International Digital Rights Day: A Conversation With Christopher Northen
Christopher Northen is the Digital Inclusion Co-Ordinator at Manchester City Council.
To celebrate International Digital Rights Day, we sat down with Chris to discuss how the Let’s Get Digital team is helping more people get online safely and responsibly, and why equitable access to the internet is key to protecting our digital rights.
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Manchester’s Digital Strategy: For the last few years, you’ve been a central part of the Digital Inclusion team at Manchester City Council. Could you tell us a little more about your role as a Digital Inclusion Co-Ordinator? What does the job involve?
Chris Northen: My role is to help the citizens of Manchester access online services if they can’t do so. Nearly all services will become online. People are falling behind, and cannot actually access those services for a number of reasons:
One being, they don’t actually have a suitable device to access the Internet.
Two, they may not have the connectivity to get onto the Internet.
Lastly, they may not have the skills to be able to use the device.
Putting all those three into the mix, it’s my job to go out into the city and see where people are falling behind with this digital connectivity to make sure they can join the digital age that we’re now, or have been for a long time. Still people are unable to access some of these services, so I’m here to make sure everyone is included.
MDS: What initially sparked your interest in this work?
C: I think once people ended up using smartphones – that’s probably around 2008 – I personally found a lot of different things that you can actually start doing online such as banking, and access to the Internet, and social media. It became a big part of my life but I could see people were not being able to use that sort of thing, so I became interested in why people weren’t accessing these services.
I could see that gap and thought I’d really like to help people to access services for their own benefit. When this role came up I thought it was a fantastic opportunity for people to help where I could certainly see the help as needed.
MDS: This year, we’re excited to celebrate International Digital Rights Days for the first time, joining over 50 cities worldwide to champion the importance of digital human rights. What does ‘digital rights’ mean to you, especially in the context of digital inclusion?
C: I think Digital Rights is really the right to be online. If they can’t, then I think they’re losing out. People have the right to access a doctor, or medicines, or such like but so much of the preparation for that is now online that people are losing basic rights because they can’t access things digitally. I think it’s at the baseline of everything, or becoming that way: that people have to be online to access basic necessities. I think it is a basic human right to be able to be online - to successfully use online tools, have the skills to do that, and hardware to do that, and have the appropriate connectivity to be able to do that as well.
MDS: Could you share some examples of projects that the Digital Inclusion team are currently working on that help to advance or protect the rights you’ve described?
C: At the moment, one of the council suppliers - XMA - have kindly given us over 300 laptop computers which we are distributing to community groups that have identified themselves to us as being people who are helping citizens who are digitally disadvantaged in Manchester. For example, I visited a group called Rainbow Haven in Gorton last week, who specifically help refugees with their problems. They’d asked for some laptops to come in because there was a big need for their service users who were asking about how to access things on the Internet such as the home office forms, GP benefits, and housing. They’re going to use the laptops to show people how to access these services so they can go away and access these things themselves. It’s fantastic to see that we can give the laptops to this organisation and they will directly help their services users.
MDS: Much of your work involves close collaboration with local community organisations. In your opinion, how do these partnerships help to promote digital inclusion and safeguard human rights online?
C: What we’re trying to do as our team is build a network of digital hubs within Manchester where people can go to access help. So rather than give everybody in Manchester a computer, for example – that’s just not possible – we’re enabling hubs and community organisation all over the city to set themselves up as their own digital hubs. They can apply for funding - which we’re guiding people to do - to maybe buy their own hardware, or train themselves up to be digital trainers, and get things like free sim cards to be able to give to people which will give them free data connectivity. The idea is that we contact community organisations all over the city. I think to date we’ve spoken to about 80 different organisations. 40 of those set themselves up as digital hubs and became part of our digital inclusion network in Manchester. The idea is to be one big happy family - one big happy digital family - helping people who cannot access digital services to do so. I think that enhances digital rights, where people do have the right to access stuff. We’re building a network of enablement.
MDS: Looking to the future, what actions would you like to see Manchester take at city level to promote and protect digital rights, including the right to access technology?
C: Manchester needs to future proof itself really. I think one of the major things is to ensure that there’s correct connectivity throughout city. Access to cheap broadband, and cheap wireless internet is going to be absolutely key to that. There’s so many startup businesses in Manchester now who are technology or Internet based. They’re going to need people with skills. I think it’s time for industry to invest in digital for the people of Manchester. So I’d like to see more investment from industry. I’d like to see better infrastructure in place, sustainable infrastructure for the supply of internet connectivity, and also I’d like to see cheaper hardware.
MDS: What can we do as individuals to support digital inclusion efforts?
C: If you work in in an office, if you think your laptop is getting a bit long in to the tooth, go to your IT department to say: “I’d like a new laptop. What’s going to happen to the old one? You could donate that to an organisation such as Community Computers, who will take that laptop, destroy the data safely and responsibly, and then repurpose that machine and give it out to some disadvantaged people in Manchester.” And that’s one of the schemes we’re involved in!