Clyburn Says Funding Digital Literacy is Bipartisan
Politics shouldn’t hold up creation of a Digital Literacy Corps similar to AmeriCorps to teach digital literacy skills, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said in a Broadband US TV webcast Thursday. The proposed program would require funding from Congress, but Clyburn expects bipartisan support, she said. Meanwhile, the FCC is eager to implement provisions of an accessibility bill to be signed into law Friday afternoon, said Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Deputy Chief Karen Strauss.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
The Corps would teach people how to take advantage of broadband, which will be critical to increasing adoption in the U.S., Clyburn said. Any change in the composition of Congress this November shouldn’t “interrupt this path that we're on,” she said. Broadband is the “great equalizer” for Americans, but one-third of the county is not connected, she said. That’s a problem as the provision of more goods and services goes online, she said.
While Clyburn didn’t specifically say “reclassification,” she said accomplishing many key goals of the National Broadband Plan -- including an overhaul of the Universal Service Fund and the creation of a national public safety broadband network -- would be “made more difficult” if the FCC doesn’t have the tools it needs. But the debate must first move beyond emotions, she said.
The adoption problem is worse for people with disabilities, and 42 percent don’t have broadband, Strauss said later on a panel. President Barack Obama plans to sign Friday a communications accessibility bill (S-3304) that will give the FCC authority to make accessibility rules to help close the gap, she said. Among other things, the bill recognizes that accessibility must be built in at the design stage. It’s much tougher for companies to retrofit products and services, she said. The FCC is working toward a public notice asking what should go into a notice of proposed rulemaking, Strauss said. The new law will give the FCC a long “laundry list” of issues to work through, she said.
The Digital Literacy Corps should help, because people frequently adopt broadband after someone in their community shows them how to use it, said Nicol Turner-Lee, vice president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. A successful digital literacy program requires anchor institutions with high-capacity, “future-proof” connections, said John Windhausen, coordinator of the Schools, Health, and Libraries Broadband Coalition. NTIA’s broadband stimulus program was helpful, but it met only about 15 percent of anchor institutions’ needs across the country, he said.
Panelists said broadband will play a key role in achieving many national objectives. “You cannot break the trajectory of poverty today without access to information,” Turner-Lee said. NTIA hopes that broadband projects funded by the Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program will act as pilots, revealing best practices that will spur on new projects, said Emy Tseng, a broadband adoption program officer at the agency.