Digital Strategy to make Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a digital business

1 Mar 2017 12:08 AM

Culture Secretary launches Digital Strategy set to create a world-leading digital economy that works for everyone. 

More than four million free digital skills training opportunities will be created as part of a Digital Strategy to make Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a digital business and ensure our digital economy works for everyone.

A pioneering new Digital Skills Partnership will see Government, business, charities and voluntary organisations coming together to make sure people have the right skills for the jobs in their area and are aware of all the digital training opportunities on offer. This Government-led initiative will help both businesses and individuals and make sure no one is left behind.

The strategy includes new commitments, including a plan by Lloyds Banking Group to give face-to-face digital skills training to 2.5 million individuals, charities and small and medium businesses by 2020; plans by Barclays to teach basic coding to 45,000 more children and assist up to one million people with general digital skills and cyber awareness; and a pledge by Google, as part of their commitment of five hours of free digital skills for everyone, to help boost digital skills in seaside towns.

It is part of the Government’s ambitions to ensure everyone has the skills they need to flourish in a digitally-driven economy.

The strategy follows the recent modern Industrial Strategy, and will help Britain to build on its strengths to secure a future as a competitive, global nation.

Businesses have played an important role developing the strategy. To capitalise on these new relationships and deliver a thriving, outward-looking digital economy, the strategy also sets out plans to empower innovative businesses and deliver world-class connectivity. This includes:

Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Karen Bradley said:

The UK’s world-leading digital sectors are a major driver of growth and productivity, and we are determined to protect and strengthen them.

This Digital Strategy sets a path to make Britain the best place to start and grow a digital business, trial a new technology, or undertake advanced research as part of the Government’s plan to build a modern, dynamic and global trading nation.

To do that, we will work closely with businesses and others to make sure the benefits and opportunities are spread across the country so nobody is left behind.

There should be no digital divide - every individual and every business should have the skills and confidence to make the most of digital technology and have easy access to high-quality internet wherever they live, work, travel or learn.

At the heart of the strategy are steps to ensure everyone can develop the skills they need to thrive in an increasingly digital world and measures to help businesses harness the benefits of innovation.

Government has taken the lead in this area and has committed to help adults who lack core digital skills to access training free of charge, similar to the approach taken for literacy and numeracy. The strategy builds on this by establishing a Digital Skills Partnership and, as part of the Digital Strategy, Government has secured the following new pledges from private sector organisations:

Josh Hardie, CBI Deputy Director-General, said:

UK companies are at the forefront of the digital revolution. The pledges announced by the Government underline businesses’ commitment to build the skills we need for a modern economy, as well as tackle barriers to technology adoption.

To uphold our position as a world-leading digital economy businesses, we and the Government need to work together - the strategy’s focus on skills, connectivity and innovation provide a useful framework for this.

Gerard Grech, chief executive, Tech City UK, yesterday said:

The UK’s tech sector is rapidly becoming a global force to reckon with, but we must ensure that we stay ahead by continuing to provide a supportive environment for British startups and digital companies to grow in, especially since other countries are trying to take advantage of our departure from the European Union. In the UK tech sector jobs are being created at twice the rate of the wider economy, and today’s Digital Strategy provides an ambitious road map for the industry to continue growing at this rate and building a new economy fit for the future.

Nick Williams, Managing Director, Consumer and Commercial Digital at Lloyds Banking Group, said:

I’m delighted that Lloyds Banking Group, as part of its new Helping Britain Prosper Plan, has made such a significant commitment to improve digital skills in the UK. By working with the Digital Skills Partnership, and our key partners such as Google and The Good Things Foundation, we can help to tackle some of the issues raised by the Government’s Digital Strategy. Our commitment to provide face-to-face support will make a huge difference to millions of individuals, small businesses and charities across the UK.

Ronan Harris, Google Managing Director UK & Ireland, said:

We believe that digital can have a transformative impact, no matter where you live and what your job is. Everyone deserves access to the tools and opportunities the web has to offer and that is why we welcome the Government’s timely Digital Strategy which ensures the benefits of the digital economy are spread across the country.

We are delighted to be part of the Digital Skills Partnership and will continue to invest in the free skills training offered through the Digital Garage, launch a new programme aiming to help seaside communities, and - as a global first - are launching engineering apprenticeships, giving young people without a degree the opportunity to join Google’s world class software teams.

The strategy also contains new measures to support Britain’s world leading AI sector which were announced earlier this week.

The strategy also builds on the Government Transformation Strategy, launched earlier this month by Minister for the Cabinet Office Ben Gummer, which maps out how Government will transform the relationship between the citizen and the state to improve public services. This has ambitions to make it as easy to renew your passport or report a crime as it is to buy a book online, and aims to sign up to 25 million people onto the Government identity service Verify by 2020.

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Professor Dame Wendy Hall FRS FREng is Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton. Wendy is an entrepreneur, and one of the world’s leading computer scientists. She was a founding director of the Web Science Research Initiative, now the Web Science Trust, and is the Executive Director of the Web Science Institute at Southampton . She was president of the British Computer Society from 2003-04 and was the first person from outside North America to be elected President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) from 2008-10. Since 2014, she has served as a commissioner for the Global Commission on Internet Governance and is a non-executive director of Dstl and the Digital Catapult.

Jérôme Pesenti is the CEO of BenevolentTech, the technology division of BenevolentAI, a British technology company using artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery. He is a world-leading pioneer in the commercialisation of AI. He co-founded Vivisimo, a tech firm specialising in text mining and enterprise search engines, which was acquired by IBM. At IBM he became chief scientist of big data, and created and led the development of the Watson Platform - the first comprehensive cloud platform for artificial intelligence.