Meeting the Challenge: The Hopkins Digital Access Initiative, Then and Now

Hopkins (MN) is a small town of around 19,000 residents, less than 20 miles west of Minneapolis. Compared to the surrounding suburbs, Hopkins is a different kind of community centered on a vibrant and walkable downtown. New residents face familiar challenges. How do they get connected? How do they sign up for utilities? How do they get to know what is available? How do they do all of the things that you would need to do just to live and work and play in today's society? Where are the parks? Where can they find daycare? There are a lot of things that are hidden within any community, and Hopkins is small enough that a lot of people know where most of those services are located. But today, even in a little gem of a community like Hopkins, a lot of that information is online. And the way the city reaches its residents is digitally—email, social media. That is not the way a lot of Hopkins residents communicate with each other or with the city. That gap inspired the Hopkins Digital Access Initiative—well before a local emergency kicked it into high gear.