Helen Milner

The important role of libraries in a digital world

Posted by

1

At the end of last week, I was lucky enough to find myself with not one, but three meetings about one of my favourite things – libraries. I attended the CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) MMIT AGM on Thursday to give a presentation about the role of libraries in digital citizenship, and then on Friday I visited Nottingham Libraries where I caught a glimpse of the digital inclusion work they’re delivering, as well as attended a meeting at the Arts Council. All of these visits further cemented something I’ve been talking about for quite a while – just how important the role of libraries is to communities, as well as in the digital world.

The CILIP MMIT Group (part of CILIP – the Chartered Institute of Library Professionals) are embarking on a year where they will really be focussing on digital inclusion, so I thought I’d share what my main recommendations for libraries are, following my discussions with them:  

  • Use existing resources: Become a UK online centre, explore Learn My Way – there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when we’ve already done lots of the hard work.
  • Work with partners: Invite local partners to come into the library to support users, or go out to partners to deliver – other UK online centres, health professionals, or other local groups and clubs are all people to think about.
  • Design around local needs: Think about the hooks that work for your audience group. Health always has broad appeal, but things like family history may work well for older people, or employability for young people. Take a look at the resources on Learn My Way for some tips.
  • Talk to each other: Use our Digital Libraries Hub Ning to talk to other libraries who can share some great ideas with you.
  • Read the Doing Digital Inclusion: Libraries Handbook for more inspiration.
Helen at CILIP AGM

Delivering my speech at the CILIP MMIT AGM

One real highlight of last week’s trip was my visit to Nottingham Libraries where I was kindly hosted by Sarah Coulson, Commercial Library Lead for Nottingham Libraries. We headed over to Aspley Library to see their first ever Discover Digital workshop. It’s a Basic Digital Skills course, which is one of 30 being delivered as part of the funding Nottingham Libraries received from our Libraries Digital Inclusion Fund project.

Collage

Visiting Aspley Library

 

As always, the best part of the visit was talking to the learners. There were ten in all, and they were all very keen to learn about how to use a tablet to access the internet. It was interesting to see how some of them found the touchscreen difficult to use, although it feels very intuitive to a frequent web user like me. I met one man who benefits from the internet already, but only through children and grandchildren, who weren’t patient enough to support him to learn but were happy to do his internet transactions for him. He’s now on the path to learning to do it himself.

IMG_1373

Chatting to the learners and hearing about their experiences was lovely

We then made our way to Nottingham Central Library for a quick look around and to see the digital inclusion work they’re doing on a day-to-day basis, and it was interesting to see their co-location with the benefits team.

It’s not only about lending books

Both of these visits made me think a lot about libraries and their role in today’s society. Towards the end of last year I read on the BBC website that the number of libraries in the UK had fallen by 2.6% in 2014-2015, which means that 105 have closed down (or become community run) in just a year. This really struck a chord with me, as I feel very passionate about libraries and their role in communities. They’re not just places to borrow books, but are social hubs – somewhere you can take your children, a place where you can use a computer if you don’t have access to one at home, and a place where you can learn. It’s really important to me personally that Tinder Foundation do the most we possibly can for libraries to support them in their evolving role in the digital world we now live in.

What we’ve done already

We’ve already done a lot to support this – recently creating an online community for libraries to meet, network and share information in the form of our Digital Libraries Hub, which I have mentioned above and which has really taken off since it’s launch at the end of November. A lot of the original members who joined were part of our Libraries Digital Inclusion Fund Project but we’re now at almost 100 members with people joining from as far afield as Australia! It’s clear that it’s more than just Britain’s libraries who are keen to jump on board the digital inclusion rollercoaster.

Embracing digital

Almost all public libraries in England will have free public WiFi by the end of March, and many have new technology and state-of-the-art facilities, including Fab Labs and 3D printers. It’s clear that embracing digital inclusion is the way forward for modern-day libraries – and lots are already doing so. My visit to Nottingham is hopefully the first of many library visits for me in 2016 and I’m making it my goal for Tinder Foundation to work even more closely with libraries over the next year, and to help further accelerate their digital journey.

