Introduction: Broadband as Experimentation and Policy Learning

Broadband internet use is often heralded for its transformative potential in a broad range of policy areas, but there is scarce evidence on whether this is so, and how it can be utilized most effectively by organizations and communities. While the attribution of change to programmatic efforts is a familiar challenge in evaluation research, broadband technologies present some particular issues for evaluation: the “black box” problem of understanding user behavior, the complexity of theorizing about the interaction between technology and policy-specific processes, and understanding change over time. How can we better address both the challenges and the opportunities for evaluating broadband initiatives? This chapter introduces the plan of the volume in the context of answering these questions.