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p7-9 explanation of wicked problem

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K12

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Higher ED

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Advancing Digital Equity Planning Document

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By Frederick L. Pilot | Original Post on The Daily Yonder | June 1, 2016 | Print article
The U.S. has failed to deliver on universal high-speed, wired Internet service. The consequences for America's disconnected are a litany of troubles: economic decline population loss, less access to education, and poorer quality medical care. History is likely to judge us harshly. EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is excerpted from a the report "Service Unavailable: America's Telecommunications Crisis."
A prime example of the highly detailed irregularity of landline Internet infrastructure is the case of Jesse Walser, who lives about 20 miles outside of Syracuse, New York, in the town of Pompey. With Time Warner Cable lines about a third of a mile down the road from his house, Walser nevertheless was told by the company that he'd have to pay more than $20,000 to connect his home its network.

Walser and many other Americans are victims of arbitrary redlining by incumbent telephone and cable companies. It's difficult to make a credible argument that living a third of a mile from existing infrastructure puts a customer in the middle of nowhere, making it too expensive to extend service. Walser's experience of living close to existing telecommunications infrastructure but not being able to get service is not unique. This situation has existed unchanged throughout much of the United States over the past decade and isn't likely to change anytime soon without an aggressive plan to address this infrastructure deficit.

With their homes and small businesses lacking access to robust fiber Internet service, many American small business operators try to get by with mobile wireless service not intended to support businesses. Larry Korte is an example, trying to run his consulting business in Churchville, Virginia, on 4G cellular service. But since the service is essentially metered Internet, where users pay overage charges for exceeding bandwidth limits, Korte finds the service expensive and a poor value. "I go to the [cell phone provider] and say, 'Well, we need 300 gigabytes a month. That would probably do it.'" Korte said. "They laugh at it, and tell me to go to the cable company." But like many residents in Augusta County, Virginia, Korte's home is unserved for cable.

Tennessee State Senator Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga) wants to get better Internet access to about 800 homes in his district. He notes that Charter, Comcast, and AT&T told him that "it's not profitable" to serve homes in that district, which covers parts of Hamilton and Bradley counties in southeast Tennessee. Some premises in southern Bradley County are less than a mile from Chattanooga's municipal fiber service, leaving them with dial-up service and a slow connection speed. That leaves nursery operator Joyce Coltrin, like many unserved Americans, reliant on her smartphone for Internet access. "It's very hard to use an iPhone for business," said Coltrin, who heads a group of 160 households who call themselves "citizens striving to be part of the 21st century."

Joanne Hovis, CEO of the national Coalition for Local Internet Choice, notes that mobile wireless Internet service provides just a fraction of what fiber can deliver with respect to speed, reliability, and capacity. "Because of data caps and usage-based pricing, it's also very, very expensive for anyone who uses a lot of bandwidth, such as families who home-school and therefore require lots of online video," Hovis complains. She adds that those who argue that people don't need fiber infrastructure because they have DSL or wireless service "is like saying that the nation doesn't need the Interstate highway system because we have the Santa Fe Trail."

Regions Suffer Disparate Internet Infrastructure

There are many communities in Virginia-largely in the central and southwest regions-where less than 55 percent of households have Internet connections. "We have some that are well-connected, we have some that are not so well connected," said Virginia Secretary of Technology Karen Jackson. Given the lack of Internet access at home for many students, schools are opening after regular hours to fill the gap, Jackson said.

Internet infrastructure deficiencies also hurt higher education in Virginia. Rebecca Scheckler, an instructor at Radford University's School of Nursing, notes her students who live in Pulaski County are required to take online courses, and those who work from home have limited Internet access. "We live in an underserved medical area," Scheckler says. "I've had to advise well-qualified candidates to not go into the [nursing] program because they don't have good Internet access." In some regions, like California's north coast, Internet cafes provide Internet access to consumers who cannot purchase it at home because no service is offered. Michael Nicholls, cochairman of Access Sonoma Broadband, supported the FCC's adoption of regulations in early 2015 that subjects Internet service to the universal service mandate that has been in place for telephone service for decades.

Internet telecommunications is increasingly seen as being as vital to a region's economic viability as other utilities, such electrical power. As knowledge work becomes more geographically independent, knowledge workers will need advanced telecommunications infrastructure at their doorsteps... That means fiber-optic connections offering symmetric upload and download speeds and scalability for future growth that is generally not offered by incumbent telco and cable companies.

America's spotty, disparate Internet access is affecting where people choose to live-as well as where they choose not to live. In Door County, Wisconsin, [a peninsula in Lake Michigan] for example, it's estimated that between 35 and 50 percent of residential premises have limited Internet access, and another 25 percent have no access. Door County Broadband CEO Kevin Voss says the lack of reliable Internet service makes the county an undesirable locale for people considering moving there.

A study by Broadband Communities magazine revealed a correlation between population trends and the robustness of telecommunications services. One of the publication's editors, Steven Ross, conducted the research. He notes that the study's findings correlate to a recent U.S. Commerce Department study that found for the first time in U.S. history, most rural counties lost population between 2010 and 2012. (EDITOR'S NOTE: Rural population stabilized in the most recent report from the USDA Economic Research Service, which covered 2010 to 2015.)

The study suggests that U.S. settlement and land use patterns could strongly be influenced by the deployment of more robust telecommunications infrastructure in less populous areas of the nation-especially given the fact that much of today's information and knowledge-based economic activity can take place most anywhere that infrastructure is available. This would balance out the distribution of economic activity that tends to concentrate in high-cost metro areas across a wider swath of the nation and help boost economic development in relatively less populated regions.

Deficient Internet telecommunications infrastructure in these areas of the nation lowers the ability of people to work remotely for distant employers and clients, of school children to access digital learning materials online, and of medical care professionals to interact with and monitor patients via telemedicine. Internet telecommunications is increasingly seen as being as vital to a region's economic viability as other utilities, such electrical power. As knowledge work becomes more geographically independent, knowledge workers will need advanced telecommunications infrastructure at their doorsteps that can support videoconferencing and other interactive applications. That means fiber-optic connections offering symmetric upload and download speeds and scalability for future growth that is generally not offered by incumbent telco and cable companies.

In 2014, the Federation of State Medical Boards adopted a model policy designed to guide state medical boards in regulating the delivery of medical services remotely via telemedicine. That policy drew protest over its requirement that doctors and patients cannot rely exclusively on lower bandwidth applications such as texting, e-mail, and voice communications and instead must utilize higher bandwidth secure Internet videoconferencing. Opponents of the policy complained that the requirement wouldn't be practical given Internet infrastructure gaps that don't allow reliable video connections to patients in their homes.

