A report out today from think tank Demos argues that information held and shared electronically is increasingly used to exclude the poor and the old from wider society.
Demos says that the real digital divide is not about getting the country online by providing access to hardware such as personal computers or internet-enabled mobile phones. It is, the researchers suggest, about the information held on individuals which marks them as unworthy of credit, insurance, electronic cash or employment.
Just last week, the department for education and employment announced a £10m plan to tackle the digital divide by providing internet and digital access to 12,000 homes in six deprived communities across England.
But the Demos report found that access to the internet is not the issue and that government efforts have been misplaced.
Perri 6 - one of the authors of the report, Divided by Information - said: "Government ministers have spent a lot of time and a not inconsiderable amount of money on solving a problem - access to kit - that will solve itself. The real worry is that information itself will be the engine of exclusion."
He explained that the organisations - such as credit ratings agencies - that hold personal information about people do not offer second chances or rehabilitation, and that negative profiles create a class of permanently "digitally redlined" people. And the Data Protection Act offers little defence against exclusions which are based on correct information, he says.
"Banks used to give second chances on an inefficient basis. Now they deny second chances on an efficient basis, and the price we pay is social exclusion," Perri 6 said.
The real discussion about the digital divide, he says, should centre on how society plans to overcome social exclusion that is based on accurate but financially damning information. If the British economy moves to electronic cash as Canada, Finland and Norway have done, information passed around the internet could prevent people from making even basic purchases.
The report concludes that the government should spend more time thinking about how to subsidise those who will be routinely turned down by banks and employers on the basis of widely available digital profiles, and less time subsidising internet cafes.
Related articles
16.03.2001: Internet revolution for deprived areas
13.02.2001: £30m to kick-start broadband
Useful links
Demos
Social exclusion unit
