Overview Digital Literacy Framework:
The California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) identified Digital Literacy as a fundamental strategy to close the Digital Divide through increased broadband adoption in its original 2007 Strategic Action Plan. In 2008 CETF established a Digital Literacy Initiative and convened stakeholders in collaboration with the Governor’s Office to review all existing Digital Literacy standards to recommend a coherent policy and framework for Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Skills. CETF published a Summary Report reflecting stakeholder consensus titled California Basic Elements of ICT Digital Literacy – Continuum of Assessment Skills which embraced the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) definition of Digital Literacy as “a lifelong learning process of capacity building for using digital technology, communications tools, and/or networks to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, create and communicate information in order to function in a knowledge-based economy and society” accompanied by the following Framework of Basic Digital Literacy with 6 Elements.
In 2009 CETF secured a Governor’s Executive Order (S-06-09) on Digital Literacy and ICT Skills which required the California Technology Agency to prepare an action plan which reaffirmed the Framework in the 2010 report titled Digital Literacy Pathways in California. The Executive Order remains in force today.
