Archive for June, 2009

Doers III: Go Digit All

Posted by irislapinski on June 26th, 2009

Yesterday I finally started to visit community organisations working on digital inclusion outside London. Thanks to UK Online East Midland’s regional manager Jo Fisher, I had the opportunity to see two in Nottingham together with Helen Milner, Managing Director of UK Online Centres.

The first one was Go Digit All based in The Meadows area of Nottingham.

Background: The Meadows

Simply known as the Meadows, this part of Nottingham is just south of the train station and the city centre. Most of the houses are council owned and the newer part of the area consists of houses built in the 1970s around a series of alleyways and footpaths which has led to a maze-like feel in some parts, and means access from one area to another by car can be tricky. The neighbourhood is quite mixed with both British white and black people primarily of lower income.

The Meadows came to public attention a few years ago in particular for several incidents of gun violence between rival gangs from The Meadows and St. Anns. The last shooting was the murder of 17-year old Nathan Williams in the Bridgeway Centre in 2006. Things appear to have improved since then, but there are still reports about violence and crime in the area. While the Meadows was not included in Nottingham’s regeneration efforts in the past, a few weeks ago the local council launched a public consultation a few weeks ago to completely regenerate the area in the next few years.

Until today unemployment is twice the average of Nottingham as a whole, and 38% of Meadows residents aged 16 to 74 have no qualifications according to the neighbourhood plan report.

The Organisation: Go Digit All

Go Digit All is located in the Bridgeway Centre in one of the shops. Set-up in 2001 Go Digit All is run as a social enterprise incorporated as a company limited by guarantee, although it does not have charitable status (because of the administrative effort involved). Its board of trustees is composed of different members of the local community. Its board of trustees is composed of different members of the local community.

Natasha Johnson-Richards is the core driver behing this venture. She initially ran the project in the women centre, but then got funding from the Active Communities Fund to buy equipment and rent an empty shop in the shopping centre area.

A mother of four, Natasha is a local Meadows resident together with several members of her family. A mother of four, Natasha is a local Meadows Meadows resident together with other of four, Natasha is a local Meamother of four, Natasha is a local Meadows Meadows resident together

Activities

UK Online Centre & LSC provider

Go Digit All became a UK Online Centre in 2003 and since then has been providing free access to people without internet skills and receives funding from UK Online Centres “Learning Journeys” fund. Go Digit All is also member of the Enable consortium of third sector organisations in Nottingham which successfully bid to become a Learning and Skills Council (LSC) provider and therefore Go Digit All offers additional online learning courses which lead to accreditations and qualifications.

Internet cafe

Go Digit All runs as an internet cafe for people who are using the computers not for learning or courses and charges £1.50 per hour for usage.

Printing services

It offers a range of printing and scanning services which need to be paid for as well as a T-shirt printing service. (Free T-shirt printing is also used by Go Digit All to increase the impact of their outreach activities to attract new learners at events.)

IT support

Because Go Digit All has Wifi it offers local people the possibility to install and support their laptops if they have technical problems.

Youth radio program

A second room in the back was renovated and furbished with 3 Macs to create a community radio program which is run for 16+ year olds in cooperation with local youth services. A sec

Access for other community groups

Access to computers is also rented out to other community groups against a small fee. Access to computers is also rented out to other community groups against a small fee.

Mobile ICT Outreach unit

Go Digit All acquired a mobile ICT Outreach unit from a failed private company and is in the process of setting-up a broad range of outreach activities by attending local music festivals and events to reach groups who would not engage with ICT and learning otherwise. atten

Future projects

Natasha is currently in discussions to take over another community building in order to have it run by Go Digit All as well.

Users/ customers

Natasha estimates that Go Digit All engages about 45 new people every month or which about 30 would sign-up for courses or online learning programs. In total she thinks that 60-75 people come to the shop on a monthly basis of which several people come several times a week or even daily.

