Gregory Pranzo, Founder and CEO of PranzoTech Solutions, is urging local communities to take direct action to close the digital divide, a crisis he argues is being neglected by both private and public sectors. In a recent interview, Pranzo highlighted the hidden costs of digital exclusion in Baltimore, where residents struggle to access housing programs, city services, and economic tools due to a lack of internet access and basic digital skills.
“We don’t need another press release about broadband expansion plans,” Pranzo said. “We need people on the ground showing others how to use the tools we already have. It’s local, it’s urgent, and it’s everyone’s job.”
Data underscores the severity of the issue: 35% of households in underserved Baltimore neighborhoods lack reliable internet access, according to the Baltimore Civic Tech Survey (2024). Nationally, 43% of adults in low-income households lack home broadband, per Pew Research Center (2023), and over 30 million Americans lack basic digital skills like creating spreadsheets or sending professional emails, according to the National Skills Coalition (2022).
Pranzo emphasized that these gaps ripple across city budgets, workforce pipelines, and healthcare systems. “When a resident can’t apply for a housing program because the form is online, that’s not a tech failure—it’s a systems failure,” he said.
While his company builds dashboards and automation tools, Pranzo insists the solution isn’t always high-tech. In 2024, he helped launch a citywide digital skills accelerator that trained over 300 Baltimore residents—many of whom had never used a computer before. He also volunteers with Code B’More, a youth organization teaching coding and robotics in underserved neighborhoods.
“We can’t build smart cities if we leave whole communities digitally invisible,” Pranzo emphasized.
He is urging individuals, businesses, and civic groups to take local ownership of digital access and education. Recommended actions include donating working laptops or tablets to community organizations, hosting free tech literacy workshops in schools or libraries, mentoring someone learning digital skills, advocating for city budgets that support digital navigators, and designing tools with non-experts in mind.
“Innovation isn’t about building for the top 1% of users,” Pranzo said. “It’s about making sure the bottom 30% can still participate.”
