New research reveals social value of being online is wor more an ,000 a year

DC14-305 08 July, 2014

New research reveals social value of being online is worth more than £1,000 a year BT study shows how 6.4 million1 Brits are missing out

BT today revealed the social benefits of getting online are worth more than £1,000 a year to someone using the internet for the first time.

The findings are part of an independent study, commissioned by BT, to calculate the social value of using the internet. The research placed a monetary figure on being online.

For someone using the internet for the first time, this was calculated at £1,0642 and comes from a combination of benefits ranging from financial savings and improved employment opportunities to reduced feelings of isolation and improved confidence.

And the accumulative benefits of being online could be as high as £3,5682 when also considering professional people's ability to work remotely and their access to higher wages from using IT skills at work. This is the first time BT has evaluated the social benefit of being online.

The results draw on an analysis of one of BT's UK digital skills programmes, Get IT Together3, which BT also published online today at www.bt.com/connectedsociety

Conducted by Just Economics, the analysis calculated the social return on investment4 (SROI) in the Get IT Together programme is £3.70 of social return for every £1 invested in digital skills.

Anna Easton, BT's Connected Society director, said: This research reinforces the critical role the internet plays in society today. We will use these findings to help shape our future digital inclusion plans.

We are publishing both the research and the supporting methodology in the hope that other organisations will seize the opportunity to evaluate their own programmes and help build a rich database of information to help get the 6.4 million unconnected people online for the first time.

Get IT Together, a BT programme delivered in partnership with UK charity Citizens Online, aims to get digitally excluded people using the internet. More than 17,000 people have become confident independent internet users after completing the three stages of the Get IT Together training and 78 per cent are still using the internet three months after their training ended.

Eil s Lawlor, from Just Economics, said: Everyone knows the internet is a hugely valuable resource and although there have been numerous attempts to measure the macroeconomic benefits, the benefits to individuals have received less attention. This makes this a very interesting piece of research.

We are delighted that BT will be sharing this methodology with other digital inclusion programmes in order to build the evidence base about what works to get people online. It is important that we don't assume that digital inclusion will just resolve itself because there is no evidence that this is happening without interventions like Get IT Together.

Anna Easton added: More than 99 per cent of UK homes are within reach of a broadband connection and yet there are still more than six million people in the UK not online.

This is something BT is passionate about addressing and we hope that by sharing this data and placing a value on the benefits of being online, more private, public and voluntary sector organisations will be encouraged to invest in digital inclusion. It's only by working together that we will tackle this issue and ensure everyone who wants them has the tools and skills to realise the benefits of being online.

For full details of the Connected Society programme and case studies on the participants go to www.bt.com/connectedsociety.

Ends

Notes to Editors

1The 6.4 million people not online figure is taken from current ONS data - http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/rdit2/internet-access-quarterly-update/q1-2014/stb-ia-q1-2014.html

2 BT commissioned Just Economics to undertake two pieces of research which demonstrate the value of digital inclusion. The research used data from BT's Get IT Together programme which it runs in conjunction with Citizens Online, and analysed the social return on investment analysis of the programme in 2011/12 from BT's perspective, Digital Inclusion: The Social Return on Investment, and an analysis of the value of being online to an individual, Valuing Digital Inclusion.

3Get IT Together: Working with charity Citizens Online, BT is helping people in 15 areas across the UK get online through its Get IT Together regional programmes. These locally-run short courses offer training built around the different needs of people in each area - whether older people, people with disabilities or unemployed people searching for jobs. A project coordinator in each area works with local partners, such as councils and charities, to set up training courses built around these needs.

The programmes run in 2013/14 were in Barnsley, Bristol, Caerphilly, Cornwall, Gwynedd, Highlands, Kirklees, Leeds, North Lincolnshire, North West Sutherland, Northern Ireland, Orkney, Plymouth, Rhondda Cynon Taf and Skye, Wester Ross and Lochaber.

4SROI is a form of cost benefit analysis that compares the value created by an intervention to its costs to make an assessment of whether an intervention is good value for money. It differs from conventional cost-benefit analysis in two key ways. First, it places monetary values on non-traded benefits, such as quality of life, which have historically been considered non-quantifiable. Second, it takes a multi-stakeholder approach - rather than measuring returns' only to the State or the economy, it includes and measures all of the most significant sources of value creation.

The model developed and applied in this research has five distinct stages: I - Identifying outcome through consultation (see report section 2) ; II - Measuring outcome incidence (section 3); III - Additionality adjustment (sec

LINK:	http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/ShowArticle.cfm?ArticleID=AA84EB4D-...
	See more stories from bt

Most recent headlines