MASSCAP, comprising the state’s 25 Community Action Agencies (CAAs), is probably the most complete infrastructure already in place, addressing poverty and related issues. CAAs were first established in the mid-1960s as part of the federal government’s “War on Poverty”. In the last 35 years they have developed a wide variety of programs designed to help poor people become self-sufficient.

MASSCAP became interested in the “Digital Divide” issue in 1998 and commissioned a study, published in 1999, entitled “Crossing the Digital Divide.” It addressed both MASSCAP’S own technological upgrade, and possibilities for client services, as a single strategic issue facing the institution. One result of that study was a second one, issued in a two part Report, Confronting Growing Inequality in the Emerging Information Economy (April, 2000). As income inequality in America widens, workers in low-paying jobs not only fail to keep up, but fall further behind, whereas Massachusetts is one of the leaders in the new technology and economy, its poor become that much more disadvantaged. With these Reports, MASSCAP has carved out a leadership position among its colleague organizations in other states.

The purpose of this Project would be to implement recommendations of these Reports for Massachusetts. Those recommendations would basically equip and position our state’s network of CAAs to be a single comprehensive system whereby accessibility to Information Technology is delivered to the poor throughout the Commonwealth. MASSCAP, as a network, is better positioned than any other institution to propose and implement this strategic breakthrough, and thereby to create a model for other state systems of CAAs nationwide.

The recommendations are too various and complex to enumerate here, but in the first year the Project would equip and train eight CAAs as access/resource centers for several thousand low-income people in their areas; it would equip and train the staff of 15 CAAs for that service function. A statewide MASSCAP IT “circuit rider” would provide training and technical assistance to the test sites. The MASSCAP website would be enhanced to become a repository of information on poverty, a central communications hub, and an instrument for streamlining all state-related poverty programs’ information requirements, both data collection and reporting. In subsequent years this strategic upgrade would be extended to all CAAs in the Commonwealth.

This is one of the most important issues for the future of our economy. Both corporate and personal commitments are needed if we are to address it meaningfully. What MASSCAP has done already is to show us a way.