Digital Equity Takes Center Stage in U.S. Cities Post COVID
Source: GovTech | By Zack Quaintance
The pandemic demonstrated the importance of including everyone in our increasingly digitized society, but once people are connected to the Internet, do they know how to use it?
A few years ago, one of the nation’s leading experts on digital equity was tired of explaining her work.
Angela Siefer, founder and executive director of the Ohio-based National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), had done digital equity work for decades, dating back to the ’90s. She’d seen the phrase “digital equity” — which refers to giving all members of society an equal chance to benefit from tech — grow into a blanket term. And she’d seen the Internet go from luxury to utility as more of life moved online. She had also seen — and helped establish — a host of effective digital equity projects, strategies and best practices.
Yet, as recently as 2019, Siefer was talking to public officials and business leaders who did not understand why digital equity mattered, or, at times, what the phrase even meant. With digitization rapidly accelerating, she wondered — how could there still be leaders in this country who needed a primer on digital equity?
Nowadays, however, Siefer rarely needs to explain.
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced the country to stay home in March 2020, the importance of digital equity became clear. To participate fully in modern life, people needed reliable high-speed Internet in their houses, up-to-date devices for accessing that Internet, and the skills to use it in meaningful ways. Many folks had these things, but across the country — in rural, suburban and urban communities — there was consistently a remaining percentage who did not. There was and still is a last mile for digital equity.
And if that last mile is not bridged, students are left out of class. Workers are unable to join Zoom calls. Small-business owners cannot participate in e-commerce, and seniors cannot visit doctors remotely. Even well-off households can end up sharing bandwidth with neighbors and family members, often to the detriment of download and upload speeds. No, explaining is no longer necessary; the importance of Seifer’s life’s work is now clear to nearly everyone, nearly every day.
“We’ve never had awareness like this, and I could have never thought this was going to be my reality,” Siefer recently told Government Technology, noting her organization had grown from three to 14 full-time members. “I rarely have to explain to someone that the digital divide is important, and I can now jump right into solutions and on-the-ground strategies.”
Essentially, digital equity is having a moment. Along with increased understanding, the work is also getting an influx of federal funding. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) earmarks $2.75 billion for it, a historic sum.
With all that in mind, Government Technology spoke with more than two dozen people who work on digital equity and digital inclusion in the United States, from officials with state and local government agencies to policy experts to leaders of community-based nonprofit groups. What emerged was a new picture of…