The first step towards bridging the digital divide is understanding the divide itself: what it is, why it exists, and how it affects our everyday lives. The term “digital divide” is commonly used to describe an individual or community’s lack of access to computers, training and online resources. The digital divide refers to a gap between those individuals who have reasonable opportunities to access technology tools and those that do not. The digital divide breaks among many fault lines including, but not limited to: education, income, ethnicity, geography, infrastructure, and disability. Digital divides can exist among those of differing income and economic levels, education, age and gender, race or ethnicity, location, single and dual-parent families, and disability. The key to understanding the digital divide is to look at it in broader terms - a digital divide exists anytime there is a gap in opportunities experienced by those with limited access to technology, especially the Internet.

ICWFD recognizes that despite impressive gains in the increased use of technology by society as a whole, a digital divide still does exist between those without adequate economic resources and access to the needed training and education to succeed in the information age and those that have these opportunities. The ICWFD’s intent in initiating its unique programmes was to ensure that citizens of G77 Developing Countries have reasonable opportunities to access technology. In addition, technology training is needed to develop the knowledge and skills required to enhance one’s quality of life.

The digital divide could be reduced and the economy of the DC’s advanced and prospered by the design and implementation of programs that provide economic resources, training, and access to at-risk members of their society that are without these critical tools. The absence of adequate economic resources, reasonable training opportunities, and access among some sectors of society needed to function, compete, and succeed in an information-based society provides a digital divide among those with the adequate resources and those without. The Internet is an essential tool in our information-based society. Technology provides increasing options for citizens to conduct daily activities on line. More and more people in the developed countries are going online to conduct day-to-day activities such as business transactions, personal correspondence, research, information gathering, shopping, and license renewals. Being computer savvy and digitally connected is becoming more critical to educational, economical, governmental, and societal advancement. Because a larger percentage of the developed world regularly use the Internet to conduct daily activities, people who lack access, knowledge, and training on how to use those tools are at a growing disadvantage, and will eventually be unable to function in an information-based society. Therefore, raising the level of digital inclusion by increasing the number of people using the technology tools of the digital age is a vitally important international goal.