“Baked in, not bolted on”: What the UK’s digital inclusion playbook can teach any e-government agenda

Helen Milner OBE: Hello everybody. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me in your wonderful country. I have been listening to everything that you’ve been saying today. I might finish with this, but good luck, right? So it’s an e-government conference. I thought we would start with this.

Back in 2011, the British government set up GOV.UK. Well, GDS — Government Digital Service — set up GOV.UK. Within a year, they’d replaced more than 1,800 websites, and within four years they saved £4 billion.

Earlier, people were talking about whether or not people would come and work for the government, but actually GDS made it super sexy to work for government. And as was said earlier by the former minister in Poland, actually having a single place, a single person above all, to actually drive this through was so incredibly important.

So some of the key lessons are about having that centralized team that didn’t disempower the departments, but actually empowered the departments. And that has actually led to having more digitally knowledgeable decision-makers now, right across the whole of government.

And it was done in the open. This is very similar to Poland. It was done in the open, it was done rapidly, it was done using Agile, and they were able to deliver very, very quickly. And as you saw on the first slide, Mike Bracken, who set up GDS in 2011, had the mantra: “Trust users, delivery.”

The UK government has a goal that one in ten civil servants — I’m on the board at the UK government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology — and the goal is to have one in ten civil servants working in a digital or data job, to embed that skill in the decision-making right across all government departments.

So, digital inclusion. Four elements. We start at the bottom of the pyramid. You have to have good broadband infrastructure: secure, fast, good quality, reliable. And then the second layer: it has to be affordable. And that has to be affordable to everybody.

So in the UK, the big discussion is: what do we do about the people who can’t afford anything? And I’ll talk about some of our solutions, but our estimate is that one million people cannot afford to buy broadband. And that, my view — my personal independent view, not the government’s view — is that we are going to have to pay for broadband for those people if we want everybody online.

Then the third area, the third level up, is digital literacy and confidence. So obviously that basic digital literacy, but confidence is so important to make sure that people feel able, that they have the self-esteem, that they have the agency to use online government.

And at the top is safety and trust. So you need trusted sites that are safe to use, but also citizens who trust those sites and who have the confidence and the skills to keep themselves safe. Because the last thing we want to do is to bring vulnerable people into the internet world and then throw them to the wolves. We need to make sure that the sites are trusted, but also that the people have the skills.

You’ll hear me say a few times that the people who are offline are older and they’re poorer. And this is really important: digital exclusion actually drives poverty, as well as poverty being a cause for digital exclusion.

So people who are poor and on low incomes have limited ability to afford devices, connectivity, or support. They’re also much less likely to have qualifications, to have general literacy and general good education. They therefore lack devices and skills, so they can’t get online.

They then have barriers to work, to services and support. So it’s harder for them to find jobs, to manage their money, to save money online, to access welfare benefits, to access education, to access healthcare.

People on low incomes are also much bigger users of public services. So by excluding these people from the public services that you’re putting online, you’re then actually excluding a much bigger majority than just the 10% who are offline. And then, of course, that widens inequality. And widening inequality drives digital exclusion.

So by not doing this, you’re driving poverty and inequality within the country.

So, 2003 — the first time we brought together e-government and digital inclusion in the UK. Before we had GOV.UK, we had a few things. We had something called UK Online. So UK Online was kind of almost the first go at e-government in the UK.

Helen Milner OBE: And then the government — so this is the Blair, Tony Blair government — invested in what was called the UK Online Centres Network. And this still exists, and I’ll tell you a bit more about it.

But very quickly, the UK Online Centres Network was established. This was back, as Toomas Ilves from Estonia was saying, in the days when a computer cost a lot of money and only a third of households had a computer with internet access at home.

So this was about having places where people could go, but which were built bottom-up. This network was growing bottom-up. Half of those 6,000 centres were funded. They were given money to buy computers, some of them to fix their roofs. But the other half were actually just branded. So there were organisations who just wanted to join the network to be part of it.

