Dorset County Council

Digital transformation should have the user at its heart during implementation as well as during design. We support internal customers to adopt new tech, accepting some staff need extra support.  But we are less good at supporting our residents when we give them a new, digital way to interact with us.  We provide communications to tell people about the new online service, and we provide digital skills to the offline community, but we don’t join up communications (and we could use increased channels / different language / images – understanding our target demographic better) and digital skills around the launch of new service to ensure it gets maximum usage.

Experience of superfast broadband take-up showed people lag in the use of technology for a variety of reasons: lack of understanding of the benefits, fear of the costs, general lack of confidence with digital technology, lack of digital skills.  This project will investigate the adoption process for new online services in detail, comparing different approaches including integrating communications and digital skills support. Adoption rates will be compared.

The business case produced at the end of this research will outline the costs and benefits of different approaches to supporting a rollout.