Digital inclusion for developing Northern Australia: An ecosystems approach

This study investigated the relevance and impacts of ‘digital inclusion’ for regional development in Northern Australia. While there is no standard definition of digital inclusion, scholars agree that lack of access to digital technologies and skills is closely associated with other forms of disadvantage, such as low income, low levels of education, and remote living (Ragnedda & Mutsvairo, 2018). For example, limited access to computers, the internet, and digital literacy training can disempower people in their work and educational pursuits. Our study was motivated by the reality that Northern Australians experience higher levels of digital and social exclusion owing to a range of interwoven factors that converge and escalate in isolated geographic areas, such as rural farms and Indigenous communities. Using a co-design methodology, a consortium of university and industry partners conducted interviews and workshops with key stakeholders in Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia to identify digital inclusion problems and solutions. While the three dimensions of the Australian Digital Inclusion Index – technology access, affordability, and digital ability (Thomas et al., 2020) – were useful to structure initial engagement with participants, the research quickly revealed that a broader, more inclusive framework was needed to capture cross-geographical and cross-sector commonalities and nuances in the dataset, and to foreground the critical role of social infrastructure to ‘give life’ to hard telecommunications and broadband infrastructure. Drawing together relevant literature from the fields of communication and regional development, this paper presents an alternative ‘digital inclusion ecosystem’ framework for understanding and studying digital inclusion in regional areas, using our study of Northern Australia as an illustrative case study. We also make recommendations for Australian digital inclusion policy and practice to help empower regional individuals, families, businesses, and communities to be self-determining in the digital economy. Ragnedda M and Mutsvairo B (eds) (2018) Digital inclusion: An international comparative analysis, Lexington Books: Lanham, MD.Thomas J, Barraket J, Wilson CK, Holcombe-James I, Kennedy J, Rennie E, Ewing S and MacDonald T (2020) Measuring Australia’s digital divide: the Australian Digital Inclusion Index 2020, RMIT and Swinburne University, Melbourne for Telstra