Connected Citizens

Improving local and regional digital connectivity

A new White Paper, Connected Citizens (published by PPP in partnership with Anderson Strategy) proposes an ambitious Digital Operating Model for the UK that sets out a long-term aim to radically improve capabilities, provide world-leading connectivity and enable digital innovation to accelerate.

We are at a pivotal moment for our country. It is not an understatement to say we are in the midst of a seismic change. There is huge uncertainty about our future, our economy, the health of our citizens, the education of a generation, and of course our global climate.

To address this uncertainty requires a paradigm shift in thinking about the core infrastructure we need for the future of our country. If we look back in history we can see the role innovation in infrastructure has played:

• 2,500 years ago the Athenians built a maritime empire stimulating economic prosperity and cultural development.
• 2000 years ago the Romans built 75 thousand miles of road.
• Railways transformed the British Empire in 19th century.
• Aviation evolved rapidly during the first world war and accelerated global trade in the 20th century.

In times of conflict, nations that accelerate their innovation prosper.

The COVID-19 pandemic has already sharply increased our use of the internet as a means for communication, collaboration, and commerce. At the start of 2020, the use of Zoom increased 20-fold in three months from 10 million to 200 million users. Ecommerce has displaced the high street. Businesses that are mature in their use of digital are realising the highest margins.

It is still early days for digital infrastructure, but it has rapidly become the critical infrastructure of our time. A high-speed internet connection is now absolutely fundamental to our progress. Access to the internet is a critical foundation to both level up our economy and the lives of our citizens and ensure our future competitiveness.

We must connect and empower every man, woman, and child in this country with high-speed internet access wherever they are: at home, at work, at school, or on the move. We must connect everyone to digitized public services and mobilise our entire workforce to realise their potential.

And we must transform our education system allowing our youth to step up their learning and ensure those who find themselves jobless can retrain quickly for the new opportunities ahead.

We can’t let anyone be left behind.

If we succeed, the opportunity for sustainable growth in the UK will be extraordinary. Delivering full-fiber across the country will boost UK productivity by nearly ￡60 billion by 2025 and will enable over one million more people to access employment – that’s about 3% of our workforce – a similar number forecast to have been displaced through this crisis.

It will unleash new digital innovation, including 5G, which will radically boost the possibilities of many businesses across the county and provide the necessary foundation to support our Government’s vision for a ‘Science Super-Power’ and a ‘Green Industrial Revolution’

There are already many examples of great programmes that have been undertaken across the UK to connect citizens. However, we are currently falling short on targets, investment, accountability, and a detailed roll-out strategy.

The new White Paper, Connected Citizens has identified key gaps and challenges and suggested pragmatic recommendations to expedite connectivity across the UK with a simple 5-point plan.

Point 1

We need a joined-up national vision, strategy, and funding plans. We must converge our connectivity, sustainability, and science super-power visions into a single powerful shared vision with a new Digital Operating Model.

The Government has committed ￡5 billion by 2025 to help connect hard-to-reach homes & offices, so far only ￡1.65 billion has been allocated over the next 4 years. We urgently need to allocate the remaining committed funds with a solid strategy backed by clear social and economic outcomes, to ensure no resources are wasted.

We need to establish a tight new timescale for full fibre rollout and re-instate the manifesto pledge to ensure that 15% of the country are not left behind in this digital world. Many of these hard-to-reach areas in fact still only have 2G coverage. The risk of a large number of citizens being left behind becomes even starker with the reality that only a quarter of the population has the necessary digital skills for everyday life.

And we must have full transparency on the measurement of connectivity. Today, there are inconsistent measures across the ONS, Ofcom, and DCMS. Research used to measure connectivity is based on public interviews, not technical data provided by operators. How many people can accurately provide their upload and download speeds when asked the question? It should be very possible to achieve a true and accurate measure of exactly where we are. If you can’t measure it how can manage it?

Point 2

The next step is to put this shared digital, green vision and strategy into action.

Those working at a regional and local level are best placed to make changes and drive a bottom-up rollout. Civic leaders must lead this change, they understand the local challenges, connectivity needs, drivers, and levers. Regional and Combined Authorities have both the headspace required to consider the strategy and pooled resources from local authorities. They have already proven their capabilities in many areas to deliver innovative digital strategies and programmes.

