The assisted digital programme is based in the Government Digital Service (GDS). It is working to make sure that the 18% of UK adults who are offline or have low digital skills can use digital by default services (GDS committed to doing this in Action 9 of the Government Digital Strategy).
What is assisted digital?
Digital by default includes people who aren’t online: ‘By digital by default, we mean digital services that are so straightforward and convenient that all those who can use them will choose to do so whilst those who can’t are not excluded.’
Assisted digital support will be the help that is provided to these people, so they can use these services. As set out in the Government Approach to Assisted Digital, there will be a core set of ways that assisted digital will be provided across services to make sure that people get consistent support and can navigate the places they can get the support from.
All new or redesigned digital services must have assisted digital provision in place to meet the Digital by Default Service Standard. GDS is working with departments, using the assisted digital action plan, to help them meet this requirement for each of the 25 exemplar services. We have also started talking to potential providers of assisted digital support from the commercial, voluntary and wider public sectors.
Being open about our work
We’ve already been blogging (over on the GDS blog) about the work we're doing with departments to develop assisted digital support and engaging potential providers of this support. We've also been talking about a user research project we're running with the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design and explaining the difference between assisted digital and digital inclusion.
We’ll now be blogging here about who we’re talking to and what we’re finding out. Sign up to our email alerts to keep up-to-date with what we're doing.
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