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Digital Equality


The Intelligent Community: Wayne Walker, OurCalling

Posted on Podcast by Robert Bell · March 06, 2019 5:05 PM · 1 reaction

 

OurCalling (www.OurCalling.org) is a Dallas-based organization that has created an interactive smartphone app that provides information and emergency alerts to some of the most vulnerable members of a community: the homeless.

OurCalling's app has a database of service providers for the poor, a list of resources such a clinics, food banks and rehab facilities, a calendar for volunteer opportunities, a way for individuals to report a situation where volunteers can go assist someone in need, and more. While it started in Dallas, they are currently working to expand nationally to provide information on services to homeless people all over the US.

Listen to this fascinating episode of The Intelligent Community to learn more about how OurCalling developed the app, the lessons they learned on building relationships, and their plans for what's to come with their mission. 

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Anne Schweiger, Broadband & Digital Equity Advocate, City of Boston (Part 2)

Posted on Podcast by Robert Bell · February 22, 2018 3:08 PM · 1 reaction


In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Robert Bell continues his conversation with Anne Schweiger, Boston's Broadband & Digital Equity Advocate. Anne works with people across Boston to figure out how they can make broadband work better for everyone. 
She believes Boston needs to be a place where everyone has options for affordable and fast broadband.

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Anne Schweiger, Broadband & Digital Equity Advocate, City of Boston (Part 1)

Posted on Podcast by Robert Bell · February 13, 2018 9:59 AM · 1 reaction


In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Robert Bell speaks with Anne Schweiger, Boston's Broadband & Digital Equity Advocate. Anne works with people across Boston to figure out how they can make broadband work better for everyone. 
She believes Boston needs to be a place where everyone has options for affordable and fast broadband.

Read more

4. Digital Equality

Posted on ICF Method by Victoria Krisman · March 31, 2016 10:50 AM

This infographic was created for ICF by StudioLocale (www.studiolocale.com) using data from the Intelligent Community in Numbers report. For more information, click here.

 

Digital-Equality-400.png

Digital equality is a simple principle: that everyone in the community deserves access to broadband technologies and the skills to use them. Like most principles, it is easier to understand than it is to live.

The explosive advance of the broadband economy has worsened the exclusion of people who already play a peripheral role in the economy and society, whether due to poverty, lack of education, prejudice, age, disability, or simply where they live. It has disrupted industries from manufacturing to retail services, enlarging the number of people for whom the digital revolution is a burden rather than a blessing.

Intelligent Communities promote digital equity because it is the moral thing to do. They also do it for eminently practical reasons. People who are excluded from the economy and society cost enormous amounts of money for social services, criminal justice and acute healthcare. Like equality itself, digital equality is an ideal that will never be reached. But every should be interested in policies and programs that make the excluded population as small as humanly possible.

Promoting Digital Equality

In surveys, the digitally excluded cite cost as their most common reason for being offline, and the lack of anything relevant as their second. Intelligent Communities work to reduce cost barriers and acquaint residents with the knowledge, opportunity and entertainment available online.

  • Access. Without a computer, laptop or tablet, access is impossible. Intelligent Communities work on access by refurbishing used computers and providing them to households in need, as well as providing free computers and broadband access at public facilities like libraries, schools and government offices.
  • Affordability. For households with their own computers, the cost of broadband can represent a challenge in many parts of the world. Intelligent Communities introduce subsidy programs for digital equipment and broadband connections to ease adoption.
  • Skills. A computer and broadband connection are useless without the right skills, ranging from basic literacy to keyboarding, PC literacy and facility with the Web. Communities respond to a skills gap with training programs for every age group in schools, libraries, community centers and special purpose facilities.

Challenges to Digital Equality

Senior-Asian_Tablet-250.pngEvery community that has addressed digital equality promotes the same set of achievements. So many public-access computers installed at libraries, municipal buildings, community centers and convenience stores. New classes on technology in primary and secondary schools. But successful Intelligent Communities go deeper. In crafting digital equality programs, they go beyond the basics to focus on fundamental change in the dynamics of digital exclusion:

  • Literacy and Numeracy. The tools of the digital age require reasonable literacy and numeracy, or workarounds that allow illiterate segments of the population to access online services. In industrialized nations, illiterate adults typically deny their inability for fear of humiliation and often develop elaborate strategies to avoid exposure. Digital inclusion programs must make literacy and numeracy training readily available in ways that preserve the dignity of users. Web sites designed to provide essential information to citizens can also be written on a low reading level and make use of colors and images to guide users. In developing nations where literacy rates are far lower, communities have developed interesting workarounds to help reach the excluded.
  • Relevance. Not surprisingly, people who have never used a computer or accessed the Web may think they have nothing of value to offer. (Older adults are more likely than young people to feel this way.) Fortunately, local government and institutions are in a perfect position to change their minds. Community Web sites can offer information and services on schools, careers, taxes, recreation, transit, health, and other topics important to people in their daily lives. Where segments of a community have strong religious, ethnic or cultural identity, government can work with institutions from houses of worship to social clubs to bring them online.
  • Capacity-Building. The long-term solution to digital exclusion is to have members of offline groups – whether the working poor, the homeless, the elderly, an ethnic minority or caste – involved in providing access, delivering content and developing services. Because they are members of the group, they understand the group's needs and interests better than any outsider can. They also, it is to be hoped, have a deeper and more long-lasting commitment to moving their group from the digital periphery to the center.

 


The Trump in the Coal Mine

Posted on News & Media by Robert Bell · February 01, 2016 12:09 PM

The multi-billion-dollar circus that is the American Presidential election rolls ever on. We stand amazed that a billionaire real estate developer and reality TV star, spewing a sneering mix of lies and vitriol, dominates the Republican side of the contest. He is less a Presidential candidate than a walking Twitter account, with a gift for finding words and attitudes that speak powerfully to a segment of the American people.

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Five ways to help boost U.S. job creation

Posted on News & Media by Matthew Owen · February 26, 2013 12:30 PM · 1 reaction

Intelligent Community Forum searches the world’s successful communities for solutions to help rebuild American prosperity

New York, NY - February 26, 2013 – As U.S. President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union address, “there are communities in this country where no matter how hard you work, it’s virtually impossible to get ahead.” In support of the President’s challenge to “build new ladders of opportunity”, the Intelligent Community Forum is offering five ways U.S. communities can seize their destinies to attract and retain high-value 21st century American jobs.

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The Intelligent Community Forum® is a global network with a think tank at its center. It connects hundreds of cities and regions on five continents for collaboration on economic development and for exchange of expertise and information that drives progress. Through this network, ICF researches how Intelligent Communities use information and communications technology to build inclusive prosperity, solve social problems and enrich their quality of life in our connected century.

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