Digital Scotland spreading the benefits Securing a world-class digital infrastructure for Scotland

is merely a means to an end.

How do we ensure that all of Scotland’s people, businesses and organisations have the desire, skills, and tools to use it effectively?

Inclusion• Every individual has an undeniable right

to digital inclusion

• Government must assume overall accountability to ensure that it is available and accessible to all

Respect and Protect

• Governments must respect and protect our rights and freedoms, online as well as offline.

Motivation• Address the network effect

• Why go online when most of your neighbours are offline?

• Target communities not just individuals

Skills• Information literacy for all

• Data literacy in every profession

• Computer science for future geeks

Trust• our capacity to acquire, store, process

and communicate information has changed

• democratic oversight of the effects of digitisation is required

In Scotland• 5.2 million population

• 3.3 million working age

• 2.5 million households

!

• 800,000 households are offline!

• 1.3 million adults lack basic digital skills

• Deprivation is more significant than geography or connection speeds

Uptake increases with isolation

Numbers offline increase with deprivation

Once we have allowed for the

effects of deprivation, we find that low speeds

coincide with remote areas

where demand is generally

higher.

• Concentrations of inclusion and exclusion are common.

• The digital divide is greater than we feared.

probability of a neighbour being offline0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

By DatazoneBy Postcode

Proportion of postcodes with most households offline

10% 90%50%

10% 90%50%

10% 90%50%

10% 90%50%

AccessStep change will not deliver even 95% availability of superfast broadband to

individuals, nor will it deliver symmetric, low

latency connectivity to businesses across all of Scotland