Digital divide, a relevant subject in the world of COVID-19

The first time I heard about the digital divide was at UCL CASA while writing research on Singapore Smart City Policies and Plans. Singapore has been at the front of the Smart City agenda, we can say that it's not a Smart City but a Smart Nation. Due to being one of the first nations entering into a smart/digital world their citizens experienced first one of the biggest challenges nations and cities have when implementing smart policies and digitalisation: the digital divide.

The concept of digital divide as found on wiki is defined as follows:

"A digital divide is any uneven distribution in the access to, use of, or impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) between any number of distinct groups. These groups may be defined based on social, geographical, or geopolitical criteria, or otherwise.[1] Because of ICT high cost, its adoption and utilization is highly uneven across the globe.[2]"

Singapore moved fast into moving all their public interactions into the web and apps but soon found out that the elder couldn't access or understand these new ways. Soon Singapore had to put a plan into place to assist the elders and include them into the new smart nation. I will leave this article here for the ones that want a more extended explanation of this.

Some weeks ago I received in the post a letter from the UK Government, signed by The Prime Minister with the ribbon of 10 Downing Street as many other UK residents did, the letter started with:

"I am writing to you to update you on the steps we are taking to combat coronavirus"

This week I've received another letter from Hackney Council with a similar message.

My partner asked me why and I said "to reach everyone". And this comes at a critical time. We all want to think that we are ready for the smart cities, the future of our workplace and sailing off into the world of cloud and connectivity, but the reality is that when talking about nation wide engagement and citizens that is not the case: A research by the Office for National Statistics in the UK shows that in 2018 there were still 5.3 million adults in the UK, or 10.0% of the adult UK population described as internet non-users. source

Now here comes the challenge and probably you can already see where I am going with this. South Korea that has one of the most successful approaches to COVID-19 up to date, heavily relaying on an apps, same case for most of the successful countries -apart from lots of testing- source. So now all the European countries including UK are looking at an app as one of the measures to tackle the virus and inform the population. In 2019 79% of UK adults own a smartphone, the gap is mainly found on the elder, which currently are one of the biggest risk demographic in this pandemic. source

While I think moving into digitalization is the right approach I think that one of the main elements to consider for people working in these areas is the digital divide. Equally and now looking at my own industry when we talk about "national digital twins" and once the digital and BIM world will reach cities and transcend the world of only experts, what measurements we will take to make sure that we include everyone?

I see a lot of conversations regarding security and privacy but less regarding this subject, and I think it is a relevant one that we should take into serious consideration. While I am extremely happy to receive these letters in my post and know that probably most of the elders in my street are well informed, equally I think we need to include in all our future plans an approach that keeps us all safe and engage no matter our situation.