Most people who come to Go Digit All are women of different age groups since they are apparently keener to get involved in learning than men.

Enterprise

Natasha mentioned that local people have approached her to get advice on setting-up companies. There is some support from a Prince’s Trust mentor. Currently, 2 people are coming to use Go Digital computers to set-up their own companies and Natasha advices them on finding information about business plans online.

Another anecdote she mentioned was that somebody who had an health issue approached her and they found information about this online before they would turn to the Health Centre… (I hope I remember this story correctly)

Volunteers

Go Digit All co-operates with Action for Employment to place volunteers in the shop and give them work experience, but Natasha noted that most of these volunteers do not come from the local area, but from other parts of Nottingham.

Challenges

Natasha thought that her biggest challenge going forward was funding. Most of Go Digit All income is derived from delivering LSC and UK Online Centre funded work while other services only make up a small part of Go Digit All’s income.

When asked which groups she would like to engage more, Natasha mentioned that young black men were the least interested in the learning opportunities that were on offer from Go Digit All.

In her eyes there was a general gap in provision for young people who are not in education, eployment or training (NEET) since funding priorities are focused on young people with extremely low qualifications (under level 2), the long-term unemployed and young families/ mothers. Young people who are not meeting these criteria are not really being targeted by funders at the moment.

Final thoughts

I was deeply impressed by the pragmatism and passion with which Natasha is running Go Digit All inside the community in the Meadows. Based on our conversation she is clearly the core driver behind the social enterprise, but has been very successful in getting local support and buy-in to expand into a range of areas that serve the needs of local people.

[Matt, a volunteer at the shop filmed quite a large part of our conversation and I will posts some of this here as well as an update once I get hold of the material]

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Doers I: Migrant Resource Centre

Posted by irislapinski on June 23rd, 2009

This is the first of a range of case studies about organisations I’m visiting during this project: the online centre inside the Migrant Resource Centre (MRC) in London, Victoria.

Background

MRC is a place which supports migrants locally in the area, but also quite a few people come to the centre from other parts of London. Migrants are supported across a range of domains:

- Legal advice
- Health services advice
- Learning and employment support
- Creche
- Language & IT courses

During 2008 2,800 people engaged with the centre and used one of its services. The latest annual accounts can be found on the Charity Commission website which show that for the year ending MRC had a total turnover of around £500,000. The latest Annual Report which provides more information about the activities of MRC can be downloaded here.

UK Online Centre

Since 2003 MRC operates as UK Online Centre in the basement of the building. UK Online Centres provides MRC with training materials as well as access to other sources of grant funding, in particular Learning & Skills Council (LSC) support. Most recently MRC was also eligible to become a Microsoft IT Academy, but this additional service offer has not yet been implemented.

Alice Goldie who is the Online Centre Manager since November 2008 estimates that about 60 people per month come to the online centre. Here she explains what the online centre does:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8QykPCDD3c]

It’s interesting to note that MRC actually has 3 distinct groups of users who use the online centre in quite different ways:

Group 1: Very IT literate migrants not allowed to work

This group uses the centre basically like a free Internet cafe in order to search for jobs, write CVs (which are checked by Alice) and to serve the Internet for pleasure. A few people in this group volunteer their time to give something back to MRC by supporting the online centre manager or teaching classes. For example, one man used to run an Internet cafe in his home country and is now volunteering at the centre. People in this group are only at the centre because they are not allowed yet to work and will typically stop coming once they have obtained a work permit and a job.

Group 2: Elderly migrants or refugees with little or no IT skills

This group makes extensive use of the MyGuide website offered by UK Online Centres. Often they face some language challenges like the expression “from scratch” in MyGuide, but overall this group learns basic skills to communicate with friends and families.

Group 3: Young mothers with little IT access at home

The last group are young migrant mothers who can leave their children in the creche and use the online centre to find out about what they do once their children get a bit older. Alice thought that for them using the online centre is often “an eye opener” which gives them new perspectives.