The adverse impact of Internet access disparities on telemedicine was highlighted during an April 2015 hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Todd Rytting, chief technology officer of Panasonic of North America, testified that while providing Internet-based heartmonitoring services for elderly residents of the New York City area, his company found several places where there was no wired broadband, Wi-Fi, or strong mobile signals available. The SmartCare monitoring service significantly reduced the numbers of heart patients who had to return to the hospital, but "the biggest problem we faced was the lack of broadband to some of our citizens," Rytting said. Some potential users of the service couldn't get a broadband connection in "downtown New York City," he added.

Telecom Infrastructure at an Inflection Point

In 2015, the United States is at an uncomfortable inflection point where the line extensions of telephone and cable TV services to Internet service have gone about as far as they can within their business models, leaving millions of American homes and businesses without modern Internet service and no immediate prospect of getting it.

Driving much of the discomfort is the lack of a successor to these business models that cannot achieve universal Internet service in the new century in a timely manner. The legacy providers have also reached the limits of their "triple play" business models-offering bundles of Internet data, TV video, and voice service-due to the high costs of TV programming. This provides them little incentive to bring fiber connections to about a quarter of the nation's homes and small businesses that have remained unserved by modern Internet infrastructure for nearly more than a decade and stuck with dial-up and satellite and, where available, fixed terrestrial wireless service.

The problem has worsened in the past decade as telephone companies have concentrated their infrastructure investments on mobile wireless services while all but ignoring their deteriorating landline cable plants. Much of the landline cable plants are in such poor condition that they can't deliver any Internet connectivity or can do so only marginally at sluggish speeds.

One strategy for the telephone companies going forward is to sell off portions of their copper cable network assets to smaller players, such as AT&T and Verizon have done. However, in portions of these companies' service territories where the decades-old copper cable plant is in poor condition and a fully depreciated asset, it's questionable what value any buyer would see in such a deal. Consequently, these companies have put those assets into runoff mode while milking a declining residual cash flow from a shrinking legacy landline phone services customer base and those stuck with slow, firstgeneration DSL at serviceable premises.

History is likely to judge the United States very harshly in how it met its Internet telecommunications infrastructure challenge. If the nation and its leadership had engaged in proper planning and budgeting a generation ago for the construction of ubiquitous fiber to all American premises, by now, the nation would be fully fibered and reaping the complete promise and value of the Internet.

Instead, the previous two decades were squandered on inaction.
Fred Pilot is from California and writes the Eldo Telecom blog, which covers broadband accessibility and policy.

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Analysis: Internet Access - An Incomplete Promise

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By Frederick L. Pilot | Original Post on The Daily Yonder | June 1, 2016 | Print article The U.S. has failed to deliver on universal high-speed, wired Internet service. The consequences for America's disconnected are a litany of troubles: economic decline population loss, less access to education, and poorer quality medical care.

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As part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), world leaders have committed to strive for universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020, and to ensure that women and men have equal access to basic services, including technology, by 2030. These pledges have put the digital divide squarely on the international political agenda. Yet our research shows that on current trends, we'll only reach the goal of universal access in 2042. The largest challenges are in Africa - where just one in five people are online today.

The good news is that universal access is rapidly moving up the political and business agenda. The Global Connect initiative, launched by the US State Department with the backing of the World Bank, aims at bringing an additional 1.5 billion people online by 2020. The World Economic Forum introduced its own Internet for All initiative last year. Innovations such as balloons, drones, and low-flying satellites to bring the Internet to remote rural areas have excited investors and media alike. Seven African leaders have formed the Smart Africa Alliance to accelerate socio-economic development through ICTs.

All of these initiatives could play a critical role in turning the SDG pledges into reality, if they build on the right foundations. Based on our experience working with developing country partners on digital rights and digital development, through the Alliance for Affordable Internet, the Web We Want campaign and the Women's Rights Online research network, here are some of the basic elements that we believe are required to bring all of the Internet to all of the people and eradicate the digital divide by 2030.

1. Both donors and governments must step up to the plate

Achieving the SDG targets on digital equality will require a step change in investment and leadership by developing country governments, as well as incremental financing from donors and multilateral development banks.

1.1 Developing countries must put themselves in the driver's seat.

Governments should not wait for donors or international agencies to set the agenda. They must take the initiative now by convening civil society, the technical community, and business to revise (or in some instances, create) national broadband plans or ICT strategies in response to the SDG challenge.

There is no single blueprint for a successful universal access strategy. Policy choices should be aligned with the SDGs and informed by international good practice, but must ultimately be based on national context and priorities. However, a broadband plan or ICT strategy that is 2030-proofed will:

Establish a clear roadmap and timeline with increased budget allocations to meet the ambitious SDG deadlines for ICT access and empowerment. The private sector can finance most of the infrastructure investments needed; but a 2011 World Bank study estimates around $10bn in public spending will be needed annually to achieve close-to-universal broadband access in Africa (as against estimated current public sector spending of about $3bn per year).

Promote, orchestrate and regulate private sector participation in ways that channel private investments towards public policy goals.

Lay the groundwork for the coordinated cross-government use of ICTs to advance other SDGs in areas such as health, education, agriculture, economic development.

Provide for effective and timely use of monies raised through Universal Service and Access Fund (USAF) levies, targeting these funds at interventions to close the digital divide between rural vs. urban areas, poor vs. non-poor groups, and women vs. men. Globally, according to the World Bank, unspent USAFs totalled more than US $11bn in 2012.

1.2 The international community must rapidly increase financial and practical support to close the digital divide.

The uneven distribution of benefits from the digital revolution is a major cause of rising inequality globally, which in turn cripples growth, says the IMF. Spreading "digital dividends" more equitably, both between and within countries, is essential to sustained and inclusive global economic growth. If Internet penetration rates in developing countries were raised to those of developed countries, "the resulting economic activity could generate $2.2 trillion in additional GDP ... and more than 140 million new jobs," according to Deloitte.

Steps that the international community should take include:

Dramatically increased aid and concessional lending. Bilateral aid to ICT fell to a ten-year low in 2014, according to OECD DAC data. At only US $56 million, it amounted to less than 15% of donor spending on coal-fired power plants in the same year. Although the same data show that the World Bank has increased lending significantly in recent years, there is still a long way to go: preliminary research indicates that as little as 1% of the infrastructure lending of multilateral development banks goes into ICTs.

Technology transfer, including rebalancing intellectual property regimes to reduce excess patents and royalties on software and hardware, which can hinder the growth of local tech entrepreneurship and increase end user costs. "Royalty stacking" on devices can increase the cost of a smartphone by as much as 30%.

Building institutional capacity of governments to negotiate and regulate private sector participation in the ICT sector, particularly in complex areas such as spectrum auctions and public-private partnerships, so as to maximise progress on public policy goals and benefit to consumers.

