Networks for People 2000
Entrepreneurship — Non-Profits @ Internet Speed
A
forum to discuss the connections of people, information technology,
and services transforming American life.
Policy and Philanthropy:
Keys to Closing the Digital Divide
Remarks by Mario Morino, Chairman, Morino
Institute
October 30, 2000
Thank you.
I'm very pleased to be here and to be part of today's
conference, Networks for People 2000. Today takes on
a special importance for me as we've had the opportunity
to be a part of and to observe the positive impact NTIA
has had from TIIAP to TOP, having been at the first of
these meetings. The Morino Institute also was fortunate
to have been part of a collaboration that was awarded
one of the larger TIIAP grants in the first year of the
program. Working with social entrepreneurs like Henry
Fernandez of LEAP in New Haven, CT, Bart Decrem of Plugged
In in East Palo Alto, CA, and scores of others, we
learned firsthand the great challenges of infusing technology
into low-income communities. One of the most important
things we learned was that technology itself was the
least of the challenges. This is why I was so enthused
by the title of TOP's annual conference: Networks for
People. It is a very simple, yet profound, focus one
that is long overdue. And this title sets the perfect
segue for the thoughts I would like to share with you
today.
The movement to close the Digital Divide may well close
the gap in access to technology the Internet and information
technology, including emerging wireless technologies
within this decade. As the 21st century opens, the movement
is gaining strength with a growing base of financial
support, promising programs and concerned participants,
from corporations to community activists.
Now, just a few years after this movement first asked
whether everyone would have access to technology, another
question needs be posed: To what end?
For the most part, today's movement remains focused
on closing the gap in access to technology as an end
in itself. But isn't the real promise more profound and
far more important? Isn't the real challenge about what
people and institutions do with the technology once they
have access to it? Isn't the ultimate possibility to
apply the technology's potential to address the underlying
challenges that are the true source of fundamental social
divides in America?
To be sure, technology access is an important issue.
Wiring schools, giving students laptops, setting up community
technology centers and processing used computers all
are important actions. But now the Digital Divide movement
is presented with a new challenge: to reach beyond these
issues of access and cut to the heart of social divides
themselves.
We have the opportunity to turn one of the farthest
reaching and fastest growing civic movements of our time
into a true social force one that helps to close core
educational, economic and social divides. And, by fully
tapping the potential technology offers us, this movement
can make great strides to ensure that everyone can enjoy
the opportunity for economic mobility, personal advancement
and a higher quality of life. That is the ultimate challenge
for the New Economy and the ultimate opportunity for
those eager to give back to a society in which they have
prospered.
This is what I want to explore with you today: How
to turn a movement focused on closing the gap in access
to technology into a force for social change, one that
will provide people living in our lowest-income areas
the chance to improve their lives.
The odds against the poor today are staggering. One
of six children in the world's 29 wealthiest nations
lives in poverty, including 13 million in the United
States.
Poverty, of course, is as old as humanity. But so is
the aspiration to climb out of it. Many people in low-income
communities are working heart and soul to overcome these
social divides. But today, a new set of problems makes
that tall hurdle even more difficult to clear.
The prosperity of a technology-driven New Economy has
made it easier for those who are benefitting to ignore
these problems. The irony is that the same New Economy
that makes this prosperity possible also is exacerbating
these formidable social divides. Like the agricultural
and industrial eras before it, the transition to this
new age is benefitting society overall. But especially
in our lower-income areas, it risks leaving more people
further behind, if not cementing a permanent underclass
in America. As a result, these people's potential to
live productive lives within the New Economy is being
squandered, while this same economy is unable to find
the skilled workers it needs.
The great majority of people in America who are privileged
to live well or at least consistently are able to make
ends meet need to better understand that many people
in our lowest-income areas live in a vastly different
world.
In more prosperous communities, strong families, job
and career opportunities, good schools and cohesive neighborhoods
create a web of support that provides the resources,
motivation and education that enable people to make the
most of their lives. But in many low-income areas in
America, this web of support is frail and, for some,
nonexistent. Severe underemployment, cutbacks in social
services, the breakdown of the family, drugs, violence
and inadequate schools have all contributed to the decline
and to a growing isolation, not only in cities, but rural
America as well.
