• Tim Williams
• Huawei

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18 November 2011Australia’s digital future is dependent on grassroots organisations creating ‘a fair go for all’ online, according to a new report. The report, A fair go for all in the digital era: Towards a Digital Inclusion Roadmap, offers a plan to ensure that no-one gets left behind as high-speed broadband is rolled out – and warns that access alone is not enough to make Australia a ‘digitally-inclusive’ nation.

Compiled by summit facilitator Dr Tim Williams, the report brings together a wide variety of perspectives from not-for-profits, businesses and government emerging from the National Digital Inclusion Summit. The Summit was sponsored by Huawei, Community Sector Banking, and the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) and held in Parliament House earlier this year.

The summit attracted a range of community organisations whose representatives contributed to the discussion on the proactive steps the not-for-profit sector can take to reduce the exclusion felt by many disadvantaged people, which laid the foundations of the report A fair go for all in the digital era.

Key recommendations from A fair go for all in the digital era include:

• The establishment of a national digital action plan with targets to get all Australians online by 2020.
  
  
• A national digital inclusion and information campaign targeting key target groups who may who may face barriers to getting online – such as young people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, older people, people with disabilities, from cultural and linguistically diverse backgrounds and living in rural and remote communities.
  
  
• Start a community campaign for organisations or individuals to give one hour to enabling a neighbour, colleague, friend or client to ‘get online’.
  
  
• That the Commonwealth, state and local governments work with relevant not-for-profit organisations in the shaping and development of digital inclusion programs.
  
  
• The appointment by the federal government of a National Digital Champion drawn from outside politics to help galvanise the campaign for digital participation; and the equivalent at state level.
  
  
• That the disposal of ICT equipment by the Commonwealth be diverted to digital inclusion programs.
  
  
• That each NFP organisation should appoint its own digital champion focused on the needs of its own client group – and identify the implications of high speed broadband for its own organisation and approach to delivery of services.