Would you walk to get e-Government?

For the past few years Government capital and Lottery revenue has funded several thousand UK online centres helping people learn computer and Internet skills, and in some cases develop online projects. Now that funding is running out, centres are looking for new streams. One idea is to provide access to e-Government services - not least because centres are generally located in poorer neighbourhoods where people are less likely to own computers with Net access, and may well be high users of benefits and other services increasingly online. Sounds obvious... but wait, would YOU walk, or spend money on travelling, to a centre rather than make a phone call? Should you have to?
These and similar issues are being discussed by one of my favourite online controversialists (or perhaps sensibilists) Horace Mitchell and others on the Communities Online conet list.

Horace makes the point that while it may be convenient to renew library books, get large items of rubbish collected, email or fax an MP from your desktop computer, it may not be worth the walk to an online centre at a library, community centre or cafe. Renewing licences, filling in tax forms may be done online - but are infrequent chores. Benefits offices usual want to see people face-to-face.
What's needed, Horace suggests, is more analysis from the consumer point of view to tailor services - by whatever delivery channel - to the needs of the users.
Joe Fortey reported to the conet list that pilots are planned to test the role of centres in provide access to services. He then followed up Horace's points by suggesting centres could ideally be 'one-stop shops' for learning, e-government, e-commerce, e-banking, social services and anything else that might help them prosper as core community service centres. I know that Joe and others are providing advice to centres about their sustainability through the DirectSupport mentoring services funded by the Department for Education and Skills. There are useful DirectSupport 'self-help' downloads here. (I should declare an interest - I'm a member of the DirectSupport consortium.... so I know they do great work).
I would have liked to provide more of the substance of Horace, Joe and other people's discussions on conet but I'm not sure about the protocols of quoting from lists. Anyone can join conet... but on that and other lists you rather assume you are among a know community, so direct quotation may be inappropriate. (the list is archived, but the link seems to be down at present or I would have offered that**).
There is useful discussion on the lists associated with the Helpisathand site also funded by DfES.
The future of UK online centres, and the usefulness (or otherwise) of Government online services in poorer neighbourhoods, deserves wider discussion, so I hope those raising the issues can develop or create a forum that gains public and Government attention (and can be linked from blogs...).
** PS the link to conet archives is working from here. This note added Nov 7 - thanks to Richard Stubbs.

Comments

[Jane Berry]

Hi David, I agree with Horace about the walking, and with Joe about the one-stop-shopping. But you haven't drawn attention to the fact that UK online centres have a very important *introductory* and awareness raising role. Some people don't have computers in their home because they don't have a (valued) use for them (Cost, phobia, skills etc come in here too). Therefore, without *supported* public access (not just communal access by itself), they are not likely to 'have a go' - at e-government or anything else - thus closing off that choice and experience to them. Secondly, some people will always see communal access as 'second best'. Others like to be social animals (for some activities at least). We can all buy our beer at the supermarket, but I haven't seen the pubs closing. (Well, only in rural areas! Hence put the UK online centre in the pub;-)

[David Wilcox]

Horace Mitchell today helpfully responded on the conet list as follows to my query about quoting on lists:
My understanding of general practice is that if a list is open to all to join then each message has been published, in the same way as an article in a subscription magazine has been published. Only those who subscribe to the magazine can read the whole article in context, but anyone who reads the magazine is free to quote from articles etc within usual copyright rules, the main one being that you can quote small extracts but not whole articles. In a list context you can quote from a message or quote the whole of a message, but it would be wrong to reproduce in some other place an entire thread, without the agreement of the list owner, who is the effective 'publisher' of the list.

There are also protocols for quoting from online messages, notably that you should cite:
The source, including the relevant url (of the archive if there is one or of the joining page otherwise)
The date of the message
The author's name

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Here's an extract from Horace's earlier conet posting, November 4
I can see the role of UK Online Centres or others helping unconnected people to know about the Internet and learn how to use it, especially in those areas where less than 50% of households have Internet (the national average is now 50%). I can see how having Internet readily available at some place you already go to a lot can be helpful to people who don't have it and can't afford it at home (a day centre for example). What I can't see is to what extent 'e-Gov' services feature as an important item in either of these scenarios. I do know that the government (and those local authorities whose thinking has got this far) do have a problem justifying their investment in 'e-ifying' most services unless they can get all or most of us to switch to the e-service so they can close down the other options. But it would be sad if the community informatics movement fell into the trap of doing the government's job for them by pretending to our communities that it's better to walk to an access point rather than phoning the local authority and giving them an earful about that bedstead they still haven't collected!

[David Brake]

If e-services are cheaper to deliver (a big if!) then it may make sense to "push" people towards them by offering better service or even a cash incentive to use that mode of delivery rather than phone or face to face. It would get people engaged online and encourage them to visit online centres which could try to entice them to broaden their online experience. But councils should bear in mind that there are many barriers (eg literacy, disability) to online use and use some of the money saved to better serve those with special needs, otherwise there is a danger of super-serving the better off who already know how to work the system.