Digital champion to focus on digital divide

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Martha Lane Fox’s focus will be the six million poorest people in the UK who are not online, she said in a speech yesterday.

The newly appointed Champion for Digital Inclusion told the Reboot Britain conference in London that although there were 17 million people in the UK without internet access, her focus was going to be on the poorest of them.

The BBC quoted Lane Fox saying: "We are really going to focus, I hope, on the six million that are at the bottom of the pile. Partly because that's the right thing to do and partly because we know quite a lot about these people - who they are and where they live.”

"It should matter to all of us because 80 per cent of government interactions are with the bottom 25 per cent of society. By keeping that 25 per cent offline you are inherently keeping the cost of government high."

This was her first speech since her appointment in June this year. The Digital Champion post is for two years, working with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to help the 17 million people considered excluded from Digital Technology.

Lane Fox said in a statement last month that she was very excited about the role and said at the conference that she felt “lucky” to be chosen as the Digital Champion for the Government.

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