So we have a digital nation in the UK too. This is the state of the digital divide in the UK this year. So over on this side, we have the people who are offline and the drivers for that — who they are. Here we have the divide, and here are the sunny uplands of once you go over those bridges.

As you can see up here, we have 7.9 million people who lack those basic digital skills that you need to function in today’s society. 1.9 million people basically can’t afford the connectivity, and 1.6 million people don’t have a smartphone, tablet, or laptop.

And as I said before, they’re basically older, and poorer. They lack qualifications, and they have a disability or impairment. The important thing, though, when thinking about disability, is that disability also drives back into that cycle. It drives exclusion in other ways in society.

So in the UK, people with a disability — only about 50% of them work. And therefore you can see why I say it’s older and poorer people. And of course, they’re excluded from services — government services, financial services, health services, council services — and they lack the skills and access.

And so these bridges are the things that we need to do to cross that digital divide: local support, helping people with data poverty, and helping people who don’t have devices. And I’ll talk some more about those as well.

So now to the sunny uplands. Lots of people think that digital inclusion is a nice-to-have. It’s about social justice, it’s about the warm and fuzzy stuff, but it’s actually about big numbers. By making sure that people are digitally included, that’s worth £13.7 billion to the economy. And that was done by an economist, not by a charity leader.

And if we got everybody in work to have the basic digital skills that they need for work, that would be a £23 billion boost to the economy.

And these are big numbers, because clearly no one is going to spend that much money on making the nation digitally included. And from an individual point of view, they’re happier, healthier, more employable, and better off.

So in the UK, if you have high digital skills, you will save more than £1,000 more than people with low digital skills in a year. So actually, you save money too.

So we’ve seen lots of stats today already. I think over here it basically tells you that your biggest problem — well, at least in 2023, and I’m sure it’s the same now — is this massive divide you have between your rural areas and your cities. And I think you know that I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.

This column here — this is the people with at least basic digital skills. The EU target for 2030 is 80%. So you can see both in rural areas and in city areas that Romania here is quite a long way behind.

But this column here is interesting too. So the UN does an e-government ranking. At the top, we have Denmark. Estonia will be pleased to know that they’re second. Third is Singapore. In the UK, we’re seventh, which is not bad. And Romania is 72nd, and that score is the same as the Philippines.

And I don’t know what you think about your equivalence with the Philippines, but I would have thought that you would think you’d be higher than them. Why I wanted to focus on the UN e-government ranking is because they have three elements.

They have broadband infrastructure, they have availability of online public services, and they have social infrastructure — social capital. So actually, a third of that score is about the investment in the people to use the infrastructure and to use those services. So if you want to get high up, you’ve obviously got to invest in digital inclusion.

So, Good Things Foundation. I created Good Things Foundation in 2011. And this is our theory of change. The goal is to fix that digital divide so people are happier, healthier, and better off. And we also want to improve leadership awareness and action by government and other stakeholders.

Helen Milner OBE: And our impact in the last three years — we’ve helped more than a million people. And I think, to have real change, you need to operate at scale. It needs to be strategic, it needs to be sustainable, and it needs to be scaled.

We now have — within that network that was the UK Online Centres Network way back 22 years ago — we still have that network. It’s stayed with us. Not all the same organisations, I have to tell you, but we now have a network of over 7,500 places, and we’ve shaped national policy, including the government’s digital inclusion action plan.

So basically, we do these three things. The network is absolutely fundamental. We go back to trust. And actually, the stats we saw just a little bit earlier said that the more local the institution, the more trusted they are. So by having thousands of places in local communities, they already tick the trust box. They are people like them — people like the digitally excluded people in those communities.

They offer face-to-face support. They provide people with confidence-building and make sure that they get those basic digital skills that they need. And we have two free online platforms: one called Learn My Way and one called the AI Skills Gateway, because we now teach AI literacy alongside digital literacy.

And then here we have the National Data Bank and the National Device Bank. And the government people here will be pleased to know that there’s no government interference with either of those, providing hundreds of thousands of people with free connectivity and free devices.

