Bringing Communities into the Digital Age

Abstract

Keywords

broadband digital inclusion community development economic development

As our society and economy continue to digitize, the landscape of communication, access, and opportunity—the very glue that connects us in society—is undergoing a substantial transformation. There is an urgent need to increase awareness of this transformation among urban and rural communities and to increase their capacity to navigate it and to thrive and prosper from the benefits it can bring (Friedman 2016; Kelly 2016; Rifkin 2014; Schwab 2017; Wadhwa 2017).

Some scholars refer to this transformation as the second machine age in reference to the first machine age that unleashed the industrial revolution (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014). Others (e.g., Feld in this special issue) call it the electrification of the twenty-first century. The point is that digitization is remaking the means by which humans communicate. However, many do not have or cannot make use of this tool. Thus, the benefits of this second machine age, this “digital age,” are not reaching all population groups. Some are being left behind and are effectively excluded from participating in the digital age with potentially disastrous consequences for social equity, economic development, health, political participation, and community well-being overall (Moretti 2013; Muro 2016; Ragnedda 2018; van Deursen and Helsper 2018). Digital exclusion poses a grave threat to the health and stability of our society.

This is not a new development. For upward of two decades, scholars, community developers, and some policy makers have been working to understand and address the problem of digital exclusion (van Dijk 2006). Over time, their understanding has advanced from a focus on whether or not populations do or do not have access to digital technology (the so-called digital divide) to a more complex understanding of differences in digital skills and Internet use as well as differences in social, political, and economic outcomes deriving from access to, and use of, digital information and communication tools (Wei et al. 2011). Thus, access to digital communication is best understood as a spectrum from exclusion to inclusion with three main levels: connectivity, devices, and skills (see also National Digital Inclusion Alliance 2019). The digital inclusion imperative is to ensure that all persons across the entire urban–rural continuum are equipped with all levels of digital information and communication capability (Spurgeon 2018).

We have a long way to go to achieve this goal. On the first and most fundamental level—Internet connectivity that today means broadband—there are significant gaps. According to the Federal Communications Commission’s 2019 Broadband Deployment Report, approximately 21 million people do not have access to broadband, defined as 25 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload, or 25/3. The majority of these persons are in rural areas, especially Native American tribal areas. Other studies have placed this figure at 42 million (BroadbandNow 2020) and even as high as 162 million (Microsoft 2018), while another study found that at least half of the counties in the nation report speeds below 25 Mbps (National Association of Counties 2020). The U.S. Census Bureau’s (2018) American Community Survey of 2014–2018 reported that 12 percent of all households in the United States have no Internet access at all. This number increases to 31 percent in homes with incomes less than US$35,000 per year.

Nor are digital literacy and skills evenly distributed among the population (Horrigan 2016; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 2016). This uneven distribution results in different socioeconomic groups and communities benefiting differently from digital applications. This in turn affects levels of civic engagement, political participation, and social inclusion in general (Dubois and Blank 2018; Hargittai, Piper, and Morris 2018; Micheli, Redmiles, and Hargittai 2019; Min 2010; Whitacre and Manlove 2016).

A concerted and sustained effort by federal, state, and local governments as well as nonprofits, foundations, and the private sector is required to achieve the goal of digital inclusion. Although such a concerted effort does not yet exist, some states and localities have made progress toward achieving digital inclusiveness, and some federal policies are helpful. The next section of this article highlights, through a series of vignettes, some state and local efforts. Based on these experiences, the article recommends federal, state, and local policies that would move our society more rapidly and effectively toward achieving this goal.

Digital Inclusion Vignettes

The vignettes presented here were selected because they illustrate how state policies and local initiatives can achieve the three elements of digital inclusion—connectivity, devices, and skills. Although the statewide policy frameworks include both urban and rural settings, some of the most ambitious local initiatives to date have taken place in urban areas. Obviously, every community is different, but these examples illustrate the kinds of things that localities can accomplish and which other communities, both urban and rural, might adapt to their circumstances, given appropriate support from state and federal governments.

Minnesota Border to Border Program

One example of an effective state policy framework is the Minnesota Border-to-Border broadband grant program. It began in 2014 and is one piece of a comprehensive statewide approach to digital inclusiveness known as the “Minnesota Model.” This model launched in 2008 with a set of broadband goals proposed by a statewide task force appointed by the governor and adopted by the legislature. Progress is reviewed annually and consists of four interacting components: statutory goals, data and mapping, an Office of Broadband Development (OBD), and a grant program. This dynamic plan responds to the changing needs of communities and Internet service providers (ISPs) and to the intelligence garnered through data monitoring and measurement. The OBD serves as the central broadband planning body for the state. It operationalizes the various elements outlined in the law, such as administering the Border-to-Border broadband grant program as well as a telecommuter forward program. Another critical role of the OBD is to accurately map broadband deployment throughout the state to aid in the planning and monitoring of broadband infrastructure investments.