Further progress on reducing tax avoidance in the digital economy. The UN estimates that corporate tax avoidance costs developing countries $100bn per year, depriving countries of funds that could not only pay for better connectivity, but also improve education, energy supply, and other essential foundations for an inclusive ICT revolution. While the problem is not unique to tech companies, taxing digital businesses efficiently, simply and fairly presents particular challenges, as the OECD notes. New rules to increase tax transparency will help, but more progress is needed on determining how to apportion the profits of largely virtual businesses according to "where economic activity occurs and value is created".

2. Make digital gender equality a top priority

Web Foundation research in urban slums in nine developing countries found that not only are women 50% less likely than men to be online at all, but they are 30-50% less likely to use the Internet for personal empowerment (even controlling for education levels, age and household wealth). Connectivity initiatives will not overcome these disparities if they are gender-neutral; rather, gender equality must become an explicit policy priority.

2.1 Governments must set concrete targets on digital gender equality and regularly report on progress.

Many national ICT or broadband plans contain, at best, a rhetorical commitment to closing the gender divide. Plans must include specific, time-bound targets developed in consultation with women's organisations, backed by adequate budget allocations and the collection of gender-disaggregated data for monitoring progress.

2.2 Businesses and investors should adopt and report on targets...

including for procurement of services from, or investment in, women-owned or women-led tech firms, and for hiring and promoting women in technology roles. ICT sector companies should additionally establish targets for increasing the proportion of women they employ, particularly at senior management and board levels, and take firm steps to eradicate the sexism and pay gaps that have been identified as a major issue in the tech industry. ICT application and service design needs to become not only user-centred, but woman-centred.

2.3 The international community must lead by example.

Donors and UN agencies should work with governments to ensure that women's organisations are consulted on the design of ICT plans and programmes and that such programmes include clear, costed measures for achieving digital gender equality. They should also offer financial and practical support to make implementation a reality - setting targets for, and regularly reporting on, the proportion of their funding that promotes gender equality online.

3. All of the people, all of the Internet, all of the time

For most Europeans, constant access to fast, uncapped broadband costs little more than the latte many buy every day on their way to the office. In the Central African Republic, one month of Internet access costs more than 1.5 times the annual per capita income. To unlock the Internet's true development impact, everyone needs to be able to access and use all of the Web, without artificial rationing imposed by lack of income, know-how, or other factors.

To achieve this, governments should:

3.1 Adopt the 1 for 2 affordability target.

The current UN definition of "affordable" basic broadband (a 500Mb allocation of prepaid mobile data at a cost of 5% of average monthly income) is actually unaffordable for 40-80% of the population in many developing countries, A4AI research shows. The Alliance recommends that governments and donors should pursue a more ambitious affordability target in order to achieve their SDG pledges: reduce the cost of 1Gb of prepaid data to no more than 2% of average monthly income (or "1 for 2").

3.2 Reduce import and sales taxes that inhibit Internet use.

Luxury tariffs on smartphones, and extra sales taxes on mobile data and airtime, may raise short term revenue. However, as an ITU report observes, reducing or removing such taxes can dramatically increase affordability and enable more people to spend more time online - thereby boosting economic growth. The end result may be a significant net increase in total tax revenue in the medium to long term, as well as faster progress on wider development goals.

3.3 Scale up public access facilities and programmes.

The Internet is not like a vaccine that works after a few injections. It is more like a library: its benefits increase dramatically with regular use. Even with lower prices, if we rely on market mechanisms alone, a large segment of women and the poor will still have to tightly ration their Internet use. As the Alliance for Affordable Internet has shown, it is essential that large-scale public access schemes are included in broadband plans. Local realities will dictate the exact shape of these programmes but possible examples include: establishing free community WiFi zones; connecting schools, libraries, hospitals and other community anchor institutions; providing free WiFi on public transport; establishing community owned networks, and many more examples. Some countries are also considering a basic data allowance or subsidy.

3.4 Invest in users' empowerment, not just infrastructure.

" Build it and they will come" has been proven time and again to be a fallacy, and it is equally true in the digital realm.

Make digital and data literacy, as well as broadband connectivity in all schools, a part of every child's right to education (along with complementary measures to overcome persistent gender inequalities in educational attainment and in science, technology and maths achievement). Our household research found that educational attainment and perceived level of digital know-how are key determinants of whether or not people are using and gaining real empowerment from the Internet.

Support the development of relevant and empowering content and services. For example, while health was the topic on which women in our study were most likely to seek information (from any source), locally specific information on sexual and reproductive health rights and services was simply not available via Web or SMS in the majority of the 86 countries covered by the Web Index. Agricultural extension advice via ICTs was offered in only two of the developing countries in the Index.

Look beyond users as passive consumers, towards enabling creative appropriation of technology. For example, e-government and open data initiatives need not stop with using the web to push services and information out to citizens; they can also be designed to encourage active dialogue between citizens and the state, and widen participation in policymaking processes.

3.5 Strive for full access to the whole of the Internet for everyone.

Initiatives that offer free (or "zero-rated") access to hand-picked websites and services are at best a short-term fix. Ensuring that everyone has the freedom to explore all of the Web is not only critical for development gains, but will ensure that local tech start-ups can flourish and compete alongside global giants. Research shows that net neutrality - preventing ISPs from favouring some kinds of Internet traffic over others - stimulates a virtuous circle between more competition, lower prices, higher connectivity, and greater innovation. 74% of countries covered in the Web Index either lack clear and effective net neutrality rules, and/or show evidence of traffic discrimination. Only a handful have held public consultations or issued decisions on how zero-rating should be treated under net neutrality rules.

4. Overhaul analogue laws for the digital era

As more people come online, it is urgently necessary for governments to overhaul laws designed for an analogue age to make them fit for purpose in the digital era. As Article 19 and Hivos observe, "challenges range from lack of transparency to arbitrary policies, vague Internet legislation with loopholes, absence of consultation with the public and poor understanding of Internet governance."

Our own Web Index research found that the majority of countries - developing and developed - lack clear, balanced and effective laws in key areas such as oversight of electronic surveillance (84% of countries), violence against women online (74% of countries), cybercrime (63%), legal liability of Internet intermediaries (64%), right to information (59%) and data protection (53%).

If not tackled hand-in-hand with investments in connectivity, these institutional weaknesses will most certainly limit the development gains from increased access by inhibiting users' ability to pursue freedom of expression, civic participation and personal empowerment online. What is more, as a recent World Economic Forum white paper points out, they may also lead to policies and actions that undermine the security and interoperability of the Internet itself, eroding "the Internet's enormous capacity to facilitate human progress".

This means:

...as a guiding framework for the policy and legal reforms needed to encourage innovation and freedom of expression online, protect Internet users against cybercrime and hate speech, and establish transparent, necessary and proportionate limits on state use of digital surveillance powers. Other regional bodies should develop and adopt similar frameworks.