The National Data Bank provides free mobile data to people in need. And all of those SIMs are donated by Virgin Media O2 in the UK — I think that’s Liberty [unclear] here — and Vodafone. So they don’t donate all of those SIMs, but through this network, it gets into the hands of the people who need it, free of charge: one year of free connectivity. And it also has calls and texts as well.

And then during the pandemic, we bought about 25,000 devices to give to people who didn’t have them because of lockdown. These are not children; these are adults who didn’t have devices. And I said to myself, “Oh my God, think of the planet.” There must be devices out there.

And also, back to strategic, sustainable, and scaled: what we’ve set up with the National Device Bank is that we take old kit from businesses and from the public sector. We refurbish them, we sell some to pay for the whole service, and then we give them out through the National Digital Inclusion Network to the people in need.

So this is a completely sustainable, self-financing model to get devices to people who can’t afford them.

So this is the first picture of an actual real person today, I think. So this is Menina. We’ve helped more than a million people, but every single one is a real person. Menina actually had no device, no connectivity, no skills, and she fled a relationship.

And she found herself, probably like a lot of people, where you have a spouse or a partner or somebody else — a proxy user — doing everything for you. She could do nothing, and she had no connection.

And so, in the years since 2018, she’s been supported by a local organisation within the National Digital Inclusion Network. It’s improved her mental health, she’s signed off welfare benefits, and she’s got a job.

So she’s not just gone from offline to online, or from not being able to use government services to using government services. Her whole life has been enriched and improved by the process of digital inclusion, putting the user first.

This is a real user. So the power of local partners: hyper-local support by trusted people reaches and engages people in the communities, by the communities. And now over 7,500 places. And they’re not paid by us. I call it a big club with a shared vision.

I’m not sure if that’ll translate. They’ve joined the network because they want to access the support and services that we provide for free to them, and that they provide to the people they support. But they also have a shared vision and shared knowledge that people in communities are getting left further and further behind every day.

So these places are community centres, libraries, local charities that help older people, migrants, people fleeing domestic violence, housing associations, food banks.

Helen Milner OBE: But also, really importantly, it includes the private sector. So we have all of the banks in the programme — Virgin Money, every single bank — where you can go in and ask for help, for digital support, and for free SIMs for connectivity. And all of the O2 mobile phone stores as well.

And also — I’ll tell you a bit more about the maternity services — 70 maternity services. So 70 hospitals where women are going for help when they’re pregnant.

And I’ll tell you a little story. In 2017, I founded Good Things Foundation Australia. I thought, I’ve been doing this for a while, it seems to work, maybe it’ll work somewhere else. So I went over to Australia and I spoke to a very senior politician in one of the states, and I talked about this model of the power of local places and partnerships.

And he said to me, “Helen, it’s amazing what you’ve done, but we don’t have those kinds of places here in Australia.” And I went, “I know, I’m English.” I kind of guessed that. A few years later — so within two years, we were funded by the federal government in Australia. Within two years, we had set up a network of 3,000 local community places to support people with digital inclusion.

So I guess he didn’t hang out in the communities where I hang out. Right.

This is cross-sector action. So we do all of this funded through the private sector. We have strategic partners, and we also have flagship projects. I’ve mentioned Virgin Money. We also now have Google.org, if the lady from Google is still here.

But they’re very important because they’re stepping up and saying: this is important to us, it’s important to our future customers. But the strategic partnership model is about strategic, sustainable funding. This is not about projects. This is about doing it now, doing it next year, doing it the year after that.

We also do advocacy and engagement — both to promote digital inclusion support to people in communities and on the street, but also with government through research and a “what works” collaboration.

So digital inclusion and digital government. This is where most people start: with specific digital inclusion action, like digital literacy. Let’s teach people how to do some things. It’s fine. This is needed.

But this needs to be embedded. So embedded digital inclusion: when someone is using a service, is in a place, and digital inclusion is embedded with that service.

And only by having both of those will you have included citizens, user focus, and will you be gaining that £13.7 billion into the economy and that long-term sustainable impact.

And this is really important. So, as Miranda said, I’m one of the experts on digital inclusion, and this is the most important slide I’ve got for you.

