Left in the dark ages
In New Zealand’s race to become a fully digital country, there is a growing divide between the tech haves and have-nots, writes Mazz Scannell.
On a chilly Wednesday morning, 10 people are waiting outside the Work and Income office on Wellington’s Willis St. Gripping a walking frame, trying to avoid being bustled by the office workers streaming past, stands an elderly woman.
Josephine Millanta is 84. She has timed her bus journey in from Miramar, and the 500-metre walk up Willis St, so she would be there when the doors opened. She doesn’t want to get cold waiting outside.
Millanta doesn’t want to be here, but she needs to see a staff member – they won’t take her credentials over the phone and she doesn’t have the technological nous to do what she needs online.
‘‘All they say is, ‘use your computer’. I don’t have a computer and I cannot use one,’’ she says. ‘‘I just want to pick up the phone and talk to somebody, it’s not hard – the banks can do it, why can’t Work and Income?’’
She nods her head towards the closed doors. ‘‘They know so much about me but they cannot do anything over the phone. It’s crazy. I have to come all the way down here to prove who I am.’’
Hospitality worker Fatima Qagim can relate. She came to New Zealand from Afghanistan five years ago and is fluent in English, well-educated and has New Zealand residency. She works in a restaurant, but also finds time to mentor refugees.
That said, Qagim struggles with the level of language proficiency that comes with digitisation. Ahead of the 2019 local government elections she struggled to negotiate voting online with a RealMe account, finding the terminology confusing.
Millanta and Qagim are the face of a new underclass – anyone for whom using a computer and navigating online is a struggle. They are the poor, the elderly, those with low vocational or educational skills, or those with physical or cognitive disabilities. Their growing frustration and alienation from society can be seen
everywhere in New Zealand, if you care to look.
They go to free public community computer hubs and libraries asking for help. They hang around outside government agencies hoping to get a few minutes with a human face. Some libraries are reporting fist-fights breaking out over scarce public computers between people who cannot afford their own. These are the digital have-nots. They have been left behind by government agencies and corporates in their race for online efficiency.
In New Zealand, the digitisation of government forms began in earnest in 2012. It was driven by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), to streamline government services, with the lofty vision statement: ‘‘Everyone in New Zealand will have what they need to participate in, contribute to, and benefit from, a digital world.’’
Now, departments are encouraged to have 80 per cent of all common forms online by next year.
A 2017 joint Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment/DIA report estimated ‘‘digital inclusion’’ could be worth $1 billion a year to the economy.
The benefits of digital technology to individuals are more apparent: from the convenience of online banking, to finding information and staying in touch with friends and family.
New Zealand has world-class fibre networks and 4G mobile internet, and Kiwis can easily renew their passports, register their vehicles, or pay road user charges and police fines online. Transacting online saves money and, for those with the right computers and skills to use them, time.
But those without the skill or the resource miss out on opportunities to participate in our modern digitised world. The advantages of living in a democratic society are diluted because of a narrowing of personal choice, while those with access are becoming richer in knowledge or wealth.
International studies show low educational levels, low incomes, lack of technical knowledge and poor understanding of how to use a computer are major hurdles to technology take-up. Research from Stanford University found we are increasingly defined by the ability to access information.
‘‘If you don’t have access to technology, you are going to be left in the dark ages,’’ says Professor Eric Roberts of Stanford’s Faculty of Computer Science.
Countries are measuring the digital gap. The 100-country Digital Inclusion Index (ADII) charts digital availability in 50 of the most, and least, technically available countries.
The index defines availability as not simply having the internet, but having the knowledge to use digital services.
Although New Zealand is not included in the 2019 ADII index, Australia is, and ranked 22. But the survey also found one in 10 Australians did not ever use the internet. In New Zealand, that figure is likely to be much higher. The 2013 Census revealed 62,000 families (about 250,000 people) were without internet at home (no-one knows what the current figure is because the previous census, which tried to go digital, failed to provide useable data).
Meanwhile, public libraries have become a dumping ground for the digital have-nots. Ministries refer their clients to libraries in an attempt to stem the number of technical questions they receive, a practice noted by The Public Libraries of New Zealand Strategic Framework 2012-2017 report.
In the Wellington suburb of Karori the public library finds its educational programmes are desperately needed.
‘‘We have a group of customers who mentally struggle to grasp the concept of the internet and they will always struggle, but they want to learn and we are making progress,’’ manager Karl Gaskin says. ‘‘I get calls from them saying, ‘It’s wonderful what you have taught me, thank you’.’’
In Masterton, the digital gap is more obvious. Like many rural areas in New Zealand, it’s been slow to get fibre-fast internet and many low-income people lack either a computer or fast internet, or both. It’s estimated three-quarters of its working people have no formal educational qualifications, and 15 per cent of them earn less than $35,000. The district scores higher on a social deprivation index.
On the morning the Sunday Star-Times visits Masterton Library, half its public computers are being used; elderly struggling to put photos onto an electronic photo album, young people on social media, a young mum looking up information and one person completing a government form. Demand for the computers increases in the afternoon and on cold or wet days.
Library manager Sandy Green has reluctantly trespassed people who were fighting over the computers.
‘‘It’s a balancing act. We want to help but have to consider the safety of staff and others in the library.’’
The fighting is only a hint of the widespread frustration she and her staff see every day. She estimates a third to a half of the technical assistance provided by library staff is about demystifying government forms, scanning, printing, copying, setting up accounts and email addresses.
