digital

It just keeps getting better

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I recently visited our colleagues at Good Things Foundation Australia in Sydney, where you might know that we’ve also established a new network called Be Connected. Everyone over there is so enthusiastic about digital and social inclusion and part of the reason for that is seeing and hearing about our impact in the UK – and our latest annual report provides a great overview of the past 12 months.

It’s been a good year for Good Things Foundation

The title says it all – another year and another truckful of incredible achievements. From supporting 320,000 excluded people to improve their lives through digital, helping 7,700 people to learn English language skills through the English My Way programme, to training 5,888 Digital Champion volunteers, the list goes on and we really couldn’t have achieved it without our extensive list of partners big and small and, of course, the Online Centres Network.

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The 5,000-strong ‘big club’ continues to go from strength-to-strength and I just want to thank you for all your amazing work over the past year. You are a true inspiration to me, to the team, and to our Be Connected network in Australia, and you are important pillars of support to the people in your communities.

I’m so proud of this organisation and all of our amazing staff. I’m looking forward to continuing our work together over the next year and achieving even more great things.

Our annual report has much more in it, do have a read. It’s at https://annualreview.goodthingsfoundation.org/#its-been-a-good-year

The Digital Capital of Europe

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I can’t stress enough the huge benefits of learning digital skills. We help so many people through the Online Centres Network to realise the importance of learning and developing this skill set but there are still some people who just don’t think it’s relevant. In fact, according to our Digital Nation infographic 2016, one of the most commonly perceived barriers to 50% of people getting online is that they think they don’t need digital. But the Tech Nation 2017 report, released last week, has a lot of stats in it demonstrating how vital tech is, not just to individuals but to the economy, and this really backs up my argument.

This is the third annual report of its type released by Tech City and it analyses how technology companies are performing across the country in individual areas. To produce the report they analysed data points, collected survey responses and incorporated insights from over 220 community partners across the UK, in order to get the clearest picture from those who know best – those working on the ground.

Some very interesting stats

The type of people discussed in the report have a lot more experience in the world of digital than the socially and digitally excluded people that we aim to reach within the Online Centres Network but I found the stats interesting as they show just how beneficial technology and the tech industry can be to individuals and to the economy as a whole, and there’s no reason why the people supported through the network can’t become a ‘techie’ themselves.

With 12.6 million digitally excluded people in the UK, I’d never thought of it as the digital capital of Europe but according to this report and these stats, that’s what we are. In the UK, digital tech investment stood at £6.8bn in 2016 (£28bn in the past 5 years), compared with other EU countries like France (£2.4bn in 2016) and Germany (£1.4bn in 2016).

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Image courtesy of Tech Nation 2017

 

Thinking about this kind of investment, surely that means the tech industry is giving back to the economy? It is. The annual contribution to the UK economy for tech workers is £103,000 per year – their gross added value is more than double that of the £50,000 contribution from those not working in technology.

With such huge benefits to the economy, individuals working in the tech industry are greatly rewarded. The average tech salary in the UK is £50,663 compared with non-tech jobs which stands at £35,155. This is 44% higher than the national average.

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Image courtesy of Tech Nation 2017

 

There’s more jobs in this area too. Between 2011 and 2015 the growth rate of digital jobs was more than double that of non-digital jobs and the report found that the UK has 1.64 million digital tech jobs in total; the digital economy is growing 50% faster than the wider economy.

But we have to make sure that we’re helping the tech industry to be all it possibly can be and that means tackling the problems they face head on. One problem which didn’t surprise me was highlighted in the report, stating that poor digital infrastructure is a business challenge for many (28% – over a quarter of survey respondents). This isn’t just in rural areas – the highest proportions were in large cities such as Glasgow, Dundee and Brighton.

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Image courtesy of Tech Nation 2017

 

Why start a career in tech?

I suppose many people would ask this question. If these stats aren’t enough to convince you, I really don’t know what is. The benefit of digital skills, not just to the economy, but to individuals as well are endless and working in the technology industry can be very rewarding, especially when you’re developing apps and systems which will benefit those who are most in need, everything from helping those with hearing loss to fighting deforestation.

