Minister for Digital Inclusion gets Strategic

The BBC reports today that Paul Murphy, minister for digital inclusion, has revealed in his first speech since his appointment how he's going to connect the last 17 million citizens. And everything could be scoped out by the summer!

Read the BBC article.

There's no hint from the BBC's coverage what the plan might be, and as of the time of writing I can find no other news coverage.

I've always thought of digital inclusion as synonymous with Web access. Gaming aside, Web access gives you everything you need for digital inclusion, including access to many tools and services provided as software-as-a-service in your browser.

So you don't need to go giving the digitally excluded groups ("an older or socially, economically or geographically disadvantaged group" according to the minister) the latest Dell Intel Core Duo 2.66 500GB HDD 3072MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM packing Windows Vista unless you're going to put a few dozen government call centres on standby. Web access requires a modem and some simple, robust kit like a XO Laptop* (pictured) or Asus Eee PC.

Saying that, it's widely recognised in the tech world that the first billion people came on line via PC / Mac, and that the first experience most of the so-called "next billion" will have of Internet connectivity will be via their mobile phone.

Paul Murphy states that he is "not a technical person"; let's hope that gives him sufficient wherewithall to fit the tech to the problem, not to allow the problem to be shaped by the tech.

* Disclosure - Racepoint Group provides consultancy to One Laptop Per Child.