17 Million Brits Have Never Been Online!

We in the IT industry sometimes act as if everyone uses the web as much as we do. But the truth is that 17 million Britons have never been online. That is the challenge facing Martha Lane-Fox, co-founder of Lastminute.com and freshly appointed by the UK government as their Digital Champion.

Have those 17 million people chosen not to go on-line? Do they see it as irrelevant to their lives, too expensive or simply too daunting? I suspect that the last two of these are nearer the mark. In fact I think many of them feel left out and at a disadvantage because they do not use the web.

Ms Lane-Fox has hosted the first meeting of a task force to target the six million poorest Britons. There is a close correlation between social and digital exclusion. The poorest sectors of society make up a large part of the 17 million.

She has a tough job. Professor Bill Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute thinks she is trying to convert those who have no desire to be converted: "The big question is how do you get people to experience a technology that they are predisposed not to be interested in,". I disagree. Who would not want access to cheaper car or household insurance? Who would not like to be able to find a job using the power of on-line searching technology? Who would not like to be able to correspond by emails with distant friends and relatives?

The UK government definitely wants to do far more business on-line. Currently 80% of its transactions are done with the bottom 25% of society, and moving these services on-line offers great cost savings. The Department for Work and Pensions (Jobcentre Plus) jobs website already has a pretty impressive one million searches per day.

And local government is following this lead. For example, Coventry City Council has put applications and bidding for social housing exclusively on-line. The scheme has driven more people to the Foleshill UK Online centre, one of 6,000 centres around the UK designed to get more people computer literate and using the web. "It is an internet-based service and unless you are computer literate it is not easy. It is a way of us helping people to help themselves," said Chrissie Morris, an advice officer at the centre.

By the way, both Jobcentre Plus and Coventry City Council use kiosks from NeoProducts to extend the reach of their on-line services. They recognise that one cannot migrate services to the web without catering for those without access. And the most cost-effective way of doing that is with kiosks. With a simplified touchscreen user interface; context-sensitive help, and good design, they make using the web easy.

One way to include those 17 million people in the digital revolution is to make the most popular and useful on-line services available on lots of conveniently-placed public access kiosks.