Technology advances every single day, a rate of change that’s upending many facets of our lives, from how we work and learn to how we shop and access essential services. For all the positive changes, advances in technology reinforce—and in many cases exacerbate—the inequalities that already exist between people, between organizations, and even between governments. As a result of this dichotomy, we’ve seen the language around what equity means in the digital world shift over the past several decades. Understanding this shift is important. It allows us to understand the changing nature of digital equity and to plan the solutions we’ll need in the future. The following timeline (Figure 1) includes key milestones in the evolution of digital equity from the perspective of both people and organizations.
Inequities related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, and income, among other aspects, are a key part of the conversation around digital equity.
Figure 1: Key milestones in Canada’s digital equity trajectory
In the 1990s, the digital divide emerged as a research and policy topic. It referred to the gap between people who had access to information technology and those who did not. One of the earliest references came when the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in the United States released a series of studies, “Falling Through the Net,” between 1995 and 2000 that sought to address unequal access to phones and computers based on race, income, and other demographic characteristics.3 In 1997, Statistics Canada conducted its first Household Internet Use Survey, finding that only 19% of all Canadian households had a cell phone for personal use and 10% of rural households had access to a computer at home.4
By the turn of the century, internet usage in Canada was quickly increasing, with 4.9 million households (42%) reporting their members regularly used the internet from their home, work, school, or other locations.5 By the mid-2000s, researchers were seeking to understand the uneven impacts of the digital economy beyond just internet access. This paved the way for early research on digital equality, which considers the additional need for skills, devices, and social networks to effectively use digital technology, and digital inclusion, which refers to policies and other efforts to improve digital equality.6
Meanwhile, the history of the digital economy reaches back to 1982, when the Boston Computer Exchange became the world’s first e-commerce marketplace. In 1995, Amazon launched as an e-commerce platform for books and, the following year, the Government of Canada launched its first website.7 In the years since then, Canadian organizations’ adoption of digital technology took off. By 1999, 98% of federal and provincial government institutions were using the internet.8 By 2006, 85% of Canadian private companies were using high-speed internet, and a year later online sales (B2B and B2C) reached $62.7 billion.9
In the early 2010s, business strategies for digital transformation emerged as a major thought leadership issue, exploring how businesses needed to prepare for the new economy. In 2013, 46% of Canadian businesses had a website and 13% were selling online.10 The digital economy accelerated worldwide, with global e-commerce reaching US$25.6 trillion in 2018 and more than 1.4 billion people shopping online that same year.11 Today, the concept of the corporate digital divide has taken on greater urgency, as businesses at different levels of technological maturity have had very uneven experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the past several years, the term digital equity has become more commonplace, especially as the pandemic fast-tracked the digitalization of our everyday activities—and highlighted the fact that not everyone is able to keep up. The City of Seattle was one of the first to formally define digital equity, describing it in 2015 as a state in which all residents and neighbourhoods have the information-technology capacity needed for civic and cultural participation, employment, lifelong learning, and access to essential services.12 Since then, the public discourse has continued to shift from equality to equity, recognizing that different groups face unique barriers and thus require unique solutions.
The scope of digital equity has remained mostly limited to the broadband access and the skills required to interact with digital technology at the level of the individual. We believe this scope needs to expand.
We need to improve digital equity for organizations, and we need to build a digital ecosystem—including policies, business practices, and norms—that enables all people and organizations to succeed in the digital world.
Municipal, provincial and territorial, and federal governments are all critical to guiding Canada toward greater digital equity. They have two distinct roles: as organizations that set policy and legislation, certainly, but also as employers and service providers—and often the largest employer in their jurisdiction. Subsequent reports in this series will focus on this dual role and how governments can lead us to become digitally equitable by 2030.
We define digital equity as “a state where all people and organizations can fully benefit from the digital technology necessary to succeed in the digital economy.” We believe digital equity is a product of three components—access, participation, and ecosystem—that are interlinked and interdependent.
The digital infrastructure, devices, and content needed to interact with the digital world.
The ability to engage with, learn from, and develop new digital technology.
The broader digital ecosystem that enables people and organizations to succeed in the digital world.
The three components that determine digital equity outcomes
Access to quality, affordable broadband and mobile data, internet-enabled devices, and digital applications and content that are accessible and meet the user’s needs.
Access to quality, affordable broadband, internet-enabled devices, and digital systems and tools that enable effective business operations.
A range of skills, from foundational (such as the ability to safely use devices, search for information, and communicate online) to advanced (such as the ability to identify skill gaps and create digital technologies).
A range of skills, from foundational (such as the ability to build a website and protect against cyberthreats) to advanced (such as the ability to upskill talent and develop new digital services).
An ecosystem that protects individuals and removes barriers to their participation, fosters a secure online environment free from bias or unfair practices, and provides accessible and human-centred digital services.
An ecosystem that incentivizes and removes barriers to digitalization, levels the playing field for small and medium-sized businesses, and enables effective, secure data-sharing between organizations.
Just as the definition of digital equity has shifted over the years, we expect it to continue evolving along with the digital world around us. As technology becomes increasingly intertwined with our day-to-day lives, we’ll find new ways of interacting with and benefiting from it. Our definition accounts for the types of infrastructure, skills, and policies that are currently required for success in the digital world—but by 2030, we expect these will have changed considerably.
