As most regular readers will probably know, I’m pretty passionate about the potential of technology to do more for people, and help people do more for themselves.  I’m also passionate about its potential to do more for communities, too.  

I’ll look forward to seeing you on the day.

That’s what Stephen Fry said when he was inducted into BIMA’s Digital Hall of Fame yesterday, and I was really honoured to join Mr Fry, and other luminaries such as Sir Tim Berners Lee, as a Hall of Fame inductee. It’s lovely to be recognised as a digital champion, and to be called “inspirational and influential”, but really I’m accepting this award on behalf of the fantastic people in all of the local grassroots UK online centres who work hard every day in helping people to use the web. Not only are these the people that voted for me, but they’re also the ones who are, without a doubt, doing all the real hard work in bringing the internet to some of the most deprived communities in the country.
 
If you’ve ever been to a UK online centre, or supported someone with very basic computer and internet skills, you’ll know just how tough a job it can be – and the wonderful people within the UK online centres network do it day in, day out, often without much recognition. So this is for all of you – you’re the real digital champions!

Here’s a picture of me thanking you all last night when I got my award.  

That’s it! With a wonderful late flourish from Andy Murray at the US open last week, our golden Summer of Sport is over! I‘ve been as thrilled as the rest of country by the great achievements at both the Olympics and Paralympics (some I was even lucky enough to witness some first hand), but now the fanfare is dying down, like many I am being forced to consider that ubiquitous ‘L’ word – that’s right,‘legacy’.

PS If you ever feel like saying thank you to the UK online centres volunteers you can post something on our Facebook wall and at least some of the 20,000 will see it.

Yesterday, together with the LSE, we ran the third in the Social Digital Research symposium series which, as always, brought together a group of very clever people, and gave them the chance to talk about what they’re doing, make connections with others interested in similar things, and answer some important questions that will help us do things better in the future.

• Ellen Helsper (@EllenHel) spoke about proxy users
• Martina Chapman (@ChapmanMartina) gave us a fantastic look at the latest BBC segmentation
• Martin Wilson from @Go_ON_UK spoke about a need for consistent measures
• Nick Breeze from @GDSteam told us about their work in progress looking at typography for helping people to transact with Government online
• Grant Blank from Oxford Internet Institute reminded us that young people aren’t all online
• Patrick Barwise made a very interesting, very sharp argument for increased investment in driving more people online to use digital government.

As well as hearing from a number of really interesting speakers, who did the job of getting everyone asking questions and sharing, we also came away with some really solid answers to where we go next with measuring digital skills, and in turn how we know whether what we’re doing is working.  

It’s great to see the fantastic progress that these symposiums have made – just six months ago, we all talked about the fact that the ONS stats were no longer the right measurement, and now six months later (and after only three symposiums) we’ve got a clear plan of how we can measure things better – in a way which will make a real impact to everyone working within digital skills, and which will hopefully go some way to securing some much-needed funding to support it.

All the slides from the symposium are on the Social Digital Research ning, and so if you’re not a member already and you’re interested in this kind of thing, I’d encourage you to sign up. It would seem a shame if our online symposium wasn’t just as lively as our offline one. Do go and have your say.

It’s wonderful doing a talk and getting great feedback. Not just “pat on the back” feedback like this (which is nice):

The kind of feedback when you know that people in the room have changed their thinking because of something you’ve said. (It doesn’t happen to me often!)

Yesterday was one of those days. I did a talk was at Westminster eForum’s “Broadband Britain: funding, killer apps, and digital engagement” in Whitehall. The room was packed – apparently a new Secretary of State does that. The organisers were willing to mix together a debate about digital engagement alongside one about superfast broadband and all the technical stuff that goes with that. True to form I said I’d talk about People not Pipes (you can see my blog about that from last year here

In a nutshell areas with poor “normal broadband” infrastructure have high take-up – usually rural areas where the internet is a lifeline to services and communications – and poorer communities with relative good, fast and/or standard broadband infrastructure have low take-up – due to lack of skills, low confidence, fear of failure as well as fear of privacy, and a fear of the costs of broadband. I called for action on both the pipes as well as the people – we need investment in both broadband infrastructure and in support networks so that everyone is skilled to use it. If we work on both elements we can be the “best in Europe” and we will really drive economic growth.

The audience yesterday understood that £1bn public investment in a broadband infrastructure without a close link to an investment in the support networks was quite bizarre. And Julian Smith MP who was chairing the event said he would raise this with Maria Miller as a priority. I’ll keep you posted.

My slides as always are on Slideshare.

This weekend, I’ve been keenly following news of the Universal Credit Select Committee, and so ahead of tomorrow’s Commons debate (which I’ll also be keeping an eye on) I thought I’d have my say too.

