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Stephen Timms MPNCH Seminar on the Digital Divide |
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| I am delighted to be here this morning and to be able to reflect at a single occasion on two key parts of my ministerial brief – on corporate social responsibility on the one hand and adoption of the new technologies on the other.
Gordon mentioned the National Grid for learning. I have just come from being schools minister, where we are indeed investing very substantially both in the use of technology to raise standards across the curriculum in schools, and to develop the IT skills of the next generation of digital citizens. It seems to be working though not necessarily always in quite the way we thought. In April as schools minister I was visiting a primary school in Derby. They showed me their ICT suite which they said was used by all the children in the school, but they said they had had a problem recently because some of the four year olds had been using these PCs to hack into the school's administrative system and had started to change some of the data which wasn't supposed to be changed. There is no doubt that we are raising a generation of digital citizens who are going to make very heavy demands on networks. One of the Internet pioneers, the US Government scientist JCR Licklider, wrote in 1968 a remarkably prescient article about what he called the interconnected electronic network. In it he wrote this: "For society, the impact will be good or bad, depending mainly on the question: Will 'to be online' be a privilege or a right?" Licklider believed the interconnected electronic network could and should be "a boon to mankind… beyond measure", as he put it. But the resolution of the question – would it be a privilege or a right – would determine whether that promise was achieved. Reading that a couple of weeks ago it struck me as remarkably far-sighted – or maybe the truth is that once the concept of being online has been grasped then the issue of the digital divide is a fairly obvious one. Either way, the concern which Licklider expressed is a serious concern which occupies us still, three and a half decades later. And it is certainly one of the reasons for the scale of the investment we have been making in ICT in schools, in Derby and elsewhere – over £650 m in the last four financial years and a further £710m just in this financial year and next. Over 99% of secondary schools and 96% of primary schools are now connected to the Internet. We are quite close to achieving our targets that, in primary schools, there should be one computer for every 11 pupils and in secondary schools 1:7. For 2004, we are aiming at ratios of 1:8 in primary schools and 1:5 for secondary. I suppose this is a fairly obvious area in which corporate activity makes sense and can make a big difference. But there are lots of others and I am certain that we are still at the earliest stages of grasping how big an impact it can be. I say that with some feeling, drawing on my own experience over the past decade or more. Twelve years ago, I became Leader of the Council in the Borough of Newham in East London. One of the first things that happened was I had a visit from the then also new Chief Executive of Tate and Lyle, the biggest private sector employer in the area. This may be a slightly unfair characterisation of the relationship before that meeting between the Council and its biggest private sector employer, but if it is, it is only slightly unfair. The truth is they never talked. The relationship had been set in stone in the 1950s when the Labour Party wanted to nationalise the sugar industry and Tate and Lyle's Mr Cube was crusading for free enterprise. The two had been on opposite sides of an ideological battle in the 1950s and had barely spoken in the intervening quarter of a century. I think the only discussion had been when Tate and Lyle came in each year to complain about the rates increase - and that was it. Occasionally, Tate and Lyle had attempted to do something helpful, like offer bursaries to youngsters staying on at school, and the council roundly denounced them for elitism or something and Tate and Lyle withdrew hurt. So nothing ever happened. For the Council and the community in our area there began with that meeting an immensely fruitful partnership which has flourished ever since. There have been benefits at many different levels and in lots of unexpected ways as well as in the ways that were originally intended. So in stating my commitment to corporate social responsibility I can draw on having seen the benefits over the past decade and more. I often think it was just as well that that Chief Executive was a Canadian because it meant he was mercifully free from the history which had prevented communication, let alone partnership, in the past. The kind of activity we are considering today does need new thinking which we have often not been accustomed to in Britain. Responsible corporate engagement can bring ambition and imagination and good organisation where otherwise there was just despair. It can bring new ideas and new approaches, new enthusiasm of the kind that gets things done. It can put caring people - of whom there are many - in touch with situations that need caring about, and there are lots of those as well. And can it reach disadvantaged young people that others have failed to reach? Yes it can. Corporate Social Responsibility offers an approach that gets away from the old idea that economic and social goals must somehow always be in conflict. What we need to work out is how progress on one of those fronts can support progress on the other – firms, voluntary organisations, public bodies working together, not grudgingly, but because each sees it as a way to advance its own key interests as well as