Information Literacy and the Housing Sector

This is the last of my postings about the presentations from the information literacy symposium in Glasgow on the 13th February 2015. 

Evelyn McDowal, Business Solutions Leader at the Wheatley Housing Group was the last speaker of the day and she spoke about information literacy and the housing sector. Some of her remarks where familar, for example "digital exclusion is a problem" and issues regarding people not being online. Evelyn highlighted that the majority of the Wheatley Housing Group customers are not online and that in Glasgow 90% of older people are not on line. It was interesting to hear that 

Evelynn highlighted Digital Glasgow and Digital Glasgow's Strategy 

Eveleyn spoke about citizens participation and the aspiration for all citizens in Glasgow. It was good to see and hear what had been achieved so far (see link to slide below for full details) with "key partners collaborating across the city" and the "number of digital access points across the partners". With the move to online benefits and the need to support this, it was good to hear of the initiative to have "trained staff in Welfare Benefits and University Credits at Digital Access points" and "free literacy and numeracy training to underpin support for basic digital skills". Also a 'digital skills standard' created for the city and a 'digital volunteers programme'. 

The presentation then moved on to the Wheatley Housing Group's vision which was innovative with "affordable internet access in every rented home" and "enhancing employability through better digital skills". A pilot project saw free broadband given to a group of house tenants supported by local learning centres. The results included successful high rise wifi access for 138 families and communal areas. Not surprising is that people asked their neighburs and friends for advice and support with their information seeking. Other results were:

It was surpirsing to hear that all tenants did not sign up to the project but not surpirsing that once the pilot started a few more came forward. 

Whilst this pilot is and has digital participant success stories, Evelyn highlighted that there are still major challenges out there. It was good to hear of the housing sector working with libraries / learning centres to advance digital participation. The Wheatley Housing Group next steps are to:

• Continue to work with Digital Glasgow
• Welfare reform support
• End to end solutions
• Replicate across Housing sector
• Digital skills for staff
• Training, voluteering and apprenticeship opportunities for customers.

Evelyn said she would like to see broadband in all social housing and that digital skills for staff were just as important as for customer. 

The slides are avialble at Information Literacy and the Housing Sector

It would be great to hear how the Wheatley Housing Group progresses there plans and to see if other social housing groups do similar initiatives. Thanks to Evelyn for a really interesting presentation.