At the unconference I led a session on “defining digital inclusion” — born out of a long held worry that different people and organisations don’t quite mean the same thing when they talk about digital inclusion.

I talked about how I felt that the definition needed to be platform agnostic, and have room being able to find out how to do something rather than explicitly having a particular skillset. We discussed how it was definitely separate from digital engagment, and how it was often closely connected to social inclusion.

We also looked at how it was placed with the issue of access (both in terms of accessibility and physical access) — we thought that maybe the three are looked at in the wrong order.

Traditionally the problem seems to be trying to be solved in the order:

Access -> Inclusion (skills) -> Engagement (motivation)

but motivation and engagement (which is closely tied with social engagement) is such a strong driver to the skills and to the access that it needs more attention. Engagement isn’t transactional, in the same way that inclusion isn’t tool-based skills — so money (savings!) isn’t a motivation to engage. The group felt that more work towards social engagement was the real driver, that digital isn’t as separate as some approaches seem to be.

Certainly We Share Stuff’s idea is that people learn the tools (and to make decisions about which to use and how) because there is a motivational reason for it. Often we hope that the digital engagement is a driver to wider social engagement too.

I was surprised that we were all pretty much agreed on what we meant by “digital inclusion” — that it was (and this is my wording, worked out now):

the confidence to use technology when appropriate, and to know where to get help if needed

How well does that sit with organisational definitions? Or yours?