I think a career in tech can be beneficial and rewarding in more ways than one. But don’t take my word for it – get out there, adopt your inner ‘techie’ and see what the world has to offer.

Read the full Tech Nation 2017 report here.

Go digital and go global

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Yesterday, I attended a roundtable event, hosted by The New Statesman in association with Lloyds Banking Group, called SME Insights: Go Digital, Go Global. The purpose of the discussion was to explore how British businesses – SMEs in particular – can capitalise on overseas trading opportunities, especially with the looming prospect of Brexit.

I was very keen to attend because I think through Good Things Foundation projects involving SMEs and digital skills, such as our Digital Garage project with Google and our rural project with Prince’s Countryside Fund, we have a lot of insight to offer.

There were two discussion points that I was keen to capitalise on:

  • How critical is digital literacy to UK’s overall global competitive edge?
  • How do we motivate businesses to change their digital capability?

When we talk about digital innovation for SMEs, we need to recognise that there is a broad continuum. (Of course) not all SMEs are the same. Almost half don’t have a website so are very immature digitally, and others are digital first companies or what Nick Williams at Lloyds calls “born digital” small businesses.

This SME digital skills continuum looks a bit like this:

DIGITALLY IMMATURE (don’t have skills, confidence or awareness)

  • According to the Lloyds Digital Index, 1.4 million SMEs (38%) lack one or more of the basic digital skills
  • 49% of small businesses don’t have a website (Lloyds Digital Index)
  • 78% of sole traders invest no money in digital skills (Lloyds Digital Index).
DIGITALLY AWARE (have a website, have some skills)

  • Over half of small businesses (55%) accept payments online (Lloyds Digital Index).
DIGITALLY MATURE (have a website, use social media, staff are confident using digital technology)

  • 50% of sole traders have all five basic digital skills (Lloyds)
  • The most digital SMEs are more than twice as likely to report an increase in turnover that the least digital (64%) (Lloyds)
  • There is a growing emergence of social media as a key platform for small businesses to reach potential customers.
    • It’s an easier cheaper way to keep in touch with their customers with 38% reporting using social media to communicate with customers in 2016. This is up by 11% on the previous year.
DIGITALLY INNOVATIVE (either “born digital” or who have evolved to develop digital products or services for their customers)

Digital maturity and digital innovation can be demonstrated in a number of ways:

  • 58% of small businesses say increased sales is one of the advantages to using digital.
  • There was a lot of love in the room for The Cambridge Satchel Company and their global growth story.
  • 65% state that they use technology to cut their costs and increase efficiency.
  • And there’s the digital sector companies selling games online globally, or disrupting through digital.

There are two key points here:

  • You are much more likely to be digitally innovative if you have a team that understands and uses digital technology.
  • Digital innovation doesn’t always have to be complex or new – it’s really about doing things better. We also talked about charities, so one example of this digital innovation is where really simple tools connect people better. Take Streetlink, a very simple online referral service that enables people to report rough sleepers so that Streetlink can then alert local referral services and provide you with an update on progress.

Motivating Businesses to change their digital capability

The risks of not innovating are much greater. I told the roundtable that many customers expect to engage digitally and by not engaging them and not embedding digital within all aspects of service delivery, it’s much harder to reach them.

Innovation and frontline delivery have become two sides of the same coin; the challenge for small businesses is to continually consider how they can improve service delivery and embed digital technology in their strategies, and the challenge for us and other organisations like Lloyds Banking Group, is to make sure we’re finding ways to help them do that.

Going Global

Lloyds has got a great portal to take the pain out of exploring overseas market – their international trade portal.

Good Things ourselves is an SME and we’re now in the foothills of going global. We know first hand some of those barriers, but also we know that without digital we wouldn’t be doing it – making contacts via Twitter and email, and developing contacts via Skype, is clearly a very low risk and low investment way of starting out. There are still 4bn people who have never used the internet, many of whom are also extremely socially excluded, so there’s a big world out there. I’m hoping we’ll be able to support a small proportion of them to thrive in the digital world we all enjoy.

