Increasing Digital Participation in Northern Ireland
25 June 2009
Last week I attended the launch of a broadband advice centre and mobile unit in Omagh for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), opened by Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster. The purpose of the unit is to help SME's and micro businesses (on which NI is economically dependent) get the best from ICT. Omagh is in the west of the province, which is deeply rural and grapples with most of the major issues with broadband and mobile telecoms.
The centre and the mobile unit are part of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment's (DETI) £3.9million, Log on-NI programme. This is designed to deliver free broadband advice to Northern Ireland's SMEs, enabling them to take advantage of the potential benefits of broadband. The programme is co-financed under the European Regional Development Fund Sustainable Competitiveness Programme 2007-2013.
Log on-NI has 10 trained broadband advisers already active in delivering broadband action plans to participating SMEs. It is a flexible programme where businesses can either visit the facilities at Gortrush Industrial Park in Omagh, or visit the mobile unit as it travels across the whole of Northern Ireland. Alternatively, a broadband adviser can go to an individual business premises to offer advice on site.
Commendium Limited, the company chosen to deliver the programme on behalf of DETI, has previous experience of working with SMEs to stimulate take-up and high value use of broadband. Their programme in Cumbria took ICT use in SME's from 17 to 70% in 3 yrs. The experience seems to show that companies that have fully embraced ICT and broadband are faring better in this current economic climate that those that have not. See www.commendium.com.
Log on-NI aims to stimulate take-up of services and to demonstrate how high value, innovative use of broadband by SMEs can deliver business expansion, increase competitiveness and market share, secure reductions in business overheads and increase productivity.
Log on-NI has the potential to make an important contribution to increasing digital participation in Northern Ireland. In providing advice and training on getting connected and understanding ICT it provides both SMEs, and the people who work in them, the opportunity to develop the range of skills required to participate fully in a digital society. Further details are at www.logon-ni.co.uk.