You have to do embedded and specific. And what do I mean by that?

So, specific: we have a digital inclusion action plan — like a strategy. Fantastic. Published last year. Five different government departments signed it: health, education, technology, housing, and work and pensions. It created a digital inclusion action committee, a cross-departmental ministerial group, and a £9.5 million innovation fund.

Fantastic. We have a blueprint. We have a government who’s listened. It’s created a unit. But it’s not the only thing to do. So do this, but do the other things as well.

Digital literacy at the kind of formal, government-funded learning level — colleges, basically, for people who are aged over 19. So last year, just over 41,000 people learned what we call essential digital skills.

So in the UK, we have a framework. This is for adults, which leads to a curriculum, and people do learning that leads to qualifications. Again, yes, do this — but don’t rely on it. It’s not enough people, and it will never get to the most vulnerable, because it is informal places like colleges.

Actually, those places in communities — those charities, those community centres, those maternity hospitals — are the places where people really are.

The framework has been developed by a charity called Future Now for AI. Embedded essential digital skills. And what we’re doing very much in the UK is making sure that AI skills are now embedded within digital literacy, but also within the essential digital skills framework as well.

And the framework is phrased in tasks. So it’s like: can you do X or Y? And back when you saw the Digital Nation, the 7.9 million people are the people that can’t do the tasks — before we get to AI — can’t do the very basic tasks within this framework.

So the midwives — one midwife in one hospital said: “I keep telling these women to go online and use these apps to help them look at the health of their baby…”

Helen Milner OBE: And all these women also keep forgetting to come to their appointments, which are essential for their health and for their baby’s health. And then they realised that a lot of these women didn’t have devices, didn’t have phones, didn’t have connectivity. And so, through being part of the National Digital Inclusion Network, they could then get those from us, from Good Things Foundation.

And now more than 70 maternity services are involved. So this one midwife has now encouraged hundreds of midwives across the UK to be part of that network, to bake in, to embed digital inclusion alongside their services. So when a woman says, “Oh, actually I can’t do that. I don’t have a phone,” or “I can’t do that, I’ve run out of data,” then they can actually help them there and then. They don’t have to send them to a library, they don’t have to send them somewhere else. They can embed it exactly where they are.

I’ve put this one up because there’s this thing called assisted digital. So within GDS — Government Digital Service — there’s a set of service standards. And every time you design a service, you have to think about what your assisted digital option is. Lots of services say “a helpline”, which obviously is quite a long way away from being in the heart of communities where people are.

So HMRC — they’re like our tax department — have worked with us now for nine years to work through some of the digital inclusion hubs to actually help people to use services like tax, Marriage Allowance, and VAT. And there’s a lovely story here from a taxi driver called David, who was paying an accountant to basically use an Excel spreadsheet. He got taught how to do that himself, and then, of course, he didn’t have to pay that accountant anymore, and he saved himself £600. And obviously David probably didn’t have a lot of money to start with.

And so this is the Treasury. So these are the people who have all the money. I was delighted that, in the digital inclusion action plan, they said that they were going to help the country receive the funding needed to deliver impact, and to work with digital inclusion and long-term financial inclusion.

So I’ve been in the Treasury advising them on their financial inclusion strategy, to embed digital inclusion in it. And this has just been published on the 5th of November. It has three main actions: helping people who don’t have ID to get access to banking, building on a pilot with homeless people, working with businesses and other government departments on digital inclusion, and then inclusive design — improving the design across financial services and across government services as well.

And this example of Virgin Money, who I mentioned earlier, was included in the Treasury’s financial inclusion strategy, talking about how the private sector working with the third sector is supporting the government with their strategy.

So I think we’re the only country in the EU that doesn’t have an ID card — any kind of ID card. So we have a driver’s licence, a passport, a tax number, and an NHS number for health. All of them are different.

So in September, the government announced that it wants to do a digital ID. Of course, it’s dreaming of being like Estonia. And the reason I’m showing you this is because, from day one, from the first press release they issued, they’ve talked about doing this with digital inclusion embedded into it.

