(Towards a) West Midlands Digital Strategy

First thoughts on key action points from the summary…

> “digital transformation of public services”

We certainly need it, but can the government either stomach (or afford, as Gordon pours away the as-yet-uncreated wealth of our grandchildren) yet more major public-sector IT projects? And I imagine Birmingham Council may feel the same, after the school meals and several other IT fiascos. And how will digital media producers answer when Councillors ask how such services will be accessed by the 24% of people in the West Midlands who can’t yet read and write to a level adequate for the 21st century — which means they can barely use a computer? Will a “digital transformation of public services” thus be skewed towards an inevitably dumbed-down delivery by mobile phones (dumbed-down due to the need to provide “one size fits all” content across a huge and ever-changing range of phone models, and also the lack of accepted location-aware content-markup standards)?

> “co-working spaces … where new services can be developed and users can interact with technologists”

Sounds good, but I fear the funding for such schemes would be pounced on and dragged into the universities, and that would be where co-working spaces would then be sited. Yet a British university seems to be the last place one would look for real commercial game-changing media innovation these days.

> “bringing high-speed fibre networks to specific ‘digital districts’”

Bring it on. And perhaps that could be an outlying “telecommuting” area rather than Digbeth? And one with excellent rail links too, such as the west side of the city of Stoke-on-Trent?

> “Investing in research into user interaction with digital technologies”

Yep, that fits nicely with supporting serious games and our Midlands games developers. But beware a potential rise in “do-it-yourself usability”, draining the potential for universities to earn consultancy money for usability advice.