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We are all online now, right?
Not really.
The Citizens Advice Office has produced a report that reveals that a large number of people suffer from “digital exclusion”: those who have limited or no access to digital technology, or who do not want or cannot use.
Unfortunately for the cash-strapped organization, it launched in February and was quickly absorbed by the flood of Covid-19 news.
READ MORE:
* Coronavirus: Covid-19 exposes the digital divide, those who do not have Internet are cut even more
* Loneliness and digital divide
* Coronavirus: Older people are even more digitally excluded than ever
But in the confinement, the warnings outlined in the ‘Face to Face with Digital Exclusion’ report were exacerbated when everything from schooling to obtaining food, subsidies and fringe benefits, went online.
The report smashed the myth that new technologies are only leaving the elderly behind. It found that people of all age groups are excluded and the biggest barrier was poverty. Maori and Pasifika were clearly overrepresented in the figures, as were the disabled, people with English as a second language and those who had literacy difficulties.
The 2018 census revealed that 10 percent of New Zealanders, more than half a million people, do not have access to the Internet. Ironically, that census is not considered reliable because it was largely conducted online.
Kaitlyn Baker / Unsplash
The 2018 census revealed that 10 percent of New Zealanders, more than half a million people, do not have access to the Internet.
“Digital is not always best for all people and all situations,” says Kerry Dalton, executive director of CABs New Zealand.
“This points very, very clearly to the fact that there are underlying problems of exclusion and disadvantage in general that are magnified when things are only accessible in the online world.”
Some people also prefer the security and tranquility of interacting with a human being.
“And what’s wrong with that?” Dalton asks.
The CAB report focuses on government departments – taxpayer-paid utilities that are increasingly moving to an online-only platform, enabling cost reduction and staff reduction.
Dalton says that Internal Affairs, for example, has stopped providing printed passport forms in bulk; instead, clients who need them are referred to the Citizen’s Advice Office. The CAB then bears the cost (without compensation) of printing and delivering them.
Dalton says it’s a clear case of cost shifting to a volunteer organization facing funding difficulties.
Other Examples: The option to fill out a paper application for Tenancy Services is almost invisible on their website. Immigration NZ is systematically shutting down its public counter services. The MBiE system for requesting labor mediation services is an online-only process.
To obtain RealMe authentication, a customer was told that he could not use a Gmail address, and was told not to use an iPhone or iPad either, but rather a “suitable computer.” The KiwiSaver withdrawal process is also a struggle to navigate.
These examples were part of 4,379 customer interactions in which volunteers identified digital exclusion over a three-month period.
“Taking an approach that says digital is the answer to everything, and it’s the best answer, creates problems and disadvantages, by excluding some people,” says Dalton.
“Those people are often the ones who need the most support. It may be more difficult to serve them, but for that we trust the government, to make sure that the most vulnerable are well. “
The problems described in the report were highlighted during the confinement of people involved in community groups and when checking the well-being of people in disadvantaged areas.
Luella Linaker was in Manurewa where she found cases like that of the great family whose only internet device was the son’s phone…. and another who had been hungry for six weeks because they did not know how to get help.
Many of those with devices couldn’t afford the data, or had subscribed to a plan that was cheap, but didn’t provide enough internet power to access what they needed.
Linaker would like to see more telcos developing schemes like Skinny’s ‘jump’, which provides cheap and easy mobile broadband at very low costs.
