Whatever sceptics think, the information age has arrived. The dotcom companies may have gone burst and the much-heralded super parallel world of the internet may not have materialised but the underlying internet society surges on with practical consequences for every area of our lives.
If further evidence of Ireland's embededness in the information society was needed, legions have been thrown up recently, including a report by Eurobarometer that the number of households in Ireland with internet access increased from a paltry 17.5 per cent in March 2000 to 47.9 per cent in June 2002. The EU average for that year was 37.7 per cent.
Another survey ranked Ireland second among 18 European countries in the percentage of basic public services that were available online in the second half of last year.
But progress for the State as a whole often does not translate to progress for all its constituent parts, as experience in other advanced information societies has shown. Despite the high internet penetration rate in the United States, the disabled, aged, single mothers and ethnic and cultural minorities have found access problematic. The difference between internet access rates for black households and the national average rate was 18 percentage points in August 2000 while that between hispanic households and the national average rate was 17.9 percentage points, according to a report by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
However, bare statistics on digital equality like those published this month by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) becloud the real issues because they conceive of access only in terms of physical access to computer and connectivity. A gift of a mirror is useless to a blind man. Broadly defined, access includes the social and technical resources a person or group needs to make the most efficient use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The end-product of digital equality is not access to computers and the internet but inclusion in the information society and economy.
Contrary to notions of technology as neutral, it is in fact socially embedded, intertwined with the social, cultural and political forces in society. Any analysis of digital haves and have-nots must necessarily focus on power relations in society and specifically on the machinery set up to diffuse such technology.
Ireland's major structures for diffusing the internet - the Information Society Policy Unit (ISPU) and the Information Society Commission (ISC) - have been blatantly biased in favour of e-business and e-government to the detriment of e-inclusion. An analysis of the priorities and projects contained in the first progress report on new connections launched by the ISPU earlier this year testifies to this. The boldest initiative to include marginalised social and ethnic groups in the information society - Community Application of Information Technology (CAIT) - wound up in June this year after two years.
Preliminary analysis of its report suggests that immigrant and minority ethnic groups benefited little from its activities. In fact, neither the ISPU nor the ISC has bothered to ascertain in a socio-scientific way the ICT access and usage rate by members of minority social and ethnic groups.
Judging by its present composition, the ISC is suited to serve an Ireland of a bygone era, not one where people of different nationalities and cultures have become a prominent and permanent presence. The ISC, or for that matter its e-inclusion subgroup, does not have a member of a minority ethnic group as its member. Membership, not only of the ISC but also of the ISPU, must be broadened to include direct representatives of minority social and ethnic groups to give these groups a say in policy formulation and implementation and to enable the units meet the goal of spreading the benefits of the information society to all residents of Ireland.
Abel Ugba is a member of the Department of Sociology, Trinity College, Dublin. His academic interests include the social implications of information and communication technologies.
