Bo Beaulieu

While digital inclusion can be framed as a social justice and equity issue, it can—and should—also be framed as a community and economic development issue. A digitally inclusive community or region ensures that all residents, organizations, and businesses can participate fully in an increasingly digitized community, society, and economy. This report will review a series of 2019 metrics to get a better idea of the state of digital inclusion in Indiana.

Despite these limitations, the digital inclusion indicators and metrics that we have analyzed do offer some insights on the steps that leaders and practitioners should consider in their community, economic, and workforce development efforts. They include:

Digital distress is defined as census tracts that have a higher percent of homes not subscribing to the internet or subscribing only through a cellular data plan as well as a higher percent of homes with no computing devices or relying only on mobile devices, no laptops or desktops. About 8.1 percent of the upper Midwest’s population (or 4.3 million people) lived in digitally distressed areas as of 2017.

As of 2017, about 1.7 million housing units in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin did not have access to 25/3 affecting 3.5 million residents. Michigan had the highest share (25.5 percent) of housing units in the region with no 25/3 access, followed by Illinois (17.6 percent) and Wisconsin (17.2 percent). Minnesota had the lowest share, with less than 10 percent of the total.