UK leaders discuss how to reboot digital Britain

17 million UK citizens still have no internet access

At a Monday event in London called Reboot Britain, the government and key IT industry influencers discussed the evolution of online culture and how public services can be delivered in increasingly digital times.

Martha Lane Fox, the UK's newly appointed digital champion, discussed an action plan she has put together to tackle the digital divide.

According to reports, Fox referred to the 17 million people in Britain who do not have internet access, but said she was most concerned about the six million "most socially and economically disadvantaged people" at the bottom of the pile.

From her visits to online centres, Fox said that she understood how those excluded from the web generally earned less and were not able to gain financial benefits from shopping online.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Hunt, shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport, delivered the opening speech at the Reboot Britain event, and outlined how technology and the internet is changing the relationship between politicians and citizens.

The Central Office of Information asked attendees how the Civil Service should adapt to new digital technologies to deliver better public services, information and communities.

Steph Gray, social media manager at the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS), discussed how policy making is changing with more data and judgement able to be 'crowd sourced', and how public understanding of complex issues is being facilitated by the openness of the web.

Richard Foggie, DIUS assistant director of electronics innovation, said that, for broadband services to become more useful to citizens, technologies need to talk to each other more. He suggested that the transformation of public and private services could be facilitated by standards-based smart home technologies, products and services

Finally Howard Rheingold, a professor at US Ivy League universities Stanford and California Berkeley, concluded the event by warning attendees not to swallow the myth of the digital native.

Just because young people understand sites like Facebook and YouTube, and technologies such as instant messaging, it should not be assumed that they understand blogging and collective knowledge gathering, he said.