I <3 Cows

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Hello and a big welcome back after the holiday period. I hope everyone had a wonderful break and if you were working over Christmas and New Year, I hope it was a calm and cheerful time for you. I really enjoyed the festivities, but, most importantly, I had a chance to reflect on our work tackling digital and social exclusion and focus my mind on the crucial areas that should be at the forefront of our work. One of these areas is Rural.

Just before Christmas, I attended the Prince’s Countryside Forum with two of my colleagues and a member of the Online Centres Network, Paul Davies from Destinations@Saltburn. Together with Paul, we hosted an interactive workshop and I gave a lightning talk entitled ‘Digital: Opportunity or Frustration’. We were also able to chat to The Prince of Wales, and I was interested to hear his thoughts on rural and share mine with him.

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One of the things that really stood out for me, was a lady who spoke at the event. She’s a farmer and she knew that from an early age she wanted to work with cows. “I love cows, I always have” is how she opened her talk. But her chosen career path presents many challenges. For starters, where she’s based is so isolated, she finds it hard to meet and interact with other people. She can’t even begin to think about digital inclusion when there are other such pressing issues, like isolation.

This made me realise just how big a social challenge rural is. It made me ask myself, what are the biggest challenges in rural areas and how can we help tackle them?

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When we talk about digital and social exclusion, we often focus on the urban environment where poorer people live. But people in rural areas also have big hurdles to jump, such as isolation – being so far from places where they can go to develop their skills – as well as availability of broadband.

Solutions

There are things being done. For example, the National Farmers Union are lobbying for fast, affordable and reliable broadband and mobile coverage for farmers, growers and their rural communities. Broadband helps rural businesses to thrive. It helps them to be more efficient; attract more customers. The centres participating in our Prince’s Countryside Fund project are helping rural businesses to do more with digital, and in year two – which we’ve just started delivering this month – there’s also focus on individuals, Digital Champions and community organisations.

Some of our centres based in rural areas are a member of our Online Centres Specialist Rural Network. Nyree Scott is a centre manager who works in rural areas running and working in many centres. She does outreach work, as do many centres in the network, bringing internet, devices and the power of online to individuals who would otherwise be left behind. In outreach work, online learning platforms, like Learn My Way, are ever so important, because it means that everyone can be supported wherever and whenever they need it.

The areas of teleworking and telehealth are opening up massive opportunities for people in rural areas that just weren’t there before. The ideas of being able to work from home or a specific location, and being able to provide healthcare remotely, through the means of digital technology, are going a long way in improving their quality of life. But that’s been talked about for the thirty years I’ve been listening!

Worlds apart but closer than we think

Often when we think about rural locations we think about places here in the UK. We definitely don’t think about places like California, especially with it being the home of Silicon Valley. But towards the end of last year I read a blog post about a project taking place there called: Bridging California’s Rural/Urban Digital Divide with Mobile Broadband.

More and more farmers in rural California and relying on tech to make their business more efficient and environmentally friendly through precision agriculture. But many rural communities there suffer the same lack of reliable, fast mobile broadband that we do here, and this means that many rural economies there are falling behind.

The project aims to tackle this issue by collecting data on mobile broadband performance in a specific area – Yolo County – and comparing that performance to what mobile providers claim they deliver, and what farmers actually need for precision agriculture. This information will be collated into a report and presented to state officials to inform public policymaking on rural broadband.

A really interesting project, and something I wonder if we could replicate here.

What does rural mean to you?

The Oxford Dictionary defines Rural as: “In, relating to, or characteristic of the countryside rather than the town.” I am quite sure that many of you would associate rural with ‘old-school’ farming and isolation, and define it as unconnected, perhaps even distant. With better connectivity and better transport links, it doesn’t have to be this way.

The online world can revolutionise the farming industry, revolutionise rural businesses and revolutionise rural life as a whole. With a little collaboration from those willing to help, I am sure we can make this revolution happen.

If we could do that, my friend from the Prince’s Countryside Forum wouldn’t have to travel to London to share her love of cows – she could get online and share it with the world. But I’m sure, as with all things digital, she would still like to come and meet Prince Charles in person, and balance her online and offline worlds to suit her.

