London Region ICT Champion

The inaugural June/July issue of the ICT Hub Circuit Rider News Digest, Round-Up is now available and features:

• ICT Hub Circuit Rider Development Project
• Project study of CVC Circuit Riders, South Wales
• Tools & Technologies - by circuit rider, John Fox
• Web resources for circuit riders
• Circuit Riders of the month – Marcus Otite of Superhighways and Marcus Pennell of SCIP

Download it from:

http://www.icthub.org.uk/circuitriders/index.html

http://www.lasa.org.uk/circuitriders/index.shtml

The News Digest is a PDF file which passes the Quick Accessibility Check and can be accessed using the Adobe Reader 8 Read Out Loud feature. Reader 8 can be downloaded from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Contributions for future issues, feedback are gratefully received.

Movement on the digital divide has stalled with only marginally more people online today than three years ago.

That’s the astonishing conclusion of new research conducted in association with FreshMinds.

Understanding Digital Inclusion is claimed to be the first report that comprehensively maps the correlation between digital and social exclusion. The report identifies the digital divide not just as a wide problem but as a deep one, with those still stuck on the wrong side more deeply excluded and harder-to-reach than ever before.

It reveals that:

• three in four people counted as socially excluded are also digitally excluded in not having convenient access to the internet.
• those who are out of work, in poor health, live in social housing, live alone, or have a low level of qualification are being set at a further disadvantage by digital exclusion.
• 75 % of people counted as socially excluded are also digitally excluded. That means they’re missing out on the opportunities, choices, savings and services computers and the internet provide.

The report brings together information from more than 80 sources, including research into digital skills, ICT usage and internet penetration from the Office of National Statistics, Ofcom, the Oxford Internet Institute, and government departments. It’s the first time the complex factors of non-ICT use and the correlation between digital and social exclusion have been comprehensively mapped.

The research will be officially launched at a parliamentary reception on 10 July. It will be available to download from the same date.

We hope the research adds further fuel to the fire that if the digital gap is to be narrowed - the ICT of voluntary and community organisations working with the most digitally excluded communities, such as Brixton Online, needs urgent and sustained investment from statutory and charitable funders.

This story was shamelessly lifted from an article originally published at Kablenet , a website aggregating government IT news.

After nearly 10 years of operation providing help, advice and training to local community and businesses Brixton Online has been forced to close down.

On it’s website, BOL lays the blame for its sad demise squarely at the door of statutory funders, particularly the LDA, for pushing it into deficit:

“[BOL has been]…..dependent on the public sector and government grants to deliver its programme of activities aimed at the most disadvantaged in London. This funding has been crucial in enabling BOL to achieve so much but it also has its down sides. Delays in payments, payment in arrears, cost only contracts and uncertainty over contract renewal made cashflow management very difficult. This came to a head in 2005 when re-structuring of several funding agencies, the end of Single Regeneration Budget funding and severe delays to payments for work undertaken for the LDA pushed BOL into deficit for the first time.

“The last year and a half have seen BOL work hard to reduce its deficit through cutting costs and winning new business. In the year to March 2007 we have made a trading profit, however continuing cashflow problems and the overall reduction of government funding going into the areas that BOL specialises in, have forced the BOL Directors to take the hard decision to voluntarily go into liquidation. Liquidators Portland have been appointed by the Board to see through the winding up of the business.”

BOL began life with a start up grant from Brixton Challenge in the mid 1990s, and specialised in delivering ICT support programmes to local community groups, start-up businesses, and individuals.  You can read the full list of BOL’s considerable achievements on their website.

Brixton Online will be much missed and we wish the all those connected with it all the best for the future.

Sadly, this is not the first time we’ve heard such a withering assessment of statutory funders, and if ever a case highlights the continuing need for statutory funders to support those seeking to capacity build ICT with the most disadvantaged communities this is it.

The London ICT Champion gives you the edited highlights from the launch of Capacity Builders Destination 2014 Strategy at Birmingham’s Botanic Gardens on 3 July.

Declaration: In the interests of transparency, the London ICT Champion is funded by Capacity Builders and is based at Lasa, a delivery partner of the ICT Hub - which is also funded by Capacity Builders.

Capacity Builders launched their Destination 2014 strategy one day after consultation on the draft National Support Services Framework closed. Others have blogged that the strategy was generally well received, but to my ears it was received in stony silence.

In the brave new Capacitybuilders world….
The revised Destination 2014 document proposes a single website for front-line groups to locate sources of support.

In a commitment to new simple language, infrastructure has been re-branded as ’support services’ or ’support providers’ and Consortia are now to be known as ’support networks’.

Capacity Builders have also re-branded themselves with a new logo and website after apparent customer dissatisfaction at the previous versions.

London Consortia showcased:
The London ICT Champion was present as one of 6 ‘champion’ projects from our region, along with CIO and Ealing Community Resource Centre. We did plenty of networking and made some useful new contacts, including Community Alliance, who are very keen to work with us.

For more on the London region case-studies, go here:

ICT in the regions:
ICT was represented or showcased on 8 of the 9 regional stands. This clearly proves that ICT support is NOT unimportant and is still something to be funded, a point which I laboured to Gill Walsh, our regional co-ordinator.

North East - VONNE ICT Champion
North West - Cheshire and Warrington Sub-Region ICT strategy on show
Yorks & Humbs - North Yorks Forum ICT service showcased
East Midlands - Voluntary Action Leicester - IT Trading for Change
West Midlands - Illuminate ICT of Coventry
South West – Cosmic: Evolve project showcased
London - London ICT Champion and Lasa
East of England - AFL, Shuttle and Circuit Riders

Social Enterprise:
Social enterprise is writ large into the strategy - but it is not clearly defined what Capacity Builders really mean. Are they talking about income generating activities (like training, room hire, etc) or have they decided that the market should now provide infrastructure support services to the sector and be funded supported with ChangeUp money for its trouble?

National Support Services (NSS) Framework:
On the question of the much heralded draft NSS framework, Chief Executive Simon Hebditch said the draft was a genuinely flexible framework and that all responses would be considered. For the record, there were 135 written responses of which 110 were a model letter from the Volunteering Hub campaign

The D2014 document still only mentions 4 national support services, with ICT filed under ‘Performance’.

What else?
Turnout: 250-300 people representing consortia projects from all over the country. Verdict: Reasonable given the atrocious weather conditions and collapse of public transport.

Interactive theatre experience: Capacity Builders hired a theatre group dressed as builders (geddit) to explain their new strategy to an invited audience already familiar with the Capacity Builders aganda. We were also treated to a 15 minute skit on the Star Trek version of Capacity Builders new strategy. Verdict: You couldn’t make it up.