The People Who Make Connection Work

Chapter 1

Beyond the usual suspects

No single organization controls everything a connection needs. Yet the public record of most projects names only one or two of the organizations involved.

The dissertation's interview participants were unanimous on the first point. They called for coordinated roles across federal, state, and local government, internet service providers, educational institutions, libraries, nonprofits, philanthropy, businesses, and communities. Federal evidence cited in the dissertation points the same way: the GAO (2022) found more than 100 federal programs across 15 agencies that could support broadband, marked by fragmentation, overlap, and coordination problems.

"I mean, they theoretically converge, but they're very divergent in terms of responsibilities."Interview participant QS2, on end users, providers, school networks, and libraries

What the archive's records name

The project archive records each project's lead and involved entities. Sorting those entries into stakeholder types shows how narrow the recorded cast usually is.

Two further figures from the same field tell the story. The median record names entities from just one stakeholder type, and 59% name one type or none. Only 11% name three or more types. Residents, families, and students appear as participants in under 2% of records, even though they are the intended beneficiaries of nearly all of them.

That is not because projects lack partners. It is because the organizations that fund and lead a project are the ones that get written down. The school custodian, the property manager, the counselor, the church volunteer, the utility pole crew, and the teenager who helps a grandparent set up a patient portal rarely make the record, and they are often the reason a project works.

Three reasons the wider cast matters

1. The affected are not the empowered. The dissertation notes that the parties affected by the divide are not always the parties with authority, funding, infrastructure, or implementation capacity. In its apartment use case, residents are the main beneficiaries but often the least formally powerful in deciding the design.
2. Hidden gatekeepers stop projects. Whoever controls a rooftop, a riser, a pole, a data agreement, or a budget line can end a project that everyone else supports.
3. Continuation depends on people who arrive late. Help desks, maintenance staff, navigators, and the funder of recurring costs matter most after launch, when planning teams have often disbanded.

Chapter 2

The stakeholder model

A useful stakeholder model sorts people by what they do for the project, not by what kind of organization they belong to. A librarian can be an implementer, a trusted helper, and a site host in the same week.

The dissertation's interviews supplied the vocabulary. Participants asked the model to distinguish recipients of services from those responsible for helping them, and to name beneficiaries, implementers, funders, providers, regulators, designers, navigators, evaluators, and decision makers. Participant QG added "responsible parties," especially those who design systems and so decide whether people can use them. This book groups those roles into four families.

The education families

For education projects, the dissertation's Appendix X, Education Specific Stakeholders, organizes the field into major stakeholder families. Its outline names them: governance, strategy, and leadership; teaching, curriculum, and learning design; technology, networks, and digital operations; accessibility, language access, and specialized support; student services, family, and community connection; funding, procurement, and program implementation; research, data, and accountability; career, technical, STEM, and workforce pathways; and higher education and campus digital equity. Every one of those families maps onto one or more of the four families above, and every one is more than a single "school" stakeholder.

Levels, not a flat list

The dissertation places digital exclusion across individual, community, institutional, and policy domains, drawing on Helsper (2012) and the World Bank (2016). Stakeholders sit at each level, and influence travels between them: a state broadband office's rules shape a provider's offer, which shapes a family's bill.

One person, several roles

The dissertation's rural use case makes the point directly: in small communities roles overlap. A superintendent may also be a civic leader. A public librarian can be a digital navigator. County administrators may oversee grant applications but not the infrastructure. A good map records roles, not just names, so that one overloaded person is visible as a single point of failure.

Chapter 3

How to identify stakeholders

Stakeholder identification is a search, not a guest list. The dissertation's Phase 2, Stakeholder and System Context Analysis, sets out its steps.

The detailed model outline (Appendix AC) names six steps for Phase 2. They run in order, because each depends on the one before it:

Six searches that surface the missing people

The steps say what to do. These searches, drawn from the dissertation's use cases and interview advice, say where to look.

"And then you've got to show them, ask them what their pain points are."Interview participant QM

Participant QR1 added a practical warning: ZIP codes can hide pockets of need, and census-block data from providers allows more targeted engagement. Participant QJ2 recommended cross-sector gap and SWOT analysis across government, industry, nonprofits, and education. Both widen the search beyond the people already at the table.

Weighing power honestly

The dissertation calls this power weighting. Its apartment use case shows why: the owner and management control risers, rooftops, budgets, and schedules; providers and contractors decide technical options; residents live with the result. The model uses the imbalance to make sure the people with the most at stake are heard in design, not only informed after it.

