Race Online: 100,000 Volunteers To Get Millions Online
Martha Lane Fox says it will just take enthusiasm to get nine million Britons online – and allow online savings
Race Online 2012, the body led by Martha Lane Fox with the aim of getting all of Britain online, has announced plans for a force of 100,000 volunteers to persuade the last nine million citizens to take their first click.
The Digital Champion campaign aims to get 100,000 people, at work and in their spare time, to help others get online, using cheap recycled PCs starting at £95, which are available through the Race Online scheme. Around 1,000 organisations, including service providers and borough councils have promised to support the programme
What is actually going to happen?
“I’m not asking people to sit down and go through the complications of a presentation or train somebody in complex coding,” said Lane Fox in a BBC interview. “I just want to enthuse people and inspire them and I think the rest will take care of itself.”
Of the nine million people still not using the net, around 7.3 million are over-55, so the campaign is focusing on turning older people who don’t use the Internet into so-called “silver surfers”.
Lane Fox has said she hopes to halve Britain’s “non-line” population by the 2012 Olympics, the notional deadline of the Race Online project.
The campaign describes its aim as making the UK “the world’s first networked nation”, but the real pay-off for the government will be the option to discontinue costly paper-based administration, and move benefits claims, pensions and other services to cheaper, more efficient online versions.
Martha Lane Fox has been leading an online review of the government’s Directgov portal, aimed at simplifying it for new users. As a step towards this, the government has unveiled alpha.gov, an early prototype version of what a single government website might look like. Users can enter their postcode and search for any government service, getting localised information back.
No money required?
The Race Online campaign was first announced in 2010 by Lane Fox and prime minister David Cameron. It has had minimal government funding in the past, which Lane Fox has said is not a drawback.
“There is no money and we don’t need it to make a big stride forward,” Lane Fox said in August 2010. “There is a massive amount you can do. You can make big inroads into that 10 million number without having to spend money.”
