Transforming Everything? Evaluating Broadband’s Impacts Across Policy Areas

Broadband, or high-speed internet, has been called the most important infrastructure challenge of the century by the National Broadband Plan. It has the potential to connect remote communities, help coordinate and streamline healthcare services, enable our children with unparalleled access to learning opportunities, promote government transparency and civic participation, and spark and support innovation in the economy and across numerous fields. But businesses and government agencies must be prepared to take advantage of new technologies, and individuals must have the connections and skills to use them. This volume argues that there is a critical need to understand whether or how public and private investments in broadband make a difference, and the best way to do that is to invest in high-quality program evaluation to assess the full range of critical outcomes and impacts. It addresses challenges for evaluating broadband initiatives to promote learning across studies and diverse contexts and offers guidance and methods of evaluation for policymakers as well as researchers. Such evaluation can provide evidence for programs and policy and show whether the transformative promise of broadband is being fulfilled, under what conditions, and for whom it has the greatest impact.