Digital Inclusion - Agenda for Change

The Greater Manchester Digital Blueprint sets out the vision for Greater Manchester to be a world-class leading digital city-region, centred around a focus on empowering businesses and people in the region.

The pandemic has highlighted the UK’s digital divide, which amplifies the impact of social isolation and loneliness particularly for groups continuing to shield such as older people and those with serious health conditions. 

"I’m proud to announce our intention that Greater Manchester be a 100% digitally enabled city-region, a region that puts people at the heart of our plans. Access to the digital world should be a basic human right, everyone in Greater Manchester whatever their age, location, or situation, should be able to benefit from the opportunities digital brings." Cllr Sean Fielding, GMCA Lead for Employment, Skills and Digital

Digital marginalisation faces the poorest, most vulnerable communities. Research indicates that people who are digitally-excluded are likely to be disproportionately heavy users of government services. 

In October 2020 we launched our Digital Inclusion Agenda for Change with a bold ambition to make Greater Manchester a 100% digitally-enabled city region, focussed on an exemplar framework and mechanism for delivery and driven by an action plan shaped by our ecosystem of industry, voluntary, community and social enterprise sector, public sector partners, local government, schools and our health and social care partnership. 

The Greater Manchester Digital Inclusion Taskforce

To deliver this ambition we have set up the Greater Manchester Digital Inclusion Taskforce. The Taskforce is bringing together our GM Digital ecosystem of industry, VCSC sector, public sector partners, local government, schools and health to identify and fund programmes, improve our evidence base and build a supportive community to work together to fix the digital divide.

The Taskforce will focus and shape an action plan to address the interrelated barriers to digital inclusion and the digital divide such as connectivity, accessibility, affordability, skills, motivation and confidence.

Join our Digital Inclusion Taskforce

Join our commitment to drive a 100% digitally-enabled city-region, express your interest by completing this form and we'll be in touch.

Express your interest (form - external website)

Our people

A new report by The Good Things Foundation and Liverpool University suggests that levels of digital exclusion is much worse than previously thought with over 700,000 people in Greater Manchester only using the internet in a narrow or limited way and a further 450,000 are classified as 'non-users.’

As many as 1.2m residents in Greater Manchester could be excluded in some way to access the benefits digital brings.

Join the movement to empower people 

Join our commitment to drive a 100% digitally-enabled city-region. We are calling on anyone who has a stake in digital inclusion or benefits from people being online to get involved! Express your interest by completing this form and we'll be in touch. 

Join the mission conversation to #FixTheDigitalDivide on Twitter and LinkedIn. 

How Greater Manchester is addressing the digital divide

Below, we'll share just some of the great ways Greater Manchester is addressing the digital divide.