4.2 Donors should assess human rights impact prior to funding connectivity projects and throughout the project lifecycle, as recommended by the Telecommunications Industry Dialogue.

A part of donor aid and lending for access efforts should be set aside to support domestic legal and policy reform in line with regional and international human rights standards. Support for public participation in policy dialogue and capacity building for civil society, consumer groups, policymakers and law enforcement agencies is especially crucial.

4.3 Tech companies should take easily available steps to safeguard the human rights of Internet users in all jurisdictions...

...such as implementing end-to-end encryption, improving data privacy policies and user consent procedures, conducting regular human rights impact assessments, making it easier for users to report and get action on ICT-mediated violence and abuse, and publishing government requests for user data as well as copyright takedown demands.

4.4 Aid and lending to increase Internet access should be decoupled from cybersecurity negotiations.

Linking the two could have unintended and damaging consequences. As the World Economic Forum notes, many governments have begun a "slippery slide" down the slope to using national security to justify "the control of political communications and cross-border content more generally", passing hasty and ill-informed laws with little public debate. While ensuring the safety of Internet users is important, donors should not add fuel to the fire by pressing for quick adoption of cybersecurity laws, but should rather invest in and support processes such as the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms (above) and equivalent national level policy dialogue.

5. Update business models

Companies can help to achieve the SDG universal access goals by:

5.1 Allowing competitors access...

at reasonable market prices, to costly infrastructure, such as towers and cables, and facilitating sharing or trading of spectrum (the chunks of the airwaves used to beam the Internet) as well as unlicensed use of low-value spectrum for public benefit (e.g. community wi-fi).

5.2 Enhancing tax transparency...

by publishing country-by-country data on income earned and taxes paid. A 2014 study by Transparency International found that Vodafone and Telefonica were the only ICT companies that released such information; Amazon, Apple, Google and IBM did not even publish a full list of countries where their subsidiaries operate.

5.3 Guaranteeing pricing transparency...

in fixed-line broadband as well as mobile data packages.

Conclusion

As the inventor of the Web and Web Foundation founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee put it: "The web is vital to democracy, [and] a public resource on which people, businesses, communities and governments depend." Like the other common goods at the heart of the SDGs - education, climate, water, forests - a sustainable future requires that everyone share equally in its benefits.

If we allow current trends to continue, self-driving cars will be a daily fact of life in many countries, before basic, universal Internet access is in others. However, if world leaders are serious about delivering on the Sustainable Development Goal promises, there is no choice but to marshall the resources, policy change and political will needed to end digital inequality.
What do you think? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below, via @webfoundation on Twitter, or by email to contact@webfoundation.org.

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Closing the Digital Divide: A Briefing Note

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As part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), world leaders have committed to strive for universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020, and to ensure that women and men have equal access to basic services, including technology, by 2030.

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http://www.digitalundivide.org

Digital divide is the inequality between groups to ACCESS, KNOWLEDGE and USE of information and communication technologies. The divide can refer to the technology inequality within a country, based on factors like age, education, race, income and gender. It is also commonly used to describe global disparities between developed and developing countries.

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the big events

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If you don't at least try to think digitally, the digital economy will disrupt you. It will drain your town of young people and leave your business in the dust. If you don't have access to the technology, or if you don't know how to use it, it's similar to not being able to read and write.
- Roberto Gallardo

Everything wants to be connected.
- Sheldon Renan

The City of Portland, Oregon, Multnomah County, and Multnomah County Library District made a significant commitment to digital equity and community broadband through the unanimous adoption of the Digital Equity Action Plan (DEAP) by both the Portland City Council and the Multnomah Board of County Commissioners/Multnomah County Library District Board in April 2016.

The plan received the 2016 National Association of Telecommunications Advisors (NATOA) Strategic Plan of the Year Award. It was praised as a model at the 2016 National Digital Inclusion Summit for its inclusive process. Diverse groups of citizens and community stakeholders took part in the DEAP's development through a process of multiple focus groups and workshops. This allowed the final plan to reflect the many voices at the table: new immigrants, communities of color, youth, community-based organizations and nonprofits, local government, telecommunication providers such as Comcast and Google Fiber, and the people who are on the front lines of digital inclusion efforts, such as our libraries, where two million free broadband sessions are provided each year.

By inviting so many diverse community members and stakeholders, not only to take part in a discovery process or comment period but also to collaborate in developing the plan's goals and strategic actions, the City of Portland, Multnomah County, and Multnomah County Library District have built an actionable strategic plan. The plan reflects the needs and aspirations of our community. We have also fostered exceptional community and stakeholder support. The plan passed unanimously at the city and county levels. Approval echoed in the testimony from diverse community organizations. Our local partners are ready to act on goals that they helped develop, such as leveraging networks and infrastructure shared by public institutions to extend free Wi-Fi service into low-income neighborhoods and working toward making Wi-Fi universally available in public places throughout Multnomah County.

History

In June 2014, a small group convened to discuss the issue of digital inclusion. This group included Portland State University, Multnomah County, Multnomah County Library, City of Portland, MetroEast Community Media, and Portland Community Media. In an effort to spread the word about the nascent issue of digital equity, the lead partners convened the Digital Inclusion Network (DIN) and held a Digital Inclusion Summit in November of 2014. More than eighty representatives of local businesses, community organizations, and local government joined the summit. Participants heard from local elected officials and others about the importance of digital equity and the current status of broadband adoption in the region, based on the 2014 Broadband Adoption Report.

The City of Portland, Multnomah County, and Multnomah County Library (the county's leading provider of digital literacy training and free broadband access) agreed to jointly fund the creation of a digital equity strategic plan. Under the leadership of the DIN, this plan would address digital equity and community broadband needs. We hired local community engagement consultants in June 2015, and a framework was created for the development of a plan based on community input and collaboration.

Process

The DEAP community engagement process began in the summer of 2015 with five focus groups for historically underrepresented populations. Each group's participants were recruited to represent demographically similar population characteristics.

Group demographics were

1. Chinese-speaking (both Mandarin and Cantonese)

2. Vietnamese-speaking

3. Spanish-speaking

4. Deaf and hard-of-hearing

5. African American

Participant Recruitment
We engaged local community service non-profit organizations to assist with recruitment. To encourage participation, we provided $25.00 gift certificates to the participants, childcare, live translation for limited-English-proficiency (LEP) groups, and food from culturally specific small businesses.