Another wonderful year

Posted by

1

Last week was our fourth birthday. Can you believe it? Tinder Foundation is now four years old. It seems like just yesterday we were starting out – a small team with big dreams and only one government contract to our name. We’ve come so far since then and our strategy has grown and developed from a little spark into a fully blown bonfire. We now have a 50-strong team and our passion to help those most in need to develop their digital skills and improve their lives is stronger than ever.

Cakey

It was Emily’s (our Research and Specialist Insight Manager) birthday too, so she did us the honours of cutting the cake.

There’s one group of people that we really couldn’t do it without and that’s our network of more than 5000 community partners. You really do make good things happen with digital technology and I couldn’t be more proud of the work you do. Thank you so much to everyone who works with us and helps us too. I’m looking forward to continuing our work with you over the next year and beyond.

As well as our birthday last week we had our annual board meeting and AGM. If you’re not familiar with our board you can take a look at them on the Tinder Foundation website. They really are a very lovely bunch of people and they’re so knowledgeable. They all come from different backgrounds and do very different jobs but they all have one thing in common: they all believe in Tinder Foundation and the work that we do. I’d like to thank the board as well for the experience and the confidence they bring to our organisation year after year.

There’s a lot of really exciting stuff in the pipeline for Tinder Foundation in 2016, including our work to improve the already wonderful Learn My Way. Our team are working really hard to develop the next generation best possible learning platform for our users and I really can’t wait to see the finished product. We played a game in the workshop section of our AGM which involved coming up with an idea to explain the internet to an alien race. The new Learn My Way is going to be so great that if we sent it up into outer space in a rocket, it would definitely be able to teach aliens about computers, the internet and all the wonderful benefits they can bring.

Rocket

Again a big thank you to our network, our board and to the Tinder Foundation team for just being awesome. Keep doing what you do, because you are truly brilliant at it. Here’s to another year of fun!

Transforming people’s lives, building a stronger economy

Posted by

1

This is my speech from Tinder Foundation’s Digital Evolution: Building a digital nation conference. 

We’re all here as we share the same passion and the same ambition. We all want everyone in the UK to have the opportunities and benefits of digital.

It wouldn’t be the Tinder Foundation conference if we didn’t launch our annual infographic with all the stats and facts you need if you’re thinking about digital inclusion. That great chasm – that cleft, an abyss – between the people who benefit from basic digital skills and those who don’t is a fitting metaphor for the divided society we live in and the wasted opportunity that we as a nation are facing.

Digital Nation infographic

This year there are a few differences – and one is the number of people lacking basic digital skills has gone up! It’s a good thing .. believe me. Thanks to our very good friends at Go On UK we now have a clear definition of the five basic digital skills and a robust measure of who’s lacking them. 12.6m people – that’s 1 in 5 adults who need support.

Of course it’s a picture of exclusion but it’s also important to have the stats on the benefits too. A report we published earlier this week shows the economic benefit to the NHS for everyone having basic digital skills is £131 million a year.

We commissioned economists CEBR to measure the net present value of everyone in the UK having basic digital skills. Digital is an amazing benefit but also a huge threat as it levels the playing field and makes the economic competition truly global.

Here’s the maths. Taking the cost of investment, the benefits to people and to government the NPV (net present value) is over £14 billion, or £2.5 bn a year from 2024. We’re facing a new industrial revolution and digital is the architect – with all jobs and all workplaces underpinned by digital.

Today is the spending review announcement we know that Cameron has already pledged £1.7 bn in broadband over the next five years, let’s see today if George Osborne will announce investment in the people and the new basic skills they need to use that infrastructure and to fuel this new, digital £2.5 bn annual productivity boost.

Let’s not talk about digital inclusion – it makes people think of technology and this is a revolution about people. It’s not digital inclusion, it’s about transforming people’s lives, and about building a stronger economy.

It’s about people like Pat and Wendy who use digital to make the NHS work better for them and to improve their health and Mike who had no hope for a job moving to multiple job offers. It’s about transforming their lives and the hundreds and thousands of people helped every day across the country by organisations – community organisations and libraries – like many of you in the room today.