DCMS must work collaboratively with Regional and Combined authorities to facilitate barrier-busting improvements at a devolved level. They should co-create a network of regional Digital Infrastructure Boards like the one recently established by the West Midlands Combined Authority.

We must now scale existing Test Beds and Trials to provide exemplar urban and rural models. Our recommendation is that a circa 200,000-person city, which is big enough to test working methods, should be identified and run as the next generation blueprint to create an optimum model. It should be connected across the Digital Infrastructure Boards to ensure national collaboration and to prepare for further roll-out.

Local authorities can use their own drivers, including reformed planning policies to reduce time and cost. They should use standardised best practice tool kits with mandated policies to ensure that no new residential developments are built without full consideration from an early stage of how fibre will be delivered.

We can only deliver against the vision if all levels of government work together and devolve funding and policies to ensure decisions are made and action is taken and at the right level.

Point 3

Delivering the vision will depend on data and information at a delivery level which is often difficult to obtain. Consortium building, collaborative thinking, convening key stakeholders and mandating information sharing by MNOs is essential to overcome friction, especially through the planning process.

By bringing together local authorities, operators and stakeholders from the early stages of development to explain their needs, concerns and regulations we can streamline and speed up the process and get more infrastructure approved. Local Enterprise Partnerships can provide a great bridge to achieve this.

The Planning for the Future white paper, published in August 2020, sets out the Government’s proposals to reform England’s planning with a clearer rules-based system that has greater consultation from local communities at the beginning of the process and utilises new technology to make online maps and data more accessible. This is a great opportunity to ensure more information is made available within local plans at an early stage.

Point 4

We must update our legislation and regulation. In 2016 a new Bill was brought forward to ensure that everyone in the country had access to broadband with a safety net 1MB upload speed. In a world where many people will never return to the office full time, this is simply not fit for purpose today.

However, if we follow what actually happened after the Bill was introduced it appears the regulatory system itself is flawed and operating at a snail’s pace. In our digital world, regulation must move an order of magnitude faster to have any impact.

A year after the Bill was introduced, the Digital Economy Act 2017 was passed. In it a Universal Service Obligation (USO) was agreed whereby anyone who didn’t have access to decent broadband could request it. 189,000 homes were identified as eligible.

The USO was both designed and managed by Ofcom but it took 2 more years to roll it out and only in 2019 was the process established and BT was designated as the provider. By August 2020, four years after the bill was introduced, not a single USO had been acted on.

This speed from Act to action is simply unacceptable and has no place in a future Digital Operating Model. The powers of Ofcom must be reviewed to ensure the best provision is being delivered and to assess the effectiveness of the USO. And we urgently need to update the Digital Economy Act 2017 to reflect citizens' needs today.

The House of Lords previously raised an amendment to the Act, to increase the safety net but it was dropped for being too ambitious. They must revisit this as soon as possible in light of the changes that have happened since.

Point 5

The final point, which underpins the other points, is to deliver an ambitious long-term nationwide digital skills strategy. This should centre on reforming the education system at all levels, to ensure that it is fit for purpose for our digital age.

We must update what are called foundation-level skills assessed by the Essential Digital Skills Framework, which sets out the minimum skill requirements to participate in digital life. This is an extensive list of skills covering a wide range of topics from communicating online, making transactions, and understanding digital safety.

Any public services digitisation programme must be measured against this framework, ensuring that vital services can be used by those with a minimum level of digital skills.

The challenge however goes through our entire education system. We have a shortage of engineering skills to meet demand and a lack of innovative talent across all sectors.

We must reform our education system.

In summary:

For high-speed broadband, we need a powerful top-down vision combined with a bottom-up roll-out; and rapid up-skilling!

And by the end of this decade our country could genuinely be a Science Superpower built on a sustainable green & digital infrastructure. And we can truly realise the great opportunity ahead to improve citizen welfare, citizen wealth creation, and our shared climate.

And we can feel proud as a generation to have driven this change.

Download White Paper.