Expert warns of the ‘digitally invisible’ population amid yawning digital divide
Guillermo Spelucin Runciman via Getty Images
By
Chris Teale
It’s not just infrastructure that keeps people offline, but also a lack of digital skills and trust, warned Nicol Turner Lee of the Brookings Institution during this week’s CX Workshop.
A recent report from the Government Accountability Office found that a program designed to help schools and libraries close the digital divide does better than most when it comes to preventing fraud, waste and abuse.
GAO found that the E-Rate program has various controls in place and so is in a good position to provide funding from the Universal Service Fund for E-Rate’s various initiatives. But while that report is encouraging news, one expert said there is so much work ahead to truly close the digital divide, including by providing people with the digital skills they need to succeed.
And while the promise of artificial intelligence to close some of those gaps may be exciting, only those who truly know how to harness it will benefit, said Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. They cannot be left behind, she said.
“We have a digitally invisible population whose presence is nearly quiet, and we tend to not see them in the ways that we discuss digital connectivity,” Turner Lee said during Nextgov/FCW and Route Fifty’s Customer Experience Workshop earlier this week. “[They're] rural residents, people that live in farming communities. They're community and government leaders. Sometimes they're people just like yourself. You're doing your work, but you're still digitally invisible, because maybe you're working on old equipment, or you're not up to date with AI and your workflow.”
Investment has grown in recent years to try and address the access component of the digital divide, especially through the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program funded in the 2021 infrastructure law. But addressing residents’ digital skills appears to be a tougher nut to crack, especially after President Donald Trump zeroed out funding for grants under the Digital Equity Act, a move that prompted the National Digital Inclusion Alliance to take legal action.
As states finalize their BEAD plans, it appears there will be plenty of money left over to potentially help improve digital literacy or for other uses. And while it’s unclear what might happen to those leftover billions, Turner Lee said governments must not just focus on the nuts and bolts of broadband infrastructure, but invest in people too.
“That new approach will bring new investments,” she said. “It will not just be supply and demand. Let's put more money just in infrastructure, or more money just in people, which we have seen over the years with this ping pong of digital divide support. For me, it becomes a question of, how do we support that teacher who's in a rural area of Marion, Alabama, so that she can make sure that her kids are successful and succeed? And I would also say that AI still does not replace the need for digital literacy and internet access.”
Building trust is a key part of helping people build digital skills, Turner Lee said, especially among older generations. She mentioned speaking to one man who said he cannot go on the internet anymore, because “every time he's on the internet, his identity gets stolen.” Investing in skills also means building trust, she said.
“We can build as many powers and poles and have as many networks [as possible],” Turner Lee said. “But behind that are consumers, and trust is a fundamental tenet of whether or not people are going to take advantage of high-speed broadband.”
To do it effectively, Turner Lee called on government leaders to recognize that the digital divide is about more than infrastructure, and that it includes residents’ digital literacy, the trust they have in technology and their ability to take full advantage of online services.
“Let's break these assumptions that the digital divide is just about the haves and the have-nots,” she said. “It is imperative today that you're connected. And being disconnected really matters, not just during times of social isolation, but it matters when you are a person trying to navigate through the quality of life that could be complicated, and one of those things where having access just makes it all simple.”
She also urged government leaders to not just think of AI as a solution to every technological issue.
“The more access that we have in this country to connect people in meaningful ways means that the next generation of technology will just be easier for people to access and adopt,” Turner Lee said. “It is up to us to make those demands known as we're thinking about and we're talking to stakeholders, that when we have a project before us on artificial intelligence, we need to ask the question, how are people going to get to it? Have you thought about not just the application itself, but the extent to which people have the tools and resources to connect in meaningful ways.”
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