One way to appreciate the difficulty in reversing Scotland's uniquely poor performance in digital participation is to look at the CV of the man who has the task of fixing it.
Chris Yiu, a Cambridge-trained economist, has worked in senior digital roles for think tank the Policy Exchange, for HM Treasury and for McKinsey. He is now director of digital participation for the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO).
Now, with SCVO's team and in partnership with the Scottish Government and third-sector digital inclusion charities such as the Tinder Foundation, he is seeking ways to get the private sector to provide cash, expertise and real estate to reach out to Scotland's can't click/won't click areas.
The SCVO is currently applying to the Big Lottery Fund Basic Online Skills funding programme and "actively seeking corporate partners and others who can provide support in kind, and delivery partners who want to run community hubs for people to come together and learn basic online skills".
Yiu quoted research from consultants Booz that suggests that widening the online community in the UK could earn the economy an extra £65 billion a year, due to the "network effect" that means that positive benefits are increased as they become widely shared. Given Scotland's statistics, the potential benefits north of the Border are worth significantly more than the rule-of-thumb 10% slice of that figure.
Yiu said: "We now have a significant number of people who didn't grow up with basic digital skills, and didn't pick them up in the workplace.
Without some kind of intervention, for a whole bunch of reasons it might not occur to them to go online, or they would be too intimidated to do so, or they wouldn't have the opportunity or wouldn't know where to go.
"That is the situation we are in. We have to help that group, because the alternative is you pass them by, and that's just not acceptable, because people deserve at least the opportunity to be included.
"Motivation is the single biggest barrier to people picking up digital skills. Of course, getting online is a personal decision, but it is important people understand what the web has to offer before they pass it up."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article