Can you help us count digital skills and capabilities in Scotland?

If you've heard me talk about digital participation recently, then you'll know that 3 in 10 adults in Scotland lack the basic online skills required to get things done on the web. For the issues that we're focused on, this insight into people and skills is massively more useful than knowing what proportion of households have broadband. The data on basic online skills comes from research conducted by BBC Learning, which they share as part of their contribution to Go ON UK. The team have already begun to update the data - and whilst there's no new figure for Scotland yet, we're hoping to see one later this year. Even then, however, we will only have a headline figure for Scotland. This is enough to size the challenge, but not enough to tell us how the nature of it varies between different groups of people or parts of the country. In a similar vein, we know from work done by Lloyds Bank as part of their contribution to Go ON UK that only 1 in 5 charities are geared up to accept online donations, and that three quarters are not investing in digital skills. Again this work tells us a bit about the variation between different UK regions, but relatively little about the variation within regions. So when it comes to improving our understanding of digital participation in Scotland, although we still need to know more to make the very best judgments about where and how to invest, the good news is that there are foundations in place for us to build on. A big part of the answer will be the work Lynne is doing to evaluate the impact of all the different projects we'll be supporting. We'll also be working with a range of partners over the months ahead to try to develop a quantitative, national picture of what's going on, to complement the detailed insights we gather from individual projects. If you're interested in getting involved then give us a shout - we'd love you to join us.