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What’s New in NYC Civic Tech – April 24, 2025

Gabby Langston

Neighbors,

If I’m being honest with you, the first words that come to mind are not safe for work. Day after day, we’re seeing absolute incompetence from the Federal government. As someone who has lived with “learning disabilities”— and learned to advocate for accommodations that reflect how my brain works— I am beyond furious. The administration is eviscerating the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which helped me navigate the educational process. This week, the National Institutes of Health announced it is collecting private medical records from various federal and commercial databases to support a new autism and neurodivergent research. This initiative is sinister, and I urge you to read more about the data being consolidated.

Second, this isn’t about autism and neurodivergent people like me—this WILL AFFECT ANYONE using network-connected tools to track their bodies, menstruation, or emotional state. The NIH’s Real-World Data Platform is a sweeping, centralized database billed as having “comprehensive” patient coverage across the U.S. population. It is accessible to the federal government with alarmingly few safeguards or transparency measures. A similar initiative was scrapped in 2024 due to high projected costs and the absence of basic project management practices. Yet here we are again, facing a revived effort with even greater implications for privacy and consent.

At the same time, the National Science Foundation is shifting its funding priorities to align with the White House’s latest Executive Order, which effectively ends enforcement of key provisions of the Civil Rights Act. If you were part of an NSF-funded project that was canceled or curtailed as a result, a group of researchers is organizing and would like to connect.

While this s-show is happening in our Federal Administration, we still have local power. As a parent of a deaf toddler born in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, fast and reliable bidirectional internet has been essential for my family’s education, telehealth, therapies, and entertainment.

When this Mayoral administration came into power, it scrapped the Internet Master Plan—a visionary initiative that would have opened municipal infrastructure to a diverse group of nonprofits and MWBE service providers.

TUESDAY, we have a rare opportunity to revive that plan—and not just to bring it back, but to strengthen it. BetaNYC will be in front of the City Council supporting the efforts to revive the Internet Master Plan and urging the City to align its Digital Equity Roadmap with the federal Digital Equity Act and with New York State’s Digital Equity Plan, which is thoroughly researched and identifies tangible benchmarks on access, literacy, infrastructure, and workforce development.

All New Yorkers must understand that the internet is not just a broadcast medium—it’s a two-way platform for civic engagement, public benefit, and economic opportunity. We need infrastructure and government services that we can trust. The labor that maintains both should be diverse and well-educated.

TUESDAY, I hope you’ll join me at City Council to support the revived Internet Master Plan and call for strong Council leadership to ensure we set digital equity goals.

Lastly, there is some local progress worth celebrating. The City has just released the final part of its long-awaited Digital Equity Roadmap. The NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD)’s research echoes the State’s findings, and is now partnering with libraries to pilot a digital navigators program. Through initiatives like Neighborhood Tech Help, New Yorkers can now access free, one-on-one tech support to learn how to use their devices, connect to the internet, set up accounts, and build confidence online. If you’re ready to put your digital literacy skills to use, the New York Public Library is hiring for positions such as Lead Neighborhood Tech Helpers Outreach Associates and Neighborhood Tech Helpers Outreach Associates.

Our road will always have challenges; the work is far from easy, but it’s necessary and worth it.

And as a reminder to always look for an opportunity to improve the city, please read Barry Benepe’s obituary. He helped give birth to NYC’s greenmarkets and our friends at Transportation Alternatives. Rest in peace.

— Noel Hidalgo

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