There is not breakdown available on the size of each group coming to the centre, but my impression was that IT literate migrants not allowed to work are the majority.

Services

There is no comprehensive approach to offering paid-for services, but users now have to pay a small fee for printing to limit excessive usage. In the past Alice has done informal IT support for people who have laptops at home which are being used by their children, but do not know how to maintain and protect them from viruses. Even if MRC had more resources volunteers are not allowed to be paid until they get a work permit.

Community activism

There is no link between community activism and the online centre activities. Social media is not being used in the centre and there appears to be a strong focus on training and employment. Individual users do not really interact significantly but gain their skills as individuals or use the free Internet cafe-style opening hours. The MRC employment services offering has links to charities and businesses in the area for work placements, but this is a separate work stream for MRC. Only recently MRC set-up a data based to be able to track whether users are accessing different services.

More recently Alice had been approached by Circuitriders to see whether some of MRC’s IT literate users can gain work experience through supporting voluntary sector organisations.

When asked for the biggest challenge Alice thought it was enough time to implement all the new program initiatives and to install free donated software on all the machines in the centre.

Since I visited in the morning the online centre was quite empty, but according to Alice it normally fills up in the afternoons and evenings. The three users present were accessing Facebook, Googlemail, music websites or were searching the web for information.

I will be seeing more different UK Online Centres this week and am quite curious how they compare.

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Digital Inclusion Policy Timeline

Posted by irislapinski on June 18th, 2009

In order to better understand the history of the digital inclusion debate in the UK I have been reading my way through publications, but also had very interesting conversations about this with David Wilcox and Kevin Harris who have been working in this field for the last decade.

I think there are different waves of the digital inclusion debate from a policy level following the technology curve, but also leading to quite significant conflicts between different players and the role of government:

1995-1997: The beginnings – Community networks
1997-1999: Initial government involvement – Assessing what to do
2000-2004: Strong resources & government involvement
2005-2007: Local government focus
2008 - : Linking different initiatives & sectors

My impression is that while the focus on local communities and social interaction was clearly there in the beginning and driven very much from the bottom-up, the new Labour government tried to take this into account after coming into power in 1997. One example of this is the PAT 15 report from 2000 called “Closing the Digital Divide” which makes interesting reading and still seems to be quite relevant today.

However, in the following years attention shifted quite strongly towards a strong focus on infrastructure access investment programs (e.g. UK Online Centres in England and Tools for Schools supported by the Big Lottery/CAF) and e-government service delivery and local authority action on digital inclusion while bottom-up community development played less of a role.

I think more recently communities and social drivers are seeing a sort of a renaissance. From the grassroots this is certainly fuelled by the rapid growth of social media (e.g. social reporters, social media clinics, People’s Voice Media, Talk About Local), but from the top it is driven by the fact that late adopters need to be reached within a social context. Using real-life social networks and communities are seen again as a key factor contributing to this as the recent RSA seminar on social capital and digital inclusion shows.

With the publication of the final Digital Britain report by Lord Carter and the appointment of Martha Lane Fox as Digital Champion this week, it remains to be seen whether the 2Mbps infrastructure requirement and copyright issues will dominate the discourse or whether community and social aspects can be brought back to the fore. And then a new government might change direction in a few of the suggested areas in any case…

I have developed a simplified timeline for different government initiatives, which is of course not claiming to be complete. Am I missing any key points?

Is Lane Fox to use her cunning for digital enhancement? (telegraph.co.uk)
What does Social Capital have to do with Digital Inclusion? (beth.typepad.com)
What does Social Capital have to do with Digital Inclusion? (socialmediatoday.com)
Bridging the Digital Divide Takes More than Just Access (sitepoint.com)

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E-society maps

Posted by irislapinski on June 16th, 2009

While doing my research I spent quite a lot of time searching for interesting maps profiling different levels of ICT abilities across Britain.

