Digital Equity Playbook: How City Leaders Can Bridge the Digital Divide

The National League of Cities (NLC) released a new report titled, “A Digital Equity Playbook: How City Leaders Can Bridge the Digital Divide,” which calls on local leaders to take action to equip people across the country with the high-speed internet access they need to fully participate in modern society. The resource provides essential guidance for city leaders on how they can expand access to broadband as it becomes more critical. Because of barriers related to broadband affordability, accessibility and skills, more than 150 million people in the United States are living with slow or unreliable internet service, while 42 million do not have access to broadband at all. Nearly half of the Americans who are digitally disconnected are Black, Indigenous and people of color. Older residents are also more likely to be digitally excluded, with 42 percent of American seniors lacking access to broadband at home. The Digital Equity Playbook details the federal resources available to cities to fund digital equity projects and tailors publicly available, national level data to fit specific cities’ needs. The report includes a broadband needs assessment that city leaders can complete to understand exactly where their community stands in terms of broadband access, compared with other cities and states. It also provides recommendations for local leaders to bridge the digital divide, highlighting more than 40 case studies that give local leaders a sense of creative solutions in use elsewhere that may be applicable to their own communities.