Is the Church the last refuge of digital innocence?

Today, 1 200 000 Swedes are excluded from the digital society. That's about 13% of the population who do not take advantage of the increasingly obvious social services to be able to do their banking, have contact with health and care or look for a job.

Moreover, more and more professions require digital skills. Digidel recently asked around 20 recruiters about the requirement of digital skills for employability. Only the Church of Sweden had no such requirements.

The number of jobs that do not require any kind of computer skills is declining. So where will those who have none go? What will they work on?

Now this is nothing new. The challenge of giving all citizens the tools to participate in the digital society is well known.

Given the scale (1.2 million Swedes) and an increasingly strong trend (lack of digital skills drives exclusion), this is obviously a high priority issue for politicians responsible for labor market policy, social care, education, integration and democracy issues. Borg, Engström, Attefall, Björklund, Ullenhag, Billström, Ohlsson and Hatt have of course realized that society is developing at an unprecedented pace where Swedish competitiveness and citizens' opportunities to participate in social life depend on the digital tools that are already a complete given for the opportunity to get a job, participate in an education, follow the news and generally be part of the social development that is happening around us.

There is indeed a broadly based government strategy, a political vision that addresses this exclusion and has allocated resources accordingly.

Or is it?

There is, of course, a strategy, in the form of the government's digital agenda, to be realized by the government-appointed Digitalization Commission.

This is a good thing. But what is missing is allocated government funds to pursue the issue of digital inclusion. It is of national interest. It touches on a wide range of policy areas. And it requires coordination.

The Digidel campaign, which aims to lift individuals out of digital exclusion and whose efforts are commendable, is currently coordinated and largely funded by the Internet Foundation .SE and with voluntary contributions from civil society.

The state taking active responsibility by providing funds would, if nothing else, have an important symbolic value. It would send a signal to all the non-profit organizations and individuals who are passionate about these issues that fine city council speeches about the excellence and importance of digital Sweden also mean something when the state budget is discussed.