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Computers In Our Future: What Works in Closing the Technology Gap?
WHAT YOU CAN DO - IMPLICATIONS FOR ACTION
The Computers In Our Future (CIOF) experience offers volumes of practical insights for the many community, state, and national leaders who are committed to addressing the technology gap they know exists. Perhaps the simplest message to take forward is that one size does not fit all, and there cannot be a franchise approach to addressing community needs effectively through technology. Instead, locally driven solutions must be supported. The CIOF experience has shown that while general principles hold true, what works in rural Plumas County will not necessarily work in urban Oakland or Los Angeles. Furthermore, what works with inner city youth in West Oakland may not be effective with youth in South Central Los Angeles. Each center adapted the basic CIOF concept to best fit its unique community, adjusting services to fit residents' interests and needs and employer conditions.
This overall conclusion is not to suggest that effective community technology programs are not replicable or scalable. We believe they are. However, we believe that funding initiatives will fail if, in a desire to take community technology quickly to scale, they fall into the trap of establishing scores of similar centers that have prefabricated goals and activities and lack a community context.
In fact, the CIOF experience demonstrates that a truly effective community technology program can accomplish far more than train a certain number of students in a software program. It can engage local residents with a broad variety of quality programs, enhance the capacity of local organizations and businesses by providing technology expertise, and influence local, regional, and state policy making in ways that strengthen the local community.
MOVING FORWARD
Unfortunately, the high quality programs and staffing so essential for a successful community technology center cannot be done on the cheap. The executive directors of the organizations running CIOF centers have concluded that an annual budget of roughly $150,000 is the bare minimum needed to run a high quality program that can achieve the range of things CIOF has accomplished. When calculated against the number of youth and adults each community technology center serves, the average cost is just a few hundred dollars per person. To put this figure into some context, the US spends roughly $4,360 annually to provide health care to an adult (1) and $8,180 annually to educate a child.(2)
Computers In Our Future has succeeded in large part because it has been a true public/private partnership involving community members, a private grantmaking foundation, and numerous nonprofit, corporate, and public sector entities across the state. The involvement of each partner has been vital, and suggests specific ways different sectors can help accomplish community technology solutions.
IMPLICATIONS FOR COMMUNITY LEADERS
Perhaps our strongest suggestion for community leaders is to develop a clear vision of what technology can do for your community, and then let that vision guide program design. Both community leaders and community members will need to take up the mantle of holding true to that vision, protecting it against the dangers of shoddy implementation and resisting the temptation to chase trendy funding streams.
Staying true to the vision also means recognizing that certain things are best left to partners. For example, in their efforts to leverage the core strengths of CIOF centers, the centers found that while employment training can be very effective at the centers, employment placements were usually best done through allies and partners.
We encourage those new to the field or those who have been frustrated by the lack of results to seek out advice from others who have gone before. The CIOF centers are committed to documenting what we have learned and what we wish we had known when we first began. Our website at www.ciof.org includes a community technology toolkit to help plan and operate a community technology center.
Finally, we urge community leaders to lend the weight of their added voice and expertise to the growing advocacy movement to promote community technology by getting involved in public and corporate policymaking.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PHILANTHROPIC SECTOR
If there is one principal point for the philanthropic community to take from the CIOF experience, it is that building successful technology initiatives that address real community problems requires a sustained commitment and a willingness to experiment. Had CIOF's funding stopped after one or even two years, relatively little would have been accomplished or learned. Sustained support, which recognizes the value of trying out untested ideas, is crucial. It is worth noting that the corporate sector used trial and error and experimentation for many years before it zeroed in on the most effective ways to deploy technology. Funders can play a leadership role in seeding this spirit of experimentation, insisting that efforts address real community needs, and helping to distill the lessons from this period of experimentation.
As a starting approach, funders can take from the CIOF experience some confidence in a community-driven model that goes beyond access and training to assure that programs will both have a community impact and be sustainable beyond the life of a grant. Foundations can also leverage their investments through programs that not only deliver effective technology training but also work to strengthen the technology capacity of local businesses and other organizations in their neighborhoods. Philanthropic investors are likely to get the biggest "bang for the buck" through programs that forge partnerships with other direct service and training programs, employers, and trusted community-based organizations.
Finally, we urge funders to resist the temptation to create models of technology programs that are thrust upon communities as a pre-fabricated package. In their zeal to find programs that close the technology gap, foundations ought to realize that local efforts must be allowed and even encouraged to look different, depending on the community.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CORPORATE SECTOR
There has been a marked increase over the past few years in the corporate sector's interest in technology in low-income communities. They understand that low-income communities represent one of the few remaining untapped markets. We applaud this corporate interest, for without it, CIOF would not be what it is today.
We urge others in the corporate sector to get involved through any of a number of ways that local leaders find valuable-contributing up-to-date hardware or software, offering internships or apprenticeships, lending staff as mentors or teachers, helping to identify the skill sets that are most marketable in a given community, lending support to policies that bolster community technology efforts, and contributing cash or in-kind services. Whatever the form of involvement, it will make the most difference if it is offered in service of accomplishing the community's goals. Once community and corporate leaders focus together on desired outcomes, private partners can offer the appropriate expertise, contacts, employment opportunities, and other needed assets.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC POLICY MAKERS
Community technology offers new solutions to problems that policymakers have grappled with for many years-developing a workforce with the skills demanded in the new economy, keeping young people safe during non-school hours, and enhancing educational achievement among people of all ages. The challenge for policy makers, therefore, is not whether to take a leadership role on technology policy issues but rather how; and how to be certain that the benefits available through technology reach those at risk of being left behind, including residents in low-income communities.
The CIOF experience demonstrates that in addition to the vital role schools and libraries play in providing technology access and training, trusted community-based organizations are an essential part of the solution. The participants in CIOF had been and were likely to remain bypassed by more traditional institutions. Yet trusted neighborhood places were able to recruit them in, gain their confidence, retain them, and impart valuable new skills and opportunities.
The most important take-away for policy makers is that any public funding source that supports technology skills acquisition should include community-based organizations among eligible grantees. This includes allocations through the federal Workforce Investment Act, matching grant programs that bring down federal funding, education programs, youth outreach and diversion programs, and e-government. It will be important for these entities to provide sustained funding that covers the range of high quality program activities proven effective by the CIOF experience-open access, life and job skills training, academic enrichment, and linkages to employment, community services, and economic development opportunities.
Notes:
(1) Table 1: National Health Expenditures
Aggregate and per Capita Amounts, Percent Distribution, and Average Annual
Percent Growth, by Source of Funds: Selected Calendar Years 1960-99, Health
Care Financing Administration, Office of the Actuary: National Health
Statistics Group; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis;
and U.S. Bureau of the Census.
(2) Table 170, 1999-2000 Estimates, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Statistics of State School Systems; Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Education; and Common Core of Data Surveys. (This table was prepared May 2000.)