Agenda item

The Executive Member for Regeneration and the Director of Regeneration and Culture submitted a report for the Executive’s consideration. The purpose of the report was to provide information on the Digital Inclusion Strategy and request its adoption.

A lack of digital skills and access could have a huge negative impact on a person’s life, leading to poorer health outcomes, a lower life expectancy, increased loneliness, social isolation and less access to jobs and education.

It was planned that the DIS would be used by the Council to help shape the future of digital inclusion in the borough, to ensure that all residents were supported to overcome digital barriers and maximise the social, health, education and economic benefits of enhanced digital access. The annually-reviewed action plan would enable the Council to target its leadership response, along with its key strategic partners, to emerging local needs, opportunities and priorities towards the ultimate aim of achieving parity with national digital inclusion standards.

The key aspects of the DIS were:

·         The Vision - Middlesbrough would be brought in line with national digital inclusion standards.

·         The Strategy - centred around the 5 digital inclusion Key Objectives, with issues and emerging opportunities for each:

o    Objective 1: Ensuring children and families were able to access digital learning and no pupil missed learning due to digital DISarity.

o    Objective 2: Ensuring job seekers were able to access digital skills and employability support.

o    Objective 3: Ensuring individuals (particularly elderly people) were able to engage with others to reduce isolation.

o    Objective 4: Ensuring local businesses were supported to trade digitally.

o    Objective 5: Ensuring town-wide connectivity plans supported Middlesbrough’s digital ambitions.

The DIS was accompanied with an action plan, which identified a series of 10 Practical Actions required to launch the coordinated digital inclusion programme and attain tangible improvement, over the next 12 months, against the Key Objectives. Those Practical Actions were detailed at paragraph 11 of the submitted report.

In addition, the Action Plan identified 4 pledges with associated Strategic Actions to ensure the Council provided the necessary local strategic leadership. Those pledges and Strategic Actions were detailed at paragraph 12 of the submitted report.

The DIS had been finalised, taking into account the contributions from the cross directorate Steering Group, plus all of the comments received during the stakeholder consultations and workshops. The final version of the DIS was attached to the submitted report at Appendix 1.

Following its adoption, the DIS would be used as part of the evidence base for the Strategic Plan, to inform the Poverty Strategy and to support relevant local and regional digital projects.

OPTIONS

Not to adopt the Digital Inclusion Strategy. That would have meant that the Council would not have had a clear strategy for delivering a coordinated local action plan for reducing exclusion and maximising local digital access. It would have been more challenging to deliver the digital infrastructure, skills, devices, services and support, of the right quality, to support current and future needs.

ORDERED

That the Digital Inclusion Strategy be adopted.

REASON

The DIS set out the key digital inclusion priorities and opportunities to help deliver the Council’s Strategic Plan and ensure that barriers in the way of maximising the social, health, education and economic benefits of enhanced digital access were reduced for existing and future residents.