Digital skills and human connections go hand in hand

Digital inclusion made a welcome return to the headlines earlier this week with the think tank Policy Exchange once again backing greater public investment in basic online skills for older people. There has been plenty of interesting reaction. Loneliness and social isolation are real problems, and helping older people with the basic online skills and confidence to use the web must surely be a no-regrets move. This isn't about replacing our humanity with screens and machines, but rather giving everybody equal access to new tools to connect with each other (and which most of us take for granted). Communities of place and of interest have rich lives both online and off, and the two often overlap. Promoting digital participation won't solve all our problems, but it will make them easier. The figures quoted around the story are also worth a mention. Neither the £875 million cost or the £1.7 billion benefits are new numbers. One important thing to remember is that the former is (a) on top of all the digital inclusion efforts that are already underway, and (b) exclusive of capital expenditure on broadband and devices. There's been some debate about whether putting a big price tag on digital inclusion is helpful or not. The risk is that politicians see the whole thing as too difficult, or are drawn toward a big, centralised solution at the expense of the patchwork of local activities and personal interactions that we know are much more likely to meet people's needs. On the other hand, we need to size the challenge if we are to have any hope of making the case and mobilising enough effort to tackle it at scale. When I worked in Whitehall, a good rule of thumb was that a number isn't big unless it's greater than 1.3 billion. Why? Because £1.3 billion is £1 a week for a year for every household in the UK. From that perspective, digital inclusion looks like a bargain.