One of the main concerns presented before the Select Committee, and one that will no doubt be debated tomorrow, is the fact that the Universal Credit will be built to be ‘digital by default’ – it will be designed for online channels, and will be managed and run online. Concerns have been raised about the 8 million offline people in the UK, and the 14.5 million who don’t have adequate skills, and the risks that they’ll fall through the cracks without the support they need to claim their benefits or keep their details up-to-date online.

It’s a bold move to build a flagship benefit service as digital by default, and so I can understand why people are concerned, but I think it’s the right approach. I talk all the time about how the internet can really open up lives, and by hook or by crook I’m determined to encourage as many people as possible to use it – and use it more. Building online services that people need to use is a great way of introducing people to the internet, and helping them to gain skills that will positively impact on other areas of their lives too. We released some research back in January that revealed that 73% of employers wouldn’t even interview those without computer and internet skills, so not only will people who are unemployed be gaining new skills by claiming benefits online, but they will also be making themselves more employable.

We know that community centres and public libraries (thousands of whom are our partners) can provide a local and low cost range of solutions. For those who need support – whether they’ve never been online before, want some help with their first claim or want ongoing help to gain more confidence with using online tools. For those who need access if they don’t have a computer at home. Labour MP Dame Anne Begg, chair of the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, said that recently she had been unable to find a broadband service for her own flat at less than £30 a month: “On the kind of income that many people on benefit have, that is completely out of the scope that they can afford,” she said. Getting online at home is of course the ideal, but UK online centres do exist as a local alternative when access at home isn’t a possibility.

Universal Credit is brave and ambitious and difficult, but I believe driving this new service to be digital by default is the right thing to do. We should be brave and ambitious too about improving the lives of people on welfare by giving them the digital skills they need to take part in a 21st century where it is inevitable that having digital skills will be as essential as reading and numeracy.

Last week, I mentioned that the BBC had released some really interesting research into media literacy, and now I’ve had the time to fully digest the report, I thought I’d share with you what I found interesting.

As Secret Affair sang (in 1979!), this is the time for action. Time to work together to support everyone, whatever their level of skill, to take advantage of all the great things the internet makes possible. Time to be seen.

I went to Stratford last Saturday without a ticket for the Olympic Park. My son had got caught up in the Olympic optimism and wanted to see the Park even if we couldn’t go in. We had a lovely day, and when we arrived we were confronted by volunteers with megaphones shouting at us that the only way to buy tickets was online. I know it’s my day job, but I did wonder how that would have felt if you had never used the internet.

I hope we can discuss this further at our next research symposium, and I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts either here or over on the Ning.

One common theme in everything I seem to blog about is the importance of working together. We couldn’t support people to improve their skills, and we certainly wouldn’t have been able to help one million of them in just over two years, without working together with our fantastic network of community partners.

You can read more about the Sheffield Channel Shift project, including the full report, and a video featuring some of our partners here.

This week, the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications published Broadband for all – an alternative vision. The report acknowledged something that we’ve known for quite some time – that people and businesses are being left behind due to a lack of access to computers and the internet.  

The report focussed on the fact that government is more preoccupied with speed than with universal access, and made a number of recommendations to ensure we can bring access to as many people as possible throughout the UK.

While I welcome the report, and such a public statement of just how important the internet is for individuals, communities and organisations, I for one felt quite bamboozled by all the jargon, and talk of spectrums, dark fibre and point-to-point FTTP had me lost. For me, this is the real difficulty I found with the report, and it brings me me back to an issue I’ve discussed at length before – one of people vs pipes. Of course, having the infrastructure in place is essential to ensuring we can become a fully digital nation, but by putting all of our eggs into the broadband basked we’re ignoring what is a far bigger issue – that of skills. 

8 million people have never used the internet before, and around 14.5 million do not have adequate skills to get any benefit from it. That’s over 20 million people, a third of the UK population. Whenever we talk about being a digital nation, and where we want to position the UK in the digital league table, we need to remember these 20 million people, and ensure that by investing in better pipes we are not leaving them behind. 

Despite the technical jargon in the Broadband for all report, for me the pipes is the easy bit. Sure it takes investment, and a huge number of people working together, but we know we can achieve it. What I’d like to see now is an equal or greater commitment to the difficult job of upskilling these 20 million people, something that UK online centres throughout the country are doing every day, with very little funding. For me, this is the real challenge, and one I hope will be recognised. 

We’re keen to join up the people with the pipes, so we’ll be soon be publishing a link to all of broadband plans submitted by local authorities, and we’re hoping to help support the demand stimulation side of these plans. I’ll blog more about this in the coming weeks.