August 2011
Civic Agenda Briefing Assisted Digital
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Introduction The Government has set out in the Open Public Services White Paper1 the policy of Assisted Digital, which is intended to help bring digital services to those among the 8.7 million people currently offline2 who are least able or willing to access the internet. Government services must be accessible to all who need them, and the aim of Assisted Digital is to ensure that services increasingly delivered Digital by Default are accessible to every member of the public while maximising the economic benefit to citizens and government of solely digital service provision. Prime Minister David Cameron has emphasised the importance of digital access: “In the internet age, we need to ensure that people aren't being left behind as more and more services and business move online. But this issue isn't just about fairness as Martha [Lane Fox]'s work shows, promoting digital inclusion is essential for a dynamic modern economy and can help to make government more efficient and effective.” Issues of digital access As services move online, the consequences of not ensuring inclusion include compounding existing issues of social isolation and economic disadvantage. The Communities and Local Government report Digital Inclusion: An Analysis of Social Disadvantage and the Information Society concludes that “those who are most deprived socially”, such as the unemployed and those with low of income and education, are “least likely to have access to digital resources such as online services”3, and are therefore “least likely to benefit from the very applications of technology that could help them tackle their disadvantage”. Rural access was also found to be more digitally excluded, and there is also an element of ‘digital choice’: the decision to use or not use digital services based on cultural or social factors. Therefore, Assisted Digital initiatives are designed to encourage change while making that change as easy as possible to make, so that financial, educational, and perceived cultural obstacles are not barriers to inclusion. Delivering Assisted Digital To tackle these access issues, the government is looking primarily to private initiatives and volunteers to deliver its policy of Assisted Digital. Research has shown that families with children are more likely to be digitally connected than those without4, and so the Government is encouraging particularly young, tech-‐savvy volunteers to inspire and pass on digital skills to offline family members and others in their communities. An example of this is the independently run initiative Race Online 2012, which encourages volunteers to be ‘Digital Champions’5, inspiring and passing on digital skills to those currently offline. 1
Open Public Services White Paper, July 2011, p. 53. http://www.openpublicservices.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ As of 20/07/11, http://raceonline2012.org/ 3 Digital Inclusion: An Analysis of Social Disadvantage and the Information Society, October 2008, pp. 9-‐12. 4 Digital Inclusion: An Analysis of Social Disadvantage and the Information Society, October 2008. 5 http://champions.go-‐on.co.uk/ 2
Case study: GO ON Pass IT on and UK Online Centres Race Online 2012’s Go ON initiative provides face-‐to-‐face IT courses for beginners for free through UK online centres6, which were set up in 1999 and are funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills via the Skills Funding Agency (SFA). UK online centres operate through existing community centres, libraries, places of worship, and mobile buses, as well as working in conjunction with private partners such as the BBC, BT, Microsoft, Remploy, Three, and the Post Office in delivering and promoting online services. With such initiatives, the Government is hoping to inspire a bottom-‐up take-‐up of digital by leveraging existing social and community networks in order to reach and educate citizens while minimising costs. Another approach to assisting users in accessing online services is through mediated access. This involves organisations directing users through online transactions in person, potentially via digital terminals based in branches or offices.
Case study: The Post Office The government has set out in the report Securing the Post Office Network in the Digital Age that the Post Office is to be “a genuine Front Office for Government at both the national and local level”7. With 11,500 branches visited by more than 20 million customers (a third of the population) each week and 93% of UK population living within 1 mile of a branch, the report demonstrates the potential of the Post Office for delivering face-‐to-‐face digital assistance at the centre of nearly every community. Furthermore, with 40% of over 55s using the Post Office weekly and 55% of branches in rural areas, Post Offices are well placed to assist in bringing digital to particularly isolated from digital services by lack of confidence or skills, and geographical location. Extant and familiar technology can also be used in innovative ways as part of a digital Channel Shift in order to minimise the leap in skills and personal technology required of the user.
Case study: Digital TV Looking Local, a TV and mobile portal for local government services with over 120 content partners, promotes the use of TV and SMS to deliver digital services. The site works with providers such as Jobcentre Plus which, for example, allowed 235,000 people in 2010 to search for jobs via their TV. The organisation surveyed 1500 of these, of whom 68% “confirmed they have no access to PC and broadband and would be unable to search for jobs electronically without the TV based service”8. In order to make such digital TV-‐based services more accessible, the Digital Switchover Help Scheme provides and offers the installation of digital TV equipment to those aged 75 or over, those who are eligible for a disability allowance, the blind or partially sighted, or care home residents9: an estimated total of 7 million people. This briefing has been produced by Civic Agenda for the Digital Leaders Programme. For further information please visit www.civicagenda.co.uk or call 0207 387 0422 6
http://www.ukonlinecentres.com Dept. for Business, Innovation & Skills, Securing the Post Office Network in the Digital Age, November 2010, pp. 2-‐10. 8 http://lookinglocal.gov.uk/site/case_studies/jcp.html 9 http://www.helpscheme.co.uk/ 7