Clearly it’s early days. In fact, my colleagues are in London today as part of a consultation programme about how to embed digital inclusion into it. But it’s so important that we have leadership from Number 10, from the Prime Minister’s office, that says that digital inclusion is fundamental to making digital ID work. And that’s what they said in the first paragraph of their press release.

So we’ve got Mike Bracken telling us “Trust users, delivery” back in 2010, saving £4 billion in the first four years by creating GOV.UK. We now have a digital inclusion action plan that helps us set a framework — a strategic framework — for digital inclusion across government departments.

But don’t forget about the four levels of digital inclusion action, and that digital exclusion drives poverty. That hyper-local action is essential. We’ve done it in the UK, and then we went and did it in Australia, showing that growing a network bottom-up, in the communities where people know who’s excluded and know how to help them, is so important.

And of course, we need specific action on digital inclusion and embedded action to make sure that we have included citizens, user focus, saving money for government, but also making sure that we have confident, connected, and safe people.

Helen Milner OBE: And I have a bag, so ignore everything I’ve said. Just remember I have a bag with one message on it. So this is what we say in the UK.

I’d better get it the right way up. Digital inclusion, as I said, needs to be scaled, strategic, and sustainable. It needs to be baked in, not bolted on. Not a project, not a programme. Every single day: baked in, not bolted on.

Thank you very much.

Smaranda Heroiu: I really love how you brought the offline into the online discussion. And I think one of the key takeaways of your talk is exactly this one: how do you design inclusion into everything you do, and not consider vulnerable communities as assisted communities, but people who will eventually become part of the conversation, be involved in the services, benefit from the services, and at the same time pass on the baton of this inclusion.

I want to go back to something we were discussing at the beginning: what is the better strategy, bottom-up or top-down? And now I would like to ask you something about policy alignment, national strategy, as in the UK.

I already said that you co-chaired the Digital Inclusion Advisory Council. You also mentioned the Treasury, and you have pushed for or coordinated cross-sector strategy on this. What were the biggest obstacles in aligning government, private sector, and community?

You also mentioned the Australia case, where you had the conversation with an official who really said, “Well, don’t bother, it’s not going to work.” What happened there? So what were the obstacles, and how did you remove them? And how do you think — just knowing a bit about Romania today, a whole day during the conference, and maybe grasping a couple of ideas.

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Helen Milner OBE: I think a few people have talked about optimism today. I think you’ve got to be optimistic and you’ve got to be tenacious. Clearly, don’t take no for an answer.

But you also asked about top-down and bottom-up, right? The work that I’ve done is absolutely rooted in communities. I go and visit the communities, I talk to the communities, and I talk to the people who are excluded. And you’d be shocked how few decision-makers actually do that — actually go and visit people, not just a user group, but actually go out and visit.

So it’s grounded in real life, real exclusion, the reality of what’s possible, but also the passion, commitment, and hard work of all of those people who work in the community. So bottom-up does work, but top-down is essential.

So you need to get to the person — this is absolutely the story — get to the person at the highest possible level to understand the reality of those people. As the divide narrows, it deepens. And so if you’re thinking about having a fair and just society, if you’re thinking about saving money for the economy, if you’re thinking about helping people move off benefits and into jobs, like Menina, actually you have to think about digital inclusion.

So I also bring stories and stats. Some politicians only think in stats — maybe your new president, he’s a mathematician. Others only understand stories. So you need both your stories and your stats.

You need to know about Menina. You need to have met the young mum who cried because you gave her a free SIM card, because now she could talk to her mother and look after her babies better. If you know those things, and you know those stories, but you also know that it’s affecting millions of people in the UK, then you know we will not be successful as a nation. We will not deliver the policies that the government wants to deliver without digital inclusion.

I said about being tenacious because you just have to keep going. And if you are tenacious and you’re lucky, then some of those people that you’ve been talking to along the way are now in the cabinet. And so they can then persuade their peers that when you introduce digital ID, you have to have digital inclusion baked in.

