The humanITy Digital Inclusion Manifesto
Where are we?
2.1 Those who most need Government services and use them most often are precisely those who are not on line; well over 80% of Government transactions take place with people who are involved in the benefits system or are regular users of the NHS.
2.2 The Government is therefore paying twice for its outward facing services (though it may ultimately save money on inward facing, 'back office' services), retaining most of its employees and paying for on-line services largely used by the 'top' 2/3 of the population.
2.3 As long as domestic computing capacity remains at under 70% with the 30% who do not use it accounting for the vast majority of Government transactions, eGovernment will not meet citizen need or save money.
2.4 People are not going to use public ICT services, eg in libraries, to deal with health or finance which account for the vast majority of citizen transactions.
Recommendation 1: Government needs help to make its services more usable by the vast majority of its service users; this at least means abandoning its underlying bias in favour of the PC platform.
humanITy Partnership Agenda
1. ALL4U - Government as Servant of the Citizen
- Make the case for a switch from Government-centred to Citizen-centred communications policy;
- Gather information from Ofcom, industry and Government on computer, consumer electronics and telecommunications use;
- Conduct research to analyse eGovernment web architecture to see whether it faces 'inwards' (to the provider) or 'outwards' (to the user);
- Compare and contrast successful commercial web sites and those the Government wants citizens to use; identify how eGovernment sites can be improved;
- User test eGovernment sites;
- Publish findings.
2.5 There is strong evidence that the poorest people are the highest percentage users of mobile phones as SMS is the cheapest form of communication; in 2006 the number of people capable of sending a text message overtook the number of people using a PC at home; thus the people Government finds it hardest to reach can send text messages and if they can send them it is safe to assume that they can receive and understand them.
Recommendation 2: Government needs help with channel analysis 1.
humanity Partnership Agenda
2. Always There - Any Time, Any Place, Anywhere
- Develop analysis of use by citizens of different platforms;
- Develop scenarios of use, eg ethnic minority people; victims of domestic violence; those determined not to use the PC; people whose first language is not English;
- Analyse marginal cost of multiple channel digital communication;
- Collaborate with Ofcom and industry to develop an ongoing system for monitoring citizen channel use;
- Convene small group to promote cross platform fertilisation (eg, use of simple EPG navigation in computing; flexible searching of TV archives; parallel use of qwerty and SMS for input);
- Publish findings.
2.6 Some citizens - not surprisingly the most alienated - equate the acquisition of basic ICT skills such as searching, reading, writing, counting with self-service, form filling and conforming.
2.7 It has been assumed that ICT literacy would in some way 'civilise' people and give them employment tools. There are six major problems, however, that are not fully understood:
- The Skills Ratchet - Automation has moved more rapidly than skills acquisition at the 'bottom' of the skills ladder and jobs for moderately qualified people in travel, finance, sales, have been automated.
- Graduate Penetration - At the same time, there has been a counter movement of graduate downward penetration as they have become more mobile and their world price has radically dropped. (If you can buy a mathematician from Asia, why train one here? Likewise, if you can employ an Eastern European graduate on a hotel reception desk at the same price as a second generation immigrant with no GCSE passes you will).
- Underlying Communications Skills - Effective technical operations have always depended on good communication skills but that is even more important now, particularly where networks are larger, sometimes random and usually virtual; there are three kinds of problem:
- Use of English where the provider uses English as a second language;
- Lack of cultural awareness and expectation;
- Problems with extending courtesy.
- Collaboration - Our creative, cultural and educational assumptions are still autonomy based. We prize the novelist over the film maker; but most of what we make, nationally and globally, depends on the ability to collaborate.
- Passive rather than active - we teach people to access and process but not to produce/create.
- Elitist - We still rank our creativity as follows:
- Transformative;
- Exploratory;
- Collage. [1]
Almost all culture that makes money is of the second kind from which people of moderate skills can make a living in an effectively collaborative environment.
Recommendation 3: Government needs help in understanding:
- The limited impact of the information revolution on behaviour
- Its potential in the area of collaboration and creativity
- The effect of the skills ratchet and
- The counter movement of falling graduate costs
- The effect of all of these on the education system.
humanITy Partnership Agenda
3. Content Counts - Promoting Creativity for Economic Viability
- Make the economic and cultural case for creativity;
- Analyse the creative process and develop tools for digital creativity;
- Explore the possibilities and limitations of facilitated creative collaboration between ICT learners;
- Develop economic models for creativity;
- Establish multi medium publishing of sponsored creativity;
- Publish findings.
humanITy Partnership Agenda
4. Digging for Gold - Exploring The Levers of Economic Self-Sufficiency
- Review community ICT training programmes, to analyse the concrete and implied links between 'hard' and 'soft' skills;
- Collaborate with alienated communities to develop communications skills training packages;
- Develop multi platform media outlets, eg to encourage individuals and communities to tell their own stories (autobiography is the first form of communication);
- Establish community media archiving (with BBC, CMA etc);
- Collaborate with Work Foundation to establish links between 'soft' skills and productivity;
- Publish findings.
humanITy Partnership Agenda
5. Niche World - Making the UK Play to Its Strengths
- Co-ordinate analysis of computer-driven automation over medium-term;
- Co-ordinate analysis of the impact of the availability and cost of graduates;
- Analyse global markets for creativity;
- Analyse declining economic sectors vulnerable to external competition in the digital sector;
- Identify opportunities for digital growth;
- Publish findings.
2.8 Our schools curriculum is still firmly based on autonomous, transformative creativity but, as the mass media have a veto on all education policy, we need a bipartisan approach to a radical alteration of the school curriculum:
Recommendation 4: Government should institute a bipartisan mechanism to achieve a radical reform of the school curriculum.
HumanITy Partnership Agenda
6. United Future - A National Enquiry into Education for the 21st Century
- Campaign for a non partisan approach to the National Curriculum and associated testing;
- Identify changing practices in knowledge acquisition and application, communication and management brought about by ICT development;
- Form a partnership with a neutral forum for curriculum and testing analysis;
- Analyse future impact of technology on education;
- Analyse successful international exemplars in curriculum development for an ICT world;
- Publish findings.
[1] This analysis of culture follows the Margaret Boden model ‘Boden, Margaret A.: Creativity and Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence 203 (1998), 347-356' which defines creativity in three ways:-
- Collage - Assembling known material into novel combinations;
- Exploration - Constructing variations on a familiar theme in a known space or genre;
- Transformational - Constructing new kinds of space, genres or media.