Intellectual Property Law

Digital skills

By Susan Crawford

The Department of Commerce has announced that the first round of broadband grants has been fully awarded - 82 grants worth $1.2 billion touching 45 states.  I’m really excited about what they’ve accomplished.

Here’s a great grant - One Economy teaming up with a host of partners to put together $28.5 million in stimulus funding and $23 million in private-sector support to train people, support, deploy networks, and develop applications for people in low-income/affordable and public housing in more than 31 states.

We know that most of the broadband non-adopters in the US are low-income and people of color. But you can’t just bring in wires - you’ve got to show people that the Internet is relevant to their lieves.  One Economy proposes to train 2500 young people who can train 235,000 others; to bring wireless mesh networks to 159 public housing developments to connect 27K people; to expand applications to connect people to job, health, finance, and learning resources online.

This is quite a package, and One Economy will be measuring its effectiveness - it’s exciting.

Full post as published by Susan Crawford Blog on April 28, 2010 (boomark / email).