But over the years, the public sector - local authorities in particular - have become drivers, leaders and innovators in digital inclusion. And as digital exclusion has become endemic, it's become vital that everyone in an organisation understands what it is, why it matters and how to combat it. It's not just the Digital Champions at the front desk or running sessions at libraries who need to know about it. For an organisation to be genuinely digitally inclusive, it needs to be across the board.
17th October 2024
Blog and news category
We are hugely excited to be starting a collaborative co-design project, focussed on making Inspire super effective for public sector organisations.
Why?
Inspire builds organisational awareness of digital inclusion, and galvanises employees to take action. We originally designed it with a corporate client for corporate clients. It was helpful for their workforce to understand the issues, while our public sector clients tended to opt for more in-depth training, delivered via the Digital Champions Network for people working in digital inclusion.
As more public sector clients started asking us about Inspire, we realised we should revisit it for its new audience. The goal of embedding digital inclusion across an organisation remained the same - but we might need to tweak the tools to do it. We started to wonder how best to adapt it but then thought... rather than assume, why not ask the experts...
Who's involved?
We're delighted to be joined by by a small group of friends from the public sector - some clients, some not, from the digital inclusion teams at Essex, Kent, Barnet, Cambridgeshire, Cornwall and the University of Keele. They'll be helping us to co-create something that works for them.
How?
They've all done Inspire and fed back in depth about it. We're using this data to run short workshops grouped around the themes of..
- Content: how does it need adapting for the different audience?
- Data: what do the organisations need to know and show?
- Engagement: who do they need to get on board and how best to do it?
What will we create together?
We know we'll end up with a version of inspire that's tailored to meet the needs of the public sector, but exactly what that is, and what else the process brings to light, we're yet to find out! We suspect it will be really interesting, collaborative and creative! And though the end-product is the important thing, we think the process may possibly be just as rewarding and fascinating.
We'd like to give a big thank our brave and imaginative co-creators for trusting us and coming with us on the journey! We'll let you know where we end up.