What would be the single most effective thing government could do to drive its digital inclusion agenda?

Flowing from this week's Digital Britain report, is the establishment of a Digital Inclusion Task Force.

Digital inclusion is defined as:

"The best use of digital technology, either directly or indirectly to improve the lives and life chances of all citizens, particularly the most disadvantaged, and the places in which they live."

The task force is headed by Martha Lane-Fox as "Champion for Digital Inclusion".

Other members  are:

• Anna Bradley - Chair of the Ofcom Communications Consumer Panel;
• Kevin Carey - HumanITy, RNIB;
• Phil Coppard - Chief Executive of Barnsley Council;
• Jon Drori - Changing Media Ltd;
• Emma Gilthorpe - BT Group Director, Industry Policy and Regulation, BT;
• Seetha Kumar - Controller, bbc.co.uk;
• Catherine Marshall - Chief Executive of the Lighthouse Project;
• Helen Milner - Managing Director of UK online centres;
• Tristan Wilkinson - Director of Public Sector, Intel, EMEA;
• Tom Wright - Chief Executive of Age Concern and Help the Aged.

Looking at the task force's given remit [65 kB PDF] "to be our conscience, on behalf of those citizens who are disadvantaged due to digital exclusion", I was left wondering how any combination of members - let alone this mix - could realistically perform the remit, though I do not doubt that individually they each know their own domain.

Earlier this year ALT (for which I work part time) responded [35 kB PDF] to a Delivering Digital Inclusion consultation from the Communities and Local Government Department. A question asked in that consultation was: 

What would be the single most effective thing government could do to drive its digital inclusion agenda?

One thing we said in response was:

"In less critical, informational cases, the inclusion by default on Government (and other) web sites of a “Google Translate” button would, at a stroke and at a trivial cost, enable reading in close to 30 languages, including most of the minority ones spoken in the UK. In addition, some basic skills as well as disability related problems can be addressed in part by the use of audio, again possibly in translation, and with text to speech conversion in the translated language."

Comments containing other responses to the "what single most effective thing government could do?" question are welcome.

Comments

[Kristianstill]

Seb - this is simply the best post I have read in a long time. I will be thinking this over for quite some time before I respond and so far I think that the answer you have offered is excellent. Will it be actioned?