BCS launching Savvy Citizen initiative (raises question)

Claire Thompson, Waves PR

Digital Britain: who pays?

According to new research commissioned by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, only 20 per cent of the UK’s population are information savvy, so they are launching a new public awareness campaign called ‘Savvy Citizens’

The campaign hinges around a new microsite called the Savvy Citizen offering resources and expert opinion and advice across topics such as commerce, safety, culture and citizenship.

I see a flaw in this strategy, or am I missing the point?  How will people know what’s there, how to get there? And even if looking, would they automatically seek out a BCS site? Can they even get on-line in a broadband challenged area?

I hope that the BCS will have considered these issues. Economically, socially, culturally and politically, digital lives are important, but, it would seem, the UK’s digital divide is getting bigger.

The divide, highlighted by the report and the BCS move, is something that the PR world needs to be aware of. PR people often live in cocooned bubbles, forgetting that the reality for many people isn’t the latest iphone and laptop, but the TV, a newspaper and a pay as you go phone from Tescos.

Which, in turn, is something for me, and my PR counterparts, to consider before being tempted to turn all of our PR activity ‘social;  and, perhaps mor importantly, to sanity check the ways that we engage with people and/or deliver information.

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