On March 28, the Federal Communications Commission presented its fiscal year 2023 budget request. The budget request will be used to support the following Strategic Goals:

1. Pursue a “100 Percent” Broadband Policy: the FCC will pursue policies to help bring affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband to 100 percent of the country.
2. Promote Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility: the FCC will work to ensure equitable and inclusive access and facilitate the ability of underserved individuals and communities to leverage and benefit from the wide range of opportunities made possible by digital technologies, media, communication services, and next-generation networks.
3. Empower Consumers: The FCC will tackle new challenges to consumer rights and opportunities stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, pursue effective enforcement and new approaches to protect consumers from unwanted and intrusive communications, and work to enhance competition and pursue policies that protect the competitive process to improve consumer choice and access to information.
4. Enhance Public Safety and National Security: The FCC will pursue policies to promote the availability of secure, reliable, interoperable, redundant, and rapidly restorable critical communications infrastructure and services.
5. Advance America’s Global Competitiveness: The FCC will take action to promote investment and advance the development and deployment of new communications technologies, such as 5G, that will allow the nation to remain a global leader in an increasingly competitive, international marketplace.  The FCC will work with its federal partners to advocate for US interests abroad.
6. Foster Operational Excellence: The FCC should be a model for excellence in government by effectively managing its resources, maintaining a commitment to transparent and responsive processes that encourage public involvement and decision-making that best serves the public interest, and encouraging a culture of collaboration both internally and across government agencies.

The pandemic revealed gaping disparities in broadband access and use in urban neighborhoods and rural communities alike. Historic broadband investments are now being made through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), with states setting priorities in consultation with local governments. Also momentous is the IIJA’s emphasis on broadband use as well as broadband networks, with requirements for affordability, and funding for subscriptions, devices, training, and support. As state and local governments develop their new broadband plans, they have an opportunity to do more than build new networks. Providing fast and reliable broadband is only a first step; as policymakers need to think holistically about how to achieve widespread and inclusive technology use—enhancing not just infrastructure, but the digital human capital to use it in both urban and rural communities. Making new investments can generate significant benefits for local economies, according to our recent research. In what economist Enrico Moretti has called the human capital century, individual and community fortunes are driven by human capital, which is often defined as educational attainment. We argue that broadband use is a form of digital human capital. Like education, broadband use can facilitate access to information and the development of skills. As with other forms of human capital, broadband use can also be expected to affect outcomes for the broader community, with multipliers and spillover effects for labor markets and local institutions, and richer information networks to encourage innovation.

[Karen Mossberger is Director of the Center on Technology, Data and Society and Frank and June Sackton Chair at the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University. Caroline Tolbert is Professor and Lowell G. Battershell Distinguished Chair at the Political Science Department at the University of Iowa. Scott LaCombe is Assistant Professor of Government and Statistical and Data Sciences at Smith College.]

Older adults have long needed help with technology. Because of this dynamic, for many years digital inclusion programs have worked extensively with older adults. Those efforts, however, became impossible to safely conduct at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. So, advocates in the space had to get creative. Tobey Dichter is the CEO of Generations on Line, with more than 20 years of experience in digital inclusion work with seniors. Dichter’s group offers online tutorials to help those who are connected learn more about how to navigate and stay safe on the Internet. During the pandemic, traffic to those tutorials increased tenfold. While Dichter had long seen demand from seniors who wanted to learn to use tech better, the pandemic also removed some existing reluctance. At the same time, there has also been an increase in support and resources. As in all areas of digital inclusion, partnerships have formed faster now that the pandemic has shown the need for Internet in homes. This has led to an erosion of some barriers that have long kept older adults offline, including access to devices and Internet connection affordability. Those both remain a struggle, but experts in the space say there is more support to overcome them than ever before. A third challenge — digital skills training — remains perhaps the largest issue, and it’s actually become harder with more of life going online. There is now more to learn, more to do and more ways to feel overwhelmed, intimidated, scammed or unsafe. The key for instructors, Dichter emphasizes, is pinpointing and addressing the moments when this sort of discouragement is most likely to occur, as well as just generally being aware of it.

Gov Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) celebrated the Building Michigan Together Plan, a bipartisan plan to invest nearly $5 billion in Michigan’s infrastructure, grow the economy, create jobs, and benefit families in every region of the state. The Building Michigan Together Plan will connect more households and small businesses to fast, reliable high-speed internet through $250 million in funding to improve access and adoption of broadband – helping ensure all Michigan residents and businesses can compete in a 21st-century economy. Michigan has set a state goal to provide 100 percent access to high-speed internet and 95 percent adoption by households during the next five years. The state has leveraged over $700 million in federal funding to expand high-speed internet and access to internet-capable devices for Michigan families “The Building Michigan Together Plan makes bold, bipartisan investments in the kitchen-table issues that matter most to Michigan families, including clean water, smooth roads, fast internet, and beautiful parks,” said Whitmer. “This supplemental uses one-time resources to make long-term strategic investments in the state’s infrastructure to improve the lives of Michiganders today and well into the future,” said State Budget Director Christopher Harkins. “I look forward to continuing to build on this success and working with our legislative partners to enact a budget that will benefit all residents of our great state.”

Beaver County (PA) Commissioners took the wraps off a two-year plan to bring the internet to about one-third of the county where logging on is slow or impossible, giving the onetime smokestack-industrial heartland a head start in connectivity. In all, some 2,000 homes in parts of 28 of the county’s 54 municipalities will be able to get online by 2024, according to Commission Chair Daniel Camp III. The commissioners earmarked nearly $20 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds for the project, which will begin in Hanover Township, followed by Big Beaver Borough, South Beaver Township and Darlington Township (PA). Meetings with municipal officials begin in April 2022. Areas targeted for broadband expansion can be found here. Lance Grable, director of the Beaver County Office of Planning and Redevelopment, said the county has been ahead of other areas in getting every home connected. A number of other counties are looking for ways of lighting up dark spots to improve education and business opportunities for residents, a costly process that, until recently, has been slowed by lack of funding. But things promise to get a whole lot smoother after the enactment of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in November 2021, which allocated $65 billion for broadband expansion projects in the US. In May 2022, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will begin accepting applications from states for broadband expansion projects, with preference given to rural or poorly served areas.

Under pressure from progressive activists, Democrats are considering employing a rarely used parliamentary maneuver to push through President Biden’s nominees for the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission. Republicans on the Senate Commerce Committee have so far blocked the nominations of Georgetown University law professor Alvaro Bedoya to the FTC and Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] to the FCC, largely on grounds that they are too partisan. That left both commissions deadlocked with a 2-2 split between Democrats and Republicans, denying agency leaders the majorities they needed to advance the Biden administration’s priorities. In response, Senate Democratic leaders are preparing to use a parliamentary maneuver known as a discharge petition to allow a floor vote on both nominees. A majority vote of the Senate is required to advance the discharge petition and bypass a committee vote. Without Republican support—and so far at the committee level there has been none—that means all 50 Democratic-voting members along with Vice President Kamala Harris must be present to support the petition. The vote for Mr. Bedoya could happen as early as this week, the people familiar said. But the maneuver could be difficult to pull off and could take weeks to accomplish. Democrats also hope to use the parliamentary maneuver to gain a floor vote on Biden’s nominee for the FCC, Ms. Sohn. Progressives view her confirmation as important to a number of FCC priorities, including expanding access to broadband and re-establishing net-neutrality rules, which require internet service providers to treat all internet traffic equally. She also has drawn support from some conservative businesspeople and activists.