Because every decision is not made by one person. It’s made by a group of people, and those people are influenced by another group of people. So make sure that you’re using the biggest tent — be in the biggest tent you can be in — and persuade as many people as you can, because this is absolutely essential for a successful digitisation of government.

Smaranda Heroiu: Was that ever in use — you making the case? The long-term goal, or maybe you had that long-term vision of the economic benefit — were you able to see that and make it a compelling argument? Because it’s a staggering figure. Like your research shows enormous economic gains from closing the digital divide. It’s over £13 billion in benefit. Was that ever one of the compelling arguments to get people seated at the table and understand the long run?

Helen Milner OBE: Absolutely. Absolutely. So back to your stats and the stories. It was to say, well, like I’ve said a bit at the beginning, sometimes digital inclusion — or inclusion or empowerment — can feel soft.

Right? So politicians go, “Yes, this is really important. We want an equal and just society, and we want everyone to be part of it, but we’re too busy doing other things.” But actually saving billions of pounds really does cut through.

I would say, though, that having an equal and just society, but also believing in digital government, matters. So now we have a cabinet in our government who absolutely believes that technology is going to drive growth. It’s going to drive jobs, it’s going to drive better, improved public services.

And therefore they know that by leaving people behind, they are making a choice to leave them out of that. So they have an absolute fundamental belief that technology is a good thing — a very, very good thing — for our society. And therefore they’re a government. And a government has to govern for all citizens. They’re not a private company. They can’t leave people behind. They have to govern for all citizens.

And therefore they understand that the investment in a better Britain that is digitised has to be for all citizens.

Smaranda Heroiu: Who would you put at the table in order to make this case? Like, digital inclusion is not just social policy, but an economic imperative. If you were, I don’t know, in the position of deciding tomorrow who to bring to the table — the right partners who should be there to decide and move the needle in making this happen.

Helen Milner OBE: So you asked a question earlier, I think, about different sectors, because it has to be a cross-sector endeavour.

So I would definitely have your economists there, because the person who has ground through those numbers — who has actually created those stats — can speak authentically. They’re the economist who knows that. So you put them at the table because, although sometimes they can be a little bit dull, they are the people who have done the work, and you can hear it straight from them.

But then it’s great to have the private sector — to have businesses at the table — who have themselves invested in supporting people to be part of a digital journey. And as I said, at Good Things Foundation we have a model for strategic partnership.

So that’s not about it being a social good. That’s about a long-term, strategic, sustainable partnership — joining in a collaborative venture towards a shared goal. And so they can sit at that table and say why they’ve made that decision, why they’re investing in this, and then invite the government to be part of that journey.

Sometimes it’s good to have users — real people — at the table. But they’re probably the least predictable of all the people I’ve just mentioned, because you’re never quite sure that the thing they told you before you went into the room is what they’re going to tell the politician when they’re in the room itself.

But again, it’s good to have people there who — we call them hubs, the digital inclusion hubs, the members of the network. And sometimes we bring them. Sometimes they are the best people there to speak about their communities and the people that they’ve helped.

Smaranda Heroiu: I’m also asking this because I’m remembering what President [unclear] said in the morning. And it’s also a concept that he mentioned a couple of days ago when we had the briefing call, and it really stuck with me.

Smaranda Heroiu: No matter who the actual driver is, you have to have someone who’s actually holding the power, making sure, holding accountability, and asking for things to be done on a certain timeline. Because I think maybe this also happened in the UK, and in Romania it surely happened — we all know it happened — and it’ll probably take a couple more generations to cut the timing, the deliverables, into a reasonable time span.

Doing things fast sometimes prevents political rotations, political interests, political perspectives from changing what has been done previously. And my question was also going in that direction: who should be the driver of this inclusion, of this digital-first, citizen-first approach?

Helen Milner OBE: So it’s similar to the e-government piece, right? You need to have — and the former digital minister from Poland said this — you need to have a first among peers, someone who’s in charge.

So in the UK, when the new Labour government came together, the Secretary of State at the time, [unclear], pulled together what’s called the Digital Centre for Government. And he had backing from others within the cabinet — the senior Secretaries of State across the different departments had that backing.