According to Bernadine Joselyn, Director of Public Policy and Engagement for the Blandin Foundation (a member of the statewide task force), these mutually reinforcing broadband plan elements constitute a critical civic infrastructure that strengthens the capacity and voice of local communities. This civic infrastructure provides support to broadband access and adoption throughout the state from setting broadband goals to supporting the OBD and to state mapping of broadband infrastructure and unmet needs (Interview, January 2020).

Statewide connectivity goals adopted in 2010 called for universal access at 10–20 Mbps download and 5–10 Mbps upload. By 2016, these goals were updated to universal access at 25/3 Mbps by 2022 and 100/20 Mbps by 2026. To achieve these goals, the Border-to-Border broadband grant program has invested more than US$85 million in broadband infrastructure in 110 projects connecting nearly 39,000 homes, businesses, and farms while leveraging roughly US$110 million in private and local matching funds. By the end of 2018, 86 percent of homes and businesses had access to 100/20 Mbps up from 39 percent in 2015. Also, 93 percent of homes and businesses had access to 25/3 Mbps up from 70 percent in 2011. In 2019, the legislature appropriated an additional US$40 million in funding for broadband grants over the following two years.

According to Angie Dickson, OBD broadband development manager, the state of Minnesota recognized early on that broadband access is a vital component of the state’s economy and all of its communities, especially its rural ones (Interview, January 2020). By maintaining this commitment consistently over time, Minnesota has taken major strides toward achieving digital inclusiveness.

City of Ammon, Idaho

In 2008, community leaders and the residents of Ammon adopted a formal resolution that established broadband as an essential service and tasked the city’s technology department to determine how this could be done. Community leaders and residents alike felt that the broadband choices and costs available were not competitive, considering neighboring Idaho Falls had offered a dark fiber option to commercial operators since 2001. A fiber-optic department was created to own, operate, and maintain the fiber as well as develop an architectural and economic model that would ensure it would stand on its own financially. As a utility operation, tax dollars or other utility money cannot subsidize or cross over to support this network.

Property owners who want a municipal fiber installation at their property fund the project. The city can provide an amortization option for property owners who want to pay their US$3,000– US$3,500 fiber connection/installation fee over time and attach the debt to their property through a long-term, low-interest municipal bond. Property owners with construction costs make an annual payment to cover installation costs along with a monthly maintenance fee in addition to the Internet service fee itself. The main objective of this network is to provide publicly owned infrastructure access to providers also known as an open-access network. While it was initially challenging to get ISPs to offer their services and get the economics right for the end user, ultimately, four residential and eight commercial providers have taken advantage of this open-access system.

The fiber network has been built out in stages, securing buy-in by interested property owners in selected neighborhoods. As of the end of 2019, 800 homes had subscribed to the fiber network with an additional 600 to subscribe shortly thereafter. Other benefits include a reduction by 50 percent in local school district connectivity costs, improved and reduced costs for public safety communications, a symmetrical 1 gigabit per second or 1,000 Mbps home service for US$26.5 per month, and a software company spin-off to develop an automated open access system.

City of Seattle, Washington

In the 1990s, the city drafted a vision for public access networks to help residents get public information online. By 1996, this vision had evolved into a digital inclusion program utilizing cable franchise revenues to create a community technology planner position and using a volunteer technology advisory board to help develop projects; these have included a Technology Matching Fund community grant program and a residential technology access and adoption survey. Over time, the city’s mission has broadened from basic computer and Internet access to a digital equity focus with skills at the forefront. A new citywide digital equity plan was unveiled in 2017, leading to expanded public Wi-Fi and Internet programs for low-income persons. The city now provides seventy public facilities with Wi-Fi and public computers, reporting close to 880,000 sessions at public computers and 3.8 million Wi-Fi connections in its most recent annual digital equity report.

As of 2019, the annual Technology Matching Fund grant program had disbursed almost US$5.5 million to 340 community organizations and generated US$9 million in community matching funds; more than 4,500 Seattle residents received digital skills training in 2018 alone. The fifth technology access and adoption survey, released in 2019, continues to inform investments and public services throughout the city.

City of San Jose, California

The San Jose city Council directed the mayor and the Office of Civic Innovation to launch a digital inclusion program in 2018. By the summer of 2019, a twenty-member digital inclusion partnership advisory board, including community leaders from Silicon Valley, was formed. The main goal of the initiative is to ensure 50,000 San Jose households are connected, obtain a working device, and achieve and sustain appropriate digital skills proficiency to engage in meaningful use of technology in their daily lives. This effort utilizes public and private funds to support the community’s digital inclusion efforts.

