Achieving a 'Digital Britain' in five not-so-easy steps

Ofcom's latest research shows that people with internet access are more like to participate in democratic activities. The internet creates the potential for new frontiers for civic engagement where citizens can become architects of their own democratic engagement. Unfortunately though, access is unequally distributed with 40% of citizens in the UK still failing to get online, rising to a disturbing 60% in deprived areas. In parallel, many citizens claim that they do not wish to participate in democracy, figures from the Hansard Society of Audit of Political Engagement suggest that 57% choose not to be involved and 40% of them say that lack of time is a reason. Ofcom's Digital Citizen's Participation research, published  this week, reports similar findings, 45% lack the time and, of more concern, 41% of people in deprived areas lack any interest in getting involved.

Whilst the internet can't increase the motivation to become involved it can lower the barriers.

It's common at this point to talk about a digital divide but this is too simplistic. Any digital divide is a consequence of other, wider inequalities, namely socio-economic and educational (as Ofcom's report shows). Going further though, it is also clear that a lack of digital access exacerbates other deficits, including a democratic one and so moving government participation and services online without addressing this issue is compounding this exclusion.

Whilst a universal service commitment (USC) is a positive step, it is a physical solution and alone won't solve the digital deficit or, for that matter, any democratic deficit. USC is one piece in a more complex jigsaw that needs to be addressed in a holistic way. This it seems is the only way we have of letting everyone who wants internet access and wishes to participate in society and democracy do so. So how do we go about this? I want to suggest five factors that need to be considered together:

1. Access must be fast enough, cheap enough and close enough - proximity of access makes a difference;
2. Information literacy is needed so that citizens have the skills to find, evaluate and work effectively with a wide range of digital content;
3. The right content and range of content is needed otherwise the motivation to be online is not sustained;
4. Accessible tools are required to turn consumers of content into creators of content; and
5. Finally, tools for the equitable dissemination of content are vital and this is where social media and Web2.0 become a powerful part of the digital engagement picture.

Digital Britain and other strategies start to address these issues but they stop far short of what is needed. It's still all too narrow, too siloed and far too strongly focussed on broadcasting.

Let's look at some examples of what actually happens online. Take Wikipedia and other Web2.0 tools, where only 1% of users create the content, 9% make occasional changes or comments to existing content and the other 90% consume. Is this a problem? No! So-called ‘lurking' is still productive and educational but one challenge has be to develop the motivation, tools, technologies and processes that can increase that 1% year on year.

Closer to home, the UK Parliament is a microcosm of wider society in its use of digital media. As our MPs Online report shows, 92% of MPs use email but that means a significant number still don't. One quarter are social networking online and the number of Twitter users as risen from two MPs before Christmas to around 50 only three months later.

I started off with a vision of citizens as the architects of their own engagement and laid out five areas that need to be addressed for this to happen. And whilst there is plenty of space for citizen-led innovation, it will take more than citizens. We need a coherent whole-of-government strategy to implement whole-of-society solutions: Joined-up government meets an energeitc and innovative civil society! Those who control the processes of engagement must recognise the viral and emergent nature of the internet and accept that, today, participation happens in a wide variety of ways and forms - on citizens' terms as well as governments. There are indications that this is starting to happen in small ways but to work long-term and on the scale we need the risk averse culture of government needs to change to embrace citizen-generated content and fresh thinking.

Finally, we need a national commitment to digital literacy across every level of society and recognition that this is a not only a key life skill but a basic human right in our knowledge society.

Andy Williamson