DI Also Stands For Digital Inclusion
BY Mike Parslow
Mike is a retired research scientist & market research professional. At the SPARC 'Digital Identity' conference at Reading University in April, Mike pointed out that DI also stands for Digital Inclusion and has sent us the following extract from his presentation

The Government is keen on getting everyone online and has coined the phrase Digital Inclusion to describe their efforts. Yet if Digital Inclusion is so important, why are there no links to the Government’s efforts on the direct.gov.uk website pages? And why, when you search for Digital Inclusion on the site, are the answers bundled with Digital TV and radio?

Fig 1. above shows the first page of the search results; Ref 3 carries, deep down, the following text:
“£300 million is going towards the Home Access programme, which provides free computers and internet connections to 270,000 low income families with school children.

The government will also contribute an additional £30 million over three years for UK online centres to get one million socially excluded people online. To find out if you're eligible for a Home Access grant, visit homeaccess.org.uk.”

How many people without web access will find this grant application?

The Digital Inclusion Task Force (set up by Martha Lane Fox for the Government) has its own web page called raceonline.org; not the easiest site to find, nor is it designed for new and potential users, but for business partners (Fig 2).

They estimate that 10 million UK residents have never used the Web, and there is a trend towards older and more ‘socially disadvantaged’ people being non users (or Digitally Excluded).

I would suggest that this includes many for whom everyday expenses are already a struggle; those who are already perplexed by the forced move to digital TV, and the impending loss of analogue radio; those who fear the loss of their identity to the machine (reinforced by press coverage of NHS schemes and identity theft); those whose disabilities preclude the use of keyboards, mice etc, and the functionally illiterate; and those for whom English is not their own language.

Bundling all these excluded groups together and calling them ‘refuseniks’ does not help, as they have real and substantial barriers to Digital Inclusion.

I have not heard a clear case for payback for the individual, although Price Waterhouse Coopers claim that making everyone go digital (The Economic Case for Digital Inclusion Oct 2009 http://raceonline2012.org/) could benefit the economy by £22 billion, and that the Government would be a major benefactor.

It uses PO data to argue that the bulk of savings could be made by using price comparison websites etc to save £560 per household per year, and through shopping online. This report also states, however, that the benefits calculated do not take into account the costs of being online!

Digital Identity/Inclusion gets a bad press, usually along the lines of ‘Facebook caused this’, or ‘the murderer used such and such a social networking site..’.

My favourite example of this appeared in March (shown in Fig 3 below), but was later withdrawn. There is no evidence that use of Facebook causes syphilis! This is a prime example of a poor interpretation of some statistics and a lurid headline – but how many people have been put off the Web by such coverage?

Now, of course, there is the new Digital Bill (see Guardian Media, 12.04.10, “You’re not a pirate, are ye?”. ‘Hundreds of people’ have contacted WHICH to say they have been wrongly identified. While the risk of identity theft is low for an individual, the consequences can be time-consuming and expensive.

The Government, software vendors and anti-malware all add to this message; that being on the Web is dangerous - you could have your identity stolen. Whereas in fact you can just as easily have it stolen offline if you do not take sensible precautions, such as shredding any documents that have your address or reference numbers on them. The press coverage of cases of identity theft and credit/cash card cloning would lead one to believe that this is commonplace and comes mainly through details being stolen from your PC. But malware protection is marketable, so not included in basic packages.


Mike's personal view of 'Digital Identity' is HERE