Why bother with the Internet?

The Government has set targets for all public services to be available online within five years, and has committed about £300 million pounds of capital and revenue to establishing or rebranding 6,000 UK online centres - places where people can learn about how to use computers and the Internet. This is in addition to the billions invested in public services and commercial development - e-government and ecommerce. But will it really matter if residents are not using the Internet, and housing associations lag behind other organisations?

Online facilities could be important in delivering services, improving resident participation, supporting community development and offering personal learning opportunities to residents.
Possible benefits have to be set again costs, difficulties in setting up systems and questions of how far housing associations should be in the technology business.
The challenge is to find where residents and landlord agendas overlap - and ensure that residents are not disadvantaged through restrictions on Internet use or withdrawal of other services.

We looked at the issue of 'why' from two perspectives with Martyn Pearl, who has conducted research in the field, most recently for the Housing Corporation's Remote Control project. We looked at what is happening generally in civic and community use of the Internet, and we built on Martyn's research through workshops with residents and housing association staff. Fuller reports are available on our website.

Civic and community technology

David Wilcox and Martyn Pearl's research into community and civic technology has been published in the Journal of the Communications Network, which serves the telecommunications industry. From our research we suggest that this non-profit use of the Internet is important to government because of its desire to improve access to services and cut costs; enhance democracy through online voting and participation; improve the effectiveness of community and voluntary sector organisations; and generally increase skill levels so that our workforce can compete internationally. Government, as part of its social inclusion agenda, also wants to avoid a 'digital divide' whereby some people, through lack of access, skills or confidence, are unable to enjoy the benefits of online facilities. We also suggest that non-profit use of the Internet - with family and friends, for hobbies or community activity - may be important commercially because it reflects the diversity of people's lives. Technology and content companies will be better able to tailor their products to people's changing interests and lifestyles if they have a better understanding of use of the Internet beyond entertainment and the office. But what are the personal benefits? Kevin Harris, Information Manager at the government-funded Community Development Foundation (CDF), suggests that when people use ICTs (information and communication technologies) they:

acquire and develop technical, communication, learning, social and other skills
learn formally and informally, together or alone, by design and through serendipity
develop confidence and self-esteem
pursue leisure interests and opportunities
publish and broadcast their opinions and ideas.

Community and civic use of the Internet is being fostered by a wide range of programmes and organisations. As well as the UK online centres mentioned above, there are voluntary community networks providing local content online, training and support, community media centres and government-backed Wired Up Communities, as well as thousands of online communities hosted by BBC Online, independent media companies or newspapers, or developed by enthusiasts using free or low-cost systems.

Residents' and landlords' use of the Internet

From the above we can argue that ICTs are important on many fronts ranging from personal opportunities to community building. We suggest that housing association use of ICTs could develop at three levels:

Delivery of services online: reporting repairs, negotiating exchanges, general assistance.
Support for resident-related activities online: integrating with resident participation programmes.
Enabling tenants to use the Net to pursue their learning, work or personal interests.

As we report elsewhere, a limited number of housing association are undertaking level 1. Even fewer are attempting 2 or 3.

Two research projects undertaken for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggest that residents may be disadvantaged in various ways because of the low priority given to home-based communication systems. On the one hand residents may lose out because of restrictions if they do want to use the Internet; on the other hand they may find traditional services being withdrawn and suffer if they are not online.

Tim Dwelly (2002) highlights the problems that residents are likely to have in making full use of the Internet for learning or working from home. He identified that the overall take-up of Internet use - now in over 40 per cent of homes - has enabled one in four of the workforce to carry out some of their work from home. However, allocation policies and tenancy agreements usually mean that tenants have no spare room for themselves or their children to use a PC quietly, and are discouraged or forbidden to run a business from home. From a survey of housing associations and housing policy and practice he concluded:

Housing association and local authority allocation policies generally take no account of a household's need to work or study from home.
Social tenants are rarely allocated a home with a spare room.
Most social landlords' tenancy agreements discourage or forbid use of the home for business.
A survey of 25 housing associations found that few had ever granted tenants permission to work from home. However, one in 20 council tenants and one in 14 working housing association tenants are already mainly working at home.

Nicholas Pleace, of the Centre for Housing Policy, University of York, has carried out research with Deborah Quilgars into the early implementation of electronic service delivery by social landlords, social services and charities (Pleace and Quilgars, 2002). He says:

The challenges are around ensuring accessibility and preserving choice. Every effort needs to be made to ensure that electronic service delivery is accessible to people who would find it difficult to use a website via a PC. For those who cannot, or do not wish to, use electronic service delivery, an ongoing effort to provide alternative routes to services that provide support and assistance, rather than expecting individuals to 'self-serve' using interactive services, is required. Without this, there will be a risk that electronic service delivery increases marginalisation and exclusion for some elements within the population. (Cited in Wilcox and Pearl, 2002, p. 52)

Nicholas identifies costs to users and organisations as barriers to developing online service - plus the nature of the services: 'Adaptation of public services is costly and complex. It is much more difficult to automate social housing management than sell books over the Internet.'

Why isn't much happening?

