At a recent meeting of the Technology Learning Collaborative for Healthy Aging, cohosted by the Massachusetts Healthy Aging Collaborative and the Executive Office of Aging & Independence, Mass Broadband Institute shared upcoming funding opportunities along with an RFI to support a statewide Digital Equity Resource List.
Digital Equity Resource List
The Request for Information (RFI) seeks responses from digital equity service providers and vendors that are currently providing digital equity services in Massachusetts or are based in the U.S. and capable of providing services in Massachusetts at the time of RFI response, due Friday, March 14. This can include aging services providers, councils on aging, and other partners in the network supporting age- and dementia friendly communities.
The goal of the RFI is for MBI to identify service providers and vendors of the following services:
- Digital literacy
- Device refurbishment and/or distribution
- Education, outreach and adoption
- Public spaces internet modernization
- Wi-Fi access
Once the RFI has closed, MBI will publish the results as a method to encourage more visibility into the resource list of digital equity service providers and vendors, in Massachusetts and nationally.
Interested respondents can view the full RFI here and are encouraged to reach out to proposals@masstech.org with any questions before the end of the question period (Friday, February 14 at 5:00 p.m. EST).
Municipal Digital Equity Planning Program
The goal of the Municipal Digital Equity Planning Program is to enable municipalities, or other local bodies of government, to engage in planning activities related to digital equity and bridging the digital divide. These planning activities will result in strategic documents designed to identify the community’s needs, interest, and key assets and provide a framework that will guide future municipal decision-making and potential investments and activities that will increase access and usage of the internet for the populations most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the digital divide.
A new funding round is being made available with a deadline of April 25th. To date, 105 municipalities have received more than $5.4 million to participate in the planning piece of the program and 19 implementation awards worth a total of $1.9 million have also been given.
The Residential Retrofit Program deploys state-of-the-art broadband infrastructure to approximately 22,000 public and affordable housing properties across Massachusetts. MBI intends to increase low-income residents’ opportunities to access high-quality, reliable and affordable broadband service in their homes by addressing deficient wiring and infrastructure through grants for the deployment of fiberoptic cabling to the unit to qualified Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who will install, own and maintain equipment.
Housing operators interested in applying to participate in the Retrofit Program can submit an expression of interest through MBI’s online form. MBI will collect some basic organizational information along with the addresses which the operator wishes to have considered eligible for the program.
The new solicitation for this program was announced on February 4th with responses due March 11th.
More information is available here.