New Projects: Embedding Equity in City Broadband Investments

San Francisco, California — We are pleased to share five exciting projects from our Summer 2021 Tech Executive Leadership Initiative (TELI) cohort. The projects, focused on ‘Embedding Equity in City Broadband Investments,’ seek to help the City of New York hold Internet Service Providers accountable to digital equity principles as it works to bridge the digital divide. The outputs include a dashboard to track community feedback; an operational plan to expand the existing Electronic Benefits Transfer program to include broadband; and a model that draws from City data to compute digital equity scores. 

The projects were released at our webinar on October 20, which also featured a keynote by the New York City Chief Technology Officer, John Paul Farmer. You can view a recording here. 

The projects are:

Preferred Vendor Certification Program

by Alex Bores, Bindu Gakhar, Dwight Lin, and Nicole Schneidman

This project recommends that the City establish an Internet Service Provider Preferred Vendor Certification Program that provides enticements to vendors who meet certain performance and affordability criteria. Establishing a voluntary certification program would incentivize vendors to provide more affordable internet services without the City having to engage in the costly and litigious process of enforcing affordability and access provisions in contracts.

Project Loop: Community Feedback and Vendor Incentive Program

by Neelam Dwivedi, Garrett Houghton, Girish Seshagiri, and Laura Thomas

This project recommends that the City adopt a Community Feedback System and a Vendor Incentive Program to incentivize vendors with advertising opportunities. These elements seek to create a circle of transparency that holds vendors accountable to the communities they serve, and makes good publicity contingent on high performance.

A Robust Internal System for Successful Broadband Implementation

by Janette Fong, Clay McGuyer, Christine Sakuda, and Bill Ward

This project recommends that the City couple its Universal Solicitation for Broadband Request for Proposals with a robust internal performance management system for the Internet Service Providers awarded contracts through this process. The suggested system is anchored by five main priorities, including: well-defined metrics for digital equity; a regular performance review schedule; and mechanisms to reward or penalize vendors based on performance.

EDEN: NYC Digital Equity Index and Provider Accreditation

by Anita Balaraman, Laura Ellena, Quaseer Mujawar, Aaron Ogle, and Miro RabVass

This project proposes that the City implement a rigorous and holistic summary of digital equity indicators – the Expanding Digital Equity in NYC (EDEN) Index – to evaluate progress towards equitable broadband access. The EDEN Index seeks to both enable the City to consistently assess provider performance and to accredit exemplary providers as “digital equity champions.”

EBT System for Broadband Subsidies

by Benj Azose, Alicia Blum-Ross, Jennie Crichlow, Joshua Gordon, and Angela Govila

This project recommends that the City of New York work with City and State agencies to subsidize the cost of broadband for low-income households using existing Electronic Benefits Transfer infrastructure. Expanding EBT infrastructure to cover broadband payments would directly lower the cost of broadband for low-income households and offer a sustainable, long-term solution.

Learn more about these and other projects here.