“Digital is here – embrace it, or survive it”: Four key takeaways from the 2022 Dismantling Digital Barriers Summit

This independent journalism on data, digital transformation and technology for social impact is made possible by the Future of Good editorial fellowship on digital transformation, supported by Mastercard Changeworks™. Read our editorial ethics and standards here. 

At the North York Community House, an organization helping newcomers settle into Toronto, the pandemic was the catalyst to begin digital service provision – including providing virtual childcare services. For recently retired executive director Shelley Zuckerman, these new services threw up additional challenges: how could newcomers form meaningful connections online, and how could staff be best trained and supported to continue providing these services online?

Today, the North York Community House has been able to fund two dedicated roles to help staff design and deliver online services to newcomers, signaling that online and hybrid programs are here to stay beyond the pandemic. This was one of many stories of digital adaptation and transformation told at Future of Good’s 2022 Dismantling Digital Barriers Summit, a two-day learning event sponsored by Mastercard Canada and CIRA. The Summit began with a discussion about the ongoing digital divide in Canada, which continues to hinder access to critical government and community services, culminating with a panel on the increasing uses and applications of data in the social impact sector. 

Panelists speak about the intersection of emerging technologies and social good 

Other notable topics covered over the two days included the use of emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence and web3, for social impact, the experiences and learnings of organizations adopting digital tools, digital fundraising, and the urgent need to prioritize accessibility when shifting to online service provision. The overwhelming takeaway, as said by Charles Buchanan, Founder and CEO of Technology Helps, was that digital is already here and present: organizations either have to “embrace it or survive it.” 

“Changemakers going digital-first is a great step forward, but we also have to think about the legacy charitable and non-profit sector that don’t have any sort of digital footprint, and are trying to figure out what the next step is,” added Sasha Krstic, the president of Mastercard Canada. “Opening the door to knowledge and to skill access is the first step.”

Ikem Opara, the director of national learning partnerships at Rideau Hall Foundation added that there is a “groundswell of openness in [his] network of funders to invest in digital transformation. Five or six years ago, this was a bit more novel.” 

Through the Summit, four recurring themes emerged: projects and organizations working to overcome the digital divide must also consider who has the rights to technology, and who owns data; communities need to be intimately involved in the design and development of any new technology that claims to serve them; the use of data and technology should be contextualized by what an organization is actually trying to achieve; and finally, there is a critical need to engage and upskill staff, as well as changing company culture. Here is what you can takeaway: 

New frontiers in digital inequity

The opening panel at the Summit featured four speakers from the social impact sector and the policy and advocacy fields discussing the current state of digital inequities in Canada. The speakers not only highlighted that certain demographic groups – such as older adults, people with disabilities and Indigenous communities – were more likely to experience a digital divide, but also that it’s a problem that goes beyond just device inaccessibility and digital literacy. 

“It’s not just a matter of giving people a device – it’s how that device is integrated into a person’s day-to-day life,” said Nour Abdelaal, a policy analyst at the Toronto Metropolitan University. Abdelaal also emphasized the need to incorporate the lack of technical skills into the wider conversation on digital equity – be that awareness about how to stay secure online, or providing coding and technical design skills to young people. 

That can also open the doors to a more meaningful conversation around who owns and controls digital infrastructure, which Rhea Doolan highlighted during this panel. Doolan, who is the senior policy lead at the First Nations Technology Council, said, “It’s not enough to just perceive Indigenous people as happy consumers of technology. It goes further than that, and it’s about ownership, access and possession. […] We need to be able to embed our worldviews into technology.”

Similar to Doolan, Jennifer Corriero, co-founder and executive director at TakingITGlobal also highlighted that external companies patent or hold the rights to technology and content as a default, and that there is a need to “decolonize contracts.” “Even the way that lawyers are trained to write contracts protects a corporation or a non-profit first, but actually we need to redesign for the community to own the works,” she said. 

‘Nothing about us without us.’

This was a statement echoed across multiple panels during the Summit, and particularly during a panel discussion about disability, DEI and accessibility plans in online spaces. Communities – and particularly those interacting with services regularly – need to be brought into the research and design stages of any new technology. 

Both Sheri Byrne-Haber, a senior architect at VMWare and a long-standing advocate of accessible online services, and Rabia Khedr, the executive director director of Disability without Poverty, suggested that not only should social purpose organizations be striving to facilitate this involvement from the very beginning of their user experience research and development but also looking to internal employees to champion online accessibility. 

“We run into this logical fallacy a lot, where people who hold the purse-strings say, ‘Well how many users with disabilities do we have anyway?’” Byrne-Haber added. “It’s a catch-22, because how do you have users with disabilities if you’re not accessible?” 

“The worst thing you can do is to make an assumption about how somebody with a disability is going to interact with your software. Ignoring it shows that you weren’t aware. Assumptions show that you were aware, and deliberately chose to do the wrong thing,” she stressed. 

Abid Virani, COO at Fable, a company dedicated to user testing for accessibility, added that one way to ensure accessibility is woven into technology development from the very beginning is to make sure that people with accessibility needs are a core part of the software development team and process. “It’s so important to make education around coding and design more important to people with disabilities,” he said. 

To what end are social purpose organizations using technology and data?

Another conversation thread that ran through the two days was the need for social purpose organizations to interrogate why they want to employ technology and data in the first place, and how it adds to their end goal of serving people and communities. According to Krista Pawley, co-founder of Wavemakers, who joined the panel on emerging technologies, it’s vital that organizations consider the implications of implementing a particular tool of technology. “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should,” she said. 

Several panelists also addressed what is lost when service provision moves online. Marika Warner, the director of research and evaluation at MLSE, alluded to that “social capital” that was lost when a sports leadership course aimed at youth had to shift online. Many lost opportunities to build a network and social connections, which formed a critical part of their self-development, she said. Similarly, Opara suggested that organizations should consider the human-to-human interaction that could be lost if a digital tool is placed between them and the public. 

There was a similar sentiment around gathering data on the frontlines. Liz Forsberg from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, for example, said that there is still a lack of critical labour data for the nonprofit sector in comparison to other sectors, likely because of the economic impact of other sectors. On the other hand, communications consultant Dennie Theodore questioned whether there should always be a need to collect more data. Instead, she added, it’s about actually using that data to facilitate communication between people. 

Aarthi Krishnan from the United Nations Development Programme echoed this in the final panel on using data for social impact: how can that data actually be used to direct investment where it is most urgently needed? 

Where staff and organizational culture fit in

Without engaging and bringing staff along the journey, digital adoption and digital transformation is extremely difficult to achieve. Amy Sample Ward, CEO of NTEN, suggested that organizations should start by addressing the challenges that their own staff have in working digitally, just as much as they focus on the communities that they serve. “It isn’t always a conversation externally, it’s also a conversation with staff and boards,” they said.  

That comes from drastically shifting the internal working culture within nonprofit organizations. Shelley Zuckerman, the recently retired executive director of North York Community House, not only found that staff needed training to design and deliver online programs, but also that the organization had to provide opportunities for staff to exchange technical knowledge between themselves. “We had lots of chances for staff to experiment, and most of them ran with it,” she said on a panel about tips for developing online community programs. 

Byrne-Haber echoed this: “The number one thing an organization needs is psychological safety. You’re supporting trial and error.” Khedr also emphasized that organizations need to put knowledge transfer mechanisms in place to make sure that when staff move on or retire, all of the hard work isn’t undone. 

Sample Ward said it’s vital to address the chasm between who is planning digital tools and technologies, and who is actually responsible for implementing them. At the moment, they said, those are different conversations happening with different teams and people, leading to a lack of accountability. 

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