The Deadline Has Arrived: First Nations Digital Inclusion and the Smart Communities Challenge

By James Sankar - ASCA President

 In 2020, the National Agreement on Closing the Gap set an ambitious target: by 2026, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would have equal levels of digital inclusion as other Australians. That deadline, Target 17, is not a future commitment. It is now.

For those of us who work in smart communities, this matters in ways that go well beyond federal policy. Digital inclusion is not a precondition for smart community work. It is the measure of whether smart community work has actually worked.

"Digital equity is not a downstream benefit of smart cities. It is the upstream test of whether they deserve the name."

The Gap in Numbers

The evidence base is now clear, and it demands honesty. In November 2025, RMIT University's ADM+S Centre released Counting on Connectivity: Measuring Digital Inclusions for First Nations Australians - the first nationally representative report of its kind [1]. The findings are stark.

The overall Digital Gap between First Nations and other Australians sits at 7.5 index points. That gap widens dramatically with remoteness: 1.7 points in major cities, 24.4 points in remote areas, and 25.3 points in very remote communities. Forty per cent of First Nations people remain digitally excluded [1].

The federal government has invested. The First Nations Digital Inclusion Advisory Group, co-chaired by Dot West OAM and Dr Lyndon Ormond-Parker, has published a roadmap for 2026 and beyond [2]. Free community Wi-Fi has been activated in 23 remote communities. A $68 million commitment has been made to inclusion programs [3]. These are meaningful steps.

But connectivity is not the same as inclusion. The RMIT report identifies rising affordability challenges since 2022 as a significant and growing barrier - devices, data, and ongoing costs that infrastructure investment alone cannot address [1]. The harder questions about access, ability, and affordability are not infrastructure questions. They are systems design questions.

"The gap between being connected and being included is where smart community design either earns its name or fails."

A Council-Level Question

The Closing the Gap framework is rightly understood as a federal policy instrument. But its implications sit squarely in local government.

Every council in Australia is, in some form, deploying digital services. Some are building smart infrastructure: environmental sensors, digital twins, mobility platforms, connected assets. Others are digitising service delivery: online rates, planning portals, community engagement tools. In each case, the same questions apply: who has been consulted in the design? Who can access the outcome? Whose experience has shaped what gets built?

For councils that serve communities with significant First Nations populations - and that includes councils across regional, remote, and urban Australia - these are not abstract questions. They are procurement questions, service design questions, and accountability questions.

Australia's National AI Plan, released in December 2025, makes this explicit. It acknowledges that AI systems can and do perpetuate harmful stereotypes and misuse cultural and intellectual property when built without genuine First Nations involvement. It commits to upholding the NIAA Framework for Governance of Indigenous Data, and to establishing a First Nations Digital Support Hub and network of digital mentors embedded in communities [4].

For councils, this is a signal that national policy is moving toward expecting First Nations communities to have meaningful agency over how data about them is collected and used. That expectation will reach local government procurement and program design - whether councils are ready or not.

What Genuine Inclusion Looks Like

ASCA's position is that inclusion is not a communications outcome. It is a design outcome.

The difference matters. A council can acknowledge Country, include First Nations imagery in its digital strategy documents, and host consultation sessions - and still build a system that excludes First Nations residents because the system was not designed with them, does not account for variable connectivity, assumes device ownership, or uses language and interfaces that were never tested with First Nations users.

Genuine inclusion begins before the technology is chosen. It means asking who is at the design table, not just who is invited to provide feedback after the fact. It means testing services against the connectivity and literacy conditions of the communities they will serve. And it means treating First Nations communities as governance partners, not target audiences.

RMIT's Mapping the Digital Gap research program - now in its second phase, covering 2025 to 2027 - found that the communities making the most progress were those where digital inclusion was driven by community-defined priorities, not externally imposed programs [5]. That finding aligns with what ASCA members are reporting from their own practice: the smart community initiatives that endure are the ones built with communities, not for them.

What We Can Do Together

Target 17 will not be fully met by the end of 2026. The Conversation's analysis of the trajectory suggests that structural barriers — cost, remoteness, device access, and the pace of infrastructure rollout - make full parity unlikely by the deadline [6]. But the target's value is not only in whether it is met. It is in the accountability framework it creates, and in what it asks councils and practitioners to confront.

ASCA is committed to helping members navigate this honestly. The ACSA/ASCS 2026 Summit will include dedicated space to share what councils are doing, what is working, and what is not. The ASCA Skills and Careers Taskforce is building the practitioner capability needed to ask better questions at the design stage. And ASCA's role as a neutral convenor means we can hold the honest conversations that organisations cannot always have in public.

The deadline has arrived. The question is not whether we acknowledge it. The question is what we choose to do next.

References

[1] RMIT ADM+S Centre (November 2025). Counting on Connectivity: Measuring Digital Inclusions for First Nations Australians. Australian Policy Online - https://apo.org.au/node/329174

[2] First Nations Digital Inclusion Advisory Group (2025). First Nations Digital Inclusion Roadmap: 2026 and Beyond. Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts - https://www.digitalinclusion.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/first-nations-digital-inclusion-roadmap-2026-and-beyond.pdf

[3] Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts (2025). First Nations Digital Inclusion - Program overview and community Wi-Fi rollout. Australian Government - https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/media-communications/first-nations-digital-inclusion

[4] Department of Industry, Science and Resources (December 2025). National AI Plan. Australian Government - https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/national-ai-plan

[5] RMIT ADM+S Centre / Mapping the Digital Gap (2024). Mapping the Digital Gap: 2024 Outcomes Report. Australian Policy Online - https://apo.org.au/node/329174

[6] The Conversation (2024). The government has a target for Indigenous digital inclusion. It's got little hope of meeting it. The Conversation - https://theconversation.com/the-government-has-a-target-for-indigenous-digital-inclusion-its-got-little-hope-of-meeting-it-239733

[7] Australian Digital Inclusion Index (2025). First Nations Digital Inclusion Dashboard. RMIT / Swinburne University / Telstra - https://digitalinclusionindex.org.au/first-nations/

The Australian Smart Communities Association acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands across Australia on which our members live and work, and pays respect to Elders past, present and emerging.