Combating data poverty
A campaign to combat data poverty across Scotland
Coronavirus highlighted digital exclusion across demographics, postcodes and sectors throughout Scotland. With our lives and work moving online at an increased pace, the digitally excluded are being cut off from essential services, resources and support.
Organisations across sectors have joined the battle against digital exclusion to continue offering their services, products or support. We brought them together in an event that identified lack of connectivity as the biggest obstacle to digital inclusion.
We derived 3 main actions from discussions at our event, forming our Connectivity Now manifesto with the aim to end data poverty and achieve accessible and affordable connectivity in homes across Scotland. Read our manifesto, pledge your support and join our campaign for #ConnectivityNow.
Let's address the poverty premium and regulate connectivity by:
- Viewing connectivity as a basic utility
- Regulating the telecoms market to simplify internet package tariffs
- Increasing accessibility of packages aimed at low income households
Let's share connectivity and link it to shared and public spaces by:
- Developing ways to gift, share or subsidise data
- Offering secure connectivity in community hubs
- Rolling out shared connectivity across all social housing
Let's help everyone get access to essential services online by:
- Recognising that digital and social isolation are linked
- Zero-rating essential service websites
- Increasing accessibility to the essential services all are entitled to
Want to read more?
Read our full report to learn more about how we created this manifesto from our Connect Four: Digital Inclusion event, as well as further information on each of our three actions.
What we've been working on
While campaigning to end data poverty, we engaged with numerous organisations, networks and events to share our learning and allow our campaign to gain momentum. Browse some of the outcomes of this work below.
- Supporting people with data connectivity (Broadband and mobile data) - A guide created in collaboration with Good Things Foundation packed with tips, advice and information for organisations who support people with connectivity
- Place-based collaboration for digital inclusion: A how-to guide - A guide created in collaboration with Good Things Foundation around the power of collaboration to drive digital inclusion
- Data Poverty APPG: State of the Nation Report - A report produced by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Data Poverty, launched at the House of Lords in September 2022, with a section from People Know How.
- Local communities and the internet ecosystem: Scaling solutions to data poverty in the UK - A report produced by Good Things Foundation and Nominet's Data Poverty Lab Fellowship by fellow Kat Dixon. People Know How spoke with Kat Dixon as part of her research, contributing to her final output.
Our supporters
Thank you to all our supporters! Scroll through and watch the videos of those who pledged.