Several community partners were employed to assist with focus group participant recruitment. Leveraging previous working relationships was essential to fulfilling expected attendance for a very selectively targeted population. Flyers were created for each focus group, then approved and distributed by the community partners. For the LEP groups, each flyer and sign-in sheet was translated. During the recruitment process, there were weekly check-ins to monitor the number of recruited participants and evaluate if more outreach efforts would be needed to reach more participants. The weekly check-ins provided the opportunity to further strengthen the relationships with our community partners and created a sense of ownership of the recruitment process (rather than a contract-hire relationship that can be typical when community-based organizations are engaged to recruit from the communities they serve). Feeling a sense of ownership of the recruitment process contributed to the prompt turnaround for scheduling and completion of four of the five focus groups. The following community partners assisted with focus group recruitment:

Vietnamese and Chinese Focus Groups-Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) helped with recruitment of the Vietnamese and Chinese participants. IRCO provided insight about culturally appropriate foods, meeting times, and outreach materials. IRCO also hosted the focus group at their location, which was familiar to the participants.

Spanish-Speaking Focus Group-Verde recruited Spanish-speaking participants and reserved the Ortiz Community Center for the focus group. The community center was selected because it was close to where a majority of participants lived.

African American Focus Group-Staff reached out to a local social justice activist with deep connections in the African American community, who was instrumental in recruiting participants from New Columbia and other low income housing developments in North Portland. The focus group took place at the Charles Jordan Community Center, with flyers distributed at several key locations. Of all the focus group recruitment efforts, this effort created the most interest and a wait list of participants for future focus groups.

Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing/Disabilities Focus Group-Connections to the Deaf, hard-of-hearing, and disabilities communities assisted with recruitment.

Focus Groups
We conducted focus groups to discover what barriers and opportunities exist for representative second-language, disability, and racial groups within the community. We used nine simple prompt questions to promote open discussion within the group. We asked for differences and similarities with each discussion point to engage each attendee and allowed for discussions to follow participants' high interest areas. The results of the focus groups were published in the Digital Equity Needs and Opportunities Report.

The focus group feedback confirmed widely held understandings about barriers to adoption and use: cost (both device purchase and maintenance and installation and monthly fees for broadband), computer literacy, and content language were fundamental barriers. Other commonly mentioned barriers included low-speed service in some areas, mistrust of service providers, lack of understanding of contract language, and limited application of closed captioning for hard-of-hearing.
Figure 2. Attendees discussing digital equity at the African American focus group at the Charles Jordan Community Center. Figure 1. Community members express their views at the Spanish-speaking focus group at the Ortiz Community Center.
We convened three half-day workshops to develop the plan. The first used the Digital Equity Needs and Opportunities Report as its basis for discussion. Our approach was to invite everyone connected with community broadband, from private-sector providers to local government agencies to community organizations. We wanted an actionable plan, not just a strategic vision, and we wanted engagement, collaboration, and commitment driven by the many voices at the table.

Members of more than forty-eight organizations attended the workshops. By having so many relevant groups collaborate in the creation of the DEAP, we not only benefited from their perspective and input but also fostered a sense of investment and ownership among our key stakeholders.

In January 2016, we developed a draft DEAP from the wealth of information and ideas garnered from the workshops. This draft became the focal point of further discussion and comments by the Digital Inclusion Network. The final Digital Equity Action Plan reflects this highly collaborative approach.

Conclusion

In April of 2016, the Digital Equity Action Plan (DEAP) was unanimously approved by the Portland City Council and the Multnomah Board of County Commissioners/Multnomah County Library District Board.

The DEAP's key goals are as follows:

Ensure access to affordable high-speed Internet and devices

Provide culturally-specific training and support

Empower community partners through funding, coordination, training, and staff resources

Create digital economy job opportunities for underserved populations

Build a supportive public policy framework

We assigned responsibility for specific actions to relevant organizations and agencies. In so doing, the DEAP is already fostering community engagement and progress.

Thanks to the depth and diversity of support from the community, the Portland City Council created and funded a full-time, ongoing city position. This staff member will focus on implementation of the DEAP and furthering the work of the Digital Inclusion Network. He/she will also partner with Multnomah County Library's Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) Digital Inclusion Fellow and a second NTEN Fellow hosted at Free Geek (a community organization offering free refurbished devices and digital literacy training) to make significant progress on DEAP implementation in the next year. NTEN, Google Fiber (which funds the NTEN Fellowships), Free Geek, Multnomah County Library, and City of Portland were all partners in development of the DEAP, and that partnership has led to significant synergy directed toward achieving DEAP goals.

Finally, local communities need to develop targeted, collaborative solutions to address the digital divide. It is going to take the whole community-providers, planners, elected officials, libraries, non-profits, grassroots organizations, and individuals. Author Jane Jacobs argued that communities "have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody."

Digital infrastructure will play an increasingly important role in creating more livable communities, but only if everyone has the opportunity to participate in the digital age. It's about people, not technology.

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Mary Beth Henry, Cindy Gibbon & Matthew Timberlake

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In Portland, the Path to Digital Equity: Building Inclusion from the Ground Up

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If you don't at least try to think digitally, the digital economy will disrupt you. It will drain your town of young people and leave your business in the dust. If you don't have access to the technology, or if you don't know how to use it, it's similar to not being able to read and write.

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Bringing STEM to the underserved in Colorado

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The members of SIG DE,SITE DE and Social Justice, Colorado Educational Groups, Leading Educators
and people interested in transformational change in schools want to
provide a learning experience that you will enjoy .

It is a pre-conference event.

A one-day workshop, Denver, 27 June 2010
The workshop is free of charge and we are providing lunch.

We are looking for people from Colorado whether or not they are
attending the ISTE conference this year.

We are looking for educational leaders who would enjoy informed networking.

We want to serve the under served. Rural, minorities, and
those who feel left out of the conversation . Add your voice.

We celebrate teachers, that's why it is free. This has been a hard economic year for teachers
It is a special event to unites several types of groups .

Parents and community members are also welcome to learn along with us.
Bring friends. Share this with friends, parents, minority groups and or
others who would might be interested.

The institute provides training for technology integration and 21st century skills for K-12 teachers and
administrators and awareness for parents and advocacy groups.

The Digital Equity SIGs began as Minority Leadership Symposiums. We want to unite and share STEM and Emerging technologies in a Symposium. We want to broaden engagement and bring the underserved,
to new ways of working, but also unite those of you who are working and
learning in these areas and who give support.

We celebrate those who teach, who help teachers and who want to make
great learning communities.
http://wininstem.eventbrite.com/

Please circulate. Lets gather and broaden engagement in many ways.

Confirmed Location:

Denver School of Science and Technology

http://www.scienceandtech.org/index.php

How to Get in the STEM Game and Win it!
A Transformational Workshop

Goals:

1. Who are the under served in STEM nationally, locally and how can we broaden engagement in STEM?( what is broadening engagement)
2. What professional development activities / supports transformational change for teachers?
3. How can we inform the learning community about successful projects in meaningful ways?
4. What national projects show great promise and are scalable in the various areas of STEM?
5. What cyber tools, and online resources are available for teachers that make a difference?
6. Who are people involved in STEM who can be mentors, or peer resources for schools and
communities?