One possible conclusion from the above is that housing associations should 'try harder' and take the lead in helping get their tenants connected. However, this may be simplistic.

On the one hand, blundering into new technology without a clear strategy and planning for change could produce more problems and expense than it saves in benefits. Training and support to help landlords and tenants avoid this will be needed. In order to reap the benefits of the Net, housing associations will need to address some or all of:

working closely with residents
becoming less secretive and generally changing attitudes
training staff and boards
recruiting specialists
reorganising information and communication systems.

On the other hand, it may be that housing associations and residents are not enthusiastic about the technology because it doesn't very evidently offer major benefits in their roles as landlords and tenants. It may offer benefits to organisations internally - and may offer benefits to residents with particular interests, or at particular times of life. However, introducing the technology is likely to be costly in time and money and may lead to other forms of communication being neglected. To bring benefits it must be relevant, integrated and maintained. Landlords and tenants may have other priorities.

The balance of benefits and barriers

The benefits and barriers identified from workshop discussions and research covered the three areas or levels above: services; tenantrelated activities; and personal benefits. They included the following:

Potential benefits for residents

Services will be more readily available for those online.
The Net provides groups and individuals with additional access to information and the means of communicating, collaborating and lobbying online. This could be important in partnership working.
Those who learn to use computers and the Net can find this gives a general boost to confidence. The Net offers both young and old new opportunities for learning.
Online networks could help build a stronger sense of community.

Potential barriers for residents

Residents may not understand - or be confident about - the technology and find it difficult to see benefits for themselves or others in their household.
Development of online services may mean reduction of other services. Solutions may be imposed with little or no consultation.
Getting connected is likely to be costly if computers are used. Services may be relatively limited if digital TV is used. Computers and the Net simply may not be a priority for residents on low incomes.
Residents may have given up fixed phones in favour of mobiles, which may mean neither computers nor interactive digital TV can be used (since this requires a return path via the phone).
Where systems are developed to help tenants' associations and similar groups, the housing association may be unwilling to allow tenants fully to control development and content.

Possible benefits for associations

Enhanced delivery of services and/or reduced costs in the long term.
Additional means of consultation and communication as part of tenant participation.
Computers and the Net can make a contribution to wider objectives of community development and capacity building.

The barriers for associations

Most senior managers don't understand the technology and so find it difficult to see the possible benefits and to develop technology plans.
There are concerns about the security and possible misuse of electronic data. In many cases, housing associations haven't developed effective information management systems.
Introducing technology requires changes in organisational culture. There generally does not appear to be the will to do this.
Front-line staff do not believe technology can help significantly, and/ or are worried that data collected may be used against them.
There is a perception that the majority of tenants are currently not interested in using new technology.
The benefits in efficiency or effectiveness are in any case uncertain in the short term, while the additional staffing needed will cost money and require organisational change.

Comments from workshops that we ran

How far is a housing association responsible for more than housing anyway?
Whichever route you go, it is all very difficult. Because technology is changing at such a pace long-term planning becomes difficult.
There is a government agenda, and a gadget maker agenda - but what is the agenda for poorer housing association tenants?
In considering options such as digital TV, it may be that, for example, local authorities develop a service that we could tap into which might be far more co st effective that doing something (smaller scale) ourselves. How can tenants know what they may want until they have seen it?
How can housing associations involve tenants in any meaningful way?
If it's free, what's the catch?
Does everyone get access (if not why not)?
Will a housing association give tenants real power to 'own' a system and use it the way that they want to?
An online system might, for example, increase the speed of repairs, but personal contact between housing staff and residents might be lost if as a consequence there were job cuts. On the other hand, some organisations might use the opportunity to free up staff time and increase personal contact with residents.
Will it be safe - particularly for children?
What happens when it doesn't work?
Why aren't you doing something essential with the money?

The challenge - developing overlapping agendas

From the above analysis of potential benefits and barriers, the challenge is to find the common ground for residents and housing associations, and develop a shared agenda.

Our workshop with the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust (JRHT) showed that both residents and staff were sceptical about 'technology for technology's sake'. The general feeling was that there might be some potential in the use of new technologies, but that benefits would have to be very clear for both residents and JRHT for any developments to be considered.

Residents would need to feel that the technology added to the existing over-the-counter, print or telephone-based services.

The following scenarios emerge from our own and other research:

Housing associations may generally decide that they are not in the technology and online content business. They develop some online services, but leave it to residents to arrange access, and local authorities and other agencies to develop local content, services and signposting.
Some housing associations decide to invest substantially in online services, and begin to reduce telephone, face-to-face and print services.
Residents who want to make substantial use of opportunities provided by the Internet find that they cannot do so because of the costs and difficulty of gaining access, and/or restrictions on use of their home for work.
It may well be that the most realistic route to achieving overall benefits is to aim for partnerships between housing associations and other interests to provide access, equipment, training and support. There is still, of course, the issue of who will take the lead.

We explore in another section where developments are most likely to take place. The main point is that decisions on what to do - if anything - should follow discussion on why action may be needed. The 'why' will be different for residents and housing associations, and for people at different stages of their life. Residents and housing associations need some common ground on which to explore these issues.

On to What developments are likely by 2007? >