The Scottish Executive’s digital inclusion strategy, “Connecting Scotland’s People”, provides the context for this work. It recognises that without support, some sections of our society face barriers to accessing the benefits of Information Communications Technologies (ICT). The strategy asserts that:

“A digitally-inclusive Scotland will ensure more equal, effective and beneficial access for all people to the digital technologies and Web facilities that benefit them in their day to day lives. In a digitally-inclusive Scotland, the public, private, and voluntary sectors will make positive use of digital technologies and the Web to improve quality of life and deliver new opportunities for disadvantaged individuals and communities.”

The strategy takes social justice as its underpinning theme and confirms the linkages between income, socio-economic status and ICT access. It clearly identifies barriers to ICT usage - costs, access, skills, culture and personal factors ­ but stresses that these cannot be tackled in isolation. Placing emphasis on the need to adopt and establish a coherent and co-ordinated set of initiatives in order to address this web of inter-related factors, the strategy highlights the need for urgency.

It concludes that without intervention, the following social groups may be unable to access services through ICT usage:

The strategy is action-focused and sets out a programme for investment under the following six themes:

The Executive has set targets related to the closure of the digital divide. These include a commitment to:

An extensive series of interventions is under way to boost levels of ICT awareness and usage. These include the development of two local community pilots, an extensive awareness raising campaign, creation of new facilities for web access and the establishment of a digital champions network in SIP areas.

Further details of the Executive’s work in this area can be found at http://www.scotland.uk/digitalscotland