Short clip: Digital divide is

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Speaker: And how big of an issue is this notion of digital divide in what you're doing, not just with municipal Wi-Fi, but across all the services that you provide?

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Speaker: The digital divide in San Francisco is alive and well, unfortunately. We guesstimate about 200,000 people who don't have access to the Internet or access to the computers. And so that's why in 2004 Mayor Newsom, in his first State of the City address, talked about the need to bridge the digital divide, and he made his now famous statement, "We will not stop until all San Franciscans have free access to the Internet and a computer." Trying to accomplish that goal is quite another matter. I happened to be sitting in the audience the day that he made that statement, and I wasn't in my current job. And I remember thinking, "Oh, the poor person who's gonna have to make that vision a reality." And then the next month, it turned out to be me. So I've spent the last two years really studying digital divide, digital inclusion issues, talking to many cities, and reaching out to four or five hundred groups within the city and county of San Francisco to really understand this issue and come up with a meaningful solution. And we've come up with a solution called "Tech Connect." And Tech Connect really has four pieces. It is about getting access to the Internet free or affordably. It's about focusing on giving the tools to the people, whether it be a laptop, a desktop, a Gameboy, a PDA, whatever it is, in order to access the computer. But then, once you have access to the Internet, focusing content for those who may not be used to surfing the web, or searching for a specific item. How do we really help those who have never done that before search for a babysitter? You know, how do you search for a babysitter in a big city like San Francisco?

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Speaker: Now, is that the role of the city, to provide, kind of, tools to help people search better, or is that more of a private sector activity?

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Speaker: That's an excellent question. And what we do and what Mayor Newsom's philosophy is let's not do another government program. Let's reach out into the community, find the people in need, find the people who are -- or organizations -- who are meeting that need, and government act as facilitator to bring those two together and somehow use its role to enhance the services that are already being provided to meet the needs of the citizens.

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