Costing the impacts of digital exclusion

[Summary: Oxford Internet Institute (on behalf of the National Audit Office) are consulting on a draft methodology for measuring the impacts of digital exclusion]

Principal Components Analysis - see http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/digital-exclusion/ for details. How much exactly does digital exclusion cost? Both the cost to individual without access to digital technologies. And the cost to government.  A PWC report last year put the cost at £22bn, but it’s not entirely clear how that figure was reached, or, more importantly, how such a study would be replicated to track changes in the costs of digital exclusion.

A team at the OII and LSE were commissioned last year by the National Audit Office to sketch out what a long-term method for reliably measuring the impacts of digital exclusion might be – and they’ve just launched an online consultation on the methodology.

I saw the methodology in a seminar a few weeks back – and there are some interesting elements to it well worth a look. So if you’ve got a digital inclusion/exclusion interest – do take a look and drop in a few comments.

Digital inclusion and social capital

I’m going to be taking on the social reporter role at the RSA seminar on Digital Inclusion and Social Capital today – and trying to tweet, video and blog insights and ideas arising from the discussions on Will Davies working paper on The Social Value of Digital Networks in Deprived Communities (to be published after input from the seminar and online discussion have been incorporated…)

Social Reporting a seminar like this is a new one for me. I’ve almost-live blogged at conferences before, but this looks set to be a really in depth discussion in a concentrated couple of hours so I’ll be trying my best to draw out elements and weave them into the web of great experience and insight that will be outside the meeting room at the RSA as well as in it.

To help with that I’m trying out CoverItLive – which, if you’re viewing this blog post in an RSS Reader that supports it, or on the front page of the blog, should present you with a feed of conversation as the session unfold – and should give you a space to add your own comments.

Please do drop in between 10.30am and 12.30am to follow the discussions and to add your thoughts to the debate on digital inclusion and deprived communities…