A local digital equity plan is the key to preparing localities to capitalize on significant federal and state grant opportunities: 

• Every state broadband office has applied for a Digital Equity Capacity Grant in recent months. As of this writing, only Nevada’s application has been approved by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)—but over the course of the next few months, every state will receive a capacity grant ranging up to tens of millions of dollars. Most of the states will use that money to establish competitive subgrant programs for digital equity, digital opportunity, and workforce preparedness.  

• NTIA just opened the Digital Equity Competitive Grant program, which local governments and their partners can apply to directly. As we describe in more detail here, NTIA expects to award 150 to 200 grants of $5 million to $12 million each. The awards will enable local governments to launch or expand innovative programs that meet the digital equity and digital opportunity needs in their communities.  

What should your strategy address? 

To capitalize on these and other future funding opportunities, local governments should develop a complete and holistic strategy around digital equity and digital opportunity for their residents.  

Guided by the “Covered Populations” framework established in each state’s Digital Equity Plan, the local strategy should take into account the ways that community members face uneven access to broadband unrelated to the availability of infrastructure and service.  

Primarily, this digital opportunity gap is associated with income level and whether a family can afford a monthly internet subscription and a suitable computing device. The local strategy should go further, though, because community needs may also include other affordability issues (such as the cost of maintaining or replacing a computer), lack of general digital skills, and an inability to maintain one’s privacy and safety on the internet. 

The importance of data 

Local digital equity and digital opportunity plans should include meaningful data collected in a statistically valid way—not only to help identify the community’s needs with respect to digital skills, security, privacy, device access, and affordability, but also to establish a baseline against which to measure changes in coming years. As your community works to meet its digital opportunity and digital equity goals, it will be important to document your progress for purposes of grant compliance and program evaluation.  

State Digital Equity Plans and BEAD Five-Year Action Plans can provide an initial framework for gathering the data necessary to assess a community’s status. (To start, see the NTIA’s list of state plans.) Each state’s Digital Equity Plan identifies barriers to digital equity faced by Covered Populations in the state, which a locality may choose to evaluate at the community level.  

We recommend conducting a statistically valid phone survey, potentially with a substantial focus on low-income residents and other focus populations, to better understand where their challenges are and what economic and other opportunities are being missed by households who are unable to adopt broadband services.  

As many of the states did in preparing their Digital Equity Plans, a local government can cost-effectively undertake such a survey using techniques that have proven to be effective ways of reaching these relatively hard to reach populations. 

Collaboration will strengthen local planning 

Developing a digital equity or digital opportunity plan will guide a community through the process of identifying and documenting its needs, goals, and potential strategies, while bringing together the engaged local entities that can collaboratively work toward digital inclusion. 

A typical digital equity plan may include: 

• Documentation of how many households may have difficulty affording broadband or devices and are eligible for broadband subsidy programs—and the gaps in enrollment in such programs. 

• Insights developed through interviews with local stakeholders that illuminate gaps in affordability, skills, and devices; the existence of local programs; and the ability of stakeholders to start or expand programs to fill identified needs. 

• Programmatic recommendations and associated budgets for strategies and activities designed to address gaps. 

Communities should also connect with their state broadband office to receive announcements about upcoming technical assistance, events, and funding opportunities—especially information about state-funded digital equity efforts. 

The CTC team has developed digital equity needs assessments and strategic plans for local governments and regional partnerships nationwide. We would be happy to help your jurisdiction develop a plan to prepare for new funding opportunities.

Please contact us if you have questions or would like to discuss how CTC can assist you.