Towards a Scottish Minimum Digital Living Standard: Interim Report

31 Mar 2025 02:07 PM

This interim report explores the use of a Minimum Digital Living Standard (MDLS) for Scotland and builds upon earlier UK-wide and Welsh MDLS studies, which delved into what households with children require to fully participate in today’s digital world.

Introduction

This report presents interim findings from a project commissioned by the Scottish Government to develop a Minimum Digital Living Standard (MDLS) for Scotland. It details the results from phase 1 on the project work and builds on a UK-wide project funded by the Nuffield Foundation and Nominet to develop a UK MDLS (Yates et al., 2024) as well as a project funded by the Welsh Government to develop a Welsh MDLS (Yates et al., 2023). Phase 2 of the project will focus on the experiences of those living below the MDLS in Scotland and further stakeholder reflections. The full project report on both phases is planned for April 2025.

Members of the research team from the University of Liverpool, Loughborough University, Good Things Foundation, City University, University College Dublin, and the survey company Critical developed the idea of an MDLS. The project initially focused on the digital needs of households with children and is currently working on standards for other household types. MDLS sets out what is needed to live and engage in today’s digital world. It is built with public consensus, bringing together members of the public in a series of focus groups to identify digital needs and the goods, services, and skills required to meet those needs.

How people interact with each other and engage with services has been notably and rapidly digitalised in recent years. In this context, digital inequalities, such as gaps in digital access, skills, and attitudes, have significant tangible consequences for citizens, households, and communities. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed absolute digital exclusion, with already vulnerable individuals, finding themselves significantly disadvantaged, socially disconnected, economically struggling, and unable to access benefits, health services, and government assistance or make online payments. At the same time, the pandemic also revealed the complexity of relative digital exclusion. It made visible the challenges beyond lack of access (e.g., no internet connection or internet-enabled devices) to those faced by “limited” users. “Limited” users are the several millions of UK citizens with digital access but failing to fully benefit from digital technologies due to limited digital skills and/or support (Yates et al., 2020).

Looking specifically at Scotland, up to September 2024, we find that 11,061 connected premises (Ofcom, 2024) did not have a broadband connection with speeds above 2MBs available to the household. Also, 98,525 connected households (3.5%) did not have access to fixed broadband speeds above 30MBs. Fixed superfast broadband – at least 30 megabits per second – coverage is lower than in any other nation of the UK, with a greater proportion of rural areas likely to have lower-quality provision (Ofcom, 2024) (see Figures 1 and 2). Figure 1 presents the percentage of households in each aggregate census area (Data Zone) having less than 30MB connectivity. Figure 2 presents the percentage of households in each aggregate census area (Data Zone) having less than 30MB connectivity.

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