Join techUK's new Digital Inclusion Working Group
The Digital Inclusion Action Plan
techUK welcomed the Government’s Digital Inclusion Action Plan when it was published in February 2025. We also responded to the Plan's consultation.
A number of techUK-supported policies were included in the plan, such as:
- The establishment of a dedicated unit within the Department for Science, Innovation & Tech (DSIT) for promoting digital inclusion. A Digital Inclusion and Skills Unit has been created.
- The adoption of the Essential Digital Skills Framework by the Government, which will be integrated into public sector skills provisions and used as a base for future skills initiatives.
- Ministers to take responsibility for promoting digital inclusion.
We also welcome the Government taking responsibility for co-ordinating and promoting those digital inclusion initiatives happening at local level.
But our response also highlight a danger in the Government getting the balance wrong on digital inclusion in the future. Fundamentally, digital exclusion is bound up with a person’s wider circumstances, often beyond their control, which makes 100% digital inclusion impossible to achieve. A young person may have all the digital skills they need, but a change in technology may render their skills useless; Another person may lose their job and be unable to afford essential connectivity or to maintain their devices; A person may also become disabled and need to relearn essential skills. The variety and complexity of life experiences will always remain steps ahead of the Government’s attempts to contain them.
We believe Government needs to think of this as ‘life-cycle’ digital exclusion, the idea being that people may become digitally excluded multiple times throughout their lives for a variety of reasons.
Thinking of digital exclusion in this way means services to tackle digital exclusion should rely on maintaining capacity and ensuring each community has support that works, instead of relying on market forces to create efficient or universally-effective solutions. The needs of the digitally-excluded across time, personal circumstances and geography, means the Government has to take a permanent role in assuring access to services that can help them.
This is why techUK’s response emphasises the importance of the Government’s role in ensuring that people can access necessary support, rather than inaugurating further competition to provide the most support amongst business and charities that are already stretched to provide existing levels of help for the digitally excluded.
techUK also emphasised the importance of digital exclusion for those groups not identified by the Action Plan. For example, data from Lloyds suggests 52% of the UK workforce cannot do all twenty of the UK’s Essential Digital Skills for Work (rising to 60% for the unemployed) and it is estimated that the digital skills gap will be the largest skills gap by 2030. Ensuring the UK support systems have the capacity to support all those facing digital exclusion is paramount.
Digital Inclusion Working Group
To ensure that digital inclusion is included across the breadth of Government policy development, techUK has established a new Digital Inclusion Working Group.
Members can join the Group to guide our work on digital inclusion, this includes our focus on the best ways to incorporate digital inclusion into employers investment decisions, ESG frameworks to hold businesses accountable, and improving Digital inclusion procurement practices through the Public Services (Social Value) Act.
Any techUK members that work in the digital inclusion space, or who wish to work in this space, are welcome to join. The group will receive all updates on digital inclusion, including drafts of techUK policy documents, and will meet on an ad-hoc basis to assess major developments in the digital inclusion landscape.
This is your opportunity to guide our work in this field.
Authors
Archie Breare
Archie Breare joined techUK in September 2022 as the Telecoms Programme intern, and moved into the Policy and Public Affairs team in February 2023.