Democracy & inclusion (copenhagen) may 2015 (helen milner)
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Digital democracy is the new kind of digital exclusion. At Tinder Foundation we have helped over 1.3 million people to gain basic digital skills and to close a bit more of the digital divide. Invited to speak at this conference in Copenhagen to share global lessons in digital inclusion, digital democracy and helping civic society and Governments to empower more people to take part in their services.
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Democracy & inclusion (copenhagen) may 2015 (helen milner)
- 1. Helen Milner Chief Executive, Tinder Foundation Commissioner, Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy @helenmilner helen@tinderfoundation.com Inclusive, Democratic & Digital Three challenges for the society of tomorrow
- 2. • We are a staff-owned mutual and social enterprise • Vision: A better world for everyone through the use of digital technology • Purpose: We make good things happen through digital technology
- 3. Online Basics qualification launched & 5000+ passes 8 local and national promotional campaigns 1 Dec 2011 – now
- 4. Photograph from The Telegraph
- 7. Online conversations did drive street protests • Conversations about liberty, democracy, and revolution on blogs and Twitter did immediately precede mass protests • 20% of blogs in Tunisia were evaluating Ben Ali’s leadership the day he resigned; 5% the month before • 25 January 2011, Tahrir Square protests had 600,000 views on YouTube; 23 hyperlocal Egypt videos on the protests had 5.5 million views Opening Closed Regimes: What Was the Role of Social Media During the Arab Spring? University of Washington, 2011
- 8. What did we learn? • Authoritarian regimes didn't understand that social media platforms are fluid tentacle networks and therefore harder to restrict freedom of speech than traditional media • Social media and online activities did provide the organisation and logistical support for offline demonstrations but ultimately it was people and not laptops that marched on Tahir Square
- 10. UK spends most in world shopping online • UK spends £2,000 per person online shopping, significantly higher than the next highest markets Australia (£1,356 per head) and the US (£1,171 per head). • More than £1 in every £5 of UK retail spend (other than food) is now online.
- 11. 30 million35 million UK Facebook Users UK 2015 General Election Turnout
- 13. We opened up our channels • Input via email, video, a web survey, and a web comment thread • Roundtable discussions • Interactions on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn • A letter to the vice chancellor of every university in the UK • Online student forums • We held formal, open (and live-streamed) evidence sessions of the Commission
- 14. Five headline targets 1. By 2020, the House of Commons should ensure that everyone can understand what it does. 2. By 2020, Parliament should be fully interactive and digital. 3. The 2015 newly elected House of Commons should create immediately a new forum for public participation in the debating function of the House of Commons. 4. By 2020, secure online voting should be an option for all voters. 5. By 2016, all published information and broadcast footage produced by Parliament should be freely available online in formats suitable for reuse. Hansard should be available as open data by the end of 2015.
- 15. People are just people. Just because someone has a smartphone and uses social media it doesn’t mean they will go on to use a political app. People need to be engaged, they need information, they need to be listened to, they need dialogue. Technology is just a tool that people use to get things done. Digital only exists with people. It’s not separate. We can’t talk about digital democracy without talking about democracy.
- 21. How can we close the digital divide?
- 22. Goal is to create independent and confident internet users Not about broadband infrastructure Not about one-off usage
- 26. 5000 local partners, 25,000 volunteers
- 27. Networked by Tinder Foundation Not owned, managed or funded by us Centre search and free phone number search
- 28. Free online courses for digital inclusion, financial inclusion and employability - www.learnmyway.com
- 29. Access 1,240,000 people don’t have broadband at home Mobile is part of the answer – not THE answer 1. Pilots for mobile use 2. Low cost broadband 3. Free access at a local centre
- 31. £1.7bn a year We can’t afford to leave anyone behind
- 32. DigitalforPublicServices Digital Inclusion … people and not laptops that marched on Tahir Square … Digital only exists with people. It’s not separate … 25,000 volunteers, helping 1.3 million people
- 34. Thank You helen@tinderfoundation.org @helenmilner on twitter www.tinderfoundation.org www.learnmyway.com
Editor's Notes
- Hello, I’m Helen Milner – the Chief Executive of Tinder Foundation. I’m sorry to say that even with all of the Scandinavian dramas I watch on TV I still don’t know any Danish, apologies that I’ll be speaking in English.
- We are Online Centres Foundation – a company limited by guarantee, a staff owned mutual, we deliver public value and all the surplus we earn is invested in our social aims.
- We’re three and we’ve helped over 1.3m people to gain basic digital skills plus other areas I won’t be able to go into today such as supporting over 100,000 people with digital health information working with the NHS. And helping people to learn English working with the BBC and the British Council.
- In December 2010 a young vegetable seller, Mohammed Bouazizi, set himself on fire outside a Council Building as a protest against police corruption following the police confiscating his cart. Bouazizi dies and the Arab Spring was born. What distinguished this specific act of protest was that Bouazizi’s friends and family wanted to get his story shared and in order to get around the country’s heavy censorship they used social media. Later that day a cousin and a friend of Bouazizi’s held a peaceful protest outside the same Council building, a friend filmed it and posted the film on Facebook. The Tunisian Government didn’t think they needed to censor Facebook. The film was picked up by Al Jazeera, sparking other activists to take to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs, to keep up with what was going on and to organise further protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere. As a result of the protests sparked by Bouaziz’s self-immolation and the film made and posted by his cousin, less than a month later Tunisia’s ruler Ben Ali stepped down.
