A Theory of Change for Expanding Computer Ownership
Making computer ownership possible at a national scale requires coordinated action across the systems, organizations, and sectors that shape how people obtain and utilize computers productively.
Today, 32.9 million people in the United States do not have a computer at home. Digitunity’s Theory of Change maps the coordinated shifts needed across technology supply, community infrastructure, policy, funding, and cross-sector action to address that gap.
Computer ownership is a systems challenge
Much of what is needed already exists. Businesses and institutions retire computers with useful life remaining. Refurbishers have the expertise to prepare technology for reuse. Community organizations understand local needs and help people connect with the resources they need.
The challenge is making those pieces work together at the scale required to address this problem.
Digitunity’s Theory of Change focuses on four ideas:
- Computer ownership is the goal. Connectivity matters, but people also need reliable access to a computer of their own to participate fully in education, work, healthcare, financial services, government services, and the modern economy.
- No single organization or program can close the gap. Businesses, refurbishers, community organizations, policymakers, funders, and other partners each have a role.
- Existing resources need stronger pathways into communities. Retired technology, local capacity, funding, policy, and support must integrate more consistently and effectively.
- Lasting progress requires coordinated systems. Shared infrastructure, stronger relationships, better data, and aligned incentives can make technology reuse for social impact a normal part of how the system works and how retired enterprise IT assets are viewed and treated.
The Theory of Change: What has to work together to make computer ownership possible for everyone.
The framework shows how changes across the system can create stronger and more reliable pathways to computer ownership.
It connects the supply of reusable technology from businesses and institutions, the capacity of community organizations and refurbishers, and the policies, funding, and cross-sector conditions that support the work, with the long-term goal of making it possible for everyone to own a computer.
Our Work: Building the System
Digitunity works across sectors to strengthen the connective infrastructure that makes computer ownership possible at scale.
Our role is not simply to move individual computers. It is to help build the conditions in which businesses contribute technology, organizations can prepare and deploy it effectively, communities have the capacity to respond to local needs, and policy and funding support the system over time.
The goal: a national system through which computer ownership is not determined by income, geography, or circumstance.