Designing digital services for equitable access

While the digital divide is now a globally understood phenomenon, service designers are still designing and building public technology systems that depend on the internet, preferencing the well-connected and embedding the digital divide. The tendency to design services for the internet—in both technology adoption and in the services that depend on them—are the digital services design divide. Service by service, the people underserved by technology are categorically and cumulatively marginalized by public services. The more public services focus on digitization as the next step in their evolution without proactively addressing the digital service design divide, the more digitization disconnects the least connected. Ultimately, the digital services design divide is both immediately addressable and the kind of small, cumulative harm that can feel impossible to bridge.

[Sean McDonald is the co-founder of Digital Public and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.]