Funding digital inclusion

Start with what works

The Digital Inclusion Alliance has asked how digital inclusion in Scotland could be made more investable. We think that question comes too early.

Our new report argues that Scotland should first establish what causes digital exclusion, what the evidence says works, who is responsible for the costs and what provision actually needs to exist. Only then does it make sense to choose a funding mechanism.

This is not an argument against innovation in funding. It is an argument about sequence. Funding mechanisms are tools, not a theory of how to tackle digital exclusion.

Why this matters now

Scotland is digitising public services faster than it is including people in them. Six in ten Scottish households with children fall below the Minimum Digital Living Standard, and home internet access ranges from 77% of households on the lowest incomes to 100% of the highest.

Meanwhile the provision that already exists is closing. Digital inclusion projects across Scotland are ending as short-term funding runs out, trusted staff are being lost, and the relationships they held are going with them. For most organisations the practical question is not how their work might be made investable, but whether it will exist next year.

Designing a coherent, investable, future-ready model is an interesting exercise. It is not the most urgent one.

What the evidence tells us

Scotland has a strong and convergent evidence base on the characteristics of effective digital inclusion. Drawing on our 2023 Digital Inclusion Roadmap, Connecting Scotland, Digital Lifelines, the Digital Inclusion Programme and Audit Scotland, the report sets out six findings:

• Digital exclusion is rooted in poverty, inequality and exclusionary systems, as well as in skills and access.
• Exclusion is dynamic. People move in and out of it as circumstances change, so Scotland needs standing capacity rather than a succession of projects.
• Organisations creating greater dependency on digital services are responsible for ensuring people are not excluded by that change.
• Much effective digital inclusion is recurring, human and relational. It creates substantial value, but rarely a revenue stream capable of repaying investment.
• Not everyone needs everything. Provision should be embedded in services and differentiated by need, which is why there is no single unit cost for digital inclusion.
• Different needs require different funding mechanisms. The mechanism should fit the requirement, rather than the requirement being reshaped to fit the mechanism.

Our two asks

The report makes six recommendations. Two are the substantive policy asks, and they correspond to two duties: prevent avoidable exclusion at source, and sustainably fund the support that remains necessary.

1. Require digital transformation programmes to assess, cost and mitigate the exclusion associated with them. If the design of a transformed service makes digital capability necessary for access, the programme should bear the cost of making that access equitable, within its own business case rather than leaving it to someone else.
2. Fund trusted community capacity on a sustained basis.Digital inclusion depends on trusted relationships held over time by people embedded in the services and communities where people already are. That capacity needs real, continuing revenue, and the immediate priority is retaining what still exists.

The remaining four recommendations are enabling actions and tests: publish a digital inclusion delivery plan, set clear expectations of responsibility across sectors, measure exclusionary systems as well as excluded people, and test financial innovation selectively against evidence of what it adds.

Read the report

Scotland does need to spend money sustainably on digital inclusion. What it does not first need is a new financial architecture through which to do so.

For more on our position and our wider digital inclusion work, see our digital inclusion pages and the Digital Inclusion Roadmap.