Race Online 2012 | We're all better off when everyone's online

Manifesto for a networked nation

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Building a networked nation

The Bottom Line

The Summary

Building a networked nation transforms lives, is good for government efficiency and good for UK plc.

PwC puts the potential economic benefit at more than £22bn, including:

£1bn of consumer savings to 3.6m low-income households;
£10bn in lifetime earnings increase for 1.6 million children;
government savings of between £3 and £12 for every one of our 1.8bn annual contacts switched from phone or face-to-face.

Being online at home improves children's educational attainment, helps unemployed adults find work faster, reinforces and builds social networks to reduce social isolation and make society stronger and quality digital public services can empower individuals and save Government money.

The Detail

Children
THE BENEFITS FOR CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS

- For children and their parents, being online athome improves attainment levels, helps parentsengage with school, and offers schools an opportunity to reduce administration costs.

The benefits to young people are startlingly clear:
- Internet access makes for confident and capable technology users, who can carry those skills through their learning and future employment.
- In the short term it improves educational performance, with research showing that children who are online at home can achieve a two-grade improvement in a subject at GCSE.10 Longer term.
- PwC estimate that increases in educational attainment if all children of school age were online at home could result in a lifetime increase in earnings of £10.5bn.
- Online school reporting and communication with parents gives schools potential savings in administration costs.
Unemployed Adults

THE BENEFITS FOR UNEMPLOYED ADULTS

- Getting unemployed adults online will help them find work more quickly and could reduce benefit expenditure.

There are 1.5 million unemployed people in the UK who claim Jobseekers Allowance (JSA); of whom an estimated 270,000 do not currently use the internet and they claim an estimated £0.8 billion a year in JSA benefits.

More than 90% of all new jobs require basic internet skills and there are many new job opportunities advertised online: approximately seven million job adverts were placed online last year,with some advertised solely online and only accepting internet applications.

PwC estimate that if just 3.5% of offline jobseekers found work more quickly by being online it would increase each of their lifetime earnings by £12,430, and bring total benefits to the UK economy of £566m a year.
Older People
THE BENEFITS TO OLDER PEOPLE

- Getting older people online is a cost effective way of improving their standard of living.

There are 6.4 million over-65s in the UK who have never used the internet and they are most likely to be offline because they don’t think the internet is for them — but being online can bring older people and the service providers who support them a huge range of benefits.
- Average household savings of £560 a year can be made by shopping and paying bills online.
- Achieving a similar increase to over-65s’ disposable income by increasing the Basic State Pension by £10 a week — ie £520 a year — would cost around £6bn a year.
Reducing Social Isolation

REDUCING SOCIAL ISOLATION

- Creating and reinforcing social networks through the internet supports a stronger society and reduces isolation.

Social isolation is a growing issue in the UK, particularly for our ageing population, as it can lead to physical and mental ill health, and increased demands on public services.

Currently, 3.1 million people in the UK over the age of 65 see a friend, neighbour or family member less than once a week and 1.8 million have contact less than once a month.

In contrast, there are now over two million active users of Facebook in the UK who are over 50 years old. Around half of all internet users say that using the internet increases their contact with friends or family who live further away, and around one quarter say their contact with friends who live nearby has increased.

Independent Age recently found that internet use can help some older people remain at home longer. The total annual cost of residential care for over 65s is £4.8bn and total social care provision for this group costs £9.08bn a year so there is a huge prize to be won even if we can save a fraction of these costs by using technology to reduce isolation and delay or prevent the need for residential care.
Digital Public Information
DIGITAL PUBLIC INFORMATION

- Access to high quality digital public information and services has the dual impact of empowering individuals and delivering significant efficiency savings to government.

Dealing with government online is often much easier than offline channels and puts users more in control. Despite there being some online services with very high take-up, including close to 100% online applications for school admissions in four local authorities, government analysts estimate that online contacts currently account for only 20% of the estimated 1.8 billion individual contacts with public services made every year.
- Each contact with government switched online is estimated to generate savings of between £3 and £12.
- If every currently offline adult moved just one contact a month with government online then we would save an estimated £900m per annum.
As Government data becomes increasingly publicly available via the web, the transparency of Government, and particularly its spending, increases, allowing more extensive public scrutiny and challenge. This also allows individuals and communities to increase their engagement with local and national democratic structures and to be empowered to challenge government to make the changes they want to see in their local area.

The internet is a powerful tool for joining up communities of interest and giving them a voice to call more loudly for those changes.