I was one of those very disappointed by Gordon Brown’s sudden withdrawal of the Home Computing Initiative (a salary sacrifice tax incentive on internet kit and connections) in 2006. The scheme was a great example of a partnership between government, industry and unions to tackle a problem that rightly concerned them all – IT skills, or the lack of them for many workers. Union learning projects in particular (who have a good history of training thousands in basic IT literacy) picked up on it very keenly and thousands of offline families used it to get connected for the first time.

But after it had just found its feet, disaster. The scheme was cancelled without any warning by the Treasury, and left many of the companies that had been set up to manage it stranded – a number went bust and firms and employers had to scrabble to sort out alternative financial arrangements in just a 2 week window. The reasons behind the closure were debatable but at least clear – that the scheme was thought to be going to too many already IT-literate people to buy second computers rather than the people who needed it most, and that computer kit was so much cheaper by 2006 that the tax break was no longer such an issue.

The tax break itself wasn’t really the most useful part of the scheme though – people with tech knowledge could easily shop around to get deals pretty much as good as the tax saving. What was useful was the ability to buy kit over 3 years at 0% (invaluable to a lot of people who might be turned down credit for it otherwise) the ongoing support package (invaluable to people who would be justifiably miffed at first by the way a PC can bork itself at a moment’s notice), the whittling down of a confusing and jargon ridden market for products, to make computer buying easier for people who didn’t know much about them, and the communications channel of union, employer and government all saying concertedly that IT skills were a fundamental good for everyone, and that workers should consider helping themselves and their kids by getting online at home.

Anyways, gripe over and my happy hat is firmly back on at Gordon’s announcement of internet vouchers to get 1.4 million kids online. The government has worked on from its objection to the HCI and come up with a very good solution, means tested so they can be sure the benefit is going to the right people.

Lack of access in poorest households to one of the greatest empowering technolgies of our time is a social divide that no government serious about equality of opportunity can ignore, and it’s great to see them setting out a clear policy to tackle it. 90% of Job Centre ads require basic computer literacy now, and computer literate kids move into jobs paying 20% more than those without IT skills. Although UK Online has done great work in making free communal access so widespread, allowing access for all to e-government, home access is crucial for the kind of sustained exposure needed to really build skills and take new opportunities.

It’s also a nice idea to see it targeted through schools, and aimed clearly at helping all kids get a decent modern education, not just those with the resources to do better at their homework. Back when glitzy dotcom launches were still in vogue, I bumped into Nicholas Negroponte at one such event. At the time, MIT weren’t pushing the One Laptop Per Child scheme, and were experimenting with poor commuities in the developing world to set up communal access using cheap desktop PC components. The technology allowed farmers to check market prices and gave people power over their own livelihoods. I was a bit sceptical that a Thai farming village would be able to keep a dial-up 486 ticking, and asked him how he supported the scheme. “Kids”, he told me. Apparently local kids had taken to the project extremely well, learning from the MIT students who were setting up, and when things went wrong, MIT just stuck a bunch of cheap components in the post and let the kids experiment with them until they fixed the PCs. If it can work in extreme situations like that, I can see a whole bunch of newly computer literate kids being a better IT training route for their parents than many employers.

I’m very keen to see how this will work in practice. The original HCI partners will be smarting still, but I think the government really needs to work to get them back on board. If the scheme is to provide the best support and clarity, industry has a huge role to play, and if it’s to be publicised to low paid workers and their families, some unions will be a key communications channel.

Admittedly, there’s a problem in only restricting this to England – one of the things the web does so well is the death of distance, and our Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish compatriots would benefit greatly from it too, but this has been left to their respective parliaments to organise and pay for. A workable idea may be to share the costly work to develop infrastructre, knowledge and marketing for the scheme with those nations if the government isn’t going to go the whole hog and share funding.

But overