METRO’s Colin Rhinesmith joined a prestigious panel on “Measuring the Impact of Closing the Digital Divide” at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on January 17. The session, part of the third annual An Economy That Works for All event, which focuses on efforts that measure equitable growth, with attention given to the impacts of small businesses’ access to capital, closing the digital divide, and mitigation strategies for natural disasters.
During the discussion between Rhinesmith, Valarry Bullard, Director of the New Jersey State Broadband Office, and Ambika Nair, Community Development Research Analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, panelists gave updates about where the states are in their Digital Equity Act planning processes and highlighted approaches to measuring outcomes of these efforts. Dr. Rhinesmith emphasized the importance of using community-level indicators (like New York City’s Equity Indicators) in addition to individual-focused measures and highlighted the need to continue using intersectional analysis to understand the impacts of digital equity work.
