The government's big IT target for the next term — if it wins the election on May 5 — is to persuade society's have-nots to get on the web. A comprehensive IT strategy unveiled last week sets a target of eliminating the digital divide among families with children by 2008. The aim is "to create a country at ease in the digital world". We achieve this not just by handing out more free computers or broadband connections, but by changing the middle-class character of the web. Schools, local councils and the NHS will all play their part in the master plan, Connecting the UK, drawn up by the prime minister's strategy unit and the Department of Trade and Industry. For the first time, it suggests overtly that citizens will one day be compelled to deal with government electronically.
According to the strategy, 44% of households with children do not use the internet. The problem is not access — nearly everyone knows somewhere they can go online — but motivation and lack of perceived need. "Cost is not the only or even the main barrier to take-up," the strategy says, and it confirms previous research suggesting that this lack of interest often reflects social class. People from the top two socio-economic groups are three times more likely to have the internet at home than those from the bottom two. And this gap is not closing — the rate of connection among DE households has been stuck at 20% since 2001.
Government should be worried, says the strategy, because IT should be closing social gaps, not widening them. It points to studies showing that computers can reduce social despair among older people and sufferers of chronic diseases. For other socially excluded groups, such as young runaways and people leaving institutions, the ability to send emails via personal internet accounts provides a way of re-establishing contact and maintaining relationships with friends and family.
When aiming at the socially excluded, content is the key, not connection. The success of digital television and mobile phones shows that people will go digital when there is something in it for them. "These changes have permeated popular culture," the strategy says. However, it bemoans the fact that "driven by the market, the internet is full of content aimed at affluent consumers targeted at middle-income groups".
The challenge of developing compelling content should be taken up by public services being e-enabled by other strands of the government's IT strategy. Three public services will take this lead. They are:
Education. Unphased by the Royal Economic Society's recent finding that computers can hinder children's education, the strategy reaffirms the government's commitment to putting IT in schools. By 2008, "all learners will have their own virtual learning space where they can store and access their work. We will also aim to give secondary school pupils — including those from low-income backgrounds — the opportunity to access ICT at home." The "haphazard" system of allowing individual schools to buy their own IT will be replaced by a "national procurement scheme", along the lines of the NHS national programme for IT. The strategy stresses that education does not end with school — people will carry their virtual learning spaces into adult life, creating continuity in learning as well as a continued reason to keep using the web.
Health. The strategy cites the £6bn National Programme for IT in the NHS (since renamed Connecting for Health) as evidence that the government is committed to using broadband to deliver services that are led by content, not technology. By 2008, every NHS patient in England will have a personal electronic health record, accessible at any time, day or night, to enable precise, personalised, care.
Criminal justice. Another IT-based reform "at the heart of public service delivery" is the £2.2bn criminal justice IT programme. By 2008, this will "allow information to flow throughout the system and deliver faster, more reliable and more accurate services to frontline workers, victims and witnesses."
Local authorities, meanwhile, will be encouraged to come up with innovative electronic public services by a new Digital Challenge award. The idea seems to have been borrowed from the Stockholm Challenge, an international competition hosted by the Swedish capital. The first national winners, from local authorities and their private sector partners, will receive platinum medals next year.
Finally, the strategy reveals that the Cabinet Office's e-Government Unit and the new Council of Government Chief Information Officers are "drawing up a cross government vision of public service delivery transformed by modern technology and a strategy for achieving that vision". This will include considering whether some government services should be moved to a "wholly digital environment" — Whitehall jargon for shutting down the option of processing them on paper, or face to face. However, the strategy promises that the "switchover will only happen as the conditions become right for each service; no one will be denied access to services because they are delivered electronically".
Autor: Michael Cross
Quelle: Guardian Unlimited, 07.04.2005