And there is an important difference today as these
factors create a cycle of poverty. Now, we see second
and third generations of children having children and
repeating the cycle. In the aftermath of the agricultural
and industrial revolutions, many immigrant families managed
to get their children out of poverty by letting them
stand on their shoulders and leave the ghetto. This does
not seem to be happening as frequently as in the past.
The family, social networks and supports that were
so critical in helping people climb out of poverty in
years past have broken down. Today, those in low-income
areas cannot depend on this human web of support to help
raise themselves out of poverty. Yet in these low-income
areas there are institutional supports: community-based,
religious and health and human-services organizations;
schools, community colleges and universities; worker-training
programs and many other nonprofit groups that provide
resources and support. This community infrastructure
can never fully replace the human support web more prosperous
communities often enjoy, but it does serve as a vital
lifeline to help many in low-income areas better their
lives. An essential part of overcoming social divides
is investing in strengthening this community infrastructure.
The Role of Technology
To this end, technology is a potentially powerful lever
for change in three important ways. First, the application
of technology can enable the individuals, organizations
and institutions that serve low-income areas the schools,
community centers, health clinics and others to transform
and improve the way they work. Second, the technology
enables these organizations and institutions to work
together much more effectively, to share resources, benefit
from each other's strengths, gain a collective voice
to better advocate their needs, and in so doing to help
build on their sense of community. Third, a stronger,
more robust community infrastructure can, in turn, encourage
and enable the people it serves to learn and apply technology
in ways that improve their own lives educationally, economically
and socially.
The lessons corporate America learned in its use of
technology over the past three to four decades should
guide our actions today. Starting in the 1960s and through
the 1970s, technology spread throughout corporate America.
Computing systems were ushered in, corporate technology
groups were established and billions of dollars were
invested in technology. Yet the productivity that has
given rise to the New Economy probably did not truly
start to take hold until well into the 1980s.
It took a long time for people and businesses to learn
the full potential of this technology. Old practices
and ingrained attitudes made it hard to usher in the
profound change technology enables. Such resistance still
exists today, because change is hard. It's easy to install
technology to place a computer in a learning center but
it's difficult to change what people do in order to apply
and benefit from that technology.
As technology became more pervasive with the PC in
the 1980s and the Internet and browser in the 1990s,
and after business had invested billions in training
and development, a funny thing occurred. The people within
organizations began to understand what they had. Their
imagination and resourcefulness, their entrepreneurship,
kicked in. Enabled by technology, they triggered a fundamental
revolution. Technology's real benefits emerged when people
and organizations began to understand and apply its potential
for returns like increased productivity, greater market
share, improved scalability, lower cost and the ability
to do things they couldn't do before.
But that change took time. It went well beyond giving
them access. The "magic" occurred when people understood
the potential and had gained the skills to use the technology.
And that's when the "magic" will occur within the web
of social support.
Through our work at the Morino Institute, we've learned
that doing things with technology in the social sector
takes time and efforts in this sector don't move at Internet
speed. We learned that until leaders and staff can see
the potential of technology, and programs are invested
in to provide them with skills and understanding, the "magic" doesn't
happen.
Since the mid-1990s, we've worked with LEAP to implement
learning centers in New Haven, supported efforts to empower
displaced agricultural workers using community networks
in Nebraska and led a comprehensive two-year effort to
establish networked learning centers in community-based
organizations here in the District of Columbia. And those
efforts have shown us that it takes time at least a year
and often much longer and major investments in organization
and staff development to effectively implement technology-enabled
efforts.
This is the lesson we must carry to the movement to
close the Digital Divide. The divide never has been about
technology, but rather about people's understanding of
what technology can do and the knowledge essential to
apply it.
And therein lies our opportunity today to move from
access to application to outcomes.
The real opportunity is applying technology to produce
more than incremental change. The application of technology
can enable quantum change with enough of an impact to
break the status quo. Now that we're close to ensuring
everyone has access to technology, let's ask and answer
another question. To what end?
The Opportunity for Change
Our goal should be nothing less than cutting to the
heart of social divides. And if the path to closing those
divides runs through the community infrastructure that
is the lifeline for people living in low-income areas,
we must go through that lifeline too. We can make the
community infrastructure stronger, more highly effective
and more sustainable by exploiting the potential of technology
to achieve better outcomes for the people it serves.
The movement to close the Digital Divide provides the
opportunity for change. The movement has growing financial
support, promising programs and concerned participants.
