Digital Divide Funding and the Power of Public Meetings

Here’s a story in the Chicago Tribune about the proposed cuts in state funding for the Eliminate the Digital Divide grant program: Proposed Illinois budget threatens digital literacy program. Here’s a snip related to the impact of the proposed cuts in Chicago:

Michael Matos, director of adult education programs for Albany Park Community Center in Chicago, said elimination of the program would hurt people who “do not typically have opportunities to use computers in their everyday lives, for advancing in the workplace, or to progress in their education.” Matos said many are “low-income families and individuals, limited-English immigrants, especially Hispanics, adults with limited education, and unemployed and underemployed individuals,” including military veterans.

“If the Eliminate the Digital Divide program didn’t receive funding for fiscal year 2016, we would have to discontinue eight training classes that run every six weeks and 12 hours weekly of open community access to the computer technology center,” Matos said.

Matos said about 1,800 people use the center, funded mostly by a $75,000 grant that ends in June.

The State of Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity has been an enormously important funder in this space. People and organizations all across the state have relied on these funds to improve skills, get job training, and generally improve their lives.

Here at Smart Chicago, access to technology & the internet and digital skills for all are important areas of focus. The Connect Chicago Challenge,  an effort to make Chicago the most dynamic digital city in the country, aligns citywide digital leadership to coordinate and activate digital access and skills development interventions to enable every Chicagoan to fully participate in digital society.

This is an important issue that affects us all. Here’s a helpful cache of public documents about the work of the committee and grantees of the program, including up-to-date notes about the current status of funding and the results of a recent meeting of the Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee.

The reporter who wrote this story attended a public meeting held by this committee last week. She joined dozens of people, in person and on the phone, who work in this nascent field. As chair of the committee, I shared my thoughts on the cuts:

Dan O’Neil, an advisory committee member who also is executive director of Smart Chicago Collaborative, whose mission is to increase Internet access, said at the meeting that he believes funding should be doubled.

The digital divide is most certainly not closed, the work is not even close to done, and the librarians, social workers, and trainers who serve on the front lines deserve our support.

Kennedy-King College Public Computer Centers

Kennedy-King College Public Computer Centers

This Morning: Eliminate the Digital Divide Advisory Committee Meeting

seal-of-the-state-of-illinoisThis morning, Wednesday, March 11, 2015,  at 10AM, I will be chairing a meeting of the Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee in the Director’s Conference Room of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) in Suite 3-400 of the State of Illinois Building at 100 W. Randolph Street, Chicago, IL 60601. If you want to dial in, you can do so at 1-888-494-4032  / Access #: 2828938287.

Here’s the agenda:

Meeting Agenda

  1. Call to Order
  2. Program Update
  3. Other Business/Public Comment
  4. Adjournment

Here’s a helpful cache of public documents about the work of the committee and grantees of the program.

Under the “Other Business/Public Comment” portion of the meeting, I’ll ask for clarification from DCEO about the discontinuation of the Eliminate the Digital Divide Program. Here’s an excerpt from page 58 of the Illinois State Budget, Fiscal Year 2016, July 1, 2015 – June 30, 2016:

In order to restructure the state’s limited resources to core priorities and to provide funding for an overall budget that the state can afford, the fiscal year 2016 recommended budget discontinues funding from the fiscal year 2016 maintenance request: the Office of Coal Marketing and Development and its programs ($25 million); the state add-on to the federal LIHEAP ($165 million); the Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standards Program ($100 million); the Renewable Energy Program ($10 million); the Summer Youth Jobs Program ($10 million); and the Eliminate the Digital Divide Program ($5 million).

Since inception, this program has invested circa $30 million in the digital lives of Illinois residents. All the way up and down this state, these funds have led to tens of thousands of people (page 254) getting trained in digital skills at Community Technology Centers.

If you believe in the power of technology to improve lives, if you think we should support the essential work of front-line trainers in this state, if you care about equity in opportunity for all residents of Illinois, this is something that matters to you.

