‘We just didn’t use it’

A study by the Royal Geographic Society identifies five key reasons people aren’t online; lack of skills, suspicions around the morality and safety of being online, a lack of motivation, access barriers including poor connection or disabilities and it just being too expensive.

For housing associations pushing to get tenants online some are easier to address than others. Free IT classes are widely available to address skills barriers, low cost broadband packages and WiFi can be fairly easily provided and putting PCs in public area improves access for those who can’t afford their own kit or connection.

However with a lack of motivation none of this will be effective. In response to a discussion on mobile internet my Great Aunt suggested ‘It’s always been there, in the air, but we just didn’t use it’ and this echoes the situation for most of our digitally excluded customers.

There are plenty of available options for them to get online around them but they aren’t using them. And like there’s little point in telling my Great Aunt about 3G she’ll never use (not for the lack of trying) there’s little point providing opportunities for online access if people can’t see why they’d need it.

Outside of housing my work with Together Now paints a very different picture around digital inclusion. Our clients there are, on paper, facing as many, if not more barriers than a typical housing association tenant (whoever that may be). They usually live in temporary housing, are facing poverty that extends to going without food, have language barriers and are suffering the after effects of trauma so can have mental health issues and anxiety.

What they don’t seem to be facing is digital exclusion. When we work on reuniting their family we rarely meet in person. Communication happens through texts, Whatsapp, Viber, emails and the odd phone call. I’ve only had one client who couldn’t manage with a ticket issued by email. People can find internet access in black outs in Kinshasa to keep in touch with their family here so they are able to receive and print their ticket.

In an emergency when only a signed document would do at short notice my client didn’t bat an eyelid, independently checking that a digital version was OK, taking a picture on her phone, sending it on Whatsapp to me and emailing it to the relevant agency in the DRC, copying in her sister in case it did need printing.

If mastering the camera on your phone was the only thing preventing someone from seeing their five year old daughter again I’m sure most people would find a way to learn.

For these people they overcome all the practical barriers because the motivation is so high. If the alternative is not keeping in touch with children (post and phone services are not reliable or secure in their home countries) people manage to get online.

We all know that there are massive benefits to our housing customers in being online and it’s these we need to be selling. The cost saving from an online price comparison of energy supplier alone could be enough to make getting online worthwhile.

We know that there are business savings to be made from our tenants accessing services online and there is more pressure than ever to realise these savings. If we want to get our tenants online we’ll need to understand them better so we can find out what really motivates them. It doesn’t seem likely that this is going to be an offer of checking their rent statement.