Gregory Pranzo, founder and CEO of PranzoTech Solutions, is calling for urgent, community-led action to close the digital divide—a problem he says is being overlooked by both the private and public sectors. In a recent interview, Pranzo highlighted the hidden costs of digital exclusion in Baltimore, where many residents lack basic internet access and digital skills.
Data from the Baltimore Civic Tech Survey (2024) shows 35% of households in underserved neighborhoods lack reliable internet access, while a Pew Research Center study (2023) found 43% of adults in low-income U.S. households do not have home broadband. The National Skills Coalition (2022) reports more than 30 million Americans lack basic digital skills. Pranzo argues these gaps affect 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,” Pranzo said. He stressed that solutions do not always require high-tech tools. “Sometimes the most important thing you can do is help someone sign up for email or show them how to use a shared document,” he added.
In 2024, Pranzo helped launch a citywide digital skills accelerator that trained over 300 Baltimore residents in basic tech fluency, 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,” he emphasized.
Pranzo 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, 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,” he said. “It’s about making sure the bottom 30% can still participate.”
Gregory Pranzo serves on the advisory board of Code B’More and works with the Baltimore Digital Equity Coalition to advance digital access citywide. He holds a degree in Information Systems from Towson University and a certificate in Smart City Strategy from MIT.
