Stay on Target: How Feedback is Helping Us Improve Project LEIA
In September, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Census Bureau announced an ambitious new initiative to improve our understanding of Internet use at a local level. Local Estimates of Internet Adoption (Project LEIA) is aimed at producing more granular Internet adoption estimates using a combination of existing data and statistical modeling techniques known as “small area estimation.” Improved and more timely estimates of Internet adoption will lead to better tracking of our progress toward closing the digital divide and fuel important research and policy development efforts in the future. The debut product of this collaboration is the first-ever set of experimental, single-year estimates of household wired Internet adoption for every county in the United States. We’re pleased to report that NTIA received a dozen responses to our Request for Comments. Submissions came from public interest groups working to close the digital divide, think tanks and researchers seeking quality data to inform policymakers, and industry associations advocating for metrics that can fully quantify the Internet access services offered by their members. These suggestions are helping to shape the direction we take, while also pointing to some gaps in available data.
Stay on Target: How Feedback is Helping Us Improve Project LEIA