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Stephen Timms MPKeynote Speech: Launch of IT 4 Communities |
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I am delighted to be here today and I want to begin by warmly welcoming this important initiative. I congratulate everybody involved and I wish the initiative every success – and I hope you will keep me informed at the Department of Trade and Industry about how IT4 Communities progresses, because it is hitting some important buttons on our priorities, with our task of building prosperity for all. I know people in this industry want its skills to contribute to social benefit I know from my own 16 years in the IT industry how much people in this industry do want the skills of the industry and the possibilities of technology to contribute not just to making Britain wealthier but also to making Britain fairer. Its been my impression sometimes that people in the industry have felt very frustrated at the limited opportunities for the industry to contribute, when it has been so obvious that it has so much to contribute. And its certainly my view that the initiative being launched today does have the potential to make a very big contribution to bridging that gap which has been a source of frustration for so long. Of course those skills are already contributing That is not to say the industry is not contributing already. It is doing so in a growing variety of ways. If you go into a Jobcentre today, you will find not those awful old boards with scruffy little postcards about local jobs, but smart kiosks providing information in a frankly much more respectful way about jobs not just locally but right across the country. Those kiosks are part of the reason, why despite everything that is happening in the world economy, unemployment in Britain is at the lowest level for nearly thirty years, and lower now not just than in the rest of Europe but in the US as well. I think it's a great example of how we can use the skills of this industry to benefit those who have been on the wrong end of the rich / poor divide in the past and ensure that we do not put a new digital divide in its place. One of my responsibilities is ensuring timely roll out of broadband, and I have been having a series of meetings with Ministers about how they will be using the new capabilities to improve the services, which they are responsible for. This week I met Lord Hunt the health minister and we were discussing the very ambitious plans for NHSnet as it is called – and how providing 2 Mbit/s capability into every doctor's surgery can make a big contribution to improving the handling of patient records – records that we are going to need to include images and in the future almost certainly video clips as well – and also to the professional development of NHS staff, because the courseware of the proposed NHS University will to a large extent be delivered online to staff in their place of work. So it is not too hard to see how broadband can make a big contribution to improving public services. That is one of the reasons we are attaching so much importance to broadband. We announced a month ago today on the 8 October that broadband connections had hit the one million mark in Britain, and the number seems to have increased by more than an additional 100,000 in the month since. But this industry is already making a big contribution to making Britain fairer. But there is the potential for a lot more But IT4 Communities points up the potential for a further contribution on a very large scale. Let me just illustrate how I see this can work out. I spent a week last month visiting social enterprises around England and Wales – that is, charitable organisations and companies limited by guarantee which are supporting themselves not just from grants but from trading, and applying the energy and enthusiasm of the entrepreneurial private sector – qualities which characterise the IT industry in particular – and applying those qualities not to making themselves wealthy but to tackling the big social challenges which face their communities. I met a lot of very impressive people during that week, and saw a lot of very impressive work – impressive from an entrepreneurial standpoint as well as in social terms. One of the places I visited was Aberfan in south Wales, which is in an area particularly badly hit by the decline of traditional industries. Jeff Edwards who runs the project came from the area but worked for many years very successfully in the City, and returning home could see the scale of the problems facing young people in finding work. He came up with the idea of providing cars for unemployed young people so that they could drive to where the jobs are – in the M4 corridor 40 or 50 miles away. So he buys mainly old Fiestas for £2000 a time, employs and trains formerly unemployed young people to refurbish and maintain the cars, charges the customers £15 a week for the cars for the first three months of their employment – and at the end of that time they have to return the car to the project because they will then be able to obtain a bank loan and buy a car for themselves. In the eight year period the project has been running, unemployment has fallen from the mid 20s per cent to about seven per cent today – and of course, other factors have contributed to that, but the impact of that single initiative in just opening up chances for young people has been a very important factor indeed. And now the project has developed further. They are turning over a third of a million pounds now – they still receive some grants, but increasingly their income comes from trading. They have set up an IT training facility. They have started to offer a web site development service to local firms. They developed a website for a one person medical supplies business based in the area, and that business has had to take on three or four additional local staff to cope with the surge of export orders which have started to pour in – exporting was not a problem which that company had had to deal with before! And in a place like Aberfan, you don't have to repeat that success very many times before you start to transform the state of the local economy. And of course they have needed to call on the support of IT experts in the local area and that support has been forthcoming. And I am looking forward to seeing that kind of impact repeated up and down the country in really imaginative ways through IT4Communities. We assumed that social environmental and economic goals are always in conflict In the past we have tended to assume that social, environmental and economic goals are somehow always and inevitably in conflict with each other. What the modern corporate social responsibility movement is demonstrating is that that is not the case. We need increasingly to be showing how we can make progress on all three of those aspirations – businesses, public bodies and the voluntary sector all working effectively together, not doing so grudgingly but doing so enthusiastically, because each recognises that it advances its own key interests to do so, not just the interests of the others. Another example, which I have been impressed by, is the Tools for Schools project which refurbishes good specification computers no longer needed by corporates, and makes them available at very reasonable prices to schools. That is in the interests of the Government and of schools as they work to raise the standards of teaching and learning for their pupils. It is in the interests of the IT sector because it increases the prospects that the youngsters leaving those schools will have the skills they need to make a good contribution in the IT industry or as a consumer of the industry's products and services – and the IT sector has been tremendously generous to Tools for Schools. And the whole initiative is being skilfully managed and delivered by a small entrepreneurial team working in the voluntary sector that are committed to the social objectives of the project. And I am certain that there is potential for a great deal more of that kind of contribution through IT4Communities. As minister for CSR and for competitiveness I see lots of examples of good business grounds for really imaginative and effective social initiatives. Companies are finding that if they want to recruit the brightest young people today, they need to be able to give them some convincing answers on CSR. Those young people want of course to know that they will be embarking on a rewarding career, but also that they will be able to make a contribution to reducing poverty or helping disadvantaged children or improving the environment. There are other reasons why this kind of initiative is good for competitiveness. I am absolutely certain that out of some of the activities, which will be supported by IT 4 Communities, there will be new business ideas, which emerge – ideas for new products and services, which will be commercially important. CSR is very good for innovation, and innovation is increasingly the lifeblood of the UK economy. And many of the initiatives will I am certain be successful in bringing into the workforce people who have been outside it for a long time – that is great for them, but it makes all of us better off if everybody is able to contribute. This project is good for social responsibility and its good for competitiveness too. So congratulations on IT4Communities. I wish the initiative every success. Please keep me posted on progress and I look forward before very long to hearing about some of the successes, which I am sure, you will very quickly be notching up. Thank you. |
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Other speeches by Stephen Timms MP
(the following are available from the archive) |
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