Tinder Foundation and Go ON UK publish report costing a digitally included Britain
Last week, the Tinder Foundation and Go ON published A Leading Digital Nation by 2020, providing for the first time an estimate for the investment needed to create a 100% digitally skilled nation.
A national commitment to ensure basic online skills for everyone by 2020 would cost some £875 million – an annual investment of £146 million over a 6-year period.
There are still 11 million people without Basic Online Skills in the UK, who can’t send and receive email, use a search engine, browse the internet or complete online forms. The report uses information on the profile of this 11 million and current interventions to get them online. It factors in the barriers, challenges and costs to upskill the hardest to reach groups – including 2 million people of working age and 4 million retired citizens. Without increased investment, the report found that around 6.2 million people will remain without basic online skills in 2020.
The cost of inclusion – key facts and figures from the report
- 11 million – number of people in 2013 who don’t have basic online skills
- £875 million – cost of basic online skills for everyone by 2020
- £292 million – investment split across the three sectors
- £50 million – annual investment over 6 years required from public, private and voluntary sectors
- £47 – £319 – calculated range of costs of intervention per person, depending on people’s historical use of the internet and other considerations
- 89% – percentage of the UK with basic online skills in 2020 without accelerated investment
The cost of exclusion – key facts and figures
- £108 million – estimated savings for the NHS if just 1% of their face-to-face visits were converted to NHS Choices visits
- £1.7 million – Government Digital Service figure on potential savings per annum of a digital by default government
- £560 – potential average of household savings if a family starts to shop and pay bills online
- £63 billion – Booz & Co total figure for the potential benefit of becoming a leading digital nation in the global economy.
