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Mar. 31—You may have noticed this column has a new name, What's New in Digital Equity. It's a change that's been coming for some time. For the past five years, this feature has covered civic tech news. In that same time, civic tech in the U.S. has increasingly focused on equity, with major actors in the space putting the work at the forefront while government agencies strive to connect everyone they serve. To that end, we've renamed our weekly feature to reflect the evolving nature of our coverage. This column will still focus on civic tech, but with a leading emphasis on digital inclusion and digital equity.
Read our March magazine feature about digital equity and cities here!
HOW THE DIGITAL DIVIDE IMPACTS ACCESS TO JUSTICE
The digital divide is having an increasing impact on whether residents get equitable access to justice, a new report found.
The report — dubbed Cut Off From the Courthouse: How the Digital Divide Impacts Access to Justice and Civic Engagement — was released this month by Next Century Cities (NCC), a nonprofit organization that supports local government efforts to get all residents connected. NCC partnered on this new report with the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Law.
In short, the report looks at the relationship between digital inequities and court proceedings that are evolving to include the use of new tech. This means developments such as remote hearings. This report was built on interviews with a total of 27 public defenders, family attorneys, community organizers, public servants and others. The press release from NCC that accompanied the report's release described these interviews as "sobering accounts of the challenges associated with being disconnected when trying to gain access to public forums that have transitioned online."
This is, of course, increasingly relevant after distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly forced many government services to go online for the first time. The situation is still fluid, but many jurisdictions across the country are now working out how much of the remote components established during quarantine will stay in government moving forward. For example, the family drug court in Pima County, Ariz., moved to Microsoft Teams for hearings during the pandemic. While there...