Just in case it passed you by, I’m going to refer to some of the startling figures we heard at the Sri Lanka FutureGov Forum event in December on the issue of digital inclusion.
They show how very real the digital divide is across Asia. According to research conducted by LIRN Asia Research, 74 per cent of Sri Lanka’s poor rural population had never used the internet, 23 per cent didn’t know it even existed.
Those kinds of figures are replicated across Asia, but the digital divide as a global policy issue has a divide of its own—between developing and developed worlds: the latter is struggling to connect the ‘final third’ of its citizens, whereas the former is dealing with largescale infrastructure challenges and huge remote and rural populations.
In the UK, where I’m from, much has been made of offering low cost laptops, £98 (US$158), to those who don’t have access, through the London: Race Online 2012 initiative, a Government-sponsored push to close the digital divide before the 2012 Games.
That is an initiative which has been successful in connecting rural and remote communities across Asia, although a recurring problem is ensuring programme sustainability.
Developing nations, who are championing e-government, faster broadband and a closer relationship between government and citizen through Gov 2.0 initiatives have, without doubt, been guilty of taking their digital eye off the ball.
If you’re not online in the UK, you’re excluded from a wide selection of service offerings—banks, the National Health Service (NHS), online shopping and recruitment, to name just a few, are established in delivering premium online services (groceries from large supermarkets are cheaper purchased online).
Developing nations are realising that in order for a digital economy to be ubiquitous, this policy problem has to be solved.
If you’re unemployed and unconnected the outlook is bleak. In 2007, over seven million jobs were advertised online in the UK, some exclusively, a figure which is set to increase significantly when cuts begin to roll out across the public sector in the coming months.
Cash-strapped councils will place most of their vacancies online in order to save money, according to the Department for Communities and Local Government.
Even the recruitment of the 8,000 London Ambassadors required to make the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games run smoothly, is primarily being conducted online.
Libraries, also a likely target of the austerity measures, were formerly a guaranteed safe-port-in-a-storm for those unable to get Internet access at home.
But the UK’s Public Library Modernisation Programme, worth £2 million (US$ 3.3 million), was recently shelved by the Department of Culture Media and Sport.
If you’re young, the future is bleak: “It highlights the effects that the Government’s drive to increase online services has on young people who have limited or no access to the internet,” a recent report Young People and the Digital Dividepublished by the advocacy group Catch 22 highlights.
Marketing gurus won’t like this but there are a significant number of young people who aren’t ‘digital natives’: they don’t walk around with an iPhone in their hand and wouldn’t know Angry Birds from World of Warcraft.
It is a cruel, but assumed logic, that all young people are, but as the Catch-22 report stresses: “While research suggests that the majority of young people are online, there are a number of young people who have either limited or no access to the Internet.
“These young people are increasingly invisible to policy makers and those whose responsibility it is to bring everyone online.”
A home computer and internet connection could increase potential lifetime earnings for young people in digitally excluded households by over £10.8billion (US$17.45 billion), a report conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers alongside London: Race Online 2012 found.
That is a startling statistic. If the London Olympics does succeed in closing that divide, it will be some achievement.
They show how very real the digital divide is across Asia. According to research conducted by LIRN Asia Research, 74 per cent of Sri Lanka’s poor rural population had never used the internet, 23 per cent didn’t know it even existed.
Those kinds of figures are replicated across Asia, but the digital divide as a global policy issue has a divide of its own—between developing and developed worlds: the latter is struggling to connect the ‘final third’ of its citizens, whereas the former is dealing with largescale infrastructure challenges and huge remote and rural populations.
In the UK, where I’m from, much has been made of offering low cost laptops, £98 (US$158), to those who don’t have access, through the London: Race Online 2012 initiative, a Government-sponsored push to close the digital divide before the 2012 Games.
That is an initiative which has been successful in connecting rural and remote communities across Asia, although a recurring problem is ensuring programme sustainability.
Developing nations, who are championing e-government, faster broadband and a closer relationship between government and citizen through Gov 2.0 initiatives have, without doubt, been guilty of taking their digital eye off the ball.
If you’re not online in the UK, you’re excluded from a wide selection of service offerings—banks, the National Health Service (NHS), online shopping and recruitment, to name just a few, are established in delivering premium online services (groceries from large supermarkets are cheaper purchased online).
Developing nations are realising that in order for a digital economy to be ubiquitous, this policy problem has to be solved.
If you’re unemployed and unconnected the outlook is bleak. In 2007, over seven million jobs were advertised online in the UK, some exclusively, a figure which is set to increase significantly when cuts begin to roll out across the public sector in the coming months.
Cash-strapped councils will place most of their vacancies online in order to save money, according to the Department for Communities and Local Government.
Even the recruitment of the 8,000 London Ambassadors required to make the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games run smoothly, is primarily being conducted online.
Libraries, also a likely target of the austerity measures, were formerly a guaranteed safe-port-in-a-storm for those unable to get Internet access at home.
But the UK’s Public Library Modernisation Programme, worth £2 million (US$ 3.3 million), was recently shelved by the Department of Culture Media and Sport.
If you’re young, the future is bleak: “It highlights the effects that the Government’s drive to increase online services has on young people who have limited or no access to the internet,” a recent report Young People and the Digital Dividepublished by the advocacy group Catch 22 highlights.
Marketing gurus won’t like this but there are a significant number of young people who aren’t ‘digital natives’: they don’t walk around with an iPhone in their hand and wouldn’t know Angry Birds from World of Warcraft.
It is a cruel, but assumed logic, that all young people are, but as the Catch-22 report stresses: “While research suggests that the majority of young people are online, there are a number of young people who have either limited or no access to the Internet.
“These young people are increasingly invisible to policy makers and those whose responsibility it is to bring everyone online.”
A home computer and internet connection could increase potential lifetime earnings for young people in digitally excluded households by over £10.8billion (US$17.45 billion), a report conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers alongside London: Race Online 2012 found.
That is a startling statistic. If the London Olympics does succeed in closing that divide, it will be some achievement.
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