- This is a picture that I, and thousands of others, tweeted in January 2011. It’s thousands of protesters gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo, again these protests were organised through social media, and again they led to the resignation of their President - Mubarak - less than a month later.
- I remember the huge optimism we all felt in January 2011 when we read this story - a new born baby (a new life) and a new democracy, with democratic change brought about by a relatively new digital tool - social media.
- Keen to get below the surface of anecdotes about the role of social media in the Arab Spring I looked at an analysis by academics at the University of Washington. They found that conversations about liberty, democracy, and revolution on blogs and on Twitter did immediately precede mass protests; the 25 January 2011, Tahrir Square protests had 600,000 views on YouTube, and 23 hyperlocal Egypt videos on the protests had 5.5 million views; in the week up to Mubarak’s resignation, tweets from and about Egypt rose from 2,300 a day to 230,000 a day. Social media alone did not cause political change in North Africa, but mobile phones and the internet did provides new tools for activists to produce and share information, to inspire one another, and to share hints and tips on how to use digital to start a revolution. But ultimately it was people not laptops who marched on Tahrir Square. I’m not going to comment about democracy in North Africa; I’m not qualified. But I will say that the initial wave of optimism that followed these internet enabled people revolutions hasn’t materialised into democratic stability. And, it’s clear that people who have had power and wish to keep power are also using technology to their own ends - for example, employing hackers in Morocco, or utilising face recognition software as they have in Bahrain to locate, identify and punish activists.
- Authoritarian regimes in the MENA region didn't understand that social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are fluid tentacle networks and therefore harder to restrict freedom of speech than traditional media outlets (often run by pro-regime editors). When people like Muhammed Bouazizi and Khaled Said were murdered by their respective regimes (Khaled Said was actually murdered outside an internet cafe) it released a public cognitive recognition of anti-regime sympathy on social media that had previously remained private. Social media and online activities did provide the organisation and logistical support for offline demonstrations but ultimately it was people and not laptops that marched on Tahir Square.
- There are other good examples of where activists are challenging the old norms of Government, challenging old ways of looking down Party lines, and of consulting the people. Such as - Iceland’s use of Facebook to crowdsource a constitution (following their “pots and pans” revolution) And this slide shows Argentina’s Net Party and DemocracyOS for public consultation But I’ve not got time for these today - but they are also worth exploring.
- The UK is a country of early technology adopters. In the UK we love to use the internet. We spend the most per head shopping online than in any other country. At almost £2000 per person in the UK, significantly higher than the next highest valued Australia (£1,356 per head) and the US (£1,171 per head).) More than £1 in every £5 of retail spend - other than food - is now online.
- There are more UK Facebook users than the number of people who voted at the 2015 General Election. So in my view the Digital Democracy Commission was about balancing the UK people’s positive appetite for digital tools with an opposing negativity about politics, politicians, including voter apathy, low turnouts - and seeing if we can do something about it!
- This is John Bercow, as the Speaker of the House of Commons he set up a commission to look at how digital technology could and should change the way in which the UK Parliament works. He asked me and 8 others (including two MPs) to be Commissioners. I was really pleased to be asked by John Bercow to be a Commissioner - it was a way to bring together two things I really care about - digital and democracy - and I was pleased as my role on the Commission was to be the person who knew about inclusion - social and digital inclusion. I’m not a policy-wonk, a politicians, nor an academic. My day job is working with people out there in our communities who are struggling with basic technology, through thousands of hyperlocal partners, and in Westminster, with policy people, politicians, and current and future Governments.
- We engaged with a lot of people, we wanted to demonstrate the type of methodologies we were suggesting - openness, online-ness, getting to people who are usually engaged, lowest barriers to participating. Practicing what we were preaching I guess. We opened up channels: Input via email, video, a web survey, and a web comment thread Roundtable discussions Interactions on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn A letter to the vice chancellor of every university in the UK Online student forums We held formal, open (and live-streamed) evidence sessions of the Commission We had informal meetings with a wide range of people. I ran lots of roundtables up and down the country including in a fish and chip shop in Stockport.
- The headline recommendations from the Commission are: By 2020, the House of Commons should ensure that everyone can understand what it does. By 2020, Parliament should be fully interactive and digital. The 2015 newly elected House of Commons should create immediately a new forum for public participation in the debating function of the House of Commons. By 2020, secure online voting should be an option for all voters. By 2016, all published information and broadcast footage produced by Parliament should be freely available online in formats suitable for reuse. Hansard should be available as open data by the end of 2015.
- This is my summary of how we should think about digital democracy.
- We can’t have full digital democracy without digital inclusion. This infographic shows the UK’s digital divide.
- We need to empower people to take part of our digital society so that they can be part of: daily life (such as communicating, information gathering, shopping, banking) using flexible and convenient public services and now, to take part in a more interactive and participative democracy through digital.
- The Tinder Foundation way is Local + Digital + Scale – I’ll explain this in the following slides.
- Three main barriers to digital inclusion: Motivation Skills and Confidence Access
- Motivation Eg Get Online Week - invented by us in the UK. 2015 is our 9th Get Online Week.
- Partners – not owned, managed or funded by us
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4fHlvgF7aA Here is a video of one man who learned how to use the internet and changed his life and he’s now changing others.
- 1 in 5 adults lack basic digital skills