Kansas City Digital Inclusion Funding Landscape Analysis

by | Feb 7, 2024 | Digital Infrastructure, Computers in the Home, Fiber to the Community, Home Internet Access, Gigabit Ecosystem Building, Digital Skills Training, Digital Inclusion

In order to help guide digital transformation efforts across the metro, KC Digital Drive has developed a landscape analysis of the current digital inclusion funding ecosystem in Kansas City. This analysis is meant to provide funders and community organizations with a clear picture of the digital inclusion needs and funding apparatus in our community by highlighting the kinds of digital inclusion programming that are currently funded, and where there are gaps at a program and system level within the ecosystem.

The goal of this analysis is to help inform the upcoming re-launch of Kansas City’s Digital Inclusion Fund, as well as to support funders and digital inclusion practitioners in developing a strategy to take advantage of upcoming state and federal funding opportunities to build digital inclusion programming and capacity in the city.

The white paper is structured according to a five-point framework that KC Digital Drive has developed to help contextualize the the full diversity of barriers that contribute to the digital divide in Kansas City:

  1. Network Capacity
  2. Access to the Network
  3. Quality of Network Access
  4. Participation in Digital Life
  5. Excellence, Innovation, and Growth

For each of these dimensions, we explore the existing capacity of Kansas City’s digital inclusion ecosystem, the gaps we have identified that will require new initiatives to address, and the systemic issues that serve as barriers or opportunities for progress.

 

Read the white paper here.

Further Reading

When Your Address Determines Your Access

The June meeting of the KC Coalition for Digital Inclusion brought together four voices from the region’s affordable housing and digital equity sectors for a rich conversation on how housing stability and internet access shape each other. Health Forward Foundation’s Adriana Pecina and John Tramel, LISC Greater Kansas City Executive Director Geoff Jolly, Hispanic Economic Development Corporation (HEDC) Executive Director Pedro Zamora, and Phoenix Family Program Manager Jessica Welch joined KC Digital Drive Digital Inclusion Program Manager Leslie Scott to explore what it means to live at the intersection of two of Kansas City’s most persistent inequities.

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How Researchers Address the Digital Divide Through Social Drivers of Health

In recognition of May as “Research Month”, Children’s Mercy Research Institute’s division of Health Services and Outcomes Research organized several “Lunch and Learn” sessions to highlight important topics for their researchers. The final session focused on the challenge of representative studies for improving both for quality and reach. KC Digital Drive worked with the CMRI team to provide further context for the session’s presentation, but also to help them create a version of Digital Drive’s Digital Divide Simulation (DDS) so that the researchers could see first-hand the circumstances which touch many of their patients and even more families beyond.

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A Laptop Means Dignity: Empire Dreams and KC Public Library Close a Device Gap

Not everyone building a business has a laptop. For Empire Dreams entrepreneurs, that gap was a wall. A connection through KC Digital Drive brought them to KC Public Library’s Chromebook lending program. Three weeks later, program participants weren’t pitching on phones anymore. They were building decks, creating marketing plans, and feeling official.

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