Ditching devices? We don’t need to detox

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I returned to work this week after being on holiday for a fortnight. I felt relaxed and ready to get back into the swing of things. I sat down to catch up on all the digital inclusion news that I may have missed while I was abroad and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the key finding from Ofcom’s annual Communications Market Report. The headline: “Fifteen million UK internet users have undertaken a ‘digital detox’ in a bid to strike a healthier balance between technology and life beyond the screen.”

I thought it was a joke.

After chatting to my colleagues I realised that it was all true. On one side of the spectrum, in the UK there are 12.6 million people who lack the very basic internet skills; on the other side there are 15m who are so sick of technology that they’re purposefully spending time away from it. The question I have is: why would anyone want to do this?

The Ofcom research says: “The [research] reveals how our reliance on the internet is affecting people’s personal and working lives, leading many to seek time away from the web to spend time with friends and family.”

Connectivity-creep

Image courtesy of Ofcom

I don’t think this is the reason. I think the reason that so many people have decided to spend time away from the web is because it’s the ‘fashionable’ thing to do. There may be some people who genuinely believe their addiction to tech is affecting their lives, but to me, the problem is with the person, not with technology.

It’s all about balance. All of the digitally included population can choose how much (or how little) digital channels they engage with.

Many people spend more time than they should online because they have a deep-rooted ‘fear of missing out’. Addiction is human nature and technology simply presents new options for this.

The internet makes things easier

Thinking about when I was on holiday for the past two weeks, the idea of going through it without the internet just seems absurd. Technology has been developed over time to help make our lives easier, and I genuinely think that it does. I was able to do my check-in online before reaching the airport, I had all of my travel documentation stored on my phone instead of printing out masses of paper, and even when I reached my holiday destination I was able to do things like look up a TripAdvisor review of a restaurant we thought looked nice to see if it would be a good place to eat. Another thing that I did with my Kindle was download an audiobook before a long train journey, so I could listen to it whilst still being able to take in the gorgeous scenery outside the window.

I didn’t spend my whole holiday stuck to my tablet/phone though – hence why I managed to miss the launch of Ofcom’s report – because I know that it’s OK to not be on Twitter replying to tweets, and I know it’s OK to not reply to an email immediately as soon as it comes through. If something is that important and needs an immediate response, the person will call me.

Smart-snubbing

One aspect of the report that I found particularly interesting (and also quite entertaining) is that 26% of adults have sent texts or instant messages to friends/family while in the same room. Can you believe it?

Smart-snubbing

Image courtesy of Ofcom

And 40% of adults (that’s four in every 10 people) felt they’d been ‘smart-snubbed’ at least once a week, with 17% saying it happens to them on a daily basis. Up until now I had no idea what smart-snubbing is – it means to ignore someone because you’re too engrossed in your smartphone or tablet. This is a prime example of obsession.

To all the ‘digital detoxers’ out there I say, if you want to visit or talk to your friends and family more, just do it! If it’s not possible because they’re in another country, like my son for example, technology isn’t a hindrance, it becomes an enabler. It means I can use services like instant messaging to get in touch with him and make calls through data and WiFi without the big phone bill that used to come with international family contact. I’d never dream of going on a ‘digital detox’ because it would mean not being able to do things I need to and want to do.

Tuesday poll

Yesterday we put a poll on the Tinder Foundation Twitter account asking whether our followers make an effort to spend time away from their phone and the internet. 42% of respondents said that they do, whilst 58% said that they do not. I’d be interested to chat to those who said they do, to find out exactly why they think that they need to.

The internet makes our lives easier in so many ways and to me, giving that up intentionally seems absurd. Maybe my earlier hypothesis was right; maybe the ‘detoxers’ really are just doing it because giving technology up is the ‘in’ thing to do. If that is the case, I can’t wait to see what fad comes next.

Take a look at Ofcom’s Communications Market Report 2016.

