Government Technology

In the summer of 2018, Verizon Wireless triggered a major controversy in the public safety community when it temporarily reduced Internet service to firefighters in Santa Clara (CA) greatly diminishing their ability to provide emergency services while fighting the Mendocino Complex fire — one of the largest in state history.

Now that all 50 governors — including a robust crop of new faces — have made "State of the State" speeches, Government Technology took the opportunity to break down how many touched on various technology topics:

• Technology: 34
• Broadband/Connectivity/Internet: 23
• Modern/Modernize: 21
• Data: 20
• Cybersecurity: 9 

Detroit has hired its first director of digital inclusion, making it one of a growing number of cities to have a full-time employee within its government tackling issues of digital equity. The city tapped Joshua Edmonds to fill the new role. Edmonds comes to the city from Cleveland, where he previously worked in the digital inclusion space. In Cleveland, Edmonds helped lead the deployment of more than $1.5 million of investments related to digital equity through The Cleveland Foundation, an influential community foundation in the Ohio city.

The Pew Charitable Trusts has launched its new Broadband Research Initiative to understand why some 24 million Americans — most of those living in rural communities — still lack what is largely now considered a basic utility. “About 30 percent of rural Americans do not have access to broadband, compared to about 2 percent of urban Americans,” said Kathryn de Wit, manager of Pew’s Broadband Research Initiative. “So while there is that big gap, I don’t think that this is a policy issue that’s split very neatly along urban and rural lines,” she continued.

Rural electric cooperatives (RECs) have some specific characteristics that make them uniquely qualified to undertake significant and meaningful strides in conquering the digital divide. Beyond their community focus, RECs possess important skills and assets that make expansion into broadband very favorable. Those skills and assets include: