One of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic is that people in local government and partners have become increasingly aware of the need for access to digital services to lead to a full and independent life.
In the second decade of the 21st century huge parts of our lives are based on immediate access to services and information online. We would be stunned if we went back to the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s in a tardis and saw how our lives and our whole way of doing things have changed.
Councils and partners in Oxfordshire have been pre-occupied with trying to support significant parts of the population who’ve been left behind in this digital revolution. Some people have poor wi-fi/broadband connection and some people have none, while others are hampered by inadequate equipment or limited knowledge. The pandemic and the need for quick access to important information, booking COVID vaccination jabs online or even reporting a positive test have all shone a stark spotlight on these issues.
Like many councils we’ve been updating our strategy to reflect the different needs that digital access now has to meet. But we in Oxfordshire have gone about it differently. There was already some help available to people who had become “digitally excluded in the county but it was fragmented, with organisations saying similar things and making similar offers but without much co-ordination.
We realised that the key to making a real difference was to engage with partners across the public, business and voluntary sectors – working together to support our emerging strategy and having a much bigger impact in future months and years.
We would have a much greater ability to reach those who are digitally excluded and provide greater support if we could co-ordinate our efforts. As a council, we recognised that each organisation in the voluntary and community sector, private, public, education and health sectors have their own challenges, and are accountable for their own digital inclusion activities. However if we could align our work through a digital inclusion charter we’d be in a far better position to make a real difference to residents’ lives. We are glad to say that this is where we are now.
How did this unique level of co-operation come about?
It was in October 2021 that the county council held a virtual roundtable discussion with approximately 35 partners from various organisations including health, education and the voluntary sectors. In this session, we defined what digital inclusion means to people in Oxfordshire and we set out the problem that needs to be addressed. We also discussed our vision for a digitally inclusive county, which included joined-up initiatives and digital inclusion by design. There was a noticeable determination on the part of all organisations that we needed to come up with plans that meant nobody would be left behind.
The discussion also covered challenges and barriers that need to be overcome, including funding, duplication of resources due to a fragmented landscape, rurality (Oxfordshire is the most rural county in the South-East), online safety, and the cost-of-living crisis.
The principles that were identified as needing to underpin our collaborative work included signposting access to support; sharing best practice; promoting the benefits of digital; embedding equality, diversity, and inclusion; and recognising that digital inclusion is about people, not just technology.
Fast-forward to April 2022, and the county council was busy undertaking a further programme of engagement with external and internal partners to build the existing foundations. Three virtual workshops were held, focussed on digitally inclusive communities, with approximately 40 attendees. These workshops were on a range of themes, such as education, isolation, and local businesses. There was also a specific focus on groups who are more likely to be thought of as digitally excluded, elderly people being one example.
Crucially interviews were held with service users who have lived experience of digital exclusion or using our online services, to understand barriers in our service delivery and their insight was invaluable. ?Finally, a further two virtual workshops were held with our own staff about how the workplace can be made more digitally inclusive.
In early June we held a Digital Inclusion Summit with a range of partners and as a result it was agreed to draft a digital inclusion charter for Oxfordshire
There’s already a strong base to build on. We have a Digital Infrastructure Strategy to ensure that Oxfordshire has great connectivity and a dedicated team that has overseen residents’ access to superfast broadband grow from 69% in 2013 to over 98% today. The programme incorporates direct contract-driven interventions in areas of market failure, as well as collaboration with all telecoms suppliers/operators.
Meanwhile many of the council’s other strategies – including its local transport plan and its libraries and heritage strategy – have digital inclusion issues hardwired into their thinking.
If we could time-travel in to future years we believe our current joint planning and thinking is putting us in a great position to make digital exclusion in Oxfordshire largely a thing of the past. Organisations across Oxfordshire are not so much singing from the same hymn-sheet as from the same app.
Cllr Glynis Phillips is Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet member for corporate services