Outcomes
At the end of the event, participants will gain an understanding of the problem of Workforce Readiness and a working definition of STEM and will:

1. have exposure to 5 STEM programs they didn't know existed.
2. be able to identify 5 resources that would enhance their own STEM efforts
3. be more articulate on where their STEM efforts fit within the national and their own state efforts
4. Be able to clearly articulate the need for increased attention to STEM education in our schools and in
particular in their immediate situation
5. Identify at least 3 technology tools that would be useful to enhance their STEM education program
6. become aware of national professional development opportunities
7. Understand ideas in computational thinking and projects.
Agenda
The agenda is set up to provide information in the morning and to
gather and use information in the afternoon. The afternoon interactive
sessions will begin with brief presentations by the session moderators,
followed by an interactive discussion relying heavily on ideas and
comments form the participants. At the conclusion of each interactive
session the moderator will ask the group to identify the top 2-3 ideas
from that session. These best ideas from all three interactive sessions
on each topic will be presented to the whole group during the wrap-up
session. Interactive whiteboards and student response systems from
Promethean will be used as productivity tools for information gathering
and prioritizing items.

8:30 - 9:00 a.m. Registration & Materials Pick up
Coffee and Juice

During this time we will project a series of student profile video's
from the Edutopia website http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation

Digital Generation http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation

Today's kids are born digital - born into a media-rich, networked
world of infinite possibilities. But their digital lifestyle is about
more than just cool gadgets; it's about engagement, self-directed
learning, creativity, and empowerment.

9:00 - 9:15 a.m. STEM explorations in ITEST

Welcome by Joyce Maylin-Smith from the Education Development Center
(EDC) www.edc.org sponsored by the ITEST program. The EDC designs,
delivers and evaluates innovative programs to address some of the
world's most urgent challenges in education, health, and economic
opportunity.and Manorama Talaiver from the Institute for Teaching
through Technology & Innovative Practices, Longwood University.
http://www.ittip.us/

Here's the stuff

Making Sense out of STEM - min followed by a discussion ) . It would
cover three "levels" - STEM for living/learning and working - the STEM
enabled citizen that I have seen mentioned in some emails back and
forth; STEM for all careers - the concept that a bit more sophisticated
level of STEM conceptual understanding and skill is needed as science,
technology, engineering and mathematics are used at work in various
industries; and the STEM professional - technicians, technologists,
scientists, engineers, mathematicians who form that part of the
workforce many people think about as STEM workers .

She has workforce development templates to share.

Learn about The Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and
Teachers (ITEST) program established in 2003 by the National Science
Foundation. The ITEST Program funds a variety of innovative projects to
increase STEM learning and career exploration. Projects design,
implement, and evaluate models that engage youth and educators in
STEM-rich, contextual learning experiences; scale-up successful
practices or conduct research enriching our understanding of how to
enlarge the country's STEM workforce.

Here is more than you need to know

http://itestlrc.edc.org/

ITEST on Twitter http://twitter.com/ITEST_LRC

ITEST on Facebook http://tinyurl.com/ITEST-LRC-Facebook

Information on ITEST

"I Am a Scientist"

Young people in grades K-12 use sophisticated technology to explore
their environment, conduct research, build programmable machines, and
create media in community settings after school and during the summer.
Across all ITEST projects, youth are using the same technologies,
tools, and methods that scientists use on the job.

Authentic Learning

Teachers work together with students to pursue research questions and
deepen their scientific and technological expertise-and learn
strategies for integrating IT concepts, skills, and applications into
their classrooms. Teachers are learning the strengths of combining
formal and informal learning environments together to create authentic
learning experiences for their students.

Engage Businesses( a model)

9:15 - 9:35 Ken Robinson Video

9:35 - 10:00 . STEM Happenings in Colorado - Phil Lawson -
http://www.spherit.com/about.htm

Phil Lawson will describe the work his group is doing to grow community
support and effort to address issues of digital equity and STEM in
Colorado using Spherit's unique set of connectivity tools/ Getting
community support

Here is a treat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXmJZBWZewY

Businesses have launched a number of initiatives. We want to model what
you can do in your community, and how businesses can help you. The
National Lab Day is in reality an event that allows people to find the
businesses in their community who want to provide support.
Colorado has a great event to share.

10:00 - 10:25 Alexander Repenning http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/
Alex will describe the impact that the tools he has developed can be
used to grow student interest in computational thinking and computer
programming. This is an example of a successful ITEST program. A list
of other similar resources will be provided to participants.

Computational What?.. you will love it and him. Digital Generation Tools

10:25 - 10:40 . Break and networking

10:40 - 11:20 Carolyn Staudt - http://www.Concord.org
(The Concord Consortium is a nonprofit educational research and
development organization based in Concord, Massachusetts. Carolyn will
describe the resources available from her organization and the role
ITEST played in supporting the work..)

11:20 - 12:00 Allan Jones - www.emaginos.com and Eli Regalado

"If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there."
Lewis Carroll.
Allan will lead the group through a process starting with a clean slate
to design an optimum school district that provides STEM, Digital
Equity, reduced dropouts, etc. He will then compare this ideal model
with a known pilot program called "Schools of Discovery and Innovation"

12:00 - 12:45 Lunch /Networking

Lunch provided

Welcome from Mark Heffron, High School Director, Denver School of
Science and Technology with a brief presentation of a videos from
students describing why they chose/like the school.

Afternoon sessions Unconference mode

There will be three interactive sessions that attendees will
participate in. If you're here as a part of a team, we recommend you
split up and attend different sessions because the participants will be
sharing information so each session should be different from the next.

12:45 - 1:20 p.m. Repeated Session 1
1:25 - 2:00 p.m. Repeated Session 2
2:05 - 2:40 p.m. Repeated Session 3

Repeated Session topics

* ITEST(Joyce and Mano)
o What it is
o How to get support for your ideas
o How to access existing programs.
* Other Exemplary STEM programs
o Globaloria
o Shodor.
o My Wonderful World
o High Performance Computing
* Identifying additional outstanding STEM programs and projects
o What programs are available?
o How do you find them?
o How do you integrate them?

2:45 - 3:20 p.m. Parallel Sessions
Parallel Session Topics
The three parallel sessions will only occur once, so attendees will
need to select one of them to participate in.

o Gender Equity programs (Bonnie Bracey Sutton)
o ELL and early reading initiatives (John Carr - Award Reading)
o Networking - next steps (Allan Jones)
3:25 - 4:00 p.m. Wrap up Session
* Highlights from 3 Interactive sessions
* Next Steps summary and discussion

In addition to the handouts available at the session, everyone
attending (who provides an email address) will be sent a Workshop
Summary document that will provide highlights from the sessions ands
links to resources.

