A grandma receives an iPad as a gift, but she needs some help with the new gear and software. So she goes to her local library, where the staff not only assists her but is so helpful that it’s as though she was being helped by “digital navigators” at an Apple Genuis Bar.
The library was actually in Queens, the New York City borough, and the person telling the story is Paolo Balboa, the city’s chief digital equity officer. He’s had the job since June and the anecdote helps illustrate his vision of what he hopes to achieve during his tenure.
“It’s all about building trust,” he said, as ever more sophisticated forms of mobile and digital technology spread through the mainstream and become foundational to city services and operations. Without such trust — without help and encouragement from public agencies and professionals — a significant part of the city’s population could feel they are being left behind.
Digital equity stands as an increasingly important consideration within government technology and a hot area of political and policy debates, especially as deployment of the latest tools accelerates.
Though it serves as the financial and cultural capital of the world, and is the largest city in the U.S., New York City has its own problems with digital equity, and that’s where Balboa comes in. He views his job as taking a holistic approach to opening up technology to more people, not as simply focusing on ultra-specific areas.
“The work of digital equity exists in an ecosystem, not a silo,” he told Government Technology.
Granted, access isn’t the big issue in New York City as it can be elsewhere, especially in rural areas.
The city has more than 8.4 million people, and households there “by and large have home Internet access if they decide they want it,” Balboa said, adding that the larger issue is access versus adoption, which can rely on factors such as affordability, or understanding the wider value of having home Internet.
Encouraging more use of the Internet by city residents is one of the reasons Balboa is an enthusiastic backer of Big Apple Connect, which launched in 2022 and recently won a three-year extension with funding.
The program provides what city officials have called “free, fast, reliable and safe Internet” to 330,000 people who live in some 220 developments operated by the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA.
Balboa also points to another, similar program called Liberty Link as evidence of digital equity progress in New York City, and another example of what he hopes to build.
The $3.25 million project, launched in July, aims to bring “high-quality Internet to thousands of low-income New Yorkers in 100-percent affordable housing buildings at little to no cost to tenants,” according to a city press release.
In fact, Balboa said he oversees a “digital equity road map” with 11 distinct initiatives. Work includes offering access to mobile computer labs.
“There is an economic development angle to all this,” he said. “There is a big economic opportunity [in getting] people online.”
That certainly reflects recent tech goals from outgoing New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
In October, for instance, he established the New York City Office of Digital Assets and Blockchain Technology. Adams wants to use digital technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrency to enhance government operations. The city also hopes to become a bigger player in artificial intelligence.
Incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who takes office Jan. 1, has supported more government-backed broadband for lower-income people and indicated he wants the city to provide more tech training for residents. Mamdani ran as a democratic socialist, and that stance suggests he will continue digital equity efforts.
For his part, Balboa, who previously worked as an associate director for the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, and a technology instructor for the New York Public Library, says that brand-new programs aren’t always needed to improve equity — even when it comes to famously innovative New York City.
“We don’t want to reinvent the wheel,” he said, adding that the city can certainly take lessons from other places and even other fields as his office seeks to boost digital equity.
