My new opportunity to promote digital inclusion
I was not an early user of the Internet and indeed for a while I really lacked confidence online – as I’ve explained here. But, when I became more familiar with the Net, I became passionate about how it could transform lives, organisations and societies and the desirability of achieving the highest possible number of people online. Today here in the UK over 20% of homes are still not online and there are 8 million people who do not use the Internet,
So I am delighted to have been appointed as a non-executive member of the newly-formed Board of the Online Centres Foundation.The UK online centres central team is funded through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) via the Skills Funding Agency (SFA). Most of the £7.2 million funding goes directly to its network of 3,800 community-based online centres across England. OCF itself has around 30 staff and is based in Sheffield,
The OCF Chief Executive Helen Milner has blogged here about the composition of the new Board. It’s a great team and i’m really looking forward to working with the Foundation’s staff and Board colleagues to bring more and more people online and give them digital skills to obtain the most from the Net.
My current work portfolio now looks like this.