Digital inclusion. Nothing about us without us.
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"Nothing about us without us" is a phrase used to communicate the idea that no policy should be decided without the full and direct participation of members of the group(s) affected by that policy.
This is as true for digital inclusion as it is for anything else.
This government has shown unprecedented interest in digital inclusion, with a team of over twenty people already in place and recruitment still happening. There are many very encouraging statements from Ministers (see below for links).
The journey from statements of intent to policy in practice, AKA action, is another matter. Because digital inclusion has its tendrils in just about all other agendas from the economy, to health, education and welfare defining a draft strategy and plotting a course will, I imagine, be a fairly daunting task for the new team in DSIT. There’s an awful lot riding on digital inclusivity.
Digital inclusion: new administration, new definition
Defining what digital inclusion ‘is’ naturally proceeds defining a strategy to promote and deliver it.
The Department has been engaging with a range of stakeholders around a draft four pillar approach to defining digital inclusion, including through networks such as the LGA Digital Inclusion Network.
In their own words: “We have developed a draft definition of digital inclusion following a literature review and in partnership with other departments. Digital inclusion means ‘ensuring that everyone has the access, skills, support and confidence to participate in a modern digital society, whatever their circumstances’. This includes having: Access, Skills, Digital Services and Confidence.
But what do the practitioners on the ground think?
The crucial question in relation to this is, how does this draft definition feel to the local and community practitioners who will ultimately be delivering digital inclusion? Bringing them along on the definition into strategy journey seems, to me, pretty key.
We used our recent Let’s Get Digital event in Durham to explore this.
You can read the report on the workshops we ran, which we have also shared with DSIT. Even better, explore the ‘video wall’ of vox pops to hear it all from the [digital inclusion] horse’s mouth.
You can read and watch here.
My main take outs from our workshops in Durham
It was interesting, energising and inspiring to start discussing the possible DSIT pillars with a wide range of practitioners, advocates and enthusiasts from Durham and further afield across the North East. My summary of the main themes that arose under each pillar:
- On access – that access works better when people can support others to achieve it; that access is meaningless without skills and confidence; that affordability viz access matters; that rural areas need special support. That people need choice.
- On skills – that the key to engaging people in digital skills is to engage them in something that is of interest or use or needed – ‘the hook’. That people are the key to engaging people in skills; that trusted community intermediaries have great scope and potential. That there needs to be an outreach element to this work to get to people; that rural communities need attention.
- On digital services – that we need people to support people to use digital services and that there is an opportunity there to build understanding, skills and confidence as we do that. That digital service design needs to take better/ proper account of digital exclusion and that excluded and marginalised users should be part of iteration and testing. Safety is important.
- On confidence – that personal social networks ‘the individual’s support system’ can support the building of confidence; as can local/ community champions; that digital confidence could be part of every day conversations for service providers. That trust and safety are important.
The critical importance of people – in supporting people with digital inclusion
It’s very clear that the one pervading theme cropping up across each of these pillars is the role, capacity and potential of the human advocate or helper (AKA digital champion).
It is also very clear that ‘talking digital inclusion’ as a matter of course, in any number and range of every day conversations, increases the chances of identifying and reaching the digitally excluded.
The good news? Those people and those networks already exist in the VCSE sector, in local authorities and local health services. They ‘just’ need supporting, extending and sustaining.
That potential also already exists in the private sector, both through service providers (banks, retailers, utilities etc) and businesses who can deliver digital inclusion through social value commitments. Like Capgemini whose partnership with Digital Unite in the Let's Get Digital projects is precisely the enactment of their social value commitments.
Although we’ve got a digital inclusion need, we’ve also already got the capacity to meet it: people.
Digital inclusion: nothing about us without us.