The Government has just released an action plan for consultation about how to bridge the digital divide.

You can access the document online at – http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/communities/deliveringdigitalinclusion

The consultation period runs from now until 19th January 2009 and so its important to make sure you get your responses back to CLG in time for them to consider them fully. 

The main issues covered in the paper are: 

• 17 million people in the UK are not using the Internet 
• there are strong links between social and digital exclusion – 75 per cent of socially excluded people are also digitally excluded 
• there are opportunities to provide more effective and better targeted services to excluded groups and communities using technology 
• considerable work is being done by government, public, private and third sectors to promote digital inclusion, but there are still gaps and opportunities 

One of the opportunities is for government leadership which provides a clear set of principles and a framework for action to ensure that all sectors are clear about their roles and how they can contribute to strategic goals. 

But what should any such principles and framework for action focus on and how should they be carried forward? 

There are proposals to 

•  introduce a Charter for Digital Inclusion creating a framework that will facilitate conversation and understanding between the various players and encourage positive cross-sector engagement on this agenda; 
• appoint a Digital Inclusion Champion who will develop, embed and promote the Charter, support the digital inclusion needs of the most disadvantaged citizens and communities, maintain a strategic oversight of the issues from the point of view of the excluded citizen and work with all sectors to identify the evidence of emerging issues and options for actions to address those issues; 
• establish an expert taskforce with representation from all sectors to support the role of the Champion; and, maintain a cross-government coordination team, to complement the work of the Champion and support the valuable and ongoing role of the Cabinet Committee