Chapter 4

A cast that changes across the life cycle

The people a project needs at the start are not the people it needs at launch, and neither group is the one that keeps it running.

The dissertation's apartment use case (Appendix AF) lays out seven implementation phases, which this book uses as a common life cycle for all six use cases: initiate, assess and engage, design and procure, pilot and validate, build and deploy, activate and adopt, and operate and review. Deciders and funders dominate the first stages. Builders take over in the middle. Trusted helpers, help desks, and evaluators carry the end, which is also where continuation is won or lost.

What each stage asks of stakeholders

The problem and the solution decide the cast

The dissertation's core finding is that solutions must be matched to causes. The same logic applies to people: each barrier and each solution type brings its own stakeholders. An affordability problem needs whoever sets prices and whoever helps families enroll. A skills problem needs navigators and teachers, not contractors. Chapter 11's tool builds a starting roster from the barriers and solution you choose.

Who keeps it going

Interview participants treated sustainability as broad: recurring costs, training, support, equipment refresh, staffing, and continued funding. Each is a stakeholder question. Before launch, name the person or organization responsible for each, and check that they were at the table early enough to agree.

"So there are op-ex costs that need to be encouraged to maintain it."Interview participant QR1

A 100-unit building from the 1970s, where broadband is technically available but slow, unreliable, and costly. The upgrade is a digital inclusion project, not only a wiring job.

The dissertation names the key stakeholders directly: residents, property owners, the management company, maintenance staff, internet service providers, wiring contractors, local permitting authorities, housing agencies, community-based organizations, and any public or philanthropic funders. It singles out the power gap: owners and managers control risers, rooftops, utility rooms, conduit, budgets, and schedules; providers and contractors decide technical options; residents, the main beneficiaries, have the least formal say. Community organizations and digital navigators shape adoption through trusted communication, multilingual support, and enrollment help.

The appendix outline adds a recommended governance structure with resident participation, and a stakeholder table of project-specific roles (Tables AF1 and AF2).

Who keeps it going

The owner or management company (upkeep of in-building equipment), the provider (service and the affordable tier), a named support path for residents, and whoever reviews adoption, speed, and affordability by unit type and language group. The dissertation's continuous improvement loop assigns that review to the owner, residents, provider, and community partners together.

Here the divide is a community development problem. The school may be the digital hub; the library, clinic, and churches carry trust; the internet provider may be a cooperative, a satellite service, or no one at all.

The dissertation names an unusually wide cast: residents, students, parents, teachers, school leaders, town or county officials, tribal or regional governments where appropriate, public libraries, healthcare providers, workforce agencies, agricultural employers, chambers of commerce, nonprofits, broadband providers, state broadband offices, and funding agencies. Among enablers it lists a supportive district, an engaged library, a regional electric cooperative, a community foundation, and public buildings that can host equipment; among amplifiers, local businesses, telehealth demand, workforce partnerships, and a community college willing to teach digital literacy.

It asks that stakeholders be mapped by title, influence, trust, authority, and implementation capacity, and it warns that legitimacy is essential: a technically perfect solution can fail if residents feel it is imposed, expensive, unreliable, or disconnected from local needs. Local champions can speed adoption by framing the work in familiar settings and trusted language.

Who keeps it going

The dissertation's phased plan ends with institutionalizing sustainability through local policy, annual funding, asset lifecycle plans, support workflows, and partnerships with county, state, education, and private-sector entities. Each needs an owner: typically the town or county, the library, the provider, and a local champion group.

A public network offering trusted, no-cost connectivity for education, employment, health care, public services, and civic participation.

The dissertation's figure note for this use case (Figure 50) frames it as a public-access digital inclusion intervention rather than a stand-alone Wi-Fi installation, and says success depends on network architecture combined with affordability, multilingual outreach, device access, digital navigation, privacy protections, cybersecurity, maintenance, public trust, and ongoing evaluation. Each of those implies stakeholders, and those are marked as named below.

In the committee draft, the Chapter 4 narrative for this use case repeats the stakeholder paragraph from the apartment use case, so it does not yet list community network stakeholders of its own. The site hosts, city roles, backhaul providers, and funders below are derived, supported by archive projects. The appendix outline shows the full version includes a roles table (AH3), a stakeholder table (AH4), and an operations table assigning each function (AH14).

Who keeps it going

A named network operator, a maintenance and help-desk assignment, site-host agreements that outlast individual staff, and a recurring budget line. The appendix outline's operations and maintenance model and review cycles (AH14, AH15) exist for exactly this.