Every single person having the opportunity to be part of this digital revolution, every person making our economy stronger.

People with disabilities excluded from web opportunities

Posted by

2

Yesterday an interesting report was published by Ofcom (“Disabled consumers’ use of communications services”) looking at the take-up and use of the internet by disabled adults. It provides much needed insight into the similarities – and the differences – between those who are offline and have a disability, and those who don’t.

Late yesterday I got a phone call asking me to appear on this morning’s edition (Friday 2 October) of BBC Breakfast, to talk about the barriers that disabled people face when getting online and to highlight the consequential exclusion to savings, discounts, and the convenience of internet services.

Helen on BBC

The report suggests that demographic differences offer only a partial explanation for differing levels of communication device and service take-up. Other factors, perhaps related to the disability itself, may affect ownership and use of key communication services such as the internet.

Over three million people with disability do not use the internet, and only 55% of disabled people have internet access compared to 83% of non-disabled people.

Some of the barriers that disabled people face are the same as those of non-disabled, such as lack of skills or affordability. We also know that some disabilities occur due to ageing, and older people are more likely to lack basic digital skills than younger people. People on low income are also more likely to be non-users of the internet, and disabled people are more likely to be unemployed than non-disabled people. This all makes it hard to discover which demographics are the causal link to being offline. However, the report does show that when all other demographics are removed, there is still a higher probability for a disabled person to lack basic digital skills. Accessibility is a barrier for some, and the report also highlights that people with disabilities are more likely to live alone and that also leads to less shared internet access.

Tinder Foundation’s network of community partners are working hard to make sure everyone has an equal chance to get online, and we’ve created a range of resources and support to help our local partners do more to help disabled people – and to make sure we can really make an impact on these figures.

Lian Pate and the team at Banbury SWITCH in Accrington are one of the centres doing just this, and they were kind enough to step up at the last minute and let the BBC Breakfast crew film at their centre. It was great to see their story on prime-time morning TV, which really helped illustrate the real impact that the internet can have on making disabled people’s lives easier – so I’d like to say a big thank you to them for all their help last night, and to all of our local partners for the fantastic work they do every day.

And it was nice to be on the telly to talk about the urgency to create a more equal nation, even though I had to get up super early.

Clicking with the Philippines

Posted by

1

This week I visited the Philippines to attend the Digital Strategies for Development Summit (DSDS 2015). I chatted about our online learning platform, Learn My Way, and learned so much about the great work going on in the Philippines to support people to gain basic digital skills. We talked about partnership and how Learn My Way can be useful for them.

Learn My Way logo

It was great to gain some insight from another country about how we can be useful and help people working on digital inclusion in countries around the world. I learned a lot, and it was all very ‘dipping our toes in the water’ but I feel like we’re already on our way to making some progress.

I can’t wait to share everything that I have seen, heard and thought, so keep an eye out for another blog very soon. In the meantime, you can listen to me talking on Radio 4’s BBC Click earlier this week, prior to setting off from the UK. Scroll ahead to 13:30 to hear me discuss the Philippines (before I went), Learn My Way, and the importance of digital inclusion.

Women in tech: Sledgehammers not pinkification

Posted by

5

Recently I met a group of friends for dinner. We all work in tech, and we’re all women. Throughout the evening we all seemed to come back to the topic of gender balance – or imbalance – in the tech industry.

I find it really frustrating that the tech sector is relatively new, but new instances of sexism against women are coming to light all the time (and they’re just the ones being reported).

A survey of Guardian readers into sexism in the tech sector found that 73% of men and women who responded think the tech industry is sexist. One 39-year-old male worker at an information security firm said: “I find women in my industry to be leaders of new ideas and equals in every way to men. I’m ashamed of being male sometimes for the way women are treated.”

Why is a new sector being built to exclude women and girls?

We seem to be building a new sector on the fault lines of the old ones

Sexism is an issue common to many other industries, but as you know my bread and butter is in digital. So, if we have a new way of living our lives (and a new industry creating it), and it’s mostly being built by men, where does that leave society?

