2 The digital divide and inclusion

The digital divide is the gap between people in society who have full access to digital technologies (such as the internet and computers) and those who do not (UK Parliament [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] , 2020).

The pandemic highlighted the issue of the digital divide. During periods of home-schooling there were frequent media reports of children who did not have access to technology to be able to join remote lessons. There were also many people who were not able to shop online due to lack of access to technology, digital capabilities or poor infrastructure – often lack of internet access.

The Welsh Government’s report on digital inclusion and basic digital skills (gov.wales, 2020) indicates that:

• 60,000 personal internet users (aged 16 or over) can’t demonstrate the skill of using a search engine
• 730,000 personal internet users can’t demonstrate the skills of managing privacy settings
• 19% of disabled people do not personally use the internet and are therefore deemed digitally excluded
• 76% of social housing tenants have internet access compared to 90% owner occupied.

The Digital inclusion and basic digital skills in Wales: 2019–2020 infographic, which summarises the Welsh Government’s Digital inclusion forward look: towards a digital confident Wales strategy, captures the scale of the digital divide in Wales. While some of the numbers may seem low, those in the digital divide are often those that are most vulnerable, excluded from basic inclusion in society or in areas where digital infrastructure is limited.

In the video below, contributors share their insights about digital inclusion, and how to narrow the digital divide.

Download this video clip.Video player: hyb_1_2022_sept126_digital_inclusion_and_the_digital_divide_compressed.mp4

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Transcript

JESSICA LEIGH JONES:

The Well-being of Future Generations Act is a legal framework in Wales that encourages organisations to improve and enhance their social, environmental, economic wellbeing. We're actually the first country in the world to have what you might consider a minister for the unborn. So we have a wellbeing of future generations Commissioner in Wales. The Well-being of Future Generations Act itself is comprised of seven key goals.

So some of those goals, for example, are to create a more resilient Wales, a more prosperous Wales, and a more equal Wales. And digital is one of the key enablers in making that happen. However, it can also be a double-edged sword. Some of the digital infrastructure that we have in Wales isn't quite at the level that it needs to be to enable that digital equity. And actually what happens is we get digital exclusion.

So within the Centre for Digital Public Services, we ran a really amazing alpha program for adult social care, where we completely transformed one of the processes. So we used SMS text message to increase the amount of communication, reduce wait times for patients and carers. And the results were absolutely fantastic.

However, there are still 12% of households in Wales that don't have access to proper broadband or proper mobile phone signals. And those individuals would be completely excluded from a fantastic process like that. So there's still a lot of work that we have to do in order to invest in that digital infrastructure and some work that we have to do to consider people who don't have access to that.

Where I live, which is very rural, I've been unable to use two-factor authentication, which is an essential cybersecurity measure for any organisation. Again, because I can't receive text messages. So developers of digital tools and standards have to think beyond what the majority of the population can access because some people will be completely excluded from using those tools.

Jobs for life are a thing of the past. It's not even about changing career multiple times anymore. It's about actually creating your own jobs in the future. And so the role that further education and higher education can play in equipping people with those digital skills is to really look at how we create short, sharp, upskilling interventions for individuals and for industries and for employers who are going on that journey.

GEMMA HALLETT:

I'm not anti-university, I'm just pro showing all the options and in a way that's digitally inclusive, accessible, to young people. The ones that are going off to university, that 20%, 30%, they're taken care of. You don't need to worry about them. But we need to worry about the 70%, 80%. So using a tool, a digital application that they've engaged with, that they've co-created is a way of showing all those opportunities, so many opportunities, particularly in Wales right now, you've got growth emerging in priority sectors.

That ultimately, these school leavers, young people can-- I say it's not about jobs of the future, it's about sectors of the future. But for young people, it's getting into work early, earning that skill, learning and earning. In this economy, it's a difference between leaving with debt or leaving with a degree and no debt. There are so many options. I've met young people in the valleys that are upskilling through various micro-credential courses that are running side hustles through-- self-taught through YouTube. There's incredible opportunity.

We have people in industry making decisions, we’re still coming from the hierarchical perspective. It's OK, we've always done it this way, so we'll continue doing it this way. And we're coming up against barriers then and blockages. But all you've got to do is speak to young people or speak to the people you're employing, speak to the people you're working with, what works best for you.

We can't just generalise that everybody’s coming with digital skill sets. Especially in rural Wales, we just don't have access to it. A lot of people, young people in south Wales, are living in generational poverty, we’re in third generational poverty in some of the valleys. If we can break down those barriers using a very simple concept the young people help design to bring these opportunities into their communities and with working as it is, hybrid models. We got the companies in Cardiff that can employ people from the valleys. And without having to travel, they can work.

There is an opportunity and equally a challenge for Welsh organisations. So if we just centralise around Cardiff right now, Cardiff companies are able to employ people in the valleys, people who may find traveling to Cardiff it's more of an occasion than a commute. So it opens up that talent pool. We can get into the communities because of remote working. We can offer Welsh people Welsh jobs.

Conversely, because the skill set is maybe not there, those jobs are actually going remote elsewhere. 99.7% of businesses in Wales are SME, 70% of them are one-man bands. So they don't have the resource to upskill handhold staff. So there's a challenge there. And I'm trying to solve that challenge.

MATT WINTLE:

Equality in people working from home, I think, is really important to us. And that is ensuring that people have the same opportunities. And that's ensuring that people have the same or equal working environment because of that. And it's being able to react to that and listen to that and give people what they need to be able to do the job well. And we've done that in a number of ways. We've done that through financial support, we've done that through technical support, we've resisted saying, well, actually you'll have to come back in then because that, again, creates that two-tier system.

