How bold can we afford to be?
Designed by Tom McGrath
When we look to the future of digital inclusion policy, we’ve been asking ourselves a tricky question: “How bold can we afford to be?”
The economy is not in great shape. Fourteen years of austerity have eroded the capacities of local government, and charities are struggling to fill the gaps in the state. Yet new technologies are being developed and implemented rapidly, leaving many behind.
Amidst this uncertainty, parties seem to be adopting a more cautious approach to manifesto development, nervous about the state of the economy and voters’ appetite for large public spending proposals. The space for expansive innovative policymaking seems to have significantly narrowed.
Given the economic circumstances, this approach is understandable. Yet if we are not careful, we risk seeing another decade of inaction on important issues like digital inclusion. As such, through our Community Connectivity program, we’ve been examining what the future of digital inclusion policy should look like.
Over the past few months, we’ve developed a series of low-cost policy recommendations. But we know that the policies we shared in February are not enough to make digital exclusion a thing of the past. We’ve been building on these with a group of experts in private roundtables. In our most recent roundtable, we discussed a wider range of issues – such as the role (or lack thereof) of AI in digital inclusion, the need for a ‘right to refuse,’ and funding for the digital inclusion sector.
It’s our view that we need to be bold. The economic constraints that the country faces do not need to be creative constraints, and we do need comprehensive action to move on from a decade of decline.
We’ve put together a series of policy ideas which we believe will lead to a significant shift in how we approach digital exclusion, and how we address the market and policy failures that allow digital exclusion to exist. We centre our ideas around four themes: funding; supply innovation; access and rights, and governance and leadership.
On 3 June, we’ll be sharing these policy proposals at an event in London with our partner, Impact on Urban Health. If you’re interested in learning more about what a bold approach to digital inclusion might look like, RSVP today – and we’ll see you there.