Finally, I got lucky and found maps that had been created during a 2007 research project at University College London CASA Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis which they forgot to delete from their initial blog. They used Experian data and the result is the e-society Profiler.

In 2007 Experian used 8 different clusters with several sub-categories:

While you can find more information for each of the groups above at their website, I found the E-unengaged and E-marginalised categories especially intriguing since they show quite a different geographic distribution.

The E-unengaged

According to Experian: “The ‘E – unengaged’ are typically groups that do not have access to electronic communications or technologies. Most are too old, too poor or too poorly educated to be able to access them, and instead traditionally rely upon personal contacts they trust for advice. Within this Group there are low levels of literacy and many people do not feel that their life outcomes are much subject to their own decisions.

Members of this Group tend to live in the poorer areas of traditional mining and manufacturing towns and to have conservative social attitudes. A high proportion of the Group is made up of elderly people, many of whom live in social housing or sheltered accommodation.”

The E-marginalised

“The ‘E – marginalised’ are not necessarily averse to the use of electronic technologies but often lack the disposable income to equip themselves with them, or the training and education needed to understand how to make effective use of them.

Many members of this Group are relatively unskilled young workers, many of whom are in manual occupations. Many also live in low rise council estates, in areas of high unemployment, low incomes and where people are reliant upon public services.” Many also live in low rise council estates, in areas of high unemployment, low incomes and where people are reliant upon publi

London Profiler

For London only CASA created a new very useful website called London Profiler. It’s an easy-to-use Google mash-up which allows you to view the geography of different socio-economic criteria, health, education as well as e-society.

The e-society map looks a bit like a Swiss cheese since E-marginalised and E-experts are close to each other. However, the further you get away from the centre the more E-unengaged and instrumental users tend to increase. The e-society map looks a bit like a Swiss cheese since E-marginalised and E-experts are close to each other. Ho

You can compare this to the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) and you will see that when using IMD scores geographic areas are far more consolidated than for e-society. In some instances it even appears that you have quite high levels of E-experts in areas that are classified as deprived.

Does somebody have other useful maps on the subject? I know that there is the mapping tool by the Digiteam at the Department of Communities and Local Government called “Social and Digital Geographies of Great Britain”. However, I have not been able to extract any useful information for the whole UK or even for London or any of the larger urban centres. If somebody has been able to do that it would be great if you could share that knowledge.

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Basic digital inclusion statistics

Posted by irislapinski on June 16th, 2009

There are different sets of statistics about Internet usage, access by age, socio-economic groups and income levels. However, there two most important ones are:

Office for National Statistics annual survey
Oxford Internet Institute Internet survey

Office for National Statistics (ONS)

Every year the ONS publishes the results of its representative surveys. The two graphs below show overall household Internet access and access by region. As you can see in 2009 2/3 of the UK population stated that they had Internet access at home. Internet access varied quite significantly between the different regions with the North West, Northern Ireland and the North East lagging behind the other regions.

The ONS survey also asked people why they do not have Internet at home. I have circled the areas of significant change between 2006 and 2008. While the number of households without Internet declined in total numbers the relative importance among disconnected households of “no need” and “no interest” went up. The reason “no skills” declined in importance for this group.

The growing importance of “no need” and “no interest” in getting access online might be linked to the profile of different groups of people. The following two graphs show adults who have never used the Internet by sex and age and the link between educational background and Internet access.

None of this is surprising:

women are less likely than men to use the Internet,
older people less than younger people, and
lower skilled people less than higher skilled ones.

So instead of being changed or resolved social divides that are mirrored in the digital world – at least on a macro level:

One last interesting statistic from the ONS data is where people have accessed the Internet in the last 3 months. Home access is by far the most important while public access through libraries and Internet cafes has been on the decline:

Oxford Internet Institute: The Internet in Britain

Every two years the Oxford Internet Institute publishes a report about the state of Internet usage in Britain. The last one was published in 2007 and can be downloaded here.