Five critical components of the program will help the city achieve its goal: (1) ensuring Internet connectivity; (2) providing working devices; (3) increasing community awareness of the importance of digital literacy; (4) providing digital literacy programs to enhance digital skills to access jobs, educational opportunities, and critical services; and (5) community organization–led pilot initiatives to promote digital inclusion. A key strategic partner in this effort is the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF). CETF is a statewide nonprofit created by the California Public Utilities Commission to close the digital divide by accelerating the deployment and adoption of broadband.

City of Portland, Oregon

To address digital inequities, in 2014, Portland community leaders and advocates created the Digital Inclusion Network (DIN). Over the next two years, the DIN conducted multiple focus groups and workshops with a variety of stakeholders, including minority groups, to identify community aspirations and priorities. This culminated in the development of a three-year Digital Equity Action Plan (DEAP). The DEAP focuses on five goals: (1) ensure access to affordable high-speed Internet and devices, (2) provide culturally specific training and support, (3) empower community partners, (4) create digital economy job opportunities for underrepresented populations, and (5) build a supportive policy framework.

The DEAP has resulted in new programs and services as well as an advocacy network. The Portland Public Library and the local nonprofit Free Geek implemented a Welcome to Computers program, a five-week course providing participants with basic digital literacy training and a free laptop upon program completion. Also, a searchable web-based database and location-aware map of digital inclusion training, free Wi-Fi, low- or no-cost computers, and public computing centers are in development for use by DIN members and community-based organizations. Last, DIN members have participated in community discussions around smart cities, and they have actively engaged in the development of the city’s privacy and information protection principles.

As a result of these and many other successful ideas and initiatives, the DEAP/DIN has won multiple national awards and was selected to host the annual Net Inclusion Conference in 2020. Perhaps the most innovative component of the DEAP is its flexible structure that provides a framework for leadership, action, and planning as technology and society continue to evolve and generate new challenges and opportunities. As summarized by Rebecca Gibbons, Broadband and Digital Equity Program Manager for DIN, the DEAP “provides a framework for leadership, action, and planning [which is critical because] as technology and society evolve, so do the barriers to access and adoption. By working to address known barriers we are building capacity and awareness in order to serve better and smarter in the future” (Interview, January 2020).

Logan County, Colorado

Like other rural counties similar in size, Logan County’s economic base is primarily in agriculture, while its largest employer is the state correctional facility. In order to bolster economic development efforts throughout the county, the Logan County Economic Development Corporation (LCEDC) was formed in 2001. Aware of the need to diversify its local economy and to remain competitive in the digital age, in 2015, the LCEDC explored the feasibility of a coworking facility in its downtown.

A coworking facility is where individuals work independently or collaboratively in a shared office space. The coworking facility, known as the Annex, has more than twenty active members/users and has partnered with FlexJobs, a remote-work job seeker web site. Several employees from local and regional employers, which allow remote work, use the facility as do trailing spouses and other traditional businesses that need a furnished office building. These jobs or businesses could have moved away, were it not for the Annex. And thanks in part to the Annex strategy, the State of Colorado has launched a new program called the Location Neutral Employment Program or LONE. LONE offers a cash incentive to businesses in addition to state tax credits for new remote rural jobs created.

Trae Miller, Executive Director of the LCEDC, stated that “by focusing on the digital economy and leveraging broadband resources we hope to improve recruitment efforts of local employers, making it that much easier for spouses to bring their jobs, or find new remote ones, and work in a satisfying environment” (Interview, January 2020). Logan County is one example of how digital inclusive efforts can diversify economic development strategies.

Policy Implications

The vignettes reviewed above constitute only a sample of the innovative ways states and localities are engaging multiple stakeholders to pursue digital inclusion with intentionality. While some communities are tackling the access issue through innovative ways to spur competition and bring down cost (Ammon, Idaho), others target disadvantaged groups to ensure their digital skills and literacy are comparable to areas with higher household incomes (Seattle, San Jose, Portland). Yet, other communities are addressing digital inclusion needs in ways that bolster their economic development efforts (Logan County, Colorado). To be most effective, digital inclusion must be integrated with community and economic development and other aspects of state and local governance. The State of Minnesota provides one example through its efforts to integrate broadband funding with community capacity building. But to be most effective, state and local efforts must be supported by and integrated with a strong federal policy framework. The following recommendations are meant to strengthen federal and state policies so that they may better support initiatives such as those discussed above.

