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Manifesto for a networked nation
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The Summary

Building a country where everyone has access to the transformative power of the internet is a big challenge.

We are calling upon industry, competing for more online customers, Government, needing to deliver better for less, and charities, wanting to better support the people they serve, to act as a collective force to deliver positive social change.

 

40 million adults in the UK already use the web. If a fraction of us chose to share those skills, exploiting our existing network of community access points, we could inspire and support millions more to try the internet for the first time

Our focus is on empowering more people to get online, so we can widen their window on the world and improve their lives.

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The Detail

MANIFESTO FOR A NETWORKED NATION

This is a MANIFESTO FOR A NETWORKED NATION — a challenge for all of us in the UK to work together to build a country where everyone has access to the transformative power of the internet.

 

It calls on people and organisations in every sector and in every area of the UK to work together to inspire, encourage and support as many new people as possible to get online by the end of the Olympic year.

 

By the end of this Parliament, everyone of working age should be online and no one should retire without web skills. Our vision is for the UK to be one of the first places in the world where everyone can use the web.

 

Technology links us together like never before. We live in a world where we can connect to one another, share information and communicate constantly. The web gives us access to multitudes of people and lets vast quantities of information into our homes, communities and places of work.

 

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If the UK becomes a truly networked nation it would increase social mobility, give people new entrepreneurial opportunities and unleash a fresh surge of enterprise into our economy.

 

 

 

 

We want people to enjoy the benefits of being online irrespective of what technology they use to access it or where they do so. We recognise the future potential of mobile phones and the internet-through-television to expand web access to new users but we do not see any one technology as a silver bullet for getting everyone online. Nor do we think it wise to sit back and wait for one.

 

We are calling upon industry, competing for more online customers, Government, needing to deliver more for less, and charities, wanting to better support the people they serve, to act as a collective force to deliver positive social change. 40 million adults in the UK already use the web.

 

If a fraction of us chose to share those skills, exploiting our existing network of community access points, we could inspire and support millions more to try the internet for the first time.

 

There have been some important recent commitments to ensure universal access to broadband infrastructure, support the creativity of our high-tech industries, and open up government data and information. Our manifesto builds on these commitments. We are focusing on empowering more people to get online - to use the web to widen their window to the world - and to improve their lives.

We continue to work closely with Race Online 2012 digital champions, people for whom the internet has already fundamentally changed their lives.  Read their inspirational strories here.