Quality Digital Assistance
Attending a workshop facilitated by the Centre for Social Informatics in Edinburgh challenged my current thinking on the role of Digital Champions.
We promote Champions as being an excellent source of person-centred support for building the confidence of people with low/no digital skills.
Embedding Champions into services most in contact with people who are digitally excluded (for instance providers of social housing, money advice services or mental health support) is a great way of giving people a digital nudge and sometimes of solving a particular digital problem.
Is there a difference between this digital problem-solver role and the role of a digital trainer or enabler — enablement = developing digital self-confidence and digital competency — giving the skills to self-manage other digital interactions and engagements.
In contrast, a problem-solver is often someone who provides digital assistance to enable someone to access a service online.
Providing ‘assisted digital’ is promoted by the government as being an essential part of the design of digital services. It’s a simple recognition that some people may need help to use a service online.
What is less clear and less articulated is whether we can expect digital assistants to be:
- trained to a particular standard
- offering accessible advice
- available for some, or all online services
- located within trusted places
- fully funded
Currently we have a patchy approach to which digital services have offered funding to provide digital assistance .
We regularly have people being sent to us from the Job Centre for assistance with completing benefit applications — library volunteer
The EU Settlement Scheme offers support via the Citizens Advice Network (as part of funding to 57 organisations) — whereas Universal Credit was initially rolled out with assumptions that existing providers would give digital assistance for free. It took significant pressure to change the digital support offer.
So my reflections and questions from yesterday are:
- Do we need an accredited digital assistance scheme?
- How are service providers (in all sectors) going to work together to ensure that digital assistance is available more widely?
One of the living examples yesterday was of someone who just wanted to arrange a council garden waste bin — to do this he needed to register his digital identity and then sign up for the scheme online.
People are going to continue to need help and support — for essential digitally accessed services — is there a case for an accredited ‘digital assistant’ scheme which is extensive and relevant working with whichever organisation is the provider? The costs of which would need to be integrated into service design and delivery as an acceptable part of ensuring everyone has the right of digital access and participation.
Thanks to Dr Frances Ryan & Peter Cruickshank at Napier University & participants at the workshop on Digital Identity held on 27 February 2020 — and I hope they will find my reflections a useful contribution.
