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Don't assume that improving IT alone will breach the digital divide

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by William Davies, Senior Research Fellow, Digital Society
The Times - 25 January 2005

Public policy is not immune to boom and bust, especially when it relates to new technology. The need to tackle the ‘the digital divide’, first publicised by the Clinton Whitehouse, is one of the most important legacies of the dotcom boom, but the policy agenda swings in and out of fashion far more erratically than internet stocks ever did. The latest surge of activity in this area is taking place in the East London neighbourhood of Shoreditch, as reported by The Times earlier this month (‘Broadband will make life rich in Shoreditch’, 10th January). A £20m scheme will make high speed broadband connections available to 20,000 people in a comparatively deprived area. The scheme will be accompanied by local online services, such as community information, message boards, and voting mechanisms to enable referendums. This is the most ambitious experiment of its kind in the UK, and will offer tantalising glimpses of how communities might function and govern themselves in future. But it is nevertheless an experiment, which will be as valuable for its failures as for its successes. Whenever digital exuberance has ushered in such a plan, optimism has turned to crushing pessimism once it becomes clear that the internet is not the answer to all our social prayers.

The most recent case of this was the Government’s £10m ‘Wired Up Communities’ experiment, completed in 2003. The policy supplied home internet access to 12,000 disadvantaged homes, but evaluation showed that the majority of people involved had little interest in using it. This lack of interest has since become a more widely understood feature of the digital divide: 35% of people know of somewhere where they can get online for free, but simply choose not to do so. Failed policy experiments are worthwhile, so long as their successors take the lessons on board. Gratifyingly, the Shoreditch scheme seems to have done so. In addition to the impressive consideration to content – i.e. reasons for people to use the internet – there are governance structures in place, to create dialogue between the technicians and the residents. However, there are still a number of pit-falls and opportunities that should be anticipated. Firstly, the scheme has made the usual, faulty assumption that the most deprived people have the most to gain from digital technology. This is rarely true. Evidence demonstrates that middle class suburbs make the best local use of the internet, through portals and discussion boards. Now clearly public funds should not be spent on more toys for the wealthy. But how about using new media to help connect neighbourhoods where rich and poor live side by side?

Enticingly, East London contains many such areas, and the experiment should aim to create bridges between classes, as well as just access for the disadvantaged. Secondly, there must be maximum evaluation. At £1000 per head, this policy will not come cheap, and it is unlikely that quite such a resource intensive policy could be rolled out very far. This makes it imperative that the consequences are observed and measured, and that the successes and failures are correctly identified. And finally, the scheme should accept that outcomes can be not only good or neutral, but downright bad. What happens when a discussion board is used to slander a local resident? Might the estate webcams also infringe privacy? Identifying these very real problems and considering potential solutions is important, if the scheme is to be rolled out. The digital inclusion agenda must not become a digital utopia agenda. William Davies runs the Digital Society programme at the Institute for Public Policy Research. He is currently working on a ‘Manifesto for a Digital Britain’ (www.digitalmanifesto.org)