It is gaining momentum. If we lift our vision
beyond access to technology alone, we can rally and focus
these resources on the community infrastructure that
helps individuals in low-income communities improve their
own lives. We can apply technology to strengthen, to
scale and even to redefine this infrastructure.
Consider the example of education. The Digital Divide
movement has helped schools gain access to technology.
To what end? Should we not direct our energies to apply
technology to improve the effectiveness of recruitment
and professional development for principals and teachers?
Should we not explore ways to use technology that make
it easier for parents and other caring adults to become
more involved with our schools? Should we not drive change
that integrates technology into the curriculum and learning
experience to enhance learning and improve academic achievement?
Similarly, what can the movement do to advance the
use of technology to improve health care, to arm neighborhood
watch groups to fight crime more effectively, to make
it easier to find and purchase low-income housing and
to coordinate transportation? In what ways can we apply
technology to better help people starting and running
small businesses succeed and for others to simply make
a living?
We should focus our efforts on the social outcomes
a technology-enabled community infrastructure can make
possible and move beyond just ensuring that the technology's
there. We must seek purposeful use of the technology.
Making sure technology is in place is only the first
step on a long and challenging journey. Again, such change
is hard.
Technology, by itself, is a thing. Silicon, wafers
and wires are amoral, neither inherently good nor inherently
bad. Technology only takes on importance when people
apply it to a purpose.
There is no guarantee that access to technology will
produce better social outcomes like improved academic
achievement or greater access to health care. Today too
many people, afraid of being left behind in this increasingly
technology-enabled world, blindly support and accept
that access to technology is key to their economic future.
But that is a leap of faith.
But people and organizations can be empowered to achieve
improved outcomes with technology. We must always remember
that the power of technology is not the computers, the
complex of networks or the vast databases of information.
Rather, it is people and their imagination, knowledge
and resourcefulness that bring about change. Technology
enables people to apply their imagination and knowledge
and to do so more effectively, on larger scale and, most
importantly, in ways not otherwise possible.
Rethinking the Potential of Technology
So how does the movement to close the Digital Divide
turn into a force for social change? What can it do to
help those organizations, institutions and change agents
serving low-income areas tap the remarkable potential
of technology for social change?
How do we answer that question: To what end?
To answer the question, "To what end?," we will have
to change some attitudes.
Just imagine that for every Microsoft or Cisco engineer
we certify to install technology, we also raise the bar
to certify "life engineers" who will be able to apply
this technology in innovative ways to address critical
human needs from literacy to health care.
To apply technology to empower the community infrastructure
that serves low-income areas and address social divides,
the Digital Divide movement should cultivate an environment
that is conducive to experimentation, that will stimulate
innovation and that will yield high-impact breakthroughs
that will, in turn, trigger quantum change. Incremental
change that maintains the status quo of our lower-income
communities simply cannot be an option.
Such environments and breakthroughs do not come from
preordained, centralized plans. This is about providing
encouragement. This is about lending a sense of hope
that things can change and that resources exist to support
those with proven approaches and good ideas. This is
about stimulating social entrepreneurship both those
seeking to change existing organizations as well as those
hoping to advance new solutions. This is less a matter
of public policy planning than of seeding experimentation
and encouraging innovation within the community infrastructure.
Not every seed will bloom. But some will and those will
serve as catalysts for change across this entire sector.
This is the real potential of the Digital Divide movement
and the direction, in my view, toward which its leadership,
energies and resources should be channeled.
In a moment, I'll discuss what the movement can do
to create catalysts that will seed broad-based change.
First, though, I'll suggest some strategies for the movement
to consider that can create the fertile environments
in which these seeds for change can flourish.
We must enable those within the community infrastructure
to raise their vision (and that of the people they serve)
of what technology can make possible.
- We must drive demand for and create interest in technology
for people in low-income areas by demonstrating what
it can mean to their lives and needs through awareness
building, community organizing, winning over change
agents and demonstrating relevant results that will
stand the test of time.
- We must invest in people and in building human
capacity in the development of leadership, in
the capacity of organizations and in the skills
of individuals, first within the community infrastructure
and then among those it serves.
- We must encourage more funding
for programs involving technology.
- We must
convince
those who
fund programs
involving
technology
to allocate
funding that
helps organizations
apply technology
effectively.
Organizations
should allocate
70 percent
of the funding
they receive
for technology
to staff,
process and
organizational
development
and the remaining
30 percent
for acquiring
the technology
itself, the
hardware,
software
and services.