The Next Eliminate the Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee Meeting is February 3, 2015

seal-of-the-state-of-illinoisThe next meeting of the Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee is Tuesday, February 3, 2015 from 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m at 100 W. Randolph St. Ste. 3-400 Chicago, IL 60601.

This is on the third floor in the offices of the Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity in the Director’s Conference Room.

Meeting Agenda as follows:

I. Call to Order

II. Program Update

III. Other Business/Public Comment

IV. Adjournment

Call in information: Dial-in #: 1-888-494-4032 Access #: 2828938287

I’m currently the chair of this committee and I’ve maintained a folder of information about its work here.

Attend the Next Meeting of the Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee

The next meeting of the Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity is coming up. Details as follows:

Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee
James R. Thompson Center 100 W. Randolph
St. Ste. 3-400
(Director’s Conference Room)
Chicago, IL 60601

Thursday, November 6, 2014
10:00 am – 11:30 a.m.

Dial-in # 1-888-494-4032 Access #2828938287

Here’s a folder of documents relating to the Committee’s work since I became chair. And here’s some relevant documents for our meeting:

Meantime, here’s a photo I took when I was in Springfield recently:

Old Capitol, Springfield, IL

Eliminate the Digital Divide Advisory Committee Capstone Project

uic_logo_large_blue_revI serve as the chair of the Eliminate the Digital Divide Advisory Committee of the State of Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Development. Recently I worked with fellow committee member Norm Peterson of Argonne National Laboratory to submit an application under the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Public Administration MPA Capstone program, “which provides MPA students with a practical, team-based experience in problem-solving within public or nonprofit organizations”.

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Eliminate the Digital Divide Advisory Committee Working Meeting

I chair the Eliminate the Digital Divide Advisory Committee , which advises the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity in establishing criteria and procedures for identifying recipients of grants under the Digital Divide Elimination Act.

Here’s meeting notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CF6J9L_uG0xCR5AgbC3_IMMfK76lUlo2lxGQOLqQcXA/edit

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Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee Meeting

Join us this morning at the Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee.

Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee
James R. Thompson Center 100 W. Randolph St.
Ste. 3-400 (Director’s Conference Room)
Chicago, IL 60601
Monday, May 12, 2014 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Meeting Agenda
I. Call to Order
II. Approval of Committee Meeting Minutes from February 10, 2014 meeting
III. Program Update
IV. Other Business/Public Comment
V. Adjournment

If you can’t make it today, the next two meetings are as follows:

  • Monday, August 11, 2014 @ 10:00 a.m.
  • Monday, November 10, 2014 @ 10:00 a.m.

State of Illinois Eliminate the Digital Divide Grants

Here is a handy spreadsheet of all Eliminate the Digital Divide grants going back to the inception of the program, showing all grants, grants by year (2007 – 2012), all Chicago grants, and all Chicago grants by year. All of this data is  pulled from http://granttracker.ildceo.net/. You can also knock around with the data in this custom view on the State’s data portal.

Here’s a breakdown:

ALL GRANTS STATEWIDE

Year | # of grants | Avg. amount of grants

2007 | 16 | $756,156 $47,260

2008 | 103 | $5,060,661 $49,133

2009 | 91 | $5,079,129 $55,815

2010 | 101  | $4,944,877 $48,959

2011 | 124 | $5,065,137 $40,848

2012 | 88 | $4,102,117 $46,615

TOTALS” 523 grants for a total of $25,008,077 with an average grant of $48,105.

ALL GRANTS IN CHICAGO

Year | # of grants | Avg. amount of grants

2007 | 11 | $460,505 $41,864

2008 | 60 | $3,327,602 $55,460

2009 | 59 | $3,303,522 $55,992

2010 | 60 | $2,519,574 $41,993

2011 | 66 | $2,728,243 $41,337

2012 | 50 | $2,228,595 $44,572

TOTALS:  306 grants for a total of $14,568,041 with an average grant of $46,870.