Digital Exclusion Heatmap - Edmund Lee

I'd like to introduce you to a resource published last year which I think could help with planning for digital projects.

One issue with a digital content or service focussed project has been the potential for exclusion of some of the population either at a national or local level – the 'digital divide'.

A charity GoONLocal, with support from Local Government Association, the London School of Economics and others has published research to see exactly how substantial an issue this might be. They have taken four factors that might contribute to digital exclusion from available sources or commissioned surveys as follows:-

- Infrastructure (Ofcom's Percentage of homes with broadband currently not achieving 2Mbit/s speed)

- Individual access from the ONS Internet Users Survey – (ONS Internet Access indicator)

- Individual skill from the Ipsos Mori Basic Digital Skills measure (Could you do this)

- Individual use from the Ipsos Mori Basic Digital Skills measure (Have you done this)

… and mapped them to local authority level. The resulting Digital Exclusion heat map can be found at

http://www.go-on.co.uk/resources/heatmap/

So if you are planning for an online service or project in  you can click into a target area and get the full survey results. For example at national level overall 81% of adults in England have 'basic online skills' (slightly more in Scotland, slightly less in Wales and Northern Ireland)

There's more detail on how they generated the data here including further links to the definitions of skills here

http://www.go-on.co.uk/get-involved/go-uk-heatmap/about-heatmap/

… and even more detail here…

http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/pdf/From-digital-skills-to-tangible-outcomes/Technical-annex-Go-On-Digital-Exclusion.pdf

It is being promoted by the Government Digital Service, so feels pretty much like a reliable source:

https://digitalinclusion.blog.gov.uk/2015/10/22/guest-post-go-on-local-and-the-digital-exclusion-heatmap/

Going beyond describing the issue, GoOnLocal provide a toolkit for the development of local projects to develop digital skills, at

http://local.go-on.co.uk/

Overall it looks like a useful resource – anyone out there using it?