May 2017

In recent years, government agencies, private foundations, and community-based organizations have increasingly sought to understand how programs that promote digital inclusion lead to social and economic outcomes for individuals, programs, and communities. This push to measure outcomes has been driven, in part, by a larger trend to ensure that dollars are being used efficiently to improve lives rather than simply to deliver services. A new report, published by Benton Foundation, describes the challenges facing community-based organizations and other key stakeholders in using outcomes-based evaluation to measure the success of their digital inclusion programs and offers recommendations toward addressing these shared barriers. This new research builds off Dr. Colin Rhinesmith’s Digital Inclusion and Meaningful Broadband Adoption Initiatives, released in early 2016. That report identified the core offerings of digital inclusion organizations – from providing low-cost broadband, and the devices to connect to it, while helping new broadband adopters gain the skills they need to navigate the Internet and online services. In this national study of digital inclusion organizations, Dr. Rhinesmith also noted that most of the digital inclusion organizations that participated in this study did not have outcomes-based evaluation frameworks. However, all recognized the importance of having them. This finding led us to conduct this deeper research on the challenges surrounding outcomes-based evaluation. Twenty-some years ago community technology centers offered training and public access to computers (a few with Internet access). Today we have digital inclusion programs provided by community-based organizations, libraries, and local government. The purpose twenty years ago was not the technology but what one could do with it. The same is true today. The difference is that we are now trying to clearly define the outcomes of access and use of the technology. What we do with the technology and the outcomes will continue to evolve as the technology evolves.

[Commentary] For several years, Kansas City has been at the forefront of a movement in the Midwest. The region was an early leader of the Silicon Prairie, showing firsthand that a thriving startup ecosystem is not the exclusive purview of the coasts. But federal regulators are about to hurt the open internet and put this growth at risk. These startups’ successes are dependent on an open internet. The rise of digital technologies has eroded boundaries: Anyone can participate, start a business and reach a global audience. Thanks to the way the internet was designed, it’s one of the most open, competitive markets we’ve ever known. Consumers can reach any site they want, without interference from the big telecom and wireless companies that provide access to the internet. This is often called “net neutrality.” But many of the incumbent internet access providers have long wanted to change the way the internet works. This sort of behavior has been kept in check because of net neutrality rules enforced by the Federal Communications Commission, but new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai plans to do away with the existing legal protections. Without net neutrality, the incumbents who provide access to the internet would be able to pick winners or losers in the market. They could impede traffic from startups’ services in order to favor their own services or established competitors. They could also impose new fees on startups, inhibiting consumer choice.

[David Cohen is the founder and co-CEO of Techstars and a serial entrepreneur.]

A recent study by Ohio State University (OSU) researchers found broadband access severely lacking in the state’s rural areas, a deficit they reported could yield significant economic growth if corrected — but if resolved could also lead to other, unintended consequences.

Connecting the Dots of Ohio’s Broadband Policy found that 76 percent of Ohio households had broadband subscriptions in 2015, a share that led neighboring states and lagged just 1 percent behind the national average of 77 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. More troublingly, the report from OSU’s Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics highlighted a disparity between urban Ohio areas, where fixed broadband access is “near universal” and adoption in metro areas ranges from less than 60 percent to more than 90 percent; and rural communities where 31 percent of the population lacks access to fixed broadband — and lives in areas where extending service is “prohibitively expensive.” Overall, the report found more than 1 million Ohioans still lack access to fixed broadband service.