GO ON UK Campaign Maps Digital Exclusion and Broadband

Charity Go ON UK has produced a new heatmap of Digital Exclusion across the United Kingdom, which contrasts the availability of broadband and digital skills with Internet usage in order to identify which Local Authorities are falling short. Unsurprisingly urban areas tend to do well, but there are some interesting twists.

The combined digital indicator is made up of four metrics that indicate digital exclusion, such as infrastructure (i.e. broadband speeds of at least 2Mbps), access (how many people have NEVER used the Internet), Basic Digital Skills and Basic Digital Skills Used.

Social factors like health, income, age and education are also weighted into the results, which are split by local authority.

The Digital Exclusion Heatmap
http://www.go-on.co.uk/resources/heatmap/

For example, Leeds was found to have a medium level of digital exclusion, which reflects how 9.00% of local households do not receive broadband speeds of at least 2Mbps, while 13.0% of adults have never been online. On top of that 77% of adults have all five Basic Digital Skills, but only 36% of adults have actually used all five of those Basic Digital Skills in the last three months.

The map also notes some interest findings, such as the way that Scotland scores low overall in terms of infrastructure, yet it also has the highest levels of Basic Digital Skills of all the four UK nations. Meanwhile in Manchester nearly 80% of adults have all five Basic Digital Skills, but only one-third have used them in the past 3 months.

Similarly Cardiff has high levels of Basic Digital Skills compared to the areas immediately around it and compared to the UK as a whole, even though Wales is the nation with the lowest overall levels of Basic Digital Skills.

The map also confirms that social indicators, such as age and income, significantly increase the likelihood of exclusion and regardless of how highly the digital indicators in that region score. For example, in Dundee and Torbay the digital indicators show a low likelihood of exclusion whilst the social indicators reveal a high likelihood. Conversely, Cambridge scores highly on the social indicators but still has a medium risk of overall exclusion.

In other words there is no single cause of digital exclusion and therefore no one-size-fits-all solution either, which is why it’s important to focus on as many of the areas as possible.

Mind you Go ON UK’s report does come with some of the usual caveats, such as the fact that it deems 2Mbps to be an acceptable minimum speed and also bases that on data from Ofcom that tends to be a fair bit out of date. Other data sources may require similar checking.

The Government’s Broadband Delivery UK project with BT, specifically Phase 1, is currently moving quite fast to deliver superfast broadband (24Mbps+) capable networks to 90% of the UK by around the end of 2015 or early 2016. As such the use of old data can return a very unreliable result for the infrastructure score.