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More on the Four "F"s - Part One: Fear

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Fear (and lack of confidence) are 2 of the key problems people have when it comes to grappling with the online world. Never underestimate these factors - recently I had an email from a particularly unconfident learner, genuinely emailing me to say she didn't know how to email... As I described earlier, fear can not only prevent people going online, but it also leads to people going offline again: " Many users are put off continuing to use the internet because of fear. Thanks to telephone scams, hacks like the Talk Talk scandal , and reams of other news about the rise of cyber-crime, many conclude the internet is not for them any more. Fear of what may happen, or fear their computer has already been compromised and is no longer secure, is leading many of the less confident to put their laptop into a cupboard or the attic or just give it away. Some have actually been a victim of ID fraud, or attempted fraud once and decide they don't want to be again. For many, managi
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Innovation Versus Plagiarism...and other reflections from a Award

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Photo by WiredforLego / CC BY I was very pleased to be asked to be a panel judge on a national digital inclusion award earlier this year and it was really interesting reading the entries and meeting the short-listed candidates - I hope I will get the experience again. I thought I'd take some time to share a couple of my reflections from it. 1. Digital Inclusion is an often misunderstood (or alternatively, a broad) term. I think there are lessons to learned from this - I think we need to be able to start to articulate more clearly some of the admittedly-related fields often lumped together. The areas that seem currently most often to get thrown in with what I would call "pure" digital inclusion include assistive technology, accessibility, digital transformation and infrastructure development. These are all valuable and important areas, and often intersect with each other and digital inclusion, but what I would like to humbly suggest actually constitutes digital i
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Recent Developments in Digital Inclusion and Internet Access

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Not a full blog today, but I thought I'd make  a quick post, as for those in digital inclusion there’s been several pieces of (hopefully) welcome news. Firstly Ofcom has announced that BT Openreach will be expected to reduce its charges to ISPs, which should be passed on to consumers (or Ofcom will want to know why not!) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/39452242 Secondly Which? have provided a long-overdue spotlight on ISP pricing strategies – aka “drag ‘em in cheap and then put the prices up later”. Which? have even been able to put a price tag on customer loyalty – it's costing an average £113/yr, a figure which actually sounds conservative to me. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39555140 I hope that both of these developments will lead to improvements in one of the barriers to digital inclusion – the cost - and related to this the complexity. It should absolutely raise eyebrows that, while it is possible to get fibre broadband for around £150-200/yr, man
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Please familiarise yourself with all exits...

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Welcome to my brand spanking new blog about my experience and reflections from around 10 years working on digital inclusion. It’s an area that has changed hugely since 2007, and will continue to evolve. However the popular conversations around digital inclusion often haven’t caught up, and it’s time we had more nuanced discussions …and goals. The current drive to move services and service users online is in danger of drowning these issues; I hope this blog can be part of widening the conversation. When we talk about digital inclusion, and (perhaps crucially) when we look at funding for digital inclusion, the goal is generally stated the same way; “to get people online”. Of course this is a key part of what should be the goal, but often it has had the effect of detracting from the actual goal; “everyone to be online”. If you work at the coalface of digital inclusion now, you probably have already noticed a change in the last decade – more and more you will notice that learn
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