a number of suggestions and recommendations for possible exploration and development.
What we learned is that no one is asking the question!
These efforts are the backbone to retaining more projects and induced spending in Alaska, enriching the local economic fabric of communities so that they are more capable and competitive. This increased capacity unlocks the potential to bring more work into local economies, supporting and sustaining our communities beyond the life of the construction of the initial project.
What’s Next?
- Invest in sharing and improving the ASCENT prototype datasets and online tools, expanding them to include additional project data sources including seeking out additional private projects that would increase public-private investment opportunities.
- Expand the community engagement process and experiment with assisting local communities to develop plans that build Constellations and opportunities they can find in the projects that are funded in their communities.
The ASCENT Community Engagement Process created during this project is built on established community and innovation ecosystem-building tools. These tools shift the source of innovation to local communities of stakeholder participants who can link and leverage their local knowledge of existing activities and resources, with the opportunities presented by infrastructure projects, to construct Constellations and ASCENT Action plans. These powerful plans support community members to define, prioritize, and take their next steps toward opportunities that are aligned with their values and support the long-term capacity and resiliency of their community