Digital Scotland
The next item on the agenda is the "Digital Scotland Task Force" report, which has been a specialist interest of Elaine Murray. If the committee wants to respond to the consultation, we have to do so before the end of June, so it has been put on the agenda as a priority. I have asked Elaine to put together a few comments on the report and speak about them. After that, we shall discuss them briefly and decide whether we want to respond in the terms that she has set out. Elaine, could you speak to the paper that has been circulated?
I shall do my best. The "Digital Scotland Task Force" report runs to about 50 pages, and considers the possibilities for Scotland to make the most of the new technology. I felt that the Rural Affairs Committee should investigate how well the report deals with issues affecting rural areas, and that we should respond with comments on the issues that we think should be highlighted as having an impact on rural areas.
The report identifies four main areas on which further action should be taken, and makes other suggestions as to how that might be progressed, such as the appointment of an e-tsar. We should ensure that rural areas benefit as much as possible from the new technology. There is a danger that, in developing new technology to serve the needs of Scotland as a whole, the central belt's needs could be met but the rural areas could fall further behind and become more disadvantaged if action is not taken.
I have split my document into four sections. I tried to think about possible recommendations, which the committee may or not agree with.
The first section is about e-commerce. As we know, rural areas tend to rely more heavily on small and medium enterprises for employment than urban areas do. One rather worrying factor is that, although Scotland and the UK as a whole are doing reasonably well in taking advantage of internet access, small and medium enterprises are not tending to sell so well on the internet. Some action must be take to rectify that situation and assist smaller enterprise to become more active in using information and communication technologies.
One of the problems relates to infrastructure. That is an issue that has been mentioned in debates in Parliament. Communications infrastructure tends to be poorer in rural areas than in urban areas, and can be considerably more expensive to bring into sparsely populated areas. The report refers to various developments such as asymmetric digital subscriber lines, which will become accessible in the major cities. Mobile broadband communication technology will become available in the central belt, but there is no indication that such technologies will spread out into rural areas, so it is possible that rural communities could be left behind in business and educational opportunities. Even very basic ITC services, such as integrated services digital network lines, can be expensive in rural areas. Certain types of technology, such as satellites, are better for rural areas than fixed networks are.
The report comments strongly on the need to examine the infrastructure. I suggest that we endorse recommendations R60 and R61, which require the Executive
"to review telecomms infrastructure capacity"
and to work with the various partners to ensure that the appropriate technologies are available in different areas of Scotland.
I felt that the report was a little weak on the application of education and training opportunities through ICT in rural communities. I am sure that Cathy Peattie can tell me more about that, as she has just been investigating rural schools in Argyll and Bute. There is a lot of experience among local authorities. Argyll and Bute is particularly well ahead of the game in getting ICT into its schools, as are North Ayrshire and South Ayrshire, the authorities in the west of Scotland with which I am more familiar.
Work has been done on supporting rural schools with ICT. It has been a problem in small schools to expose children to ICT at the same age and stage. There tend not to be many pupils in such schools working on the same part of the curriculum. There is the possibility of using videoconferencing to support rural schools and education in remote rural areas.
There is also the question of the higher still exam. To support the entire curriculum, a secondary school needs a population of about 800. That is obviously less likely to be the case in remote rural areas, but there are ways in which ICT can be used to deliver a curriculum from another school. Some local authorities are already doing work on universal timetabling, and it would perhaps be worth while for the Executive to review current initiatives in school and adult further education to find out how ICT is being used to support education and training. We will see what we can learn from that.
The University of the Highlands and Islands uses distance learning to try to educate people in their own environment. The same approach has been taken via the Crichton campus in Dumfries. If people are receiving further and higher education in their own communities, there will be less of a drift of young people going away to get skills elsewhere and not coming back. In summary, there are rural issues that I feel could have been highlighted more strongly in the report.
Another area covered by the report was e-public services. It noted that the commercial sector has commercial pressures concerning the new technologies, but that there was not the same stimulus in the public sector. There could, however, be great benefits in the delivery of public services through the use of those technologies. They could benefit the infrastructure of rural areas, with online health services, online consultation and even e-voting, which it might be suitable to pilot in rural areas.
