Roadmap to the Digital Inclusion and Literacy of Incarcerated Individuals in California

Introduction

Broadband access to digital information and the applications and skills to find, evaluate, organize, create, and communicate such information has many benefits including the potential to improve health outcomes, educational attainment and achievement, employment stability, economic success, and social and civic participation and decrease recidivism among incarcerated individuals during the period of their incarceration and upon their release.

Unfortunately, even when incarcerated individuals have nominal access to digital devices and a broadband connection to the internet (e.g., the GTL tablets available to CDCR incarcerated individuals), they face unique barriers to obtaining access to critical digital information, applications, and skills. The greatest of these barriers for CDCR incarcerated individuals is the GTL tablet's lack of:

• Meaningful and engaging content that meets the information needs of incarcerated individuals and that is discoverable, navigable, and usable
• Bug-free, full-featured applications that enable incarcerated individuals to find, evaluate, organize, create, and communicate digital information

The Digital Equity Act and California's State Digital Equity Plan provide a framework and funding for advocates, service providers, and other stakeholders to develop and implement strategies for overcoming these barriers and realizing digital inclusion and digital literacy among incarcerated individuals.

Unfortunately, California's digital equity plan lacks a coherent focus on the elements of digital equity at the core of the Digital Equity Act, the unique context within which CDCR incarcerated individuals encounter digital exclusion, and the substantive barriers that flow from that context.

Moreover, while development and management of California's digital equity plan is the responsibility of the California Department of Technology (CDT), the burden of implementing the plan falls largely on individuals and community organizations who face their own barriers to designing and implementing programs for the digital inclusion and literacy of incarcerated individuals: a lack of shared understanding of the benefits, barriers, context, opportunities, and strategies related to digital equity in the custodial context.

Fortunately, there are articulable opportunities to overcome each of these barriers: the inadequate digital equity plan, the lack of shared understanding of the issues concerning the digital equity of incarcerated individuals, and the low quantity and quality of digital content, services, and applications available to CDCR incarcerated individuals.

Opportunities to contribute to a shared understanding of the issues related to digital equity of incarcerated individuals

Stakeholders can contribute to a shared understanding of the issues related to digital equity of incarcerated individuals by:

1. Developing definitive statements about the benefits, barriers, context, opportunities, and strategies associated with the digital equity of incarcerated individuals generally and as applied specific jurisdictions and custodial agencies
2. Making the definitive statements available publicly
3. Developing and managing an online community where stakeholders can read, comment on, and contribute to the definitive statements

GitHub advocacy-tools repository

At present there are draft statements regarding the benefits, barriers, context, opportunities, and strategies associated with the digital inclusion and literacy of incarcerated individuals generally and in CDCR institutions specifically available online for public access and contribution at the advocacy-tools repository.

There is a need for stakeholders to contribute to the statements, manage the online repository of statements, and raise awareness of the online repository of statements.

Opportunities to contribute to the quantity and quality of digital content, services, and applications available to CDCR incarcerated individuals

Public comments submitted during the development of California's digital equity plan suggested that the quantity and quality of digital content, services, and applications available to incarcerated individuals could be increased by:

• Developing or adapting content or services to the custodial context that meet the information needs of incarcerated individuals
• Developing or adapting applications appropriate to the custodial context that enable incarcerated individuals to find, evaluate, organize, create, and communicate digital information
• Curating asset maps of new and existing content, services, and applications appropriate to the custodial context
• Advocating for custodial agencies and service providers to make particular content, services, and applications or the contents of entire asset maps available to incarcerated individuals

At present there are frameworks for online repositories to enable the design, development, implementation, and management of asset maps, content, and applications by stakeholders.

GitHub asset-maps repository

At present there is a shell of an asset-maps repository online. The repository currently only contains open issues suggesting asset maps that could be created by stakeholders.

**There is a need for stakeholders to:

• Design the asset map data structure
• Document the asset map data structure
• Import the lists of assets contained in the open issues to asset maps
• Suggest and review content for new asset maps
• Curate and manage asset maps
• Manage the asset-maps repository**

GitHub oer4inmates repository

At present there is a shell of an oer4inmates repository online. The repository currently contains no content.

**There is a need for stakeholders to:

• Suggest OER or other open content for adaptation to the custodial context
• Adapt OER and other open content to the custodial context
• Create new OER designed for the custodial context**

GitHub apps4inmates repository

At present there is a shell of an apps4inmates repository online. The repository currently only contains open issues suggesting existing open source apps hosted on GitHub that could be adapted to the custodial context.

**There is a need for stakeholders to:

• Develop a standard for secure mobile applications in a custodial context
• Document the standard for secure mobile applications in a custodial context
• Clone existing apps and adapt them to the custodial context
• Design, develop, and implement new apps designed specifically for the needs of incarcerated individuals**

CDCR CTS procurement

The current contract between CDCR and GTL for the wireless tablets and services available to incarcerated individuals (CTS contract) is set to expire and CDCR, in coordination with CDT, is developing a new RFP for a new!CTS contract. While the previous RFP that led to the current contract contained some digital inclusion and literacy friendly requirements (e.g., word processor app), they were either removed from the RFP prior to execution of the contract, poorly implemented, or not implemented at all.

As a result, the current tablets, in addition to lacking important content and apps, contain unnecessarily onerous features that discourage, rather than encourage and enable, digital inclusion and literacy activities by incarcerated individuals. Advocates, service providers, and other stakeholders have an opportunity to advocate for provisions in the new RFP that encourage and enable digital inclusion and literacy activities by incarcerated individuals including **provisions that:

• Require access to word processor, presentation, spreadsheet, notes, and calendar apps (as was required in the previous RFP)
• Require access to digital literacy enabling apps from asset maps
• Require access to content and services from asset maps
• Require document viewer apps with digital literacy enabling features such as highlighting, bookmarking, searching, and notes (as was required in the previous RFP)
• Require unified web browser with access to white listed sites as bookmarks (as is implemented in college laptop program)
• Require offline login (as is implemented in college laptop program)
• Require offline access to previously accessed content
• Require unified profile that does not require logout/in to switch apps**

Opportunities to contribute to the adequacy of California's State Digital Equity Plan

CDT has committed to refine the state's digital equity plan as it relates to incarcerated individuals in collaboration with advocacy organizations and to develop an asset map unique to incarcerated individuals. Stakeholders can contribute to a more adequate digital equity plan NY **leveraging this commitment to:

• Advocate for CDT to consider the statements available on the advocacy-tools repository when refining the plan
• Advocate for CDT to include the asset maps available on the asset-maps repository in their own asset maps for incarcerated individuals**