We have a composite document that is a repository of STEM and Emerging
technologies that will be given on a DVD.

Broadening Engagement. We have programs for ELL that are delightful and
after school gems.

You can register by writing to me
Subject/ Registration Colorado initiative.

Give your name, school , and email.

I will answer any questions you may have. None of this works if we
don't do grass roots and work from the classroom up. This has been a
hard year for teachers, come be with teachers and friends in this
event. We have done lots of the work for you , we need YOU.. You are
special !!

Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Digital Equity SIG
ISTE

Digital Equity and Social Justice Chair
SITE

Circulate to your friends

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Grass Roots Initiative Uniting the Under Served in STEM, Colorado Preconference Event - SITE

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The members of SIG DE,SITE DE and Social Justice, Colorado Educational Groups, Leading Educators and people interested in transformational change in schools want to provide a learning experience that you will enjoy . It is a pre-conference event. A one-day workshop, Denver, 27 June 2010 The workshop is free of charge and we are providing ...

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Areas they are reaching and what how their providing access to technology is improving

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Close the Gap: Bridging the Educational Divide

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Close the Gap: Bridging the Educational Divide

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Close the Gap is an international non-profit organisation that aims to bridge the digital divide by offering high-quality, pre-owned computers donated by large and medium-sized corporations or public organisations to educational, medical, entrepreneurial and social projects in developing and emerging countries.
Close the Gap collects decommissioned computers from companies and arranges for other organisations to clean the hard disks and then check and configure the hardware according to the requirements of its end-users.

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Close The Gap > Help us bridge the digital divide !

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Close the Gap is an international non-profit organisation that aims to bridge the digital divide by offering high-quality, pre-owned computers donated by large and medium-sized corporations or public organisations to educational, medical, entrepreneurial and social projects in developing and emerging countries. All the projects are demand-driven and share the common denominator of being non-profit-oriented initiatives.

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Infographic from their website

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Education and home Internet go hand in hand. And equalizing access to educational resources is one of the most important benefits of a home Internet connection. That's precisely why we first offered Internet Essentials to low-income families with children from Head Start through 12th grade. Education, however, doesn't just end after high school. So, today, I had the privilege of joining Colorado Lieutenant Governor and Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education Joe Garcia and President of the Colorado Community College System Nancy McCallin, Ph.D., to announce that Comcast is extending Internet Essentials, on a pilot basis, to low-income community college students across Colorado. We also announced an Internet Essentials low-income community college pilot program in Illinois, home to one of the largest community college systems in the nation. To be eligible, students must be receiving a Federal Pell Grant - the nation's largest need-based grant program.

According to the most recent data on community colleges from the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), nearly 40 percent of students attending two-year community colleges receive Federal Pell Grants. Specifically in Colorado and Illinois, more than 130,000 community college students attending schools within Comcast's service area receive Pell Grants and would, therefore, be eligible to apply for Internet Essentials in this pilot program.

Community college is one of the most accessible paths to a post-secondary education. In fact, according to the NCES, community colleges educate about 40 percent of the nation's post-secondary education students and serve an even higher proportion of nation's low-income and non-traditional students. As a result, community college students are more likely to be employed, independent from their parents' finances, have dependents, and be older.

Additionally, for many community college students, the path to receiving an associate's degree is a struggle. According to Complete College America report, the average community college student takes 3.6 years to graduate, incurring an estimated additional cost in attendance and lost wages of over $80,000, on average. Beyond this, according to a National Student Clearinghouse Research Center report, only 39 percent of community college students graduate from two-year or four-year programs within six years. According to the NCES, the picture is even worse for low-income community college students. In fact, only 13 percent of students in the lowest income quartile who started at a two-year college completed an associate's degree within six years.

By offering an affordable Internet connection and computer, Internet Essentials will enable students to access educational resources not just at school but also at home. In addition, Internet Essentials will link students to crucial digital literacy training programs that will not only help students as they study but will continue to have positive impacts on them after graduation. Don't just take my word for it. Watch these two videos from Denver and Chicago.

Students need support at every level of their education, and extending Internet Essentials to community college students highlights our commitment to providing them the support they need, whether in elementary, middle, or high school, or pursuing post-secondary education. This is our number one community investment priority.

Extending Internet Essentials eligibility to community college students is the next step in working toward a goal of improving educational outcomes and connecting all Americans to the Internet at home.

Data underscores the positive impact of a community college education and earning an associate degree. In addition, recent research shows that having an associate degree versus a high school diploma increases the chance of being employed by 12 to 15 percent for men and 20 percent for women. Moreover, according to a study by the American Association for Community Colleges, an associate degree increases lifetime earnings by more than $400,000 nationally compared to just a high school diploma. When you look at the big picture, a lot is at stake here. The same study also found that in 2012 community college graduates added $809 billion in income to the U.S. economy in higher wages, increased productivity, and multiplier effects.

In 2011, I visited both Denver and Chicago and stood alongside Colorado Governor John W. Hickenlooper and Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock, as well as with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and announced that Comcast would bring Internet Essentials to all of the communities we serve in 39 states and the District of Columbia. Since then, the Governor, Mayors, and other local officials, school districts in Denver and Aurora in Colorado and Chicago in Illinois (along with many others), and a host of community- and faith-based organizations have embraced the program and been steadfast champions of it year after year.

Their hard work has paid off. Colorado has the highest Internet Essentials participation rate in the country, with nearly 30 percent of eligible families having been connected. What's remarkable is this is ten percentage points higher than the national average of 20 percent. Since 2011, nearly 24,000 Colorado families, or almost 100,000 individuals, have been connected to the Internet at home through Internet Essentials. In Chicago, we've connected 30,000 families, or about 120,000 individuals, more than any other individual city Comcast serves.

Nationally, we have connected more than 500,000 households, benefitting more than 2 million low-income Americans. This record is multiple orders of magnitude larger than all of the other private sector low-income Internet adoption programs, combined. Earlier this month, I was proud to announce that we are tackling another demographic and offering Internet Essentials to low-income seniors through pilot programs in Palm Beach County and San Francisco. It was great to be back in Colorado today, this time to announce yet another expansion of our digital inclusion efforts. We won't stop here either, because there is still more good work to be done.

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Comcast Announces Internet Essentials Community College Pilot Programs in Colorado and Illinois

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Education and home Internet go hand in hand. And equalizing access to educational resources is one of the most important benefits of a home Internet connection. That's precisely why we first offered Internet Essentials to low-income families with children from Head Start through 12th grade. Education, however, doesn't just end after high school.

