The Digital Challenge, explains explains The Guardian, arose from a realisation by the British government that merely giving people access to the internet was not in itself going to close the digital divide.
The idea is to find a community using IT in an imaginative way to fight exclusion and deprivation. The reward: a prize of £10 million ($18 million US) and official status as a digital exemplar.
The prospect attracted 79 entries, whittled down to a longlist of 18 Regional Winners. Proposals ranged from building a city-wide Wi-Max network for monitoring the health of chronically ill people to galleries of digital multimedia and video art.
The Top Ten National Finalists of the Digital Challenge are:
- The Virtual District of Stratford-upon-Avon – Stratford on Avon District Council
- City and Rural Communities Using IT – Birmingham City Council (Lead Authority) & Shropshire County Council
- My Norfolk – Norfolk County Council on behalf of the Norfolk Ambition County Strategic Partnership
- Sunderland – Where people matter – Sunderland City Council
- Success Through Diversity Enabled by Digital Innovation – Ealing Council
- Connecting Bristol – Building Momentum for Change – Bristol City Council on behalf of Connecting Bristol and the Momentum Group
- Connected Nottingham – Nottingham City & Nottinghamshire County Council
- STREAM – Transforming Neighbourhoods – Kingston Upon Hull City Council
- Digital MK – Milton Keynes Council
- One-Manchester – Manchester City Council, in partnership with Tameside MBC
Each winner receives £120,000 ($220,000 US), to take its idea further.
The projects range from Birmingham city council, which is working with neighbouring Shropshire on a “digital charter of entitlement” crossing the rural/urban divide; Milton Keynes, which has plans to install wireless broadband in its most deprived communities, and Kingston-upon-Hull, which wants to engage residents and businesses in making decisions about public services through an interactive video service available via PCs, mobile phones and digital TV.
Norfolk county council would use the Digital Challenge to offer personalised web pages and alerts to socially excluded people across the UK’s largest free wireless broadband network. Bristol city council is pursuing “e-participation”. Stratford-upon-Avon, a council with a far smaller budget than most of the finalists, is proposing to create a “virtual district” which can be accessed by all sections of society.
Other finalists are the cities of Manchester, Nottingham and Sunderland and the London borough of Ealing. In January, if all goes well, one will be picked to receive £7m ($13M) to put its proposals into action.
What will this achieve? This being Britain, the winning community can expect flak from its council-tax payers as well as the national media. In popular culture, the words “local government” and “exemplar” rarely go together.
Central government will get deserved criticism for giving only token funding. On close inspection, about half the £7m seems to be made up of promises from IT giants, some of which are beginning to feel they are being taken too much for granted. My criticism is that few, if any, of the shortlisted projects tackle the big issue of integration with the health service.
For all that, the Digital Challenge is a great idea.
It marks a shift away from a relentless quest for efficiency gains and into something creative. And there is just a chance that, despite the paltry funding, the winner really will become a national or even international exemplar. The Digital Challenge won’t get as many visitors as our other national grand project, the 2012 Olympics, but it may have longer-lasting consequences.
Some thirteen “pilot” communities are working with Intel to design, develop and deploy solutions that enhance government efficiency, promote economic growth, foster greater community satisfaction and bridge the digital divide, says the Intel (Flash demo).
Cleveland; Corpus Christi, Texas; Philadelphia; and Taipei, Taiwan are among Intel’s “pilot communities”. Accela has partnered with a number of companies to provide municipalities with wireless/WiMax solutions that allow building inspectors to take their workplace on the road and is being used in Cleveland and Corpus Christi. Accela Wireless Applications use store-and-forward technology in which the home server periodically polls the client for new information.
The Intelligent Community Forum is a nonprofit think tank that focuses on job creation and economic development in the broadband economy. Our area of interest is the local community, both large and small, in the developing and developed economies of the world. They present annual awards for notable community achievements.
In June, one of their Top Seven award winners is selected as Intelligent Community of the Year. In 2006, Taipei was honored for their huge WiFi mesh project, the world’s largest. During the awards ceremony, ICF also names its Intelligent Building, Intelligent Community Technology and Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year.
The Intelligent Community Forum judged the Top Seven Cities for 2006 were:
- Cleveland, Ohio, United States
- Gangnam District, Seoul, South Korea
- Ichikawa, Japan
- Manchester, United Kingdom
- Taipei, Taiwan
-
Tianjin, China
- Waterloo, Ontario
Other winners include:
- Taipei, Tawain
- Spokane, Washington, USA
- Toronto, Canada
- Dubai, United Arab Emirates
- Mitaka, Japan
- Pirai, Brazil
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
- Tianjin, China
- Singapore (1999 Intelligent Community of the Year)
- Sunderland, U.K.
- Long Island (Nassau & Suffolk Counties), NY, USA
- Province of Ontario, Canada
- Greater Cleveland and NE Ohio, USA
- Calgary, Alberta, Canada (2002 Co-Recipient of the Intelligent Community of the Year)
- Dublin, Ireland
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