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, from small business owners unable to access affordable automation tools to families left out of city services due to a lack of basic digital literacy.
“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. The data underscores the severity of the issue: 35% of households in underserved Baltimore neighborhoods still lack reliable internet access, according to the Baltimore Civic Tech Survey (2024). Nationally, 43% of adults in low-income U.S. households do not have home broadband (Pew Research Center, 2023), and more than 30 million Americans lack basic digital skills (National Skills Coalition, 2022).
Pranzo argues that these gaps impact not only individuals but also city budgets, workforce pipelines, and healthcare systems. While his company builds dashboards, smart infrastructure, and automation tools, he stresses that the solution is not always high-tech. “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 said. “That’s how change starts.”
In 2024, Pranzo helped launch a citywide digital skills accelerator that trained over 300 Baltimore residents in basic tech fluency; many 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 or sponsoring free tech literacy workshops in schools or libraries, mentoring someone learning digital skills, advocating for city budgets that support community technology staff, 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.”
Gregory Pranzo is a Baltimore-based technologist and community advocate who serves on the advisory board of Code B’More and works with the Baltimore Digital Equity Coalition to advance digital access citywide.
