Costa Rica began a battle in favor of social inclusion. In this fight, one of the axes is the National Strategy CRDigit@l, which has as an end the reduction of the digital gap in the country.

In May, Costa Rica was awarded with the WSIS Prize 2016 of the World Summit on the Information Society in the category of Access to Knowledge and Information, thanks to the project Connected Homes, one of the five programs of this innovative public policy.

A year later, over half of the programs show progress, while the rest are in process.

Connected Homes
It is one of the programs that is generating the change. The program was launched, June 6, 2016 and by December twelve thousand homes are registered in the program. Connected Homes was formulated with the end in mind of providing equipment and access to Internet, subsidizing more than 140 thousand homes in vulnerability conditions, to contribute to reduce the digital gap in vulnerable families. It is estimated that to reach the proposed goal for the period 2016-2018 $100 million USD are required.

Connected Communities
The purpose of the program is to bring into general use the access to telecommunication in districts where the cost, the needed infrastructure and its maintenance are not affordable for these services. For these actions an investment of $167 million USD is estimated. Currently the program is at a 38%, with 69 districts with coverage, the goal is to reach 184 by 2017.

Connected Public Centers
This component of the National Strategy proposes to equip the public service centers that care for the population in vulnerability conditions. A budget of $20 million was estimated to achieve this, and the public contest 009-2015 is in process of being allocated to provide 9,800 devices to educational centers.

In process:

Connected Public Spaces: Seeks to promote the free access to Internet in public spaces, the objective is that for 2017 there will be 240 public access points, with a projected budget of $10 million.

Solidary Broad Band Network: Oriented to providing broad band connection to centers that require it to better their service, but only after having a diagnosis of the institutional needs. Source: Costa Rican Government Press Releases