Welcome to November’s Inquiry Group, Bridging the Digital Divide

A definition  The digital divide refers to the gap between individuals, households, businesses, and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels with regard both to their opportunities to access information and communications technologies (ICT's) and to their use of the Internet for a wide variety of activities  imbalance both in physical access to technology and the resources and skills needed to effectively participate as a digital citizen.technologydigital citizen  Technical inequality

Categories of division  WHO : individuals vs. organizations  Communities, societies, countries, world regions;  WHICH characteristics: income, education, geography, age, gender, or type of ownership, size, profitability, sector, etc.;  HOW (level digital sophistication):  access vs. usage vs. impact;  WHAT (type of technology): phone, Internet, computer, digital TV, etc.  How we frame this divide depends on our desired impact

International Divide

How does the digital divide mirror other inequalities?

International differences  between 12 and 17 in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, and Tokyo in 2007 show that the 'digital generation' has grown up with computers and the Internet, with 96% of them being internet users, and having 6 years of computer experience on average. (Jung 2010)  Japan 94 million rate of 74%.  South Korea 34 million Internet 71 percent  Hong Kong 4.8 million users 70%,  Taiwan 15.4 million 67 percent () of the total population, over the past five years. With users,  Singapore %  U.K. children’s Internet behaviors, where they discovered that nearly all surveyed teens (98%) aged 9 to 19 years old had Internet access, and approximately 75 percent had Internet access at home (e.g., Livingstone & Bober, 2003; Livingstone et al., 2004).

 As for their mobile phone usage, Singapore led the five cities with 97% of the surveyed teens reported using a mobile phone, followed by Tokyo (89%), Hong Kong (88%), Seoul (87%), and Taipei (84%). On the other hand, significantly more teens in Tokyo connect to the Internet via their mobile phones compared to teens in other cities.

Intergenerational divide

Avenues of Action  Literacy: both traditional and ICT-related  Web accessibility and the disabled  Linguistic accessibility  Website navigability and document formats  Public vs. at-home Internet access

obstacles  “Out with the old, in with the new” (shutting offline services, replaced by online services)  Funding challenges  Non-engagement of private sector & civil society  Lack of public engagement  Unnecessary “bells and whistles”  Non-enforcement (or lack) of accessibility standards  Insensitivity to reading levels  Linguistic barriers

O Promising developments  The profits of fishermen in India grew when their mobiles helped them determine the best price for the day’s haul.  A mobile application in Kenya allows people who had never used bank accounts before to transfer funds to their families or to pay for goods and services at local businesses. Farmers have been able to save their crops through timely teleconferencing with agronomists  Eighty percent of the planet’s population lives within range of a cell tower. More than half of the world’s 4.5 to 5 billion mobile phone subscribers are found in Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa  1dvyzE2bN 1dvyzE2bN

Internet as a human right  recent BBC poll of some 28,000 adults in developed countries. It found that 79 percent of them agreed with the statement, “Access to the Internet should be a fundamental right for all people.”  Is this feasible?  mclemee314#ixzz1dvzB4XHV mclemee314#ixzz1dvzB4XHV

Economic Development  According to the World Bank : economic growth in developed countries was boosted by 1.3 per cent for every 10 per cent increase in the availability of broadband ($)

ideas  Technology transfer  Computing as a service  The internet as a human right  Mobile internet provision services – motohotspots  WiMax and beyond

Example: MyPyramid.gov  April 2005: US Dept of Agriculture releases new “food pyramid” only on website  Not available over phone, fax or on paper  Inaccessible for people with disabilities  English-only; Spanish website not ready for launch

Referances  Achieving E-Government for All - Andy Carvin, Digital Divide Network $ - World Bank (2009) Information and Communications for Development 2009: Extending Reach and Increasing ImpactWashington DC: The World BankInformation and Communications for Development 2009: Extending Reach and Increasing Impact