The 'Enabling a Digital Birmingham Evaluation' research project evaluates Birmingham City Council’s Enabling a Digital Birmingham programme. Led by Dr Nathan Kerrigan, researcher and lecturer in Criminology, the evaluation explores how the initiative tackled digital exclusion within the city.
Enabling a Digital Birmingham is a strategy and action plan employing a partnership approach based on multiagency stakeholder engagement between public, private and third sector partners to tackle the problem of digital exclusion.
The aims of the study were to:
- Examine what is working well and what is not working well in the delivery of the Birmingham Digital Inclusion Strategy.
- Examine the role structural inequalities have on current levels of digital exclusion across Birmingham and the effectiveness of the Birmingham Digital Inclusion Strategy in reducing the overall level of digital exclusion across the city.
- Assess how the Digital City and Innovation Team can better monitor and record levels of digital exclusion and what needs to be adopted to support individuals, groups, and communities most at risk.
- Assess what the central priorities of the Birmingham Digital Inclusion Strategy are and how these can be embedded across all five potential future workstreams to ensure sustainability of the initiative.
22 semi-structured interviews were conducted with key public, private and VFCSE (voluntary, faith, community and social enterprise) stakeholders, alongside three focus groups with Birmingham Digital Inclusion Strategy workstreams and analysis
of survey data collected by the Digital City and Innovation Team.
The project impacted the ways community initiatives and activities to reduce digital exclusion were used by local groups in Birmingham.
The use of ‘digital cafes’ was recommended – a network of community hubs across Birmingham. This was building upon Birmingham Voluntary Sector Council’s ‘Warm, Welcome Spaces’ programme to provide more spaces in which citizens can use to develop digital skills and foster a sense of belonging and connection.
Secondly, the findings from the Enabling a Digital Birmingham project have been used by Ofcom to help structure their approach in delivering digital literacy training in two areas of Birmingham, Hodge Hill and Billingsley, where rates of digital exclusion are high.
Birmingham City University’s role in the Enabling a Digital Birmingham Project was to act as an evaluative partner, mobilising academic knowledge as a partnership with public, voluntary, and private sector organisations. The overall aim is to support citizens and address local social need.