Archive for the ‘Inclusion’ Category

I was writing an email to B.Strong today about how digital media can be used to help voluntary organisations market themselves and generally do whatever they do more effectively.

B.Strong (part of the Council) provides organisational development support and capacity building training to voluntary organisations and community groups and is putting on a series of workshops for voluntary organisations that support excluded communities, especially BME, Migrant, Refugee and New
Communities. Donna, my colleague, and I offered to help them include some training in using online tools for marketing in their programme following a meeting last week.

Now here comes the ‘crowdsourcing’ bit: More – Crowdsourcing: support for voluntary organisations

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) released the responses this week to the Digital Inclusion Action Plan consultation that have been collated over the last 3 months. 99 responses were received in all, a fairly small number considering it was a national consultation – but that has not affected the amount of information DCLG and Paul Murphy MP (Minister for Digital Inclusion) has had to go through.

The resounding agreement of all to the consultation was the fact that digital inclusion is inextricably linked to social inclusion, improving one area would inevitably improve the other.

More – The results are in

Deputy Leader, Cllr Paul Tilsley views all that's left of a computer hard drive after shredding, watched by Secure IT Disposals' MD, Martin Burke

Research last year showed that only 20% of the 6 million items of electronic equipment thrown away annually are recycled. It’s good to see then that the scheme that we put in place last year together with Birmingham City Council, Service Birmingham and Secure IT, to recycle IT waste such as computers, printers and laptops is starting to have a positive impact on the community. So far around 15,000 items of unwanted IT kit have been collected from businesses and schools. In addition Secure IT provides a door to door residential collection service which to date total 108 collections. A nominal fee of £15 is charged for up to four items though for the registered disabled it is free of charge. More – Green IT initiative is a winner all round

….or at least that’s the fancy title of the pilot project we’re running with funding from the department for Communities and Local Government. As announced by Hazel Blears, Birmingham is one of ten English councils who secured funding for a ‘Timely Information for Citizens’ pilot project.

The idea behind ‘Birmingham – Open City’ is to develop a community of practice around developing new resources to empower citizens. When Digital Birmingham were working up the bid we went on the basis that we shouldn’t presume what kind of services could be developed, or indeed, what kind of data sources could be made available to develop them. Instead we’re focusing on putting some resource into generating the collaborations, discussions, creativity and debate from which new services can spring.

More – Birmingham – Open City

The next generation of superfast broadband was given approval by Ofcom on Tuesday … the new £1.5 billion fibre-optic network will be 25 times faster than today’s speeds. Songs will take just two seconds to download and DVD-quality films less than two minutes in the 100 megabit per second system.

“There are no regulatory barriers in the way of investment in super-fast broadband, we want to promote investment but also ensure that there is fair and effective competition for the future.” stated Ofcom Chief Executive Ed Richards.
So, here at Digital Birmigham we are making the assumption that BT will no longer be subject to Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) as they were under the ADSL roll out, which will no doubt be a huge impetus for its implementation.
BT is investing £1.5bn in a fibre optic network that will deliver download speeds of 100mbps to UK broadband users. The move follows increasing competition, particularly from Virgin Media, which plans to introduce a 50mbps broadband service in September.

BT aims to put 10 million homes on the fibre network by 2012. To control costs, the network will be built in two parts. One million new-build homes will receive the fibre network directly. For the remaining nine million residents BT plans to replace the copper cabling that connects kerbside cabinets in streets to the local BT exchange with fibre optic cabling.

… then what would it be? Okay, I’ll narrow that down a bit: if you could remove a government-imposed obstacle to allow Birmingham City Council to help you improve the sustainability of your community, what would that be? More – If you could change one thing…