How Billings Built a Global Digital Literacy Model from the Ground Up

While much of the world scrambles to respond to cascading crises, a second typhoon in China, wildfires in Spain, the Strait of Hormuz closed by Iranian forces, Billings has quietly been building something that may matter just as much for the long term: a citywide digital literacy infrastructure that is drawing notice from UNESCO and the World Bank.

The numbers are striking. According to the Billings Economic Development Corporation, 78% of adults in the city now hold a basic or intermediate digital literacy credential, up from 34% in 2020. That growth rate, faster than comparable hubs like Toronto, Berlin, or Tel Aviv, is the result of a coordinated push that started not in a boardroom, but on Harbour Street, in the basement of the old Central Public Library.

From One Basement to a Citywide Network

The program that kicked things off, called Code for Billings, launched in March 2021 with a single cohort of 18 people meeting twice a week at the library’s Harbour Street Annex. Today, Code for Billings operates out of 47 locations, including four high schools, two community centres in the Riverside neighbourhood, and a converted warehouse on Wharf Lane that serves as a drop-in digital skills lab open 12 hours a day.

What makes Billings different, according to a draft report by the OECD’s Directorate for Education and Skills, is not just scale but structure. The city required all publicly funded organisations, from the Billings Transit Authority to the Billings Housing Trust, to embed digital literacy training into their workforce development plans by 2024. That policy alone pushed 22,000 municipal employees and contractors through baseline cybersecurity and data-privacy modules last year.

The private sector followed. Tech firms along Innovation Corridor, the stretch of Ninth Avenue from the harbour to the financial district, now collectively fund a “digital passport” program that lets any Billings resident take 15 hours of free online courses in return for a verifiable credential accepted by 112 local employers, including Medtronic, Shopify, and the Royal Bank of Billings.

Why This Matters Right Now

The timing is no accident. Billings experienced its own brush with global instability last summer when a ransomware attack shut down the city’s permit system for 11 days, delaying 1,400 building inspections and costing an estimated $3.2 million in lost economic activity. That breach, traced to a phishing email opened by a city contractor who had no formal cybersecurity training, became the catalyst for mandatory digital literacy requirements in all city contracts.

“It’s not about everybody becoming a programmer,” said the program’s coordinator during a city council hearing in May. “It’s about making sure that a restaurant owner on Market Street knows how to spot a phishing attempt, and a nurse at Billings General Hospital knows how to handle patient data without putting the hospital at risk.”

The results are measurable. A July 2026 audit by the city’s IT oversight board found that cybersecurity incident reports from city departments dropped 41% year-over-year, and the average time to close a reported vulnerability fell from 9.3 days to 2.1 days.

Other cities are taking notice. Delegations from Birmingham, UK, and Medellín, Colombia, have visited Billings this year to study the model. UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning is expected to publish a case study on the Billings approach in September.

For now, the next phase is already underway. Starting in October, every student entering ninth grade in the Billings public school district will be required to complete a digital literacy portfolio, including modules on artificial intelligence ethics, data privacy, and basic coding, before graduation. The school board approved the measure in a 6-1 vote on June 15, with the dissenting member citing concerns about overburdening teachers.

The Code for Billings drop-in lab on Wharf Lane is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week. No appointment needed. No cost. Just a chair, a terminal, and a city that decided its best bet against a volatile world was to make sure everyone knew how to use the tools already in their hands.