Digital Exclusion: How the SNP’s efforts to bridge the gap are falling short

It’s been a year since Sally Dyson, head of digital at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, warned that failing to bridge the digital divide would worsen poverty levels.  

And while a lot has changed in the technology sector since then, efforts to tackle the digital skills gap seem to have stagnate, with no funding dedicated to tackling digital exclusion in the 2025-2026 Scottish budget.

Evidence has highlighted the gravity of the situation, with Audit Scotland warning that a lack of basic digital skills could impact people’s human rights.

And, more recently Scottish Labour said the current levels of digital inequalities were a “scandal”, triggering a consultation by Anas Sarwar’s party on how to ensure no one is left behind.

But the pressure is mounting, and progress is too slow, campaigners warn.

“The findings and recommendations of Audit Scotland were not a surprise”, Dr Irene Warner-Mackintosh, managing director of the Mhor Collective tells me. Since launching in 2016, the community interest company has worked to fix digital inequalities, offering support to those suffering from digital exclusion. “Digital inclusion is everybody's priority, but no one's commitment. It often sits across policy portfolios, across different people's work, but it seems to belong and sit with no one”, she adds.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, efforts to bridge the gap should be at the forefront of government priorities, now more than ever.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer put technology at the heart of public sector reform, describing artificial intelligence (AI) as the “force of change that will transform the lives of working people for the better.”

Meanwhile, First Minister John Swinney said innovation would be central to NHS renewal, confirming a health and social care app would begin rollout by the end of the year. He described the app as a “much-needed addition to improve patients’ interaction with the NHS”.

He also insisted that his government was working on measures to avoid digital exclusion and ensure patients have “a variety of different methods of access to technology.” 

However, concerns still run high on how digital support will be deployed in line with this new technologically driven revamp of the public sector.

Warner-Mackintosh warned the NHS app “absolutely cannot deliver equitable access to healthcare without digital inclusion work”.  “What we can see is that there is a never-ending increase in the implementation of digital systems to support some of the people hardest hit by wider social inequalities in society, whether that's benefits or health, but no focused work on digital inclusion.

“If we don't really focus our resources on this, things are going to get worse for people and in particular, in the setting of health. I think it will make lives better for a lot of people who are in a lucky situation that their lives are jogging along. But for those of us whose lives are not like that, how do you use these digital tools that can help keep you alive?”

The lack of funding allocated to closing the gap in the draft 2025-2026 budget was “clearly a blow”, she adds. Last month, Holyrood revealed that the Get Connected project which helps those suffering from homelessness get online had been forced to cut back its services after the government ended its financial support in December. This meant the project could only offer support at a local rather than a national level, reaching out to only tens of people compared to thousands prior to the funding cut.

“We've been working in this space for over a decade, and I have [for] very long heard how important digital participation is. I've heard that from everyone forever. But I'm very used to it being no one’s no one's responsibility. I guess everybody thinks, ‘oh, somebody else will do it’.”

Like Dyson, Warner-Mackintosh also links digital skills to poverty. “How do we lift people out of poverty without access to digital? I see every door is closed. Every way of improving our lives has a digital element.

“We need to see it as that single issue that closes every door, whether that's employment, education, health, or indeed recovery from poverty.”

At present, the lack of access to digital resources is often considered a key blocker to securing social and economic stability. In 2022, a poll run by Big Issue revealed nine in 10 Brits believed digital access was vital to finding a job.

“Do I think it [the lack of funding in the budget] is short sighted and detrimental to people? I do. And it really worries me because there'll be people on the sharpest end that struggle the most and we're just contributing to a widening gap in inequality by not taking it seriously and by thinking it'll somehow be magically covered,” says Warner-Mackintosh.

“They’ll [ministers] sort of invest a wee bit of money for a wee while and [think] ‘that's me done digital inclusion’. But actually, the work to minimise the impact of digital inequality is going to go on for as long as we're working to address social inequality. It's not going to go away.”

She argues government initiatives seem to be punching below their weight. “I don't necessarily see the response, the investment, the commitment other than lots of people having meetings and talking about it. But now what though?”

The point is echoed by elected members themselves. During a Public Audit Committee session held following the Audit Scotland report, the public body’s audit manager Bernie Milligan told committee members it was “still not clear” what the remit was of the Digital Inclusion Alliance, a year past its launch.

Reacting to this, Tory MSP Graham Simpson called on the government to explain why it set up these bodies and not “do anything about it”.

Over recent months, Mhor Collective has convened two multi-agency meetings named ‘Digital Inclusion on the Brink’, to gather frontline services that are supporting those struggling  with digital exclusion.

The group, of which many now face “significant cuts, redundancies, and in the most extreme example, closing their doors”, Warner-Mackintosh says, have been pressing the government for much-needed clarity.

Members are also concerned over the overall “plans for wider digital inclusion work”, she says, as initiatives like Digital Lifelines and Connecting into Care are set to end in March.

With the shift towards a digitally fuelled society showing no signs of slowing down, it seems the government is running out of time to fix the gap. In the words of Warner-Mackintosh, “we need to focus in on the commitment to the doing, not the talking”.