Community Development

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Signature Programs > Quality Places > Digital Ready Community

Digital Ready Community

The Digital Ready Community program empowers communities to increase civic engagement, trust, and local government responsiveness by leveraging digital platforms. A team of Purdue specialists and educators guides the community in forming a digital asset group (DAG), inventory digital assets, and draft a community-wide digital engagement plan. Deliverables include the formation of the DAG, DAG’s operational agreement and a community-wide digital engagement plan. The program lasts 6-9 months.

Overview

Why Digital Ready Community?

The Digital Ready Community (DRC) program guides community stakeholders/local champions, including local government, to help the community leverage digital platforms to increase civic engagement and trust as well as become more responsive to citizen’s needs.

Who Should Be Involved?

Every community is different, but there is a similar set of stakeholders who should be considered when forming the group that participates in the program:

- Emergency Management
- Police/Fire
- City Hall
- Parks Department
- Works Department
- IT Department
- Councilmen/Commissioners
- County Highway Department
- Treasurer
- Clerk
- Auditor
- Utilities
- Planning Commission
- Chamber
- LEDO
- Main Street
- Extension Educator

Goals of the DRC Program

It can be a challenge getting communities to become aware and motivated to leverage digital platforms to increase trust, responsiveness and civic engagement. Through presentations, hands-on activities and planning facilitated by our Purdue trainers, communities become equipped to:

- Earn community’s trust and convey benefits of program
- Establish a digital assets group (DAG)
- Assess current online presence & reputation
- Discuss importance of online presence, netiquette, and legal considerations
- Design and implement a community-wide digital engagement plan

The digital assets group (DAG) is key for success of this program and consists of selected members of the community whose organizations have a form of online presence, such as a website, social media, blog, etc.

DRC Programming

Over the course of six-nine months, the digital assets group (DAG) and the Purdue team meet face-to-face for nine meetings and hold two webinars. Topics covered include:

- Forming a digital assets group
- Program overview
- Trust 101
- Online assessment and vision
- Networking 101
- Internet safety and security
- Legal requirements
- How to write a DAG operational agreement
- Community survey
- Digital engagement plan and implementation timeline

Community Results

By the end of the program, you will have formed a digital assets group (DAG), drafted a DAG operational agreement, gained knowledge on digital awareness and drafted/implemented a community-wide digital engagement plan. We guide your community through each step of this process!