We also now have a friend in Number 10, the Prime Minister’s office. One of the ministers — it’s a new position — Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister. It’s called Darren Jones. And luckily for us, Darren Jones actually set up a digital inclusion group when he was a backbench MP, before they came into government.

So we have the right-hand person to the Prime Minister who is driving digital inclusion. But I think it’s important also that around the cabinet table there are many advocates for digital inclusion and many advocates for digital. So again, it’s seeing that they go hand in hand: by pushing forward on digital, you have to push forward on inclusion.

Smaranda Heroiu: What are the three top mistakes that maybe Romania could avoid making, focusing on designing digital services with inclusion in mind?

Helen Milner OBE: I think having a network is massively important. But doing that top-down rather than bottom-up would be a mistake.

So it would be very expensive to set up 7,500 places where people could go and access online government. But it’s much less expensive to get 7,000 organisations that are already committed to helping people to become part of a big club. Because they already believe in helping people in their communities. So you’re saying: let’s help them digitally.

So spending money to impose a top-down model, when you can build bottom-up, would be a big mistake.

I think setting up a digital literacy programme and saying “job done” would be a massive mistake as well. As I said, digital literacy is so important, and you need to have a digital literacy programme. But it has to be embedded, like with the midwives. You have to have it where people are.

At job centres, when people are going to look for jobs and don’t have the skills they need to do that online, you need to do it there — not send them somewhere else. So signposting is good, but embedding is even better. Don’t just do one thing and tick it off.

And the third thing — because you said three — I worry slightly about the EU funding mentality of projects. As it says on the bag: baked in, not bolted on.

The project-grant mentality drives a cycle where you set up a project, you deliver a project, you finish a project, and you move on. You want it to be strategic, you want it to be scaled, and you want it to be sustainable.

So having that as the strategic framework for thinking about digital inclusion matters. And if all of a sudden you look at your beautiful map with all the dots on it and drill down, and there are lots of little projects doing digital literacy here and giving some refurbished devices over there, just say: stop.

Let’s put all of that together under a strategic framework and imagine how much money that might be. Imagine what you could do strategically and sustainably if you think not in a project mentality, but in a strategic and sustainable way.

And I think it’s great to have access to EU money — of course, we don’t anymore in the UK — but there is a problem with that grant-project mentality that EU funding sometimes drives.

Smaranda Heroiu:  I think that we are all aware that we’re kind of in an age where digital has made us a bit more individualistic, and we live in an era of social atrophy — at least this is what some anthropologists say. How do you build trust among community, government, private sector, and the people who need these services and need to be included?

Helen Milner OBE: Yeah. Well, back to being optimistic, right? We’re all good people trying to do good things to help others. Really, at the end of the day, very few people get up in the morning going, “I’m going to do some bad things today.”

So if you can understand the vested interests of all the people around that table, but also understand that they’re humans and they want to do good things, then you can go on a journey together.

I loved it earlier when your minister said he didn’t have a dream because he wanted to have a reality — if I understood the translation properly. I thought that was fantastic. Because often it’s about having the biggest possible ambition you can have and working towards it. Not being scared of failing, but knowing that it might take you a while to get there. But just don’t stop. Be tenacious.

And understand that every time we go on our phones to look at Google Maps or TikTok, there are millions and millions of people left behind. Millions of people who often don’t have those social networks — as in human networks, human contacts — to help them take the next step on their journey, because they live with people like them.

So within that community, where are those community leaders? Empower those community leaders. Put them into a big club. Help them to help one another.

Then you will really see momentum in your communities — in your rural communities, in your urban communities. It absolutely is possible.

And I hope I’m right. I hope Romania is like Australia, where that minister said to me, “Oh, it’s not like that in Australia.” And I said, “I think it probably is.” And I think it probably is in Romania too.

Smaranda Heroiu: Well, on that optimistic and hopeful note, I would like to end this dialogue. I know there have been a lot of questions sent, and this dialogue was promised. We will address them. Thank you, Helen, very much. Thank you.