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This report reflects on some of the activities within the LUCID Science City demonstrator project identifying the relationship between the digital resources created and users. From that it looks at ways in which the role of the user should be seen as key in shaping further interventions of this kind. Activities that involve users as producers and controllers of content are vital in identifying which digital tools that such projects create can be made commercially viable.

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The report prioritises this position over one that would seek to second guess which technologies will or won’t work. It highlights the role of the public sector in promoting innovation through recent shifts in perceptions about the delivery of both public service broadcasting and public sector services – these are the areas in which digital innovation can flourish.

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In avoiding a technologically determinist approach, that is, one in which the technology itself is seen as the only driver of change, the region can instead focus on creating the right conditions for innovation to flourish. Those conditions include:

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  • Support further demonstrator projects in the use of digital technologies but with a focus on supporting the digital transformation of public services.
  • Promoting Birmingham and the West Midlands as a centre of excellence in partnership working to support the digital transformation of public services.
  • Supporting the development of a co-working spaces or ‘hack labs’ where new services can be developed and users can interact with technologists.
  • Supporting developments to the digital infrastructure, including bringing high-speed fibre networks to specific ‘digital districts’
  • Examine the strategic organisation of the cluster programme at Advantage West Midlands to better reflect the meshing of creativity and technology that happens in industry.
  • Investing in research into user interaction with digital technologies and promoting the dissemination of this knowledge to technology businesses.

Posted by daveharte on March 31, 2009
Tags: executive summary

« Previous: Developing a digital strategy for the West Midlands Next: Introduction »
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D’log :: blogging since 2000 » (Towards a) Digital Media Strategy for the West Midlands on whole page :

[...] thoughts in some key action points from the summary… “digital transformation of public [...]

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April 3, 2009 3:53 pm
D'log :

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.

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April 6, 2009 4:14 pm
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