I like men, I’m a mother to two boys, and I know several men who have stood on a chair and shouted “I’m a feminist”. I don’t want a world where the dial swings the other way and we exclude the men. But I’d really like us to try and get a better gender balance. Without it sounding like a complete compromise, I think the answer has to include men, as well as acknowledge that the current status quo is a problem and we need to actively encourage and support women explicitly into the sector.

Take a look at Emma Mulqueeny’s great blog, ‘How to put girls off programming and tech – the easy way’, as an example of trying to include more girls in tech with the best of intentions, but in reality doing the opposite.

Pinkification

When I was little, my mum modified the TV so that me and my siblings couldn’t watch ITV (to avoid the adverts). My brother would even say he was going to his friend’s house to watch TV so that he could work out what he wanted for Christmas. Now I understand what my mum was up to. Instead of letting the toy companies or cosmetic companies tell me what a girl was and what I should be, she was trying to let me decide that for myself. You only have to Google ‘Girls Toys’ to see the pinkification of our world. And I’m afraid it’s only got worse since I was a child.

Toy shop

I like pink, but just as one colour in the paintbox.

And what about me? I’m not exempt from sexism. Of course I experience sexism. Sometimes I know if I was a man I’d immediately have status. But I’ve spent my life trying to ignore gender and just getting on with it so I can do what I think needs doing. You might have noticed this is my motto for most things.

Dame Shirley is an amazing role-model, a pioneer and one of the most successful tech entrepreneurs ever. She says she “just got on with it” but in order to become successful she had to go by the name ‘Steve’ and her husband had to help her open her first bank account. She did so much for women to work flexibly in technology, as well as other important issues such as equal pay. Watch her brilliant TED Talk – ‘Why do ambitious women have flat heads?‘ to find out more. Please do take the time to watch – you’ll even have a laugh!

Unfortunately after all of the groundbreaking by Dame Shirley and others, we don’t really seem to have gone much further. In fact has it got worse?

The answer has to lie in both men and women creating the right working environments that are fair and equal.

I won’t pretend to have the answers to these questions because it’s clearly not that simple. Does banging on about it even help?

Martha Lane Fox has set up Dot Everyone, with one of her early priorities a focus on Women in Digital; their website says: “Our objective is that 50% of the people that design and make Britain’s networked world will be women. Our initial focus will be on: mapping and assessing activity of women in digital; building an evidence base of the challenges faced by girls and women; and creating a funding vehicle that invests in sustainable social enterprises helping girls and women in digital.” Don’t just watch this space, but go over to her website and see if you can help.

I’ll be meeting up with my dinner friends in the not too distant future to talk about how we get the balance back, how we can help the women and girls following behind us, and what we can actually do that will make a difference.

The optimist in me likes to think things are getting better, slowly; more men are talking about this as an issue. But I’d rather make progress more quickly; let’s tackle this with a sledge hammer not a toothpick. We deserve to have a digital world where men and women are respected and have equal opportunities; where women also build the digital society. After all, we live and work in it too.

Tweet me at @helenmilner and let’s discuss.

Everyone’s been at it recently…

Posted by

1

…talking about digital inclusion that is. Well, that’s how it’s felt after celebrating some important milestones over the past week.

In my last post I talked about the Digital Leaders Annual Lecture and following on from that I wrote a post for the Digital Leaders blog – which just so happened to coincide with the Digital Democracy debate at the House of Commons, led by Meg Hillier MP. It was also the first time the public (me included!) could use electronic devices during an MPs debate.

The Digital Democracy debate in Westminster Hall, March 2015

Fast forward a few days and it was back to Westminster, this time at the House of Lords, for a big day for the Tinder Foundation team. For the past six months we’ve been working with Vodafone UK and 17 UK online centres to research how mobile technology can contribute towards bridging that digital gap. The results of the project have formed a new report, “Mobile: Helping To Close The Digital Divide?”

