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Digital participation – new enquiry

The Royal Society of Edinburgh is to run an enquiry into digital participation in Scotland, the aim being

to ensure that digital technologies help to narrow the social divide, rather than widen it, and that the opportunities for economic development presented by digital technologies can be realised across Scotland’.

The benefits of digital participation for individuals, communities, public bodies, businesses and voluntary organisations are, says the Society, well documented and it wants to take stock of the social, economic and cultural communities across Scotland that are not yet enjoying these benefits.

Well one community that is not yet enjoying these benefits is the public sector where digital participation is woefully inadequate, mainly because employees are generally discouraged or blocked from participating. Some examples:

  • Not allowed to install buttons on browser, for example to store useful web pages in Delicious or Instapaper
  • Not allowed to access streaming video from, eg, Vimeo
  • Not allowed to access Twitter or Facebook
In the many workshops on social media (aka digital participation) that we have run in recent years most people understand the benefits and are enthusiastic, but are daunted by the barriers erected by their organisation. We have made this point many times; requiring people to ask for permission to use Soundcloud, Youtube, Vimeo, Delicious etc. is disempowering.  If digital participation means anything it means removing  these institutional barriers.

On the other hand there is plenty evidence that the public in general do engage with social media. See for example our our own study from 2010 The Future for Personalisation? Service Users, Carers and Digital Engagement. And more recently a study (reported in this blog) from the Government Office for Science  found that people are becoming more engaged in online networks, are working out how to manage their online identities, and can switch seamlessly between multiple identities.

The big barrier to digital engagement, I would suggest, is the lack of trust that many employers show in their employees.  As  Detective Chief Constable Gordon Scobbie puts it
 
We trust you with a baton and with the right to take away someone’s liberty, I think we can trust you with a Twitter account.

If your employer’s internet access policies hinder your digital participation why not visit the enquiry site and make your views known?

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1 thought on “Digital participation – new enquiry”

  1. Nicola Osborne

    Ian, many thanks for this blog post about the Inquiry launch yesterday and links to your 2010 study (which I will pass on). Thank you also for your encouragement for others to make their views known via the Inquiry website. The Inquiry Committee is keen to hear from a wide range of communities and I therefore wanted to echo your encouragement to take part.

    Thanks, Nicola.

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