Left in the dark: As life moves online, what happens to those left behind?

Four years ago, when Boris Johson announced a complete UK lockdown, a digital divide began to be erected. As daily life moved online, many were left behind, feeling excluded from a society they didn’t know how to navigate. 

“I realised I wasn’t going to be part of the world”, Connie says when asked about the tech-driven shift. “It was like being in a foreign country”.

For the past year, the 82-year-old has been going every week with her friends Tan and Jenny to a digital skills cafe to adapt to the demands of the online age.

“As you get older you already seem to not be in the world, and I didn’t want that, I wanted to learn as much as I can,” Connie continues as she is abruptly interrupted by the fourth woman in this resilient quartet, Moira, who comes into the room visibly distressed.

As she introduces herself, she explains: “I’m receiving strange calls every 20 minutes and it’s driving me up the wall. I went to the phone shop and they stopped the ringing. The man said, ‘if there’s more, remember what to do’. And that’s me, I haven’t got a clue. I just can’t remember; he was very quick.”

Their stories are just some of the many that replicate across the country. Last month Audit Scotland revealed that more than 650,000 adults in Scotland lack a foundational level of digital skills. The organisation’s report painted a bleak picture, illustrating how this gap is putting the human rights of those excluded at risk.

Interestingly, digital inclusion is not a latecomer to the Scottish Government’s plans, but rather another addition to a series of delayed long-standing promises.

In March 2011, after winning its first Scottish Parliament election in 2007, the SNP  government published its first digital strategy, which acknowledged that “limited ICT skills can lead to digital exclusion for many people” and pledged to fix the skills gap and encourage digital participation. Although during the pandemic digital inclusion enjoyed a period of increased focus, with the government devising the Connecting Scotland initiative which aimed to ensure everyone had access to digital services, there’s since been a “loss of momentum”, audit manager at Audit Scotland Bernie Milligan, told Holyrood.

Today, 14 years and four strategies later, the digital skills gap is far from being closed.

Two weeks ago, the auditor general was keen to emphasise to the Scottish Parliament’s Public Audit Committee that, while the strategy is consistent, there “is a lack of clarity about which specific actions and what specific accountability would deliver on the strategy”.

Milligan echoed these concerns to this magazine, suggesting that there seems to be too many schemes in place to measure progress adequately.

For example, the Digital Inclusion Alliance, launched in 2023 to create a more digitally inclusive society, has been quite “slow getting off the ground”, Milligan explained. “We’re still not clear what its remit is, who the members are or what it’s intended to do – things that we’d be looking for in any programme or policy.”

In the words of Tory MSP Graham Simpson, who is a member of the committee, it seems the government needs to explain “why they set up these bodies and don’t do anything about it”.

Yet more recently, the Scottish Government indicated that progress towards closing the gap could be further postponed, with finance secretary Shona Robison announcing that a digital inclusion iPad programme would be one of the initiatives to go under a £500m cut in public spending.

Sally Dyson, head of digital at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, says: “I’m not naive about the financial situation that Scotland and the UK are in. But if you’re prepared to scrap this now, it is just an indicator of how great a priority you give to digital inclusion, and how much you don’t understand the importance of digital inclusion for everything.

“We’re making short-term cuts which are going to have a negative impact on our long-term ambition.

“I’m not hopeful about the upcoming budget. I don’t think it’s going to be good news.”

And this uncertainty affects more than just older adults, it extends to some of the most vulnerable pockets of society.

Lacking the skills to use devices can often amplify the harmful stereotype commonly associated with underprivileged communities, Jamie Trout, head of digital at charity Simon Community Scotland (SCS), explains. Since 2017, the charity has been helping homeless people get online and benefit from digital connections.

“If they don’t have the skills to use a phone, it just becomes a lump of metal, so why wouldn’t they sell it?” Trout says. “However, if you have a digital inclusion programme that brings in learning skills and confidence so that people can benefit from a phone like the rest of the digitally included society does, that second-hand resale value is less than the benefits that they can get from the device.”

SCS is one of several organisations that are “hugely concerned” about the potential limitations on their work once the Scottish Government’s budget is announced in December.

“We have a responsibility to make sure that everybody can get and stay online. And if there ceases to be funding, the people who have made great strides forward may not have the skills to remain online, as technology keeps continuously evolving,” Trout adds.

But there are deeper issues. Public sector reform has been a recurring topic dominating political debate for the past few years, with a significant focus on transitioning to digital-first or even digital-only approaches. For instance, at the heart of the Digital Health and Care Strategy for Scotland is the goal of creating a more efficient and accessible healthcare system for everyone via digital technology. However, the stakes are high for those who may be left behind by the shift, Dyson points out.

“We know that it’s cheaper to provide digital services, so that is going to happen,” she says. “But people who are digitally excluded also use public services more heavily than anybody else, so those who need these services most are going to be further away from them.

“So you’ve got that double whammy around that cliff edge that people will fall off because they can’t access healthcare or training information, and Scotland lagging behind the rest of the world. It’s a doom and gloom situation.

She adds: “People also need to be able to understand whether they are looking at an NHS website, or at one which is trying to scam them and prey on their ill-health.”

Meanwhile, in the private sector, the shift towards digital-only services has been unfolding for quite some time. Since 2021, Bank of Scotland alone has closed nearly 300 branches, reflecting the transition to digital banking. 

“This is the crux of it. It just exacerbates the situation that people are in, because if you’ve got multiple ways to access the service you can choose between them. But if that reduces to just one and you’re not able to do that, then that service becomes totally off limits to you,” Carrie Thompson, programme lead at Digital Lifelines, tells Holyrood.

With a new digital strategy expected by the end of the year, experts are demanding that it will help underscore the urgency of bridging that gap.

Dyson tells Holyrood: “It’s everybody’s responsibility to help, but if the government isn’t stepping up, then what message does that send out to public services, voluntary organisations, and potential private sector partners? We need strong leadership, an individual whose role is to champion digital inclusion.”