Making Digital Inclusion Fun Again
This set of three blog posts started life as some of the notes and “thinking aloud on Bluesky” that I did in preparation for giving oral evidence at the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee’s inquiry into the digital centre of government.
It has been ten long years since the last Digital Inclusion Strategy was published, so it was great to see a new Digital Inclusion Action Plan published in February with strong support from a range of ministers. Inclusion languished under the last government, with some incremental shifts around social tariffs, so this new energy to close the equity gap is very welcome indeed and everyone who has worked hard to keep digital inclusion on the policy agenda during some challenging times deserves huge praise for this achievement.
However, the Action Plan could be a bit more exciting.
Luckily it is open for consultation until 9 April, and I’m sure the team at DSIT would love to hear from you about (a) how to make it more fun and (b) the fact that amazing digital inclusion organisations like Community Tech Aid and Solidaritech need proper consistent funding so they can get on with delivering and not have to constantly worry about fundraising.
That aside, five thoughts from me:
1. Make services work for people; don’t make people work for services
Bafflingly, rolling out One Login to more government digital services is listed in the action plan as a useful stepping stone to digital inclusion. Digital inclusion shouldn’t be about logging into government services; it should be about being able to use technology on your own terms in ways that help you to have a good life. Instead, the digital inclusion action plan could be designed to operationalise the brilliant Minimum Digital Living Standard.
2. Stop giving people terrible old laptops
Yes, I know the circular economy and everything, but if you’re not digitally confident, why would you thrill to the idea of having an old civil-service laptop? Honestly, give people something they can use joyfully and confidently without having to track down a former civil-service IT support manager when it goes wrong.
3. Digital exclusion is often economic exclusion
Economic modelling carried out by Promising Trouble in 2023 showed that some lower income households spend 5% of their disposable income on broadband. Social tariffs aren’t enough and charity isn’t the answer; really solid digital inclusion reform requires economic policies as well as digital ones.
4. Build an inclusive innovation culture across the UK
Technology often gets talked about as a domain populated by “exceptional people” doing exceptional things, but honestly those guys all need to get over themselves. As I’ve said before, what good is innovation if it doesn’t work for everyone? We could build an inclusive culture of innovation across the UK that makes it fun and interesting and inspiring and exciting and opportunity-creating for more people to use technologies to get things done and find things out and have a go at doing stuff. It doesn’t have to be all forms you don’t want to fill on on old laptops you don’t want to use. We need to stop thinking about digital inclusion as a wicked problem and reframe it as an opportunity. More about how to do that in this Green Paper.
5. Some people don’t want to use the Internet.
Leave them be. They’re probably doing just fine.