South Takes on Digital Divide

In an economy driven increasingly by computer literacy and connectivity, leading the nation in the percentage of households not connected to the Internet is a distinction many in the South are working to eliminate. One South, Digitally Divided, the second annual TelecomSouth conference of the Southern Technology Council (STC), and its accompanying report Creating the CyberSouth are efforts in that direction.

Creating the CyberSouth, prepared for STC by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, presents a discussion of the implications of the Digital Divide, statistics revealing the extent of the Divide in each of fourteen southern states, and examples of the programs and actions underway in several southern states to address the inequalities. Thirteen of the 14 Southern states were below the national average for the percentage of households with home computers in 1998.

Virginia Polytechnic found all of the Southern Growth members are responding in one way or another to the challenge of the Divide. For example, all 13 states and Puerto Rico have been actively working to close the gap between the access of public school students to computers and the Internet in affluent, suburban districts and those in lower-income and rural communities. In addition, a number of southern states are developing virtual schools to expand program offerings to districts without the resources to provide them locally. Initiatives to strengthen and expand the information infrastructure were common across all the Southern states as well. Website and contact information is provided for the all of the programs and initiatives highlighted in the report.

One South, Digitally Divided, held October 1-3 in Roanoke, Virginia included several sessions on topics with potential application or replications across the country, including: Who’s Responsible? Three Perspectives; The Activist State: States as Catalysts; Tackling the Training Issue; Creating and Sustaining State Telecommunications Plans; and, Funding Investments in Infrastructure.

The report and many conference presentations are available for download from the Southern Technology Council’s website: http://www.southern.org/main/digitaldivide/digidv1.html

Our thanks to STC Friday Fax editor Keecia James for alerting us of these resources.