Former Member 12 Years yn ôl Great post Sarah and I'm pleased that digital inclusion is making its way back on to the LGA agenda. Hopefully, this time, there will be opportunities to focus on the real issues of service delivery. While the Race Online approach has had a number of beneficial outcomes not least keeping digital inclusion in the public and political domain it has failed and will continue to fail to reach a key audience. That is those who are hardest to reach and most excluded and who are, at the same time, the most demanding of and the most expensive users of public services. For people whose lives are chaotic access to services is not a "shopping" experience and yet these are potentially the people who have most to gain. To address the real needs of this sector we need to understand the role of those organisations who operate there every day in the voluntary and community sector, we need to understand their skill requirements and how we can assist them in making ICTs accessible to their client groups. We also need to accept that any use of ICTs with hard to reach groups must address their needs, strengthen their networks and support their survival strategies. These will not be the same needs and strategies as those who wish to save money on line by booking holidays and shopping at Waitrose (or M & S for that matter). We have to have faith that hard to reach groups are more than capable of managing much in their environment in ways that might not agree with the approach of the majority of people. This doesn't mean that their approach is wrong nor does it mean that we should not listen to the criticisms that they might make about what others do and how others approach the problems. As an example look at the work of Rangswammy and Cutrell with youths in the Indian slums . There are pople thinking about how social media can make a difference at the sharp end of service delivery and within the organisation not least Martin Howitt and Carl Haggerty with whom I've had an interesting discussion . Finally, when we re-visit digital inclusion this time let us not forget that: digital inclusion is big "...You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to" digital inclusion (with sincere apologies to Douglas Adams) There is a tendency to focus on "the answer" but just like the number 42 this approach does not take account of the scale of the problem and its many facets. Maybe this time around we can think about just how big a problem it is and we can think about a direction of travel which, ultimately, may lead to the empowerment of the dis-empowered, which is what we're all about isn't it? 2 Reply as... Canslo