Closing the digital divide in Riverside County

Challenge 

Southern California’s Riverside County, home to 2.4 million people spread across dozens of municipalities and unincorporated communities, was grappling with a problem familiar to many local governments outside major urban hubs: a stubborn digital divide. More than 61,000 households in the county lacked a home broadband subscription, posing a major impediment to everything from finding a job to scheduling medical care, obtaining public services, and even staying in touch with loved ones. With so much of modern life conducted digitally, residents without easy access to high-speed internet or digital skills risked falling behind.

The county knew it needed to expand broadband infrastructure to unserved areas and improve digital literacy and adoption through better community engagement. And it needed a funding strategy that would enable it to do those things.  

County leadership turned to Guidehouse, engaging us as a strategic advisor to help stand up the county’s broadband office and RivCo Connect—its broadband and digital-support initiative—and to reshape its broadband strategy. The engagement would ultimately also entail grants-management support, as well as partnership-building with dozens of county departments, cities, and regional bodies to reach a wider range of underserved residents. We would also give hands-on help with implementing digital upskilling and adoption initiatives. 

Approach

We set out to create a multifaceted Broadband Master Plan that addressed the critical needs the county wanted to tackle. Priority number one: stakeholder engagement. Working with county leadership, we established partnerships for conducting outreach to residents eligible for aid through the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), the federal broadband access initiative for low-income households. Circulating ACP materials and helping organize enrollment events, we gathered information about specific challenges and opportunities affecting residents, compiling the insights into a Broadband Stakeholder Engagement Report. To extend the reach of its work, we've also: 

• Helped establish public-private partnerships to bring shovel-ready broadband infrastructure projects to the county.  
• Created a Funding Strategy Report to document possible funding structures and sources at the state and federal level; the report contains a budget forecasting model to help the county sustain the program and initiate new investments. 
• Helped develop funding applications through grant writing and the tailoring of materials for key stakeholders in order to extend ACP outreach and digital device and literacy programming. 
• Supported the county’s compliance reporting for multiple federal and state funding programs.
• Produced a Gaps and Opportunities Report, which provides a comprehensive analysis of broadband legislation, policy, infrastructure, and funding.
• Created a dynamic, interactive story map that visualizes the digital divide and what the county is doing to close it. 

When the ACP ended in June 2024, we shifted our focus to digital literacy and skills. As part of this work, we developed a Digital Skills Report, which synthesized findings, recommendations, and market research and contained a cost-benefit analysis for developing a statewide Digital Skills Program.  

We also helped launch the county’s Tech on Wheels program, which deploys two specially equipped vans that provide free digital navigation services and digital literacy training to residents. We co-developed the RFP for the program; helped onboard staff; developed a training curriculum, a program handbook, and program reporting templates; and is providing ongoing program reporting.  

Impact 

With Guidehouse’s assistance, Riverside County has been able to put in place an actionable, sustainable broadband strategy, one that’s informed by real data, governed by best practices, and driven by the insights contained in the stakeholder and funding reports that we created. The strategy has already yielded concrete results: 

• More than 230,000 people—64% of the county’s eligible residents—were enrolled in the ACP. 
• The county has submitted 19 grant applications for broadband access and digital equity programs, representing a total of $63 million in potential funding. 
• The county received $1.1 million from the State of California for broadband planning and continues to engage with internet service providers and the state on infrastructure expansion, positioning itself to leverage additional future funding. 

What’s more, the extensive documentation compiled by Guidehouse has helped Riverside County make a case for investing in broadband access and digital skills training to a wider array of potential funders and partners. To take one example, a net-present-value analysis contained in the Digital Skills Report indicates that every dollar invested in digital upskilling can yield up to seven dollars in economic benefits. It’s a finding that says volumes about the transformative potential of closing the digital divide.