The Draft Digital Opportunity Plan is a roadmap for how Minnesota can make best use of federal Digital Equity funds. Created by the Office of Broadband Development (OBD) based on input from Digital Connection Committees (DCC) around the state, OBD is currently holding listening sessions for folks who want to learn more and/or comment on the report. (I attended the session in West St Paul.) Also, OBD invites folks to send comments on the report until September 29 before OBD makes revisions and submits the plan to the National Telecommunications and information Administration (NTIA), which will be distributing federal funds.

Over the weekend, I finally took a long, deep dive into the plan. It’s a lot of information! I thought it might be helpful to frame the plan for other folks. It’s not as linear as I’d like but I tried to pull out the items I thought were most salient.

About the Funding

It’s helpful for me to remember that federal broadband funding fits four buckets:

• Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program ($3 billion)
• Enabling Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Program ($1 billion)
• Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program ($42.45 billion)
• Digital Equity Act Programs ($2.75 billion)
  • Digital Equity Planning Grants ($60 million)
  • Digital Equity Capacity Grants ($1.44 billion)
  • Digital Equity Competitive Grants ($1.25 billion)

The Draft Digital Opportunity Plan only speaks to the Digital Equity Act Programs, which does not include funding for broadband deployment. (More on that distinction below.)

What is the plan of action?

Here are OBD’s key strategies:

• Establish a Digital Opportunity Leaders Network to coordinate support digital opportunity initiatives regionally and statewide.
• Expand OBD’s public data and mapping tools to include digital opportunity measures.
• Prepare reports exploring models for: (1) a statewide tech helpline; (2) state-level programs mirroring ACP or Lifeline; and (3) a state-managed system for loaning large-screen devices long-term.
• Partner with state offices serving people at high-risk for digital exclusion.
• Coordinate with ISPs to support newly connected households needing education and resources.
• Administer targeted grants to support:
  • Local and tribal governments preparing their own digital opportunity plans.
  • Community partners piloting positions focused on trust-based digital opportunity work.
  • Small businesses improving technology access.
  • Local and tribal governments improving web accessibility

Who are the covered populations?

NTIA asks states to focus on “covered populations” that are disproportionately experiencing digital inequity. The list includes:

• Individuals living in households with incomes at or below 150 percent of the poverty line.
• Individuals 60 years of age or older.
• Individuals with disabilities.
• Individuals with barriers to the English language (including English language learners and those with low literacy).
• Members of racial and ethnic minority groups.
• Individuals residing in rural areas.
• Individuals incarcerated in non-federal correctional facilities.

Much of the report outlines the assets, needs and barriers experienced by each group. (Although OBD uses slightly different language.) If you have special knowledge or interest in any of these groups, your expertise would likely be welcome.

Remember it’s not funding for deployment

For me, it’s hard to separate access from adoption – and that’s not on OBD, their assignment was *not* building networks – but knowing that access is a bigger issue in rural areas and seeing the number of folks impacted below, doesn’t make it easier for me to compartmentalize access and adoption.

Cost and disinterest may factor into rural subscription rates but as of Oct 2022, 74.42 percent of rural Minnesota did not have access to wireline broadband (94.31 did not have access to even fixed wireless) at speeds of 25 Mbps down and 3 up. So, access is clearly an issue. Another indicator is the number of local digital opportunity plans that focus on infrastructure. On page 82, the plan notes that “most other plans focus primarily on broadband infrastructure.” Other being not Duluth, Minneapolis, Hennepin County of Ramsey County/St Paul.

Using info as above but in real numbers, not percentages

Can we learn from past programs?

One way I can get my head around the deployment issue is to the remember past Blandin programs, beginning with MIRC (Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities), which morphed into Blandin Broadband Communities (BBC). Here’s a description from the website…

The Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities (MIRC) project was a multi-sector, comprehensive approach to rural Minnesota broadband adoption. In 2010, the MIRC coalition, comprised of 30 partners, was awarded $4.8 million from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) for a Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grant — a program of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. MIRC-related work was completed spring 2013, and while the federal funding may be gone the work goes on at the community level and through the Blandin Broadband Communities program.

Partners included geographic communities and programmatic partners, who provided a range of services to the communities including refurbished device distribution (PCs for People) and training. The communities formed local teams that went through a community broadband development program where they learned about broadband, assessed their local needs and came up with plans to meet those needs. Partners provided some services for free to the communities. Funds were available for each community to support local projects through a grant process. People in the community applied for grants and the community leadership team helped decide what would get funded.

I can see similarities between MIRC and the Digital Opportunity Plan. Having been a part of the MIRC initiative, I thought it might be helpful to share some of the lesson I remember learning from the process:

• Partners are very important. You want folks who will work well with the communities. To that end, the Digital Opportunity plan names several (potential?) partners. Comments from folks who have worked with named partners might be helpful.
• Local teams were key to success and part of that is getting a diverse team of folks who are willing to put in the work. It helps if someone in that group is getting paid because it is a lot of work to attend meetings, even more work to set them up, take notes and share information. A local champion makes all of the difference.
• Blandin was in a different position during MIRC than OBD will be with the statewide equity plan because Blandin only aimed at supporting a finite number of communities at a time. There was a natural selection process, which meant a community (and/or community leadership team) were vetted before starting. With that in mind, I’m not sure of the role of the Digital Connection Committees moving forward but it does seem that they have self-selected into their current role. Perhaps there’s a way to ensure that they represent the needs of the whole community based on how the community might define itself. (For example, is it a segment of the population speaking for an entire county or are all segments adequately represented?)
• The promise of money gets people to the table. Reviewing the MIRC program once completed, most participants agreed that the process of working together was at least as important as the funds they received but the promise of funds motivates people to start – and to an extent, continue.
• Blandin did not fund networks yet found that many of the communities were in desperate need of broadband access. To bridge the gap, Blandin funded feasibility studies, which read like a business case of options for a community to get better broadband. Perhaps there’s room to add something similar to the Digital Opportunity plan.

Other items

A few other items that I caught reading the report.

• Broadband is defined as 25 Mbps down and 3 up. They cite the FCC for that definition but in Minnesota the broadband goal for 2026 is 100 Mbps down and 20 up. I’d love to see the focus on the higher speeds.
• The specificity in the report may be a hindrance later. For example, on page 16, there’s a recommendation to hire and train students (high school, after school and college) as part-time tech repair technicians, which may have unintended consequences for existing technicians. Or page 20 suggests providing access to affordable large-screen device or smartphones, when speak-aloud software may be a better option. Leaving room for local solutions or custom fixes might better serve immediate needs as well as help include technology options of the future and that can be easily done by simply alluding to the high-level goals of: Connecting People to People, Connecting People to Information and Connecting People to Resources.
• One last comment, those goals seem to keep “people” in the consumer seat, it would be nice to evolve the plan to point of helping people become the producers of info and resources, which should include transactional tools such as selling, working, accessing healthcare and innovating.