In 2025, digital inclusion stopped being about programs alone. It became unmistakably clear that it functions as civic infrastructure—essential for accessing health care, education, work, and public systems, and dependent on coordination, trust, and sustained human support to work at scale.
2025 Was About Systems, Not Just Services
Throughout 2025, KC Digital Drive saw a familiar pattern repeat itself across communities: the problem was rarely a lack of effort. Instead, residents encountered fragmented systems that required navigation as much as access, and community organizations were stretched trying to meet demand without shared infrastructure.
Our work this year focused on reducing that friction. Rather than expanding isolated programs, we invested in the connective tissue that helps systems function—aligning practitioners, strengthening coordination, and ensuring residents could move more easily through complex digital environments.
Coordinated Access Through the Digital Life Exchange
The Digital Life Exchange (DLX) continued to serve as the backbone for coordinated digital inclusion service delivery. DLX does not replace community organizations; it supports them. By aligning partners around shared practices, training, and tools, DLX allows residents to receive help from trusted organizations while benefiting from coordination behind the scenes.
In 2025, DLX included:
- A growing network of community organizations providing digital navigation, skills training, and device access
- The Digital Ambassadors program, expanding resident support while creating workforce pathways for students (see Spring 2025 cohort report here)
- American Connection Corps (ACC) members embedded in communities to strengthen local coordination
- A Kansas ADOPT–funded Device Access initiative that paired devices with navigation and training (blog here)
The takeaway was simple but powerful: access alone does not close gaps without trusted guidance.
Why Place-based Support Still Matters
At the Digital Services & Support Center (DSSC) at LAMP, residents continued to seek help with everyday digital challenges—recovering accounts, applying for jobs, enrolling in benefits, and troubleshooting devices. These needs did not diminish in 2025; if anything, they became more complex.
In addition to direct resident support, the DSSC increasingly functions as shared instructional infrastructure for the ecosystem. In 2025, community-based organizations used the lab space to host digital skills classes and workshops, extending their reach through a reliable learning environment, technology access, and on-site support. KC Digital Drive also delivered a train-the-trainer model for the cord-cutting workshop, including curriculum, enabling partners to replicate high-demand content consistently across community sites.
At the same time, DSSC began piloting what the next phase of digital inclusion looks like. New offerings such as AI for the Rest of Us and Yep, That’s a Scam! reflected a growing reality: digital equity must now include safety, confidence, and agency in an increasingly automated and high-risk digital landscape.
Building Shared Understanding Through Experience
In 2025, KC Digital Drive delivered Digital Divide Simulations in Louisville, Baltimore, San Antonio, Charlotte, and Kansas City, Missouri. These simulations are designed not simply to raise awareness, but to help leaders experience the complexity of digital exclusion and understand how policy, funding, and systems decisions affect real people.
Across cities, the outcome was consistent: shared language, deeper alignment, and more grounded conversations about what meaningful digital inclusion actually requires.
The Invisible Work That Holds the Field Together
Much of the most important digital inclusion work happens quietly. In 2025, KC Digital Drive invested heavily in field infrastructure—coalitions, shared learning spaces, and funding coordination that allow the ecosystem to function over time.
This included formal participation in equity-focused coalitions, as well as ongoing “small c” coalitional work through the Kansas City Coalition for Digital Inclusion (KCCDI). Monthly practitioner convenings, co-designed agendas, and published recaps created continuity and peer learning in a field where organizations are often under-resourced and overstretched.
KC Digital Drive also continued stewardship of the Digital Inclusion Fund (DIF), which completed three funding cycles through 2024 with grant terms extending into 2025. Alongside this, we compiled an updated Digital Inclusion Funding Landscape Analysis to help funders and practitioners better navigate a fragmented funding environment.
From Plans to Practice in Local Government
Local governments across the region are increasingly responsible for turning broadband and digital access plans into action. In 2025, KC Digital Drive supported Johnson County and Miami County (MCCC) in bridging the gap between policy, funding, and implementation—helping translate plans into practical, community-centered strategies.
A New Model for Community Access: Get Help KC
In 2025, KC Digital Drive hosted the first-ever Get Help KC online expo, a free, multi-organization event designed to help residents enroll in programs, access devices, and build digital know-how. The event demonstrated how coordinated, virtual access points can reduce barriers and extend reach when organizations work together. Read the blog and watch the video here.
What 2025 Made Clear
By the end of the year, several lessons were impossible to ignore:
- Digital navigation is as critical as access itself
- Trust and human support remain indispensable
- Fragmentation persists without coordination infrastructure
- Emerging technologies bring new equity risks alongside opportunity
- Funding alignment remains one of the field’s greatest constraints
Looking Ahead
As we move into 2026, KC Digital Drive will continue scaling what works—deepening coordinated navigation, expanding emerging technology literacy, strengthening coalition-to-funder feedback loops, and reinforcing digital inclusion as essential civic infrastructure. At the same time, we recognize that digital inclusion must evolve as technology evolves. As AI, automation, and online fraud reshape daily life, the field must expand beyond access to include safety, confidence, and real-world digital agency.
Digital inclusion is not a temporary intervention. It is a permanent requirement for equitable participation in modern society—and it must be built to last.