Possible Solutions

Measures to Overcome Digital Divide

What Can Unions Do To Bridge The Divides?

• They can promote the provision of public Internet access points in places like libraries, stations and community centres and especially in local post offices and new generation telephone kiosks.
• They can negotiate access at work to both the company’s intranet and the Internet itself, subject to common-sense provisions against the abuse of such access.
• They could negotiate bulk purchase of home access, whether this be the terminals themselves (either PCs or other devices) or the use of the Internet via a selected Internet service provider. Unions in Australia, Norway and Sweden have run such schemes.

To overcome the international inequalities, they can promote international twinning arrangements, whereby a Branch of a British union assists the Branch of a union in a less developed country – ideally in the same industry or occupation – to meet the costs of PC purchase, Internet usage, and relevant training.

Action to Tackle the Divide

Governments across the western world are beginning to take action to try to bridge the perceived divide. Apart from a sack load of strategy documents, practical measures are being taken in some places to increase access to computers and the Internet.
One approach is that of Arizona in the US. Here the TOPAZ project (Telecommunications Open Partnerships of Arizona) is aimed at providing broadband access rural communities. Over the next 5 years Arizona expects to spend $100 million supporting local public agencies in purchasing broadband telecoms services, via a state-wide carrier service. 
Arizona State has contracted with 9 leading telecoms providers to develop the service.  In this way the network is being "pushed" out to the communities. The "pull" factor comes from the state encouraging, and financially supporting, local authorities, tribal governments, health and education providers and the not-for-profit sector to aggregate demand. In this way the business case is made for continued rollout of the service.

A similar principle of building the business case by aggregating demand is being tested in Scotland. In many areas the biggest users of telecommunications come from the public sector. Government agencies are being given more leeway than they are in England to work with the telecoms operators in bringing broadband into areas that would take forever for the market to reach.

Video Games

Sony PlayStation 3

Nintendo Wii

Video games can be seen as a way to help "bridge the gap" so to speak as they input certain ICT skills into the user which can be used for the mosbasic of ICT, and so can help, in a way "tutor" children and grown-ups alike in the Information Age. Children in developing countries, if had access to this, could within time develop decent ICT skills, and be involved more in the technology of this world.