This week's trans-Atlantic discovery is a report from the UK government on Inclusion through Innovation: Taclking Social Exclusion Through New Technologies (PDF). I discovered the report through Paul Waller, the former director of e-democracy and e-Europe for the UK Cabinet Office and the new head of a digital inclusion team charged with implementing the recommendations of this report.

The report and project take aim at a broad set of groups who are often ill-served by traditional public service models: groups like disabled people, people with limited literacy, certain ethnic groups, some young adults, and many seniors. The report enumerates a bunch of ways that information and communications technologies (ICT) can help serve the needs of these groups:

• economic benefits: ICT can be a driver for both increased employment opportunities and greater overall wealth in society
• the job market: ICT changes the nature of a considerable number of jobs, in a way that allows the development of a more inclusive labour market.
• strategic planning and service targeting: Through the collection and sharing of information we can develop a much better understanding of the patterns of social exclusion and the needs of excluded people.
• improving access to services: ICT introduces new ways for people to access services....This provides opportunities to develop a more flexible approach to service availability, and to the way services are delivered
• opportunities to build more effective, integrated, personalised, and customer focused services, by providing support and new opportunities for service providers to better understand and engage with their customers.
• building personal capacity: ICT helps individuals to address some of the key drivers of social exclusion which reduce life chances...These key drivers include: - Early years disadvantage - Educational underachievement - Worklessness - Homelessness - Health and health inequalities - Crime (and being a victim of crime)
• Finally, building social networks and civic participation:...The opportunity to pursue individual interests and activities online often serves as the ‘hook’ or incentive that initially engages people with the Internet. The opportunities for communication with friends, family, or new communities of people who share interests is one of the most striking and liberating aspects of ICT

It's not surprising that this perspective leads to action plans that focus less on the bells and whistles of direct online service and access, and more on broader context of how ICT can improve the way that government works -- particularly in how it works for socially excluded people. Some of the more intriguing recommendations include:

We recommend that telecare systems should include broadband connections into people’s homes and should always look to bundle in other Internet capabilities, such as e-mail and local information feeds to help users stay connected to their local community...

We recommend that the specification and planning requirement for each homeless hostel, children’s home, sheltered housing scheme, NRU Neighbourhood community centre and similar focal points for delivering services to disadvantaged groups should include the provision of a wireless broadband ‘hotspot’...

We recommend that government explores action Data Sharing to ensure the provision of a controlled vocabulary for social exclusion themes, groups and individuals, to enable practitioners from the public, third and private sector dealing with excluded groups to more easily share information across partner agencies...

It sounds like Paul has an interesting challenge ahead. I'll certainly be interested to see what can happen when a government engages constructively with the Internet's potential for supporting social inclusion, rather than leaving the job entirely in the hands of civil society.