And there is one overarching strategy that we also must
consider: a greater use of strategic investment models
by philanthropic and government funders to realize high-impact
change to benefit those living in low-income areas.
The Digital Divide movement may be large. But its resources
are not infinite. Spreading them across the country in
hundreds and thousands of small efforts, with little
support, is likely to spread them so thin they will be
ineffective.
We must use strategic investments to target resources
for maximum effect. We must move beyond funding through
grant applications to a more strategic investment management
model. Funders must go into the low-income areas, talk
with leaders firsthand and, based on their input, find
those investment opportunities that offer the greatest
potential for a high social rate of return.
We must make significant, long-term investments that
are supported by strategic management and technical assistance.
These investments should be made over long periods four
to six years and be tied to performance criteria. They
should focus on levers for change, the underlying points
at which if pressure is applied maximum change will occur.
And organizations that already have clear missions,
strong leaders and proven track records within their
communities should have priority for investments. Technology
cannot overcome management problems or replace clear
missions. It does children little good to place computers
in a school with an ineffective principal. To the contrary,
infusing technology into an organization with an unclear
mission or ineffective management simply risks if not
ensures diluting its effectiveness.
Finally, the movement must change thinking and do all
it can to remove barriers that stand in the way of the
community infrastructure's ability to apply technology
effectively. These barriers include the incremental way
in which community leaders are forced to think about
the future of their organizations; the acute shortage
of staff skilled in technology; the lack of funding from
traditional sources for building strong organizations
and for technology acquisition; and the debilitating
complexity and life-cycle costs of technology.
Turning a Movement into a Social Force
These strategies can create an environment in which
experimentation can flourish. Now let me suggest five
actions to help transform the Digital Divide movement
into a social force by serving as catalysts for broader,
institutionalized, high-impact change within that environment.
Make the Case for "Applied Technology"
We must make explain and demonstrate how technology
can be applied with relevance to the needs of people
and the organizations that serve them.
To those whose fervor for technology is evangelical,
that may sound unnecessary. But we must not forget
that many people's enthusiasm, especially in low-income
communities, does not match that of those who work
in technology fields. Many just see little reason
to embrace technology. Others, citing concerns
like privacy, distrust it.
A recent report by the Pew Internet and American
Life Project found that 57 percent of people without
Internet access do not plan to log on. Cost is
a factor for some, but less than most suggest.
Too much focus is placed on price points, when
relevance to people's lives is what is critical.
The Digital Divide movement must make an investment
in demonstrating that technology is relevant to
the lives of people in low-income areas.
Create an Academy for Leadership in Technology
To raise the vision among the people within
the web of social support and in low-income communities
about what technology can make possible, we propose
establishing an Academy for Leadership in Technology.
The Digital Divide movement has begun to address
technical training. But it is just as important
maybe even more so to help organizations and
individuals see how technology can drive fundamental,
if not transformative, change.
Top executives in corporate America have undergone
this "conceptual orientation," thanks to the
efforts of technology vendors and management
consultants who must establish a vision of what
technology makes possible in order to convey
the merits of their solutions. There is no obvious
counterpart in the nonprofit sector. The Academy
for Leadership in Technology would serve this
role for community leaders and agents of social
change.
The academy would help to educate these leaders
about the potential, applications and risks of
technology. It must be large enough to reach
tens of thousands of these catalysts. It would
show them tangible, real-life examples of how
technology can drive fundamental change. Most
of all, it would empower them with a higher vision
for what technology makes possible for them and
the communities they serve.
Create a Digital Peace Corps
We propose seeding experimentation and investing
in leadership and skills by creating a Digital
Peace Corps to serve lower-income urban and
rural areas in the United States. The corps
would be composed of committed individuals
who would work to empower people and organizations
in low-income communities to use technology
to improve social outcomes.
These individuals would possess strong expertise
in a specific discipline, such as K-12 education,
health or micro-entrepreneurship. They would
have both an intellectual and a practical grasp
of how technology can empower someone working
in that discipline. This elite corps would
serve as involved advisors, analysts and innovators,
not as technology specialists.
Just as the Peace Corps' mission is to empower
people around the world to improve their lives,
the Digital Peace Corps would help to empower
those who serve low-income communities to be
more effective change agents. Also like the
Peace Corps, its members would be experts in
their fields. For example, a corps member in
education would be foremost a master teacher.
