Keri Facer and Neil Selwyn answer some questions, eGov monitor put to them on Futurelab's recent report Beyond the digital divide.
Q1 Could you tells us about the thinking behind the six challenges in the Charter for Change?
The concept of 'the digital divide' is based upon a set of assumptions about what constitutes and sustains information inequalities. These assumptions drive the sorts of political and practical decisions that get made about how to tackle information inequalities. As such, it is not enough to suggest we need a new set of entitlements - we need also to challenge the assumptions which underpin thinking about digital divides. The challenges are, in essence, the cultural and conceptual changes required in order to enable the practical entitlements to be delivered. The order of prioritization is intended to move policy thinking beyond the basic provision of ‘access’ to the more fundamental questions of equality of outcome.
Q2 What risks do we run as a society if we don't directly address the digital divide now and why do these risks warrant the level of expenditure needed to meet the entitlements in your Charter for Change?
Addressing the digital divide is an essential pre-requisite to much of the e-government, e-democracy and e-health programs – and to ensuring that these efforts are not socially divisive
In terms of global economic competitiveness, the UK runs the risk of slipping lower down the international comparisons for ICT access and use, which feed in to growing gaps in terms of ICT-related work skills and lack of technical expertise (which in turn leads to the UK being less attractive in terms of inward investment)
In societal terms, we are running the risk of creating a three-tier digital society – those with plentiful access, resources and capabilities to use ICT in a range of empowering ways; those with compromised access, resources and capabilities to use ICT and sporadic opportunities to benefit from use; and those with little or no meaningful access and opportunities at all. The commercial ICT market is sustained by developing and selling new products to this first group. Government has a crucially role to play in resorting and supporting these other under-served groups.
The issue of expenditure is debatable. Returning to the access to hardware and software question, there is no reason that a thriving re-use market could not be established in the UK in the same manner as for white goods. The WEEE directive provides a financial and regulatory incentive for manufacturers and retailers of computer hardware to engage in re-use of product for socially excluded groups.
When we consider issues of access to skills and support - the role of existing centers and networks could be re-examined, this is not necessarily about new resources but about targeting these more effectively. How might we re-examine the role of schools/libraries/UK online centers? What resources amongst young people and communities already exist and are untapped? There are significant banks of knowledge in communities - the major challenge is how to connect it with those people who would benefit from it. But we know from all the work over the last ten years that centralised provision does not always help in these areas - what is needed are networks that connect mothers with mothers, children with grandparents, local community geeks with individuals needing technical support - so that you create a more organic network of social support.
When we consider issues of access to relevant content - if the UK, with the BBC and Channel 4 cannot address the question of creating content relevant to diverse groups and interests, no one in the world is likely to be able to achieve this. From another perspective, however, it may not be about increasingly centralizing the production of content to 'public service' bodies but, instead, understanding how to put tools for content creation into the hands of communities. Consider, for example, the FabLab approach from MIT, which is about establishing the means by which communities can create their own software at a local level for their needs. Consider, also, the rise of Open Source movements and practices which offer different production models.
The key question is how we mobilise the resources and people and tools available in the UK around these new entitlements, rather than mobilizing them around a reductive model of digital divide as an issue of access to hardware.
Q3 Why should the digital divide be a prioritised with public money rather than putting public money directly into child poverty, the incomes of pensioners or the education system?
In the report we argue that both offline and online inequalities should be given priority for public money. Any digital divide spend should not preclude spend on the crucial areas of public spending such as child poverty, housing, winter fuel payments etc. However, the case for directing extra expenditure towards the digital divide/ICT use amongst excluded groups is that ICT use has the capacity to address some of these long-standing offline inequalities. Moreover, steps need to be taken to ensure that digital inequalities do not lead to new forms of social exclusion as ICT becomes a more integral part of day-to-day life [e.g. newly retired older adults who lose internet access once having left the workplace, school leavers etc]
However, we would return to the question of whether significant additional expenditure is required if we reconceived the objective as the creation of organic self-sustaining communities of access and support, rather than continuing to envisage the challenge as one of one-off government investment in purchasing new equipment and delivering training. This latter model has failed and will continue to fail. It is possible that a complete rethink in terms of provision may also provide a more cost-effective solution.
Q4 Futurelab has identified the lack of a single agency across Government to tackle the digital divide with the demise of the Office of the E-Envoy, does the UK CIO Council and other Cabinet Office based organisations not fulfill this role in terms of leadership and as a advocate for appropriate funding?
They may provide this role structurally within government, but given the extent to which this issue as a major political and public concern has fallen off the media and political radar in recent years, we would question whether there is, at present, sufficient high profile strategic and campaigning leadership in this area that really takes the debate out to the public and industry.
Q5 What will be the scope of your further research into digital inclusion?
Futurelab will be contributing in four key ways in this area (see below) and we actively welcome partnerships with other organisations in these activities to ensure that we do not reinvent the wheel and in order to enhance the impact of the programme:
First, we will be creating a hub for sharing ideas, experience, projects and knowledge between different sectors and organisations. This hub will be both physical - through events, seminars and showcase activities - and virtual - through online publications and forums.
Second, we will be bringing together practitioners, policy makers, creative and technology sectors to tackle substantive questions which crosscut the concerns of different organisations. For example, we will be using the charter as a basis for really creating an understanding of what 'inclusion' could and should look like - particularly in education. A major challenge, for example, will be understanding whether national standards of 'inclusion in digital practices' serve to empower or to exclude - are we better aiming for a single set of basic standards or for diverse and specialised experiences? How might this be enacted at local, national and international levels?
Third, we will be creating experimental approaches to tackling a wide range of social and educational inequalities by bringing together young people, adults, community groups, technologists, designers, policy makers and practitioners. Building on the expertise of these different groups we will experiment with radically different methods of exploiting digital technologies to challenge existing practices which sustain social inequalities. These approaches will be trialled and tested, research findings will be published and, where successful, we will look too wider scaling up of these approaches.
Finally, we will be commissioning and conducting empirical and desk research into overlooked areas of concern. These will be identified in partnership with stakeholders and participants in events, consultation and via the web.
We are very keen to build on and acknowledge previous experience and knowledge in all of these areas. We are actively looking for examples of effective, proven or experimental projects. We are keen to hear suggestions from individuals and organisations as to the issues they see as priority and key concerns today, in the next 10 years and in the next 20 years.