Letter from Holyrood: Digital Participation

The Scottish Parliament Cross-Party Group on Digital Participation met last Wednesday evening, convened by Willie Coffey MSP, and I gave the group an update on the programme of activity underway here at SCVO. One of the main points I raised was the scale of the challenge ahead. If we are serious about digital participation, then significant investment needs to be made to reach the 1.3 million people in Scotland who don't have basic online skills. Yes, there are plenty of great initiatives happening already, and yes small grants and pilot projects are always welcome - but without a coordinated push to accelerate and scale things up, they will not get us across the line. We also heard from Citizens Advice Scotland on how digital exclusion is affecting their clients on a daily basis, and from Professor Michael Fourman, chair of the Digital Participation Inquiry at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The inquiry's final report is due soon, and will give us an independent perspective on how we ensure that all of Scotland's people, businesses and organisations have the desire, skills and tools to use our digital infrastructure effectively. The next day MSPs returned to digital in a debate on Developing Skills for Scotland's Digital Economy. This covered basic online skills alongside a range of issues from youth employment to computer science education. For me the recurrence of digital amongst other topics reinforces one of our most important principles: digital inclusion is about social inclusion first, and technology second.