#LoveLibraries

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Wow. From the first moment I stepped into Manchester Central Library I was impressed. I visited another English city’s central library recently and they said, with a wistful look in their eyes: “If only we could become like Manchester Central Library”. Now I know why.

The beauty of libraries – like all UK online centres – is their diversity; the frustration is … their diversity. However, that long list of things that some libraries want to be or that some libraries want do, Manchester Central Library ticks them all.

  • An impressive space, well used. ü

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  • A blend of old, heritage spaces and modern services enabled and enhanced by technology. ü

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  • A virtual archive wall, designed for co-use by young and old people together. ü

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  • A bustling cafe embedded amongst the digital archives. (Including all maps now digitised.) ü

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  • A business library and support service for businesses. ü

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  • A music library where you’re encouraged to be noisy. ü

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  • 3D printing facilities. ü

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  • Lots and lots of people using it. ü(5 million people a day)

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  • A media lab with a weekly session for teenagers to learn coding. ü
  • Drop in support for basic digital skills. ü
  • Human beings smiling and helping. ü

Our Digital Libraries Hub (#digilibraries) is becoming the virtual place to go to talk about digital inclusion and libraries. And later next month I’ll be talking about the role of community assets – such as public libraries and the community centres in the UK online centres network – in deploying digital to tackle social challenges.

In the meanwhile, if you find yourself in Manchester, do pop into the Central Library, as I think you’ll say “wow!”

Obamacare: Cash poor, health poor, digital poor. Can we help? Yes we can

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A few bugs in the Obamacare website is not the real story here. It’s the fact that, according to Pew Internet, 48 million Americans don’t use the internet at all and millions more can’t do online transactions. Tinder Foundation is a UK non-profit with a proven solution to help millions to get online and use Government services. A year ago I would have said that our success wasn’t relevant to this story unfolding over the pond but now I know that it is – the stats tells the story. In the US and the UK the people who are offline are basically the same demographic and have the same barriers: 50/50 of offliners are over/under 65 years of age; around 40% live in households on very low incomes; and about 50% have a low educational attainment (no high school diploma in the US and don’t have 5 GCSEs in the UK). Lack of perceived relevance and not having the skills to use the internet are the two main barriers. If the problems are the same then the solution could be too.

The correlation between those who are the ‘digital poor’ – who don’t and can’t use the web – and poor health is huge. Just looking at life expectancy is a clear indicator: in London the average age at death ranges from 71 in Tottenham Green to 88 in Queen’s Gate and in Washington DC life expectancy for the poor is 71 years and for the education professional it’s 83 years.

The cost of healthcare is not something we have to worry about in the UK, we’re lucky to have the NHS so much so we often take it for granted. If you fall ill in the US it’s down to you to foot the bill – unless you have health care insurance. It is estimated that between 32-50 million Americans don’t have any cover and with the average visit to the emergency room costing £780/$1,265 it can be expensive. Unsurprisingly the number one reason for bankruptcy in the US is health care costs. So Obamacare is there to help people who are cash poor, and who will in all likelihood suffer health inequality, and will also suffer digital exclusion.

Tinder Foundation is lucky to be working with NHS England to tackle the ‘digital poor’ so that they can benefit in the drive for better health information, health prevention, and more conversations about health – all to be online. Our work with our 5000 hyperlocal partners in the UK online centres network will increase the web literacy for those digital poor so that both have the skills to use it and know that it can improve their and their families’ health. Tie that together with essential tools such as the free Learn My Way online courses helps people to learn as well as local partners to track that learning using the data analytics. I think this is a model that could help Americans to not just register for Obamacare but also to access online information to keep them healthy too.

We’ve helped over 1 million people at a unit cost of £30/$50, and I know our model could work for much higher numbers of people where there is a collective will to make it happen. This kind of effort, at the kind of scale that’s needed, takes time, fantastic partnership building on the ground, and persuasive and focused leadership.

It’s easy to see that the introduction of Obamacare should benefit millions of people. Stop talking about the bugs. Bugs in a website are a temporary problem and I’m sure there are hundreds of programmers busily fixing it right now. It’s the 48 million Americans who don’t use the web that is a more difficult problem to fix.