#LondonCyber: EU wants all member states to appoint a 'Lane Fox' digital champ

As I tweeted late yesterday, Neelie Kroes revealed at the London Conference on Cyberspace on Tuesday that plans are afoot to create a digital champion in the Martha Lane Fox mould for every EU member state in a bid to get more people online.

Kroes, who is the European Commission vice president responsible for the Digital Agenda, claimed that a whopping 30 per cent of Europeans have never been online.

Of course, in countries such as the UK, the percentage will be much smaller. The latest figures put broadband penetration at around 90 per cent of all UK households, and the government is certainly on its way to achieving universal 2Mbit/s speeds by 2015.

But it's a different matter across Europe, where the digital divide is more of a yawning chasm especially in the region's many rural and impoverished areas.

No wonder, then, that Kroes has persuaded EC president José Manuel Barroso to ask all member states to follow the UK's lead in appointing a Lane Fox character to lead the race to get more European citizens online.

Cabinet minister Francis Maude joked subsequently that the job will be difficult given that "there's only one Martha Lane Fox", but the UK government will no doubt be pleased that one of its ideas - or at least one it is claiming for its own - is being held up as an example of best practice across Europe.

Race Online 2012, the campaign led by Lane Fox, aims to get the nearly nine million UK citizens who have never used the internet online. As prime minister David Cameron mentioned in his brief address to the conference on Tuesday, getting more people online equals more growth.

"Studies show it can create twice as many jobs as it destroys," said Cameron. "It's estimated that, for every 10 per cent increase in broadband penetration, global GDP will increase by an average of 1.3 per cent."

02 Nov 2011