‘‘The delivery of so many services online creates huge anxiety for those people who are not skilled in that area.’’
Non-government organisations are also trying to plug the gap. About 20,000 people a year use Wellington’s Smart Newtown centre, which has 15 computers and more than 150 attend its six-week computer introductory and refresher courses. Places are limited and demand is high. Like Masterton Library, it too has had to trespass people for fighting.
Manager Richard Halton says the most common questions are about passwords and accessing government sites.
‘‘They [the sites] are not designed for people who are not confident with websites – they are way more complicated than they need to be.’’
While local councils are trying to fill the gap, you could be forgiven for thinking the government seems determined to widen it.
Computers in Homes was a community initiative run by the 20/20 Trust, a charity. It supported eligible families, providing the household with a computer and discounted access to broadband.
The new knowledge and hardware for each family was a virtual springboard across the digital divide. Its government funding was cut in 2017.
Chair Laurence Zwimpfer says the promise of a computer, even a reconditioned desktop unit, was a big incentive for a family member to attend training.
Zwimpfer has led courses on creating a digital verified identity; many government application forms require previously established ‘‘unique personal identifiers’’– verified digital identities.
Getting one involves filling in a complicated online form and uploading a digital photo taken in exactly the correct way, usually involving a trip to a passport photo service. Photos taken by phones are usually not good enough. For many, even that can be too difficult.
RealMe’s website has a video that outlines the steps to register your identity online. It runs quickly through the steps and includes a lot of information. When the first video was released,
‘‘They are not designed for people who are not confident with websites – they are way more complicated than they need to be.’’ Richard Halton
Manager Smart Newtown
Zwimpfer set up a class of eight with the idea of developing a training module based around the video.
It took two two-hour sessions over two days to tutor eight people. At the end two participants successfully established their online identity.
‘‘It was frustrating for everyone,’’ says Zwimpfer.
20/20 trustee and former chief executive Laurence Millar estimates at least 600,000 Kiwis struggle with technology. Bridging that divide seems to be ‘‘nobody’s number one priority and everyone’s number five priority’’.
One group that is getting help is the elderly. NZ First leader Winston Peters launched the enhanced Super Gold Card at the Grey Power Federation Annual Conference in May. The majority of the $7.7 million funding is budgeted for a major web upgrade and new app, while $600,000 is targeted for computer literacy training.
How far that will go is another matter – there are 750,000 Super Gold Card holders. More than half use the internet and about half have a smartphone.
The brave new digital world appears to have been designed by people who have lost touch with the people they serve. The 2018 Census debacle was a clear example. Brenda Perry, 88, of Masterton, used to receive her census form from a volunteer who delivered it. In 2018 a letter arrived with a unique identification number. For her, it meant nothing. She had given her computer away years ago, and doesn’t understand the internet. But she was one of the lucky ones. Her son lives in Masterton and helped.
‘‘It’s not so good for some of my friends who don’t have children in New Zealand.
‘‘I don’t know what they did or where they went for help.’’
Many, in fact, did not get any. It is estimated the census missed one in six people – an unprecedentedly low response rate, and so low as to make some of its data useless. The debacle caused an inquiry and eventually, the resignation of Statistics NZ chief executive, Liz MacPherson.
Associate professor Siobhan Stevenson of the University of Toronto in Canada, an expert on digital inclusion, says research shows access to the internet in itself is insufficient to help people at risk of being left behind by galloping technical change. The problem requires structural solutions and corresponding changes in life circumstances of those too poor to help themselves.
Ministry of Social Development general manager of strategy and change, Jo Cunningham, acknowledges that Work and Income centres need to make it easier for clients to get support and services.
She says they are remodelling the centre spaces and installing self-service kiosks and touch screens to make it easier for clients to find their way to online services. It also wants to ensure access and support is available for clients seeking help, regardless of the method they are using to do that.
It has launched ‘‘cheap as’’ data that uses very little or none of the existing phone or digital device data if you use major providers. Cunningham estimates at least 90 per cent of Work and Income’s clients are connected to one of the four major telephone providers – meaning they must have access to the internet.
However, users of Warehouse Mobile – which many beneficiaries use, because it’s the cheapest around – cannot access ‘‘cheap as’’ data.
Cunningham said training videos helped clients with things like using a USB or checking entitlements.
For some there is a bridge across the divide. Fatima Qasim registered to vote and received her voting papers. But for others, like Josephine Millanta, it seems the dark ages are already here.
Millanta is vivacious and tells it like it is. She lives in a tidy unit in Miramar and is very proud of her home, her thriving vegetable garden and her family, whose photos hang on the hall wall inside the front door.
She is frustrated that she has been left behind. She prided herself on her proficiency to use a typewriter when she left school. But the rules have changed and she doesn’t understand or have the ability to access the digitised world. She will struggle to access the discounts for superannuates on the Gold Card app.
She may forever have to travel by bus to the Work and Income centre to get her benefit sorted.
‘‘I am old, I use public transport. All this could be sorted out on the phone, but I cannot do that because I have to prove who I am.’’
She waited about half an hour for one of her two favourite staff members to become available so she could prove who she was, and then discuss her budget and come up with a repayment plan that suited everybody.
‘‘I don’t want to have to keep retelling my story every time I come in. I want to talk to someone who knows me and who I trust.’’