Align Federal and State Policies around Digital Inclusion and Equity

State and federal initiatives need to consider both broadband deployment and adoption. The BroadbandUSA effort, under the National Telecommunication and Information Administration, has made significant progress in this regard. The Digital Equity Act, introduced in the U.S. Senate in 2019, would also bolster this effort by funding digital equity and planning projects. However, as noted by David Keyes, City of Seattle Digital Equity Program Manager, recent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rulings have undermined the ability of local governments to manage more of the assets needed for digital infrastructure, such as rights-of-way, pole attachments, and fee collection (Interview, November 2019). These limits constrain local efforts to develop infrastructure and inclusion efforts, and they should be removed. And as Rebecca Gibbons, Broadband and Digital Equity Program Manager for Portland’s DIN, argues, no two localities are completely alike, so federal and state policies must be sufficiently flexible that localities can productively use them to meet their digital inclusiveness needs (Interview, January 2020).

Equally important, federal and state economic, education, and human services policies and programs must emerge from the policy silos in which they are often embedded. As David Keyes, Seattle’s Digital Equity Program Manager, stated, federal and state programs should explicitly recognize and integrate digital inclusion goals since, ultimately, digital inclusion is essential to the equitable operation of economic development, education, and other federal and state policies (Interview, January 2020). For example, according to Kerstyn Olson, Portland’s Digital Inclusion Partnership Program Manager, a federal policy defining minimum high-speed or high-quality Internet faster than 25/3 Mbps would ensure that even those persons who receive only minimum speeds still would be able to participate in all essential aspects of digital communication with adequate connectivity (Interview, January 2020).

Increase Community Awareness of the Importance of Digital Inclusion

The absence of digital inclusion from federal policies, or mutually contradictory federal policies, undermines the ability of local champions and stakeholders to make digital inclusion and equity a priority at the community level. The importance of this issue cannot be overstated. Communities need the encouragement of federal and state governments to organize the local will needed to embrace and advance to digital inclusion. The National Telecommunication and Information Administration’s BroadbandUSA program and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance’s efforts provide some of this support, but much more needs to be done. To cite but one example, clear and consistent federal workforce development program expectations and guidelines regarding digital skills would go a long way toward increasing local (and state) awareness of the need for digital inclusion.

Provide Digital Inclusion–Specific Funding

Existing broadband-related funds focus almost exclusively on infrastructure and overlook other digital inclusion components. Infrastructure-related issues, such as inaccurate maps, regulations prohibiting network overbuilding, lack of competition among ISPs, inefficient allocation of incentives, and subsidies are well documented, although not yet solved, problems (Ali 2019; Matthews 2018; Sallet 2019). (See also Feld in this special issue.) However, still lacking is a federal push toward digital equity. The Digital Equity Act discussed above would go a long way toward bolstering existing digital inclusion efforts by supporting an array of digital equity projects at the state and local level. In addition to federal efforts, states need to design and allocate funding mechanisms for digital inclusion efforts that go beyond broadband infrastructure. Only a handful of states, such as CETF, do this. Yet to truly move the needle on digital inclusion, more states need to get on board.

Support and Incentivize Digital Inclusion through Local Solutions

The vignettes described above illustrate the power of locally crafted solutions. Communities understand and can often solve their problems if given the resources and technical assistance necessary to do so. For this reason, federal and state policies should support and encourage locally based digital inclusion initiatives. To date, successful, robust community-level digital inclusion efforts seem to exist primarily in urban contexts. While there are multiple rural digital inclusion efforts underway, few approach the extent of those existing in urban areas. Therefore, incentivizing rural communities to make digital inclusion a priority is essential. Rural communities may not have the same operational capacity and may lack the awareness of making digital inclusion a priority that may exist in urban settings. This lack of awareness could change if broadband infrastructure programs required a digital inclusion component as well. Also, incentives to jump-start state or regional rural DIN s could mobilize dormant assets such as churches, libraries, and extension offices that are not currently deployed to advance digital inclusivity. The Minnesota Model provides an excellent example in this regard, as it focuses not only on building infrastructure but also on building community capacity to advance digital inclusion by working through local civic infrastructure.

Governments need not go it alone; multiple nonprofit organizations and networks can provide guidance, technical assistance, and funds, but government efforts must recognize and work with them. For example, the Intelligent Community Forum has identified six characteristics to help communities take proactive steps to prosper in the digital age. These include innovation, knowledge workforce, broadband, advocacy, digital equity, and sustainability (Bell, Jung, and Zacharilla 2014; Intelligent Community Forum 2015). The Center on Rural Innovation (2019) helps to build digital economies by leveraging existing assets such as downtowns, schools, and culture among others. And Connected Nation (2019) engages with communities to organize collaborative, data-driven technology planning that informs creative, digital development.

Conclusion

Innovative approaches and programs to bring communities into the digital age exist; this article has highlighted several of them. But much more must be done if everyone is to be included in the digital age. No one expects an American household to make do without electricity. We should expect the same for all levels of digital inclusion—connectivity, devices, and skills. We must make digital inclusion a priority and incorporate it into all relevant aspects of public policy.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Roberto Gallardo

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