What do we mean by‘digital’?
The word ‘digital’ can mean so many different things to people, from websites to app’s to smart speakers and more.
When we applied to the National Lottery ‘Digital Fund’ we did have an idea in our mind that this would lead to us developing a wider digital offer for carers. We didn’t know what this would look like, but in order to support an ever growing number of carers in a world of where funding is becoming more challenging, there was a feeling that ‘digital’ provided an opportunity to achieve this.
At this point, almost a year ago, we were really at the start of our digital journey. We were thinking about‘digital’ in terms of what we do now, and how that could be ‘digitized’. How can our web presence improve our support offer? How can social media replicate & extend our peer support groups? How can video technology be used to help carers feel connected?
A year on, having now started our ‘Digital Transformation’ project, it’s interesting to see how our views on what ‘digital’ means have changed.
What has been exciting about this project so far is how much we’ve learned about ourselves and what being digital really means. We’ve not finished this learning by any means - we’re still at the start of the project! Some of this will be explored more fully in future blogs, but to sum it up I guess we’ve realised that being digital is probably as much about the way you work as it is about what you do. Maybe that’s what Tom Loosemore meant when he said digital was
Applying the culture, practices, processes and technologies of the Internet-era to respond to people’s raised expectations.
We’ve recognised that for us, a ‘digital’ approach includes the way we plan our work; the way we evaluate and change our work; the way we gather and use data across our services (both physical and digital) as well as the digital products that we might create.
This has made life both more interesting and more complicated at the same time. Transforming our organisation to meet the needs of this new age has become more complex. It’s challenging not to feel overwhelmed — it was hard enough thinking about how to do our existing work in new ways let along how to try and implement entirely new approaches to working!
But it’s a challenge we need to take on if we want to meet the needs of the growing number of carers. Changing the way we work to become more responsive to user needs; more able to evaluate our success; more aware of what data is telling us will make us more able to achieve our vision of a carer friendly community which supports carers to stay well, stay connected and stay in control.
If you want to read more on the changing nature of digital, I recommend this thoughtful piece from Megan Gray of NCVO (well worth a follow!)