advancing the interests of others in exactly the way that Mary described. A lot of businesses and other organisations embrace the need for responsible behaviour as a matter of principle; but they also report that these activities can help build brand value, help foster customer loyalty, help motivate staff, and contribute to a good reputation among a wide range of stakeholders. At the same time, their involvement can have an immensely positive impact in addressing social problems. Some of you will know about BT's £8.5m Education Programme, which will involve over 2 million schoolchildren. The educational road shows are put on by a theatre-in-education company and has already visited 5,500 of the UK's 28,000 schools. In fact they were at that primary school in Derby when I visited. The schools are also provided with support materials – videos, CD-Roms and a web site. Pinning down the commercial benefits of a social investment programme like that is not straightforward but BT's research shows that its overall image and reputation is a major factor in customer satisfaction. Those findings support the business case for CSR as well as highlighting the social benefits. Another example of business and community working together is the Ford Partnership Centre in Southampton. The Centre, funded by the Ford Motor Company and the South East England Development Agency, conducted research with potential users including Ford employees, and identified that IT was a major training need in the local community and within the Ford company itself. Putting the basic skills agenda into the business context has enabled Ford to create capability to succeed in the increasingly competitive global market and connect positively with the community as potential consumers. Beyond what we have done in schools, we have worked hard to increase Internet access, most notably establishing a network of more than 3000 UK online centres - to rise to 6000 by the end of the year including every public library in the country - where people can get cheap or free Internet access. And through the UK online Partnerships Programme a wide range of private, public and voluntary sector partners have contributed to the goal of ensuring Internet access for all who want it. There is more to be done there and we need your help. We will be launching a major, 8 week, UK online campaign in the autumn to raise awareness and to encourage people to use the Internet. It will be an ideal opportunity for organisations looking to focus their CSR activity on ICT and to make a real difference and one of the groups to be targeted for part of the 8 week campaign will be disadvantaged young people. If you think you may be able to help, do contact the Office of the e-Envoy and ask about getting involved in that campaign. Barclays Bank, for example, has been working with the Office of the e-Envoy and the voluntary sector organisation Tools for Schools on a pilot scheme to provide PCs for children in low income homes. There is a lot of potential in activities like that. One of our major objectives is the establishment of a broadband infrastructure for the UK. We have announced a £30m fund over the next 3 years to support innovative schemes to meet local requirements to ensure access to affordable broadband services. These schemes include 'Broadbanding Buckfastleigh' – introducing the town of Buckfastleigh in Devon to the benefits of broadband by linking up the school, health centre, town hall and library and establishing a community access area. And can we by all these means reach young people who would not otherwise be reached? Yes we can. We do have an absolutely lamentable record on education of cared for children. It is an alarming fact that in Britain we have fewer 17 year olds in education as a proportion of all 17 year olds than is the case in any other OECD country, with the exception of Turkey, Mexico and Greece. We have to do better than that. We are losing the enthusiasm for learning of far too many young people far too young. ICT gives us the chance to do that in schools, supporting a wider choice of subjects and progression through them at a much more flexible pace. But we need to exploit the potential of ICT to reach young people who have already given up on school too. There are some great examples of corporates working alongside voluntary sector organisations to do that. Notschool.net is a fascinating research project looking at ways of re-engaging teenagers into learning when they have been out of school in the long term, through providing them with PCs, access to high quality learning content and tutorial support. There are some remarkable examples of learning progress emerging from that project among young people who had given up on school as complete no hopers. And we have heard as well about the excellent work being taken forward by NCH with the support of the Lattice Foundation and that is another impressive example. Karen's presentation and the video was very telling. NCH was among the first to recognise the importance of child safety in Internet usage and to address it seriously and it continues to do so. This is a text book example of activity which is building for us both a stronger economy and a stronger society. I am delighted to see so many interested in it today and I hope we can all work together to bring about much more of it in the future, for the benefit of course of those disadvantaged young people who will be on the receiving end of it, but in reality for the benefit of all of us as more people are equipped to make a full contribution to our society and to our economy, making all of us better off. Thank you. |
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Other speeches by Stephen Timms MP
(the following are available from the archive) |
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