So I think being very aware that not all things are equal and being able to react to that and give people the support they need has been really important for us. And it wasn't easy. Those first three or four months, I was still working in technology at that point, was a Herculean task. To be able to get everybody the tools that they needed to be able to do the job effectively is really tough. And if you didn't go through that concentrated period of doing it, then I think the focus on that over time, you have to retain that focus because otherwise, you'll leave people behind.

And you only need to leave a few people behind to start breaking down that positive culture that you might have in your business. It's really important that as a business you continue to focus on the equality of people working at home and working in the office and making that experience great for everybody, especially with the potential inequities of people's home environments and their technology and what they have to work with. And you can't forget that because even if you've done a lot of effort to get people there, it may not always be the same. So now that just becomes a normal part of running the business.

MICHAEL WOODS:

So one of the things which have to be considered by organisations who are trying to encourage people from working from home is also thinking about equity of access to that, because another dimension of this is, of course, that in order to work from home, you do need a reliable broadband connection. You need that accessibility of digital infrastructure.

So there are concerns. I think in thinking through that, there's a need to how people living in different areas have different ability to work from home, there is a sense that the growth of this may be geographically uneven, it may favour some regions over others. And organisations and companies which are encouraging work from home might wish to consider that, may wish to consider what support they might need to give to employees who maybe are already living in areas which have less strong access to the digital infrastructure.

Whether there's ways in which they can support them, whether they need to, for example, consider rather than working from home, remote hubs or supporting remote access sites. So there are a number of small scale initiatives which are being taken to try to address some of the real blackspots in terms of access to digital infrastructure. But the other way of approaching this is to actually try to think about provision of more collective facilities.

So looking at communal workspaces and hubs, say in small towns. Where there might be access to fast broadband, there might be access to other digital equipment, there might be spaces for meetings, other workspaces, as well those who are working from home, as well as those who have, maybe, local businesses in the area could come in and use. Those might, for example, be joined onto existing facilities like libraries and so on. Or they could be new facilities.

So again, there are some initiatives starting to develop in that way, and there are some historic models of these kind of hubs existing. But I think this is becoming more part of people's planning about how we need to equip Wales, in particular rural Wales, with the infrastructure. Not just in terms of the technical infrastructure, the wires, and the cables, but also the infrastructure of hubs, of access to facilities to ensure that the benefits of the digital economy are equally accessible across all parts of Wales.

NATASHA DAVIES:

The reality is we're going to be incredibly reliant upon digital technology. And if we don't take action to address the quite different levels of digital skills and digital competence that we have across the workforce, I think we are at risk of excluding people, particularly if our ways of ensuring good communication, collaboration, management of mental health and wellbeing, are increasingly reliant upon new and emerging technologies.

So I think as businesses, but also from the government, we absolutely need to have investment in basic digital skills to make sure that everybody's got a good baseline. I think, some organisations had to quite quickly during the pandemic, adopt a far more digital first approach. So I also think it goes beyond the basic digital skills and making sure that we're supporting staff and our workforce and our leaders to be confident in embracing and trying out new technology as it comes.

It can't be a static thing. Technology can be a great way of including people, but it can, if not used in the right way or isn't thought about from an equalities perspective, it can exclude as well. So I think this is really an important space for everybody to have a basic level of understanding around equality and inclusion. And to be switched on to how that needs to affect decisions about how we're using technology, how we're communicating, how we're structuring things like team meetings, collaborative workspaces, socials, and that kind of thing. If we're going to have a massive shift to more remote working, which does seem inevitable and it's certainly-- it's the goal of the Welsh Government here to have 30% of the workforce moving to working away from the office as the norm. We're going to have to think about the infrastructure that's in place to support that at a very basic level to all parts of Wales.

For example, we've got very large rural parts of the country. Does everybody have access to good high-speed broadband? Not at the moment. So that needs to be fixed as a matter of urgency. Is there good mobile phone coverage? Because we're not always at our desks, in the home office, or we might be reliant upon-- if we’re out and about, on our phones. And again, the coverage isn't great in terms of mobile phone signal.

But I think it also stretches into decisions about building, for example. Are we building properties that as standard, have space for a home office? More of an issue, I think in urban areas, but we have a large number, for example in Cardiff, of HMOs where people literally have a bedroom or studio flats or one-bed flats.

But I think there needs to be a much bigger discussion about the wider implications of a more dispersed and remote working norm. And those conversations have started, but I think they probably need to happen at a much quicker pace to make sure that we're not putting people in a situation that doesn't really work for them where they might not have the space at home, they might not have the access to the broadband that's needed to be able to take up new opportunities.

JO PARKER:

In terms of building an organisation which is digitally inclusive, you can't make one-size-fit-all. You just can't. Everybody's individual, everybody's got different backgrounds, everybody's got different needs and experiences, and you bring all of that with you when you come to work. In terms of inclusion, I think probably, the things that came to the fore-- you know, I work in a library, most of our services are virtual. We were able to shift to online support for our students and deliver most of our services online, anyway.

But I think what we found in our interactions with each other, what was trickier was people having the space to be able to do their work. So appropriate setting to be in work but then make that shift to being at home and preserve that work-life balance. So the space was an issue. Kit. Decent access to kit, decent access to broadband. The relevant hardware and software, making sure that was all set up and working. But then also, there's an issue around skills as well. And I think for me, they're the three main things. When it comes to being inclusive, there are three key things to think about. Have you got the kit, have you got the space, have you got the skills? Thinking about digital skills and the future and where we're going, I think we're looking at more equality of access, I think. I think people who have, perhaps, grown up with more digital stuff will start to-- I was going to say take over, but I don't mean take over.

Will start to really come to the fore and you think about my kids, they're playing with their devices and they're teaching me stuff. And I think just the possibilities of learning from other people and from younger people teaching older people and whatever, I think that's a really exciting prospect.

End transcript

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