It includes lots of useful data about where, how and why people are using the Internet Internet in Britain. There is more detailed information on motivations by age groups and level of education, although nothing is really surprising.

The new 2009 report will be launched next week and will be available on the Oxis website. Let’s see if there will be any surprises in user statistics.

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Digital inclusion definition

Posted by irislapinski on June 16th, 2009

Digital inclusion in the UK does not only mean the digital divide, but has a far broader meaning in policy terms. The Digital Inclusion Team came up with the following description:

Digital Inclusion means different things to different people:

giving people the basic ICT skills to participate in the knowledge economy leading to improved macro-economic performance

closing the Digital Divide — the gap between those enabled and empowered to participate in information and knowledge based society and those who are not.

making technology and electronic services accessible and usable for people with disabilities or the elderly

giving people broadband internet access

preventing economic exclusion from electronic commercial and public services that save time and money

preventing social exclusion from digitally connected communities

using any digital technology to tackle social exclusion

using any digital technology in communities to tackle area-based deprivation

One phrase that captures the essence of most such interpretations is:

The use of technology either directly or indirectly to improve the lives and life chances of people and the places in which they live

The Digital Inclusion Team focuses on stimulating innovation to achieve the last two in this list. Consequently, the meaning of “digital inclusion” for the Team is:

The use of technology either directly or indirectly to improve the lives and life chances of disadvantaged people and the places in which they live.

I do not want to be to philosophical about this, but it basically shows that the term digital inclusion in a UK policy context means so much more than making sure that people have access to skills, confidence and computers to be empowered and to turn around their lives. It includes e-government and public service delivery, telecare (at least for some) and high-speed broadband infrastructure access. Sometimes also digital television and mobile phones are included as alternative platforms to achieve digital inclusion. So digital inclusion means very different things to different people. Mental note: use with caution!

Milestone in mobile phone use (guardian.co.uk)
Threequarters of consumers say broadband as essential as water (telegraph.co.uk)
Digital Britain interim report released (theredrocket.co.uk)
Bridging the Digital Divide Takes More than Just Access (sitepoint.com)

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Welcome!

Posted by irislapinski on June 11th, 2009

Hi,

As promised I’m starting to document the work I’m doing for CDI, the Centre for Digital Inclusion, previously known as: Committee for Democracy in Information Technology.

CDI is a Brazilian non-profit organisation that empowers people at the margin of society through student-lead learning and technology, with a focus on entrepreneurship and community action. CDI has worked with more than 1.25 million people in 10 Latin American countries in the last 14 years.

Here is the most recent video produced by the Skoll Foundation which gives a good idea of CDI’s origins and the work Rodrigo Baggio and the whole team have been doing in Latin America:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecpYn17nZIU&hl=en&fs=1&]

The challenge of this project is to see if and how CDI can bring aspects of its experience in bottom-up learning through technology to the UK.

In order to answer this question I will be blogging about:

UK landscape on digital inclusion, empowerment through technology and community action – at least to some extent
Interesting initiatives in the space

This will include also short profiles of the different organisations we are engaging with from UK Online Centres to youth clubs, community centres as well as connectors in the field.

I’m really looking forward to your comments and thoughts!

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Archive for June, 2009

Background: The Meadows

The Organisation: Go Digit All

Activities

UK Online Centre & LSC provider

Internet cafe

Printing services

IT support

Youth radio program

Access for other community groups

Mobile ICT Outreach unit

Future projects

Users/ customers

Enterprise

Volunteers

Challenges

Final thoughts

Background

UK Online Centre

Group 1: Very IT literate migrants not allowed to work

Group 2: Elderly migrants or refugees with little or no IT skills

Group 3: Young mothers with little IT access at home

Services

Community activism

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The E-unengaged

The E-marginalised

London Profiler

Office for National Statistics (ONS)

Oxford Internet Institute: The Internet in Britain

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