Broadband & Digital Equity

Digital Equity and Libraries

Libraries are critical in helping the residents of Illinois participate in the digital economy. You provide access to the internet and connected devices, offer digital skills training, and keep patrons informed about new technology. RAILS is working to provide information, funding, advocacy, and partnerships that help libraries provide the services most needed in their communities.

If you have questions or would like to share the work your library is doing, please reach out to RAILS Director of Technology Services and Chair of the Illinois Broadband Advisory Council Anne Slaughter, anne.slaughter@railslibraries.org or 630.734.5127. We’d love to highlight your projects and stories!

Library Stories

News From RAILS & Beyond

Get Involved

Illinois Digital Equity Networking Group

If you have a passion for increasing digital equity and working towards mitigating the digital divide, please consider joining and participating in the RAILS Digital Equity Networking Group. Participants in this group will work together to identify barriers that stand in the way of digital equity and will share solutions and opportunities for bridging the digital divide in their local communities. This group is open to staff from any Illinois library.

ALA Digital Inclusion Working Group

The Digital Inclusion Working Group provides a channel for library workers who attend monthly working group meetings to exchange knowledge around digital inclusion and equity work occurring in the library community. Working Group meetings are facilitated by ALA’s Public Policy and Advocacy Office and include regular digital equity and inclusion policy updates. 

Digital Skills and Digital Navigators

Library workers are the original digital navigators! Library workers have been helping their communities develop digital skills for decades. In today’s digital equity ecosystem, digital navigators are individuals who address the whole digital inclusion process — home connectivity, devices, and digital skills — through repeated interactions if that’s what a community member needs. The digital navigator model has proved to be flexible and replicable across a variety of settings, including libraries. The National Digital Inclusion Alliance provides further information about digital navigators and digital navigation programs on their website.

Digital Equity Resources for Libraries

Professional Guidance and Reports

Allied Organizations

A small sampling of organizations working in Illinois and beyond to offer opportunities to track the latest developments, learn, network, and advocate.

Digital Equity Data

Definitions

Adapted from the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA).

Digital equity is a condition in which all individuals and communities have the information technology capacity needed for full participation in our society, democracy, and economy. Digital equity is necessary for civic and cultural participation, employment, lifelong learning, and access to essential services.

Digital Inclusion refers to the activities necessary to ensure that all individuals and communities, including the most disadvantaged, have access to and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). This includes five elements:

  • Affordable, robust broadband internet service;
  • Internet-enabled devices that meet the needs of the user;
  • Access to digital literacy training;
  • Quality technical support; and
  • Applications and online content designed to enable and encourage self-sufficiency, participation and collaboration.

Digital Inclusion must evolve as technology advances. Digital Inclusion requires intentional strategies and investments to reduce and eliminate historical, institutional and structural barriers to access and use technology.

Broadband in Illinois

Illinois has been allocated over $1 billion of federal funding for broadband expansion and digital inclusion programs as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. There are two separate programs:

  • The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program is aimed at getting unserved and underserved households and community anchor institutions like libraries connected to high-speed internet. The Illinois Office of Broadband is responsible for distributing the funding via the Connect Illinois program and has created the BEAD Five-Year Action Plan and State Digital Equity Plan to guide this work.
  • The Digital Equity Act is intended to support digital inclusion projects aimed at helping Illinois residents access affordable internet service as well as devices, digital skills training, and other support. On Friday, May 16, RAILS was notified that the U.S. Department of Commerce had terminated funding for the Digital Equity Capacity Grant to Illinois. More information is available in our RAILS Digital Equity Update article from May 20, 2025.

Illinois Office of Broadband

Find information about the programs funded by Connect Illinois, BEAD, and the Digital Equity Act; explore the Illinois Broadband map; find grant opportunities; track broadband expansion projects impacting your community; and learn about the Broadband Advisory Council. Sign up for their email newsletter to get regular updates.

Illinois Broadband Lab

A collaboration on broadband data, mapping, research, and publication driven by the Illinois Office of Broadband and the University of Illinois System.

County Plans

RAILS encourages our libraries to connect with your counties, digital equity coalitions, broadband networks, and other local organizations engaged in broadband expansion and digital inclusion to partner on grant projects and other opportunities. Don't see your county listed here? Reach out to them directly to find out if they have a digital equity program, and please let us know about it.