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What's happening in the federal IT community
By Thursday, July 3, 2008 | 4:54 PM
A report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project on broadband adoption has some sobering news for the next president – if he wants to expand electronic government. The first statistic that jumps out of the report, "Home Broadband Adoption 2008," is that the percentage of low-income Americans who have a broadband Internet connection dropped from 28 percent in March 2007 to 25 percent in April 2008. For African Americans, the percentage that had broadband grew only slightly 43 percent from 40 percent during the same period.
And it won’t change anytime soon. Of those that use the slower dial-up connections, almost two-thirds said they had no desire to change to broadband, and almost one out of five said nothing would make them change.
Another statistic that should worry e-government advocates is that 27 percent of Americans have no Internet access, with most of those being either elderly or low-income. And PEW found that only 10 percent of the non-Internet users have any desire to become wired.
These are the hard-core resisters – and there are millions of them. That means if government wants to move ahead with providing more electronic services – including services that may require faster and more robust connections that broadband provides – a large portion of Americans may just not care. And these resisters are exactly the demographics that government tends to serve.
Cracking that resistance, or finding a way to deal with it, will be a tough one.
Comments
As a die-hard dial-up user for many years, it was a difficult decision to take on the additional expense associated with broadband. The fees were initially affordable, but after Charter decided to phase out its lower speed broadband service and offer very high speed broadband for an additional fee, it became apparent that broadband consumers were entering into a never-ending cycle of fee increases to support service upgrades. At some point, the cost outweighs the benefit for most users.
Mark | Tuesday, July 8, 2008 | 10:33 AMI believe Daniel has a good point. Why is the promise of electronic government viewed as "All or Nothing"? I also believe his idea about the role of public libraries is a great one. Public libraries are fighting for their lives in many communities. By consolidating services into an existing public institution, just makes sense. The cost savings would be immediate in some cases, and evident within a few years once those libraries which require additions/upgrades were finished. It sounds like a win/win as long as the funding issues are fair and equitable.
Ohio Fed | Monday, July 7, 2008 | 4:15 PMSo, remove the Internet from the equation and what do you have? Traditional citizen apathy that has existed in proportionate numbers since our democracy began. Today, those who want to participate in governing processes can still do so through traditional engagement models --public meetings, private meetings, letter writing, or phone calls.
As for relying on the Web for service delivery, government's use of the Internet to expedite its processes and to make them more accessible and efficient is still in transition. It is another option for, but not a replacement of traditional service delivery models.
Striking a balance between using traditional and new, electronic methods should be the goal to serve the entire public. As for government encouraging late adopters or "resisters" to use new media tools, perhaps this could become a new role of local libraries –which maintain computer banks with high speed Internet access. Formalizing this into its public service offerings, libraries could become the public comment centers of the future and also serve as government branch offices for some social service delivery programs and agencies, which could result in cost savings.