Digital Inclusion Trailblazers are municipal, county, or regional governments that are paving the way and providing excellent models for digitally inclusive communities. They are intentional. They are invested. They are committed to advancing digital equity. The Trailblazers recognition isn’t just an award — it’s also a collection of valuable resources. The places selected as Trailblazers provide models to aspire to, demonstrating how local governments can support their own digital inclusion ecosystems.

Any local government may apply to be a Digital Inclusion Trailblazer. Local governments include:

• Municipalities
• Townships
• Counties
• Regional governments

Individuals or organizations outside of local government should encourage their local government to apply, and may even assist by compiling documentation and resources for submission. However, the primary and media contacts for each application must be staff at the local government seeking Trailblazers recognition.

Applications for 2023 Trailblazers recognition will be accepted through October 20. NDIA staff reviewing submissions may follow-up to clarify documentation within the application window. All applicants will be notified of their Trailblazers status prior to a public announcement of the 2023 Trailblazers recipients this Fall. Trailblazer communities will also be honored at Net Inclusion 2024.

• The Trailblazers Scoring Worksheet is a helpful tool for "pre-scoring" an application and identifying sources of documentation for each indicator prior to beginning work on the actual application.
• Hovering over an indicator in this application will display examples of acceptable documentation for that indicator.
• There is no size limit on file uploads; however, large files (50Mb or larger) may take a long time to upload or remove, and may be more prone to errors or timing out. Consider compressing large files or breaking them into multiple files for upload.
• While each indicator will only be counted once, multiple sources of documentation are allowed, and encouraged! This highlights your community's work and enhances the value of the Trailblazers Resource Inventory to other communities.
• To ensure the highest score on your application and to avoid the need for follow-up inquiries, please double-check that all indicators for which you are seeking points have at least one source of documentation (uploaded file or URL) prior to clicking the submit button.

You may submit documentation of your efforts for each indicator for which you wish to be considered by uploading files or URLs (or both) to this form. To provide a complete picture of your work and to maximize the value of the knowledge database, we encourage you to provide as much documentation as possible for each indicator. All relevant resources submitted through applications will be shared publicly in the Trailblazers resource repository, with attribution.