I must admit (it’s something I talked about on Tuesday) when we first started working with Vodafone I was feeling pretty fed up of attending events to hear people saying that everything (digitally-speaking) was fine because “all the old people will die soon and everyone left already owns a mobile”. And I was definitely fed up of replying (or often shouting) that they were wrong.

But the project with Vodafone has reignited my enthusiasm for mobile as there have been some really great results.

The launch event for ‘Mobile: Helping To Close The Digital Divide?’, a report produced by Tinder Foundation and Vodafone UK

We thought the people taking part would find using a mobile more intuitive (and they did) – which has had a huge impact. But the health and wellbeing impacts, and the impacts for people with caring responsibilities – were a real ‘bonus’ finding. The below is only a taster; I hope you can have a read of the findings in full here. Let me know what you think by using the hashtag #digitalmobile:

  • 55% not only learnt in the UK online centre with the help of the brilliant staff there, but they also carried on learning and enjoying their mobile device at home (and 45% didn’t learn independently)
  • 88% improved their digital skills, with their motivations for using the internet also changing dramatically
  • 65% reported improvements to confidence and self-esteem.
  • Overcoming loneliness and isolation was a big gain, with 67% saying they had better and more frequent communication with friends and family.

And finally, on Wednesday we celebrated another important milestone in our Widening Digital Participation work with the NHS, where I was joined by Dr Ollie Hart. Ollie is a GP from Sloan Medical Centre in Sheffield and together with local partners in Sheffield he has been integral in referring his patients to the UK online centres “digital surgery”, run by the Heeley Development Trust.

I’ll be blogging more about the Widening Digital Participation programme soon, but in the meantime take a look at http://nhs.tinderfoundation.org/.

We’re also holding a great Tweetchat next Thursday to find out what GPs, CCGs and other health practitioners think of the Widening Digital Participation programme. You can find out more here, and so do join in if you’re interested using the hashtag #NHSWDP – we hope to see you there!

Leaving Nobody Behind

Posted by

3

After all of the excitement of our Digital evolution events on Tuesday and Wednesday, I’ve finally found time to blog, and what a few days it’s been!

This is the third year we’ve run the Digital evolution conference, and I’ve got to say it gets better every year. It’s just brilliant to bring together such a positive, can-do bunch of people who have a real commitment to making things happen, and making things better, for the people they’re supporting in their communities.

This year, the focus of the conference was on leaving nobody behind, and people saw the conference as a rallying cry to close the digital divide once and for all. I talked to delegates about the enormous social and financial benefits of basic online skills, and I presented our A leading digital nation by 2020 report, that we published in February, which for the first time ever sets out clearly the cost of getting everyone in the UK online. It’s great having these figures as it gives us something to aim for, and a clear ask in terms of investment.

I also spoke about the focus that we need to put on really getting to the hardest to reach. I know I’m preaching to the converted when speaking to UK online centres about this, but as more and more people get online, we need to start trying to reach those who are most excluded, as they’re the ones who can benefit the most from what the internet has to offer.

Rachel Neaman gave a great speech; she talked about her new role as CEO of Go ON UK, and her ambitions for the organisation. One thing that Rachel said really stuck with me, that “1 in 5 of our adult population doesn’t have basic digital skills and this a national problem and a national disgrace.” She also talked about digital as the fourth basic skill, alongside reading, writing and arithmetic. This ambition really resonated with the audience, and with this kind of clarity I’m confident that Rachel will have a big impact in her role heading up Go ON UK.

All the delegates and speakers had such a positive attitude – everyone spoke as a real doer, not just a talker. This was only emphasised by our final two speakers – Steven Roberts from Barclays who leads the bank’s Digital Eagles programme, and Dominic Campbell of Futuregov, who is aiming to revolutionise the delivery of public services. They both have a great can-do attitude, which I think really sums up the conference.

I’m confident that every single person at the conference will go away and do something else, new, additional, to help close the digital divide – whether big or small. I certainly came away feeling really inspired, and I hope that if you were there, you did too. You can take a look through what was discussed through the #digievol14 hashtag, and you can look at our Storify here.