Panel touts bridging digital skills gap

Key Takeaways

It’s becoming more imperative each day that counties ensure their constituents are digitally literate, a panel of county officials said Saturday, March 1, at the Telecommunications & Technology Policy Steering Committee meeting.

There are many ways to help bridge your county’s digital divide. One way is with “digital skilling” or teaching your residents digital skills, according to panelists Jennifer Clark, Lake County, Ill. Board member; Jonathan Feldman, CIO of Wake County, N.C. and Kyla Williams-Tate, Cook County, Ill Digital Equity director, who each spoke on the subject.

In Cook County, they are “building the learning ecosystem,” said Williams-Tate. That entails helping county employees build digital skills and become more confident using technology for day-to-day work and collaboration.

The Cook County Office of the President created the county’s Digital Equity Action Plan, Williams-Tate said. After an engagement process with residents in 2023, the plan was completed with four digital equity cornerstones:

• Access: Ensure all residents can afford high-quality internet and devices, and can access tools and support to use them.
• Confidence: Ensure that residents have the skills and comfort to navigate and use the internet to meet their needs and improve quality of life.
• Safety: Ensure residents feel safe and secure in digital environments and can protect themselves online.
• Infrastructure: Ensure that Cook County has sufficient physical infrastructure (conduit, cables, towers and data centers) to support healthy, robust internet service for all.

Wake County, N.C.

Wake County, N.C. recently completed a digital inclusion plan, the first step toward teaching digital skills. 

“It’s increasingly impossible to exist in modern society without a device, without a network and without the skills to use it,” said Feldman, asking the standing-room only audience: “How many of you have a doctor who has a patient portal? Most hands shot up.

“That’s a lot of folks,” he said. “Think about your health outcomes if you don’t know, in a timely way, what your health status is.”

When Wake County put out an RFP to get a comprehensive digital inclusion plan together that included finding out the needs of their population, the “most important thing we did was to get out…too often in government, we ask people to come to us,” Feldman noted. 

“We went to churches, community centers, where people live. There were times when I was driving almost an hour to where these people live, work and play. When you go to where people already congregate, a funny thing happens — they actually show up. So, I feel really good about the data we got.” 

The result was a plan that outlines strategies to bridge the digital divide. Their next steps are to implement the plan. (See a copy of the Wake County Digital Inclusion Project here.)

Lake County, Ill.

Getting buy-in from leadership is crucial for getting a program up and running, said Clark, from Lake County, Ill. “We started with a coalition,” she said. “I can’t tell you how important it is to get those stakeholders, to get people together. We reached out to libraries, schools, non-profits and community groups. ‘Let’s just get together and talk about what our residents need and what you’re providing.’”

“We heard over and over,” she said, “that people are looking for someone to take the leadership role, and the county is best positioned for that, to bring people together.”

Lake County hired six digital navigators, which are people trained to go out in the community, from the workplace development office in Lake County. Clark said they asked their digital coalition where to send the navigators. 

“We have people going to libraries, non-profits, and many of them are bilingual. The digital navigators make sure people have the appropriate equipment. I was surprised at how many students were trying to do homework on their phones. There are organizations like PCs for People who will ‘wipe’ old computers and refurbish them at a very low cost to give to residents.”

Clark noted that some other free and low-cost ways to engage the community to help make residents more digitally literate include finding:

• Volunteer expertise and mentorship: Individuals with digital skills can volunteer as mentors or trainers to help teach others, including pairing up teenagers with senior citizens at local libraries.
• Corporate sponsorship and resource allocation: Companies can commit financial support or donate technology and training resources.
• Advocate for policy and funding support
• Promote awareness and community engagement: Use social media, local events and community forums to highlight success stories and benefits of digital navigators and digital skills.

“Two years ago, we started on this journey, we set aside $6 million in ARPA money to make our plan a reality,” said Clark. On Saturday, she urged other county officials in attendance to benefit from her county’s plan. See the plan here.