Behind the Bytes

It's been a busy stretch at DECA, so here's a quick look at what we've been up to.

Our team attended the TUANZ Connecting Aotearoa Summit last month. If you signed up for the DECA pānui at the summit, hi! Thanks for being here. Our Digital Equity Compact got its moment on stage and drew really strong interest from attendees. The Compact will become a shared commitment across community, government, industry and philanthropy to make digital inclusion something we're all accountable for, rather than something susceptible to election cycles and shifts in funding. We're working away behind the scenes and a Compact working group will be formed soon, so keep an eye out for an invite.

Thanks to Craig and the TUANZ team for putting on the summit. Great learning, great kōrero.

We've been feeding into a number of proposed government changes, putting community evidence in front of the people making decisions about digitisation. Our role here is to advocate for the voices that usually get left out of these conversations, to keep visible those who may be missed and how they can best be supported when agencies and services move their front doors online.

Closer to home, we've been thinking hard about community Digital Navigators. Over the last six to twelve months we've piloted this role in a few different ways in different places, and we're now looking closely at what those pilots have shown us.

We’ve learnt the role isn't only about sitting face to face with folk, helping them get connected, skilled up and confident online. It's also about working with local orgs and across wider social services who are already doing their part to bridge the digital divide, often without anyone calling it digital inclusion. They feed what they're seeing back to DECA, and we hold the nationwide picture.

The challenge is that this mahi is usually short-term, project-funded and invisible in the bigger picture. We think it's some of the most important infrastructure we have, and how to properly name and support it is one of the big questions we're holding right now.

Alongside that, we've been working on our own research while helping others build theirs. We're calling it a data constellation: harnessing the best data that's already out there, making sense of the scattered evidence that on its own doesn't tell the full story and working in partnership to collect new insights from across the sector.

Thanks for being part of it.