City of Seattle: The Digital Divide

In 2000, the City of Seattle conducted a telephone poll asking people if they had access to a computer and the internet. Respondents were also asked about their age, ethnicity, gender, education, and income as a way of statistically compiling and then predicting the probability a person had access based on these factors. This was then mapped and compared to Community Technology Centers (CTC). The idea was to provide more funding to a CTC in an area that had a lower probability of computer and internet access, thereby allowing the CTC to possibly buy more computers or provide training for those areas, and hopefully reduce the Digital Divide.

The final analysis map of 2000 Seattle residents’ computer access compared to CTCs, which Heather created as a student in 2006, can be viewed in the following PDF: The Digital Divide.

Additional Portfolio examples can be found on the Portfolio page.