It strikes me that one of the problems for someone living in remote rural areas is that the documents for planning applications or for a national park plan, for example, might only be available at the council headquarters, which might be tens of miles from where that person lives. It is possible to put such documents on the internet so that people can access them from local centres. That could help better involve citizens in rural communities.
The issue of rural post offices has been raised in debate. Post office services are being put online, which could help with banking through rural post offices. Could we consider the delivery of various other public services through that post office computer network? People could pay their council tax or get information about planning applications that way, for example. I am sure that all members here want to support rural post offices—the concern about them has been clear. The Executive might consider the opportunities that are afforded by an online post office system to find out how other public services could be co-ordinated with that.
The report considers how social inclusion is impacted upon by ICT. As rural areas can be excluded from ICT, so can social groups. Figures in the report show the percentages of households in high-income areas with their own personal computers compared to households in council areas. There is clearly the possibility of a divide. Wealthier people are more likely to be information-rich, which could lead to the exclusion of people on lower incomes. There may also be an impact on rural communities, because in many rural areas incomes are lower than average.
I have also made various recommendations about training. On page 3 of the draft report members will see that recommendation R42 tries to encourage the provision of
"affordable Internet access in community based facilities".
The hope is that people who do not have internet access at home will be able to get access at, for example, their local community centre or school.
Recommendation R43 is more slanted towards the social inclusion partnership areas, and suggests that social inclusion programmes should look for gaps in ICT provision. I wondered whether we ought to recommend that some projects should consider the gaps in provision in rural areas where there is social exclusion.
I was not really sure how to express the main thrust of my recommendations. However, we may want to say to the Executive that, for all ICT development strategies in Scotland, we must consider the impact on rural communities. In many such developments, the issues in rural areas will be different from those in urban areas. When considering the development of digital technologies in Scotland, we should ask some standard questions: how will this development apply in rural areas, and how can we ensure that rural areas are not left behind?
Thank you for that comprehensive report. It was so comprehensive that I feel quite guilty for having asked you to do it at such short notice.
It is a smashing paper—thank you, Elaine. I want to follow up on some of the education issues. I agree with Elaine that it is important that people should have access to education and should know how the systems work. There is an opportunity for rural schools to be regarded as lifelong learning centres—places where everyone can learn. Local authorities have to face the issue of schools not being at full capacity. Education could be going on in those schools beyond the education that is just for primary or secondary schoolchildren.
If we are serious about this, everyone needs to have the opportunity to access education. Having information about services online is wonderful, but if elderly people, for example, cannot use it, or are worried about using it, or cannot get access to it, there are problems. There are opportunities for people to access services that they would not otherwise have known about. Training and education are vital. This committee has to consider rural-proofing. Whatever we do in the Parliament, it is vital that we have the opportunity to proof policies for rural communities. When education, economic development or community planning happen, there have to be partnerships to ensure that all the community benefits.
I read about training in the first draft of Elaine Murray's report, but I cannot find it now.
It should be there.
It was about training people how to use computers.
Yes, it is in the section headed "E-inclusion and e-communities". Recommendations R42 and R43 relate to training.
I would like to ask about the section on e-commerce. Rural areas could capitalise on e-commerce, because it is possible to sell products or to liaise with colleagues without having to be near anywhere in particular. However, it is worrying that the figures in your report seem to show a slow growth in rural areas because they were not able to access the infrastructure and the technology.
Could we emphasise the importance of e-commerce for rural areas, because the indications are that things will not improve and that the central belt will get the new technology first? Things may change, but there is no guarantee whatsoever that firms, and especially the SMEs, in rural areas will be able to access new technology anything like as quickly as their competitors or colleagues in the central belt.
There has to be positive action.
You have certainly included a recognition that rural areas could be further disadvantaged unless efforts are made to prevent that. I do not know how much more strongly that could be put in the report. Nobody seems to be making firm commitments to ensure that e-commerce opportunities are rolled out more quickly to rural areas.
Is the committee broadly content with the contents of what Elaine Murray has prepared, and, if so, does the committee agree to this response being made in the name of the committee as a whole?
Members indicated agreement.
Thank you very much, Elaine, for your effort.