Digital Strategy
The Information Age Partnership’s Digital Strategy workstream report focused on how content services could improve inclusion across the UK.
The report was created to stimulate debate about how the Government’s Digital Strategy should evolve and to provide a framework of recommendations.
Taking the key themes of the Digital Strategy, the report investigated the implications of the Government’s goals and highlighted opportunities to capitalise further on the actions under consideration. These covered a wide range of topics – as briefly examined below, however the full report can be accessed in pdf format.
The workgroup recommended that the Government should look beyond the issues of digital inclusion and identify broader areas for the Digital Strategy to cover. This might have included fostering collaborative working between the public and private sector or encouraging individual digital entrepreneurialism.
The Digital Switchover provided an opportunity to drive overall digital literacy, not just in terms of take-up of linear television but also in digital, two-way, broadband services.
There was also an opportunity to improve digital inclusion by focusing on content services:
- The availability of stimulating content online could be seen as an important factor in encouraging people to adopt ICT
- Government could seek to stimulate investment in and demand for content services
- Innovation was based on very short development cycles with multiple product releases. A strategy was required to improve and facilitate partnerships between the private and public sector
Within industry, software developers could benefit from tax credits and this should have been more widely promoted, alongside a widening of the definition of the work eligible for credits.
At the same time more focus needed to be given to ensuring the ICT and internet industry was properly skilled. Universities could make a more explicit link between IT courses and job opportunities, such as working in web and new media production.
Finally, industry development could have been encouraged by enabling venture capitalists to better understand the creative industries to bring further investment into the sector.