National Digital Inclusion Alliance

Do you know someone who should be recognized for their work in digital equity? Or someone who has brought a fresh, innovative perspective to the field? We are now accepting applications for the 2026 Digital Equity Champion Awards! Named for Charles Benton, the founder of Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, NDIA created the awards to recognize leadership and dedication in advancing digital equity: from promoting the ideal of accessible and affordable communications technology for all Americans to crafting programs and policies that make it a reality.

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), represented by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the Trump Administration’s repeal of the Digital Equity Act Competitive Grant Program.

National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) and Public Knowledge (PK) submitted comments to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) about the questions for the 2025 Internet Use Survey:

In the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Congress specified five distinct ways that States and Territories could use the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment funds. States could competitively sub-grant funds to: 

In the Fall of 2024, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance conducted a survey of digital inclusion coalitions to gather information about how coalitions structure their work, how they are organized, and how they measure the impact they have on their communities and states. A total of 87 coalitions responded to the survey.

When we discussed project highs and lows with the program managers of the National Digital Navigator Corps cohort, they often mentioned their digital navigators as the best part of their programs and the times they transitioned to new digital navigators as the most challenging. These times of transition led to some great lessons learned about preparing for turnover in the digital navigator position, expanding and scaling work with additional digital navigators, and ensuring consistency across services provided by digital navigators with different levels of experience. 

A well-planned program is only effective if people are aware of it, highlighting the crucial role that marketing and outreach play in the success of your digital navigator program. Shannon O’Brien, a digital navigator with the National Digital Navigator Corps from Washington State University – Grays Harbor Extension, was “surprised at how much program development and marketing were needed when starting out.

Access to education, resources, and training will determine who will understand how societal use of artificial intelligence (AI) will impact them, and who will be able to safely and effectively leverage AI tools. Without AI literacy, an individual may be unable to identify or challenge unfair practices, be more susceptible to AI-aided scams, unprepared to vet answers produced by AI, unable to protect personal information, or spend time and effort working inefficiently because they do not know how to leverage AI tools.

The 1996 Telecommunications Act not only established the Universal Service Fund and its programs, it also required that the Federal Communications Commission regularly provide a report that determines “whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.” To develop the report, Congress required the FCC to release a Notice of Inquiry to gather information for the public record and inform the Commission’s final determination of whether ‘advanced