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Internet Essentials Community College Pilot in Illinois

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Project Link builds fiber-optic networks, making it possible for local providers to connect more people to the Internet and each other. Find out more at http://www.google.com/projectlink

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Check out Google Project Link. Today, only 2.7 billion of the world's 7 billion people are connected to the Internet. Google is launching Project Link to bring faster, more reliable Internet to the places and people that need it.

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social network to connect women with resources

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Connecting women to a global community for change | World Pulse

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A social network that connects women and creates a global community of leaders that speak out, share resources, and speed up change.

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who we are

With generous funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, this project brought together a talented team of researchers to collect and analyze the data, and to write up the findings. You can find out more about us, and our work, below.

Vikki Katz

Vikki Katz, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, and a Senior Research Scientist at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Worshop. As the Principal Investigator for this study, she has led all aspects of the research, analysis, and reports. You can find out more about her work here.

Victoria Rideout

Victoria Rideout, M.A., is the president of VJR Consulting, where she conducts research on children and media for academic and non-profit organizations. She directed the national survey research for this project and was the lead author of the survey report. Visit her company website to find out more about her work.

Carmen Gonzalez

Carmen Gonzalez, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Washington. As a Postdoctoral Research Associate, she helped lead both the interview and survey phases of the digital equity study, and co-authored four reports on the interview findings. Find out more about her work here.

Alexia Raynal

Alexia Raynal, M.A., is a Research Associate at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, funded by the study grant. She helped conduct interviews, analyze data, and co-authored the four reports on the interview findings for this project. Follow her blog for more on her work and interests.

Michael H. Levine

Michael H. Levine, Ph.D., is the Founding Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. The Center conducts research and catalyzes industry and policy reforms to advance high quality media experiences for all children. He leads the research team at the Center that partnered with Vikki Katz to conduct this study. You can find more information about his work here, and about his recent book, Tap Click Read.

Catherine Jhee

Catherine Jhee, M.A., is the Director of Web and Strategic Communications at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, where she leads its digital media and publication efforts, including those related to this study.

And we're grateful to the student researchers who conducted interviews in Arizona, California and Colorado:
Rocio Almanza-Guillen, Adam Bradbury, Regina Calvario, Yasmin Campos, Jesus Jaime Diaz, Daisy Garcia, Camila Gavin-Bravo, Gerardo Hernandez, Leslie Ann Hill, Scarlett Jimenez, Hillary Kosnac, Yarazel Mejorado, Andres Nuncio-Zuñiga, Andrea Rodriguez, Boanerges Rodriguez, Silvia Rodriguez-Vega, Hugo Salgado, Dinorah Sanchez, Dennise Vega, and Mariana Zamboni.

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With generous funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, this project brought together a talented team of researchers to collect and analyze the data, and to write up the findings. You can find out more about us, and our work, below.

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India

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New Delhi-based Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) was started in 2002 out of the deep understanding that marginalised communities living in socio-economic backwardness and information poverty can be empowered to improve their lives on their own, simply by providing them access to information and knowledge on using digital tools. And so, in 2002, DEF was registered as a not-for-profit organisation under the Indian Societies Registration Act, 1860, to carry out this mission of empowering people digitally.

Today, DEF is one of the world's leading practitioners in the field of Information & Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D). Its Founder and Director, Osama Manzar, is globally recognised as an expert in this field and he, or DEF as an organisation, is a member of several national and international government and non-government bodies, expert panels and task forces engaged in promoting a digitally-empowered and information-rich society.

Through all its diverse activities, DEF seeks to help people living in information darkness overcome the information barrier, learn how to use digital tools and the Internet to achieve greater socio-economic equality by uplifting themselves almost on their own using the power of digital devices to access information and knowledge.

So far, DEF has empowered more than one million hitherto marginalised people living in information darkness and socio-economically backward areas to become digitally literate and access the Internet. It has also enabled more than 5,000 entities such as civil society organisations, micro-enterprises, schools, public libraries, heritage sites and village-level local government bodies to adopt digital tools, set up their own websites and avail all possible benefits of an information-rich society in the age of information, created and driven by the architecture of information & communication technologies and the global digital and knowledge revolution. It has also created a knowledge network and database of more than 7,500 ICTD interventions and practitioners across India, South Asia and the Asia Pacific region through its various award platforms that discover, recognise and honour innovators using different digital media.

DEF has adopted a multi-stakeholder and multi-dimensional approach based on establishing community-owned and community-managed digital infrastructure and Internet access points in rural and semi-urban areas which operate in such a way that the entire community can avail the benefits of access to the Internet and the global information highway. This is done not only by establishing common Internet access points with all basic digital infrastructure such as computers, laptops, tablets, printers, photo printers, scanners, web cameras, etc. but also by spreading digital literacy among the masses either free of cost or at very affordable prices.

Today, DEF has its presence in 150 locations spread across 80 districts of 22 states in India through common access points called Community Information Resource Centres (CIRCs). These community-owned and community-managed access points also enable DEF to roll out various other digital interventions across several dimensions with the overarching goal of empowering citizens, governments, businesses and civil society organisations by enabling them to use digital tools and access the Internet.

Over the years, DEF's work has evolved to cover six programmatic verticals or major work areas under which several projects have been launched. These programmatic areas are:

1. Access & Infrastructure
2. Governance & Entitlements
3. Education & Empowerment
4. Markets & Social Enterprises
5. Knowledge Hub & Network
6. Research & Advocacy

In the last 15 years of its existence, DEF has initiated and worked on various projects with support from the Indian government and the state government; multilateral agencies such as the United Nations, the European Union and the World Bank; global civil society organisations such as the Internet Society (ISOC) and the Public Interest Registry (PIR); private national and international philanthropic foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, Vodafone Foundation, Intel Foundation; and private sector companies such as Intel, Google Inc and Microsoft Inc; among many others.

In implementing its projects, DEF has achieved immense reach in truly grassroots communities and has acquired a great deal of knowledge of ground conditions in different rural and semi-urban areas of India through collaboration with thousands of civil society and community-based organisations.

In the past few years, DEF has grown rapidly from having just a handful of employees to a total staff strength of nearly 400 now spread across the length and breadth of India. And we continue to attract global talent.

Apart from India, DEF now offers help to civil society organisations engaged in the field of ICTD in Africa, South Asia and the Asia Pacific region.

To strengthen the global community and become part of the global development fraternity for an empowered world, DEF is affiliated to the following associations, bilateral, multilateral agencies as institutional member:

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New Delhi-based Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) was started in 2002 out of the deep understanding that marginalised communities living in socio-economic backwardness and information poverty can be empowered to improve their lives on their own, simply by providing them access to information and knowledge on using digital tools.

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quote: " Learners of all ages are more motivated when they can see the usefulness of what they are learning and when they can use that information to do something that has an impact on others—especially their local community (McCombs, 1996; Pintrich and Schunk, 1996).