One of the most common responses to the homework gap, and one of the easiest to underestimate.

The dissertation names the stakeholders: students, parents and guardians, teachers, school administrators, district technology staff, librarians, counselors, wireless carriers, funders, school boards, and community partners such as libraries and nonprofit digital inclusion organizations. It explains each role. Teachers matter because they assign work that assumes internet access. Technology staff manage configuration, filtering, inventory, and support. Parents and guardians decide the terms of home adoption. Students gain or lose the most but often have little say, so the model asks planners to include them through surveys, focus groups, help-desk feedback, and multilingual outreach.

Among amplifiers it lists laptops, after-hours help, family digital skills orientations, school bus Wi-Fi, library access, and student digital ambassador programs, each bringing its own people.

Who keeps it going

The school board and funders who pay recurring data costs, technology staff who manage inventory and replacement, and the data team that compares outputs with outcomes each term. The dissertation stresses that devices age, coverage changes, students move, and funding disappears, so the program must be regularly reassessed.

A new fiber network built into city neighborhoods already served by other providers, paired with modernization of multifamily housing.

This use case appears in the dissertation's appendices (Case Study 5 in Appendix AE and the full Appendix AJ) but not in the Chapter 4 narrative. The appendix outline shows it covers target market and service-area segmentation, governance and stakeholder responsibilities, market, needs, and readiness assessment, and deployment and competitive strategy options, with roles and stakeholder tables (AJ3 and AJ4). Every stakeholder below is therefore derived by applying the model, supported by archive projects.

A competitive build adds stakeholders that the other use cases lack. Incumbent providers respond to the new entrant. The city controls rights-of-way and permits. Investors expect returns, which shapes where the network goes first. The equity question is whether low-income blocks and older buildings are served early, late, or never.

Who keeps it going

The provider's operations team, the city's franchise or rights-of-way office, building owners who maintain in-building access, and a community partner who monitors whether affordable tiers are offered and used in the neighborhoods that need them.

Building the knowledge and confidence to use AI tools safely, so that a new technology does not open a new divide.

Appendix AE's Case Study 6 is titled "Artificial Intelligence, Digital Skills, and the Emerging AI Divide," and Appendix AK, "AI Literacy and Digital Skills Initiative," gives the full use case, including stakeholder tables. The body text of those appendices was not in the file, so the stakeholders below are derived. They follow the dissertation's own discussion of AI: tools could help with tutoring, translation, accessibility, and advising, but the divide could widen if access requires paid subscriptions, advanced devices, reliable broadband, or data literacy, and bias, opacity, and privacy risks create new disparities.

That makes this cast different. Designers, privacy and ethics reviewers, and accessibility specialists move to the center, alongside the teachers, librarians, and colleges who deliver the learning.

"We can't offer AI solutions to someone who doesn't know how to use the internet in the first place."Interview participant QM

Who keeps it going

Curriculum owners who update content as tools change, a data-governance lead who reviews new tools before adoption, community learning centers that keep teaching adults, and evaluators who track confidence and safe, independent use rather than course attendance.

Chapter 11

Build your stakeholder map

Choose the barriers your diagnosis found and the solution you are considering. The tool builds a starting roster, grouped by family, with the reason each stakeholder belongs.

Treat the result as the first step of Phase 2, not the last. Then name real people for each role, weigh their power and stake, and check the map with the people on it.

Back matter

Sources and notes

Ross, P. (2026). Dissertation, committee draft dated September 23, 2026. Used: Chapter 4 interview findings on stakeholders, power weighting, and sustainability; the model's interpretation sections; the model simulations and use cases for the apartment, community wireless (figure note), hotspot, and rural cases; Chapter 5 practical implications. Outlines only: Appendix W (Stakeholders Identified), Appendix X (Education Specific Stakeholders), Appendix AC (Phase 2 steps), and Appendices AE through AK (use cases). Their body text was not present in the file provided.

Digital Divide Projects and Initiatives master file, updated September 24, 2026, digests 1 to 10 (6,295 records). The Chapter 1 chart classifies the "Lead / Involved Entities" field by keyword; figures are approximate.

A note for the committee draft: in Chapter 4, the "Stakeholder and System Context Analysis" subsection repeats the Phase 1 problem-framing text, and the community free wireless use case repeats the apartment use case's stakeholder and strategic-fit paragraphs. Both may be worth revisiting.

Archive records cited