But he or she also would be armed with a conceptual
understanding of and practical experience in
implementing technology-enabled education and
learning programs.
Such a resource for a school could help create
technology-enabled teaching programs and enriched
learning environments for students; it also
could help other teachers become more productive
through their personal use of technology. Imagine
similar scenarios for health clinics, small
business centers, out-of-school programs, community
development centers and others.
Corporations which already are in dire need
of talent that can apply technology to deliver
solutions could sponsor Digital Peace Corps
members for two years in exchange for the member
agreeing to work with the firm afterward. Such
an employee benefit could help firms recruit
and retain talented personnel.
Advance Alternative Technology-Delivery
Solutions
We believe the Digital Divide movement
should fund the exploration of alternative
ways of delivering technology to the community
infrastructure. These organizations and institutions
must deal with macroeconomic challenges like
the complexity of technology and the cost
of managing it over time. Yet funders rarely
help organizations cope with these issues
beyond an initial donation of hardware or
software. Meanwhile, these organizations'
ability to attract personnel with the skills
to handle those problems is severely constrained
by the dire shortage of technical workers
in the private sector.
Creative solutions to these problems should
seek to enable organizations to deploy and
manage technology more cheaply and reliably
than they could by themselves. They should
also be inherently scaled to handle growth.
These alternatives might include options
like:
- Standard technology outsourcing, in which
information technology systems and support
are managed entirely by an outside contractor.
- Business process outsourcing
(BPO), in which an outside
contractor provides business
processes, like fund development
or payroll, including all
the underlying technology
to support and continuously
improve them.
- Use
of Application Service Providers
(ASPs) and Managed Service
Providers (MSPs). These concepts
are still evolving, but offer
great promise in areas like
subscription computing, enterprise
applications and Internet Portals.
Organizations within the community infrastructure
can follow the lesson of the commercial world,
which has learned to focus on core competencies
and outsource nonstrategic activities. Wouldn't
it be nice if a community organization could
focus on its mission to help others and know
it would have the technology it needs, when
it needs it?
Nurture a Social Entrepreneurs
Learning Community
We must provide a venue in which social
entrepreneurs and change agents who are
applying technology to improve social outcomes
can come together, learn from one another,
exchange experiences, codify and continually
improve their knowledge and create a web
of mutual support. Such a community learning
model is difficult for many to grasp and
even more difficult for institutions to
embrace, let alone fund. But creating a
forum for turning individual actions into
collective intelligence can be a powerful
source of support, growth, learning and
change.
For example, the Morino Institute helped
to create an evolving, organic environment
of learning and support for New Economy
entrepreneurs through its Netpreneur initiative.
Netpreneur is an example of how a self-organizing,
adaptive system can marshal the collective
power of an entrepreneurial community.
The model for stimulating New Economy entrepreneurs
is analogous to what is possible for social
entrepreneurs.
These five actions can serve as catalysts for change
within the community infrastructure for low-income Americans.
There are, no doubt, countless others. In this case, as
in most in the New Economy, the most powerful possibilities
lie just over the horizon of today's imagination.
Our proposals are intended to be empowering, not limiting.
We urge those in the Digital Divide movement not just
to do these things, but to undertake and broadly encourage
these kinds of actions. We believe that doing so will
seed the garden of ideas, enabling breakthrough changes
to blossom. And that change, in turn, will become institutional:
Rather than simply disseminating technology, technology
will be thoughtfully applied to change the way the community
infrastructure in low-income areas works. The change
will be organic. It will occur from within, driven by
innovation and the creation of demand.
The result will be powerful: The horizon of the Digital
Divide movement will be raised from simply extending
access to technology to serving as a catalytic force
for social change. Individuals will be empowered to better
their own lives.
In the mid-1990s, the Digital Divide movement asked
a powerful question: Will everyone have access to technology?
Now that question is being answered in the affirmative,
our next challenge is to pose another one: To what end?
The movement to close the Digital Divide has unleashed
a growing stream of resources and built a momentum aimed
at that challenge. The result is a moment of extraordinary
opportunity. If we lift the horizon of this movement
from technology access to its application to improve
outcomes purposeful results for people and if we focus
our efforts to empower the organizations and institutions
that make up the community infrastructure serving our
low-income areas, we can close gaps not simply in access
to technology, but in access to opportunity itself.
This is the answer to the question: To what end? To this end.
Thank you.
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