Andrea DiMaio

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Andrea Di Maio
VP Distinguished Analyst
12 years at Gartner
25 years IT industry

Andrea Di Maio is a vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Research, where he focuses on the public sector, with particular reference to e-government strategies, Web 2.0, the business value of IT, open-source software… Read Full Bio

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The Irony of Trying to Bridge the Digital Divide

by Andrea Di Maio  |  December 21, 2010  |  4 Comments

After yesterday’s post about how the increasing complexity of technology may dwarf even the best attempts at bridging the digital divide, Alex Howard of O’Reilly Radar, who often acts as a very helpful watchdog for my posts, pointed me to the excellent District of Columbia Citywide Digital Divide Strategy that the Office of the CTO in Washington DC published a few days ago.

I will comment on it in the coming days, as I believe it is a very worthwhile document. However trying to get a copy online was a sort of proof of what I was saying in my earlier post.

Following Alex’ link I ended up on the OCTO web site (http://octo.dc.gov/octostrategy). From there, clicking on the Citywide Digital Divide Strategy link took me to a page providing a Scribd version, and – at a bottom – a line saying “Having problems viewing the document? Download it here[PDF]”. I clicked on the Download and – with some disappointment – I was taken to a page with a “Page Not Found” message.

Then I clicked on the Download link in the Scribd section, where I was asked to login, first of all with my Facebook account – which I never do to avoid lots of suggestions and advertisement when I use it – and then with my Scribd account, which I had but , as usual, I had forgotten my credentials. I finally managed to connect, although Scribd kept telling me it could not send a verification email to my Gartner address and asked for another one (I suspect as a way to get another access point to e, after I denied my Facebook credentials).

I do appreciate that a digital divide strategy is not meant to target people on the disadvantage side of that divide, as they will just be the beneficiary of its implementation, but is aimed at policy makers, think-tanks, consultants, vendors and “haves”: all these constituencies will have no problem in getting the document.

However I found the whole thing a bit ironic. For a moment, I felt like the car dealer in front of a new model fully of gizmos that the client returns to the dealership, or like my wife about to give up her upgraded iPhone with battery lasting about an hour (see yesterday’s post for details)

4 Comments »

Category: e-government     Tags:

4 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Tweets that mention The Irony of Trying to Bridge the Digital Divide -- Topsy.com   December 21, 2010 at 5:48 am

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Gov 2.0, Andrea DiMaio and others. Andrea DiMaio said: @digiphile Alex, you ended up giving me fuel for the next post -http://bit.ly/hrxBGZ – DC strategy not so easy to access :) [...]

  • 2 A Honest Attempt at Dealing with Digital Divide   December 21, 2010 at 9:15 am

    [...] Andrea Di Maio is a vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Research, where he focuses on the public sector, with particular reference to e-government strategies, Web 2.0, the business value of IT, open-source software… Read Full Bio Coverage Areas: ← The Irony of Trying to Bridge the Digital Divide [...]

  • 3 Bryan Sivak   December 21, 2010 at 9:48 pm

    Andrea,

    Thank you for pointing this out — rookie mistake on our part, and the high irony factor is duly noted. We are fixing this immediately.

    Bryan

  • 4 Andrea Di Maio   December 22, 2010 at 4:24 am

    @Bryan – Glad I was useful. What matters is the strategy, which looks really sensible (and I hope will be implemented by the next administration). This little glitch just made it more human :)