Digital Sea reports growth but auditors and council press for clearer subscriber verification

Digital Sea told the Cleveland Utilities Committee on Oct. 30 that its third-quarter rollout has connected thousands of households but drew sustained questioning from council members and the city's internal audit team about how subscriber counts are verified and which Cleveland households are actually getting service.

"We don't need perfection. We need progress," Digital Sea executive director Josh Edmonds told the committee during the presentation, framing the program as a "Cleveland model" that pairs city funds, philanthropy and local outreach. Edmonds said the program has connected 4,019 households this year (the year-two goal was 4,700), 6,821 total households since January 2024 and more than 17,000 residents overall, and that Digital Sea has facilitated roughly 19,000 trainings to date.

Council members pressed staff for clarity on the figures and on access to the underlying data. "Trust but verify," Councilman Harsh said multiple times while asking why committee members could not see the subscriber lists directly. Natasha Brandt, manager of internal audit for the city of Cleveland, told the committee that internal audit receives subscriber and adoption files from Digital Sea on a secure flash drive and "they check those against a database of addresses that we have," adding that the team also cross-checks billing addresses and sign-in sheets and performs field sampling.

Brandt said auditors keep personally identifiable information secured and that the quarterly audit files are not…