When the UK goes 'digital by default', who will be left behind?

UK government services are going digital, yet often the people who need them most are not able to access them. Elizabeth Rust reports on the 17% who are digitally excluded


Richard Taylor has signed on for Job seekers Allowance twice since October and has received two payments. Each time he signed on, his payments were stopped almost immediately because he couldn't prove that he was searching for work 35 hours every week. “I don’t own a computer and I am reliant on my local library,” he said. “You can book two hour blocks of internet use in advance, but if you just turn up you can only use it for 15 minutes.”


At the Job center, Taylor was given a list of all of the local libraries in Newcastle with internet access. “They think everyone has the internet, but I don’t. They don’t understand how hard that is. They've clearly had it explained to them that there are plenty of places to get online to fill out job applications, but they don’t know how cut-off I feel.”


Since losing his job in October, Taylor has been living off handouts from his father and friends, but says his situation has made him depressed and anxious. “I’m in a lot of debt because of this whole situation," he says. "I’m 30 and I think they think I’m sitting at home playing Xbox and getting free money.”


Taylor is not alone in not having internet access. According to Office for National Statistics, 17% of households in the UK didn't have internet access in 2013. The problem can be lack of skill or the cost of equipment, but there are some who simply aren't interested.


Yet at the same time, government services are becoming "digital by default", and access to services, such as the universal credit system, will primarily be done online. The government’s Digital Efficiency Report suggested that digital transactions are 20 times cheaper than by phone, 30 times cheaper than by post and as much as 50 times cheaper than by face-to-face meetings, meaning that the government could save between £1.7 and £1.8bn each year if all transactions were done online.


Many services can now be accessed from the gov.uk website where services from 34 government departments and 331 agency and public body websites have been merged into one, with the aim of making these digital services so easy to use that it is the preferred way of accessing them.


Chi Onwurah, MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, isn’t against government services going online. She believes that a “digital government offers a huge opportunity to change the relationship between the government and the people [who use its services]”.


She is concerned, however, that the current government is going "digital by default" simpy to cut costs while forgetting about people who don’t have access to the internet or the digital skills to use it; that latter number is estimated to be 19% in April 2014, according to BBC Learning, down slightly from 21% in October 2013.


To address the issue, Onwurah has launched the Digital Government Review with fellow MP Michael Dugher to determine how the government’s digital services can best benefit the people who need them.


“When Ed Miliband talks about people powered services, digital is what will help enable people to take control of their services and not simply be at the centre of service delivery, but actually be co-designing those services so that they can design it how they see best,” she said.


An independent advisory board has led the review with representatives from central and local government, consumers, and tech industry groups. The panel called on submissions from the public on how digital services should be designed, as well as examples on where digital services are working well and how they should be improved.


Staff at Newcastle's Citizen’s Advice Bureau (CAB) told Onwurah during an event in May that many users felt excluded by online services and were relying on CAB staff to help them fill out forms. Libraries have proved unsuitable because of lack of support from staff, no privacy for users and short time limits on shared computers. Other CAB staff reported that benefits claimants were increasingly replying on food banks because of the problems of accessing services online.


“The Government Digital Service has done a lot of great work in making government services more digital, but there’s a profound difference between digitising the DVLA, and digitising services which are directed at the poorest and most vulnerable,” Onwurah said. “This is putting the cost of going digital onto them and not where it belongs, with the government - which will be reaping the financial rewards of going digital.


"The idea that unemployed people are paying the price of digitalisation I find absolutely unacceptable.”


Grant Blank, a survey research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, thinks the government is realistic about the number of people who can’t access services and understands that it will have to offer assistance. The Digital Inclusion Charter launched in April 2014 begins to address the problem, he points out, aiming to reduce the number of people offline by 25% by 2016 working with such organisations as the Tinder Foundation and Go-On UK.


Despite this, the charter estimates that 10% of the population may never gain basic digital capabilities.


A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “We will always provide assistance for those who need help in accessing government services online. The world is changing and when you can bank online at midnight and shop from your bedroom, people rightly expect high-quality digital services from government.”


The spokesperson added: “Our ambition is to reduce the number of people who are offline by 25% by 2016. To help achieve this, we have brought together for the first time 40 public, private and voluntary sector organisations to sign a new UK Digital Inclusion Charter. This includes a national programme of support to help get more people online.”


But according to Blank, current government support “is not great”, describing an instance when he emailed a question about an online form, and received an automated reply saying he'd have a response within two weeks. “A modern response would be to have a chat online directly or a default fallback with a phone number to call,” he said.


There are also people who may be capable, but have never used the internet and see no need to start. They just aren't interested, explains Blank.


Angus Gammack is a case in point. A retired dentist in his 80s who lives outside of Exeter, Gammack says that unless the internet becomes absolutely essential he is very happy to stay offline. “I keep in touch with people using a telephone," he says. "I have a son in America, and we phone him when it’s convenient for both of us."


“The internet is classically an experienced technology in the sense that you can’t see many of its advantages in the abstract, you actually have to experience it to understand how it can work for you,” Blank said.


“At some point, though, people who want government services are going to have to be online. And this is a real conundrum for the government; if you look at who’s offline and who wants government services, they’re the same people.”


According to Blank, people who tend to be offline are disproportionately older, in poorer health, have lower income, less education and aren't employed, but these are the people who want to make disproportionate use of its services and will need assistance with ‘digital by default’.


This, says Onwurah, is causing real hardship in the short term. " We believe in the longer term this will lead to a disenfranchised class of those who can’t take part in a digital society. And to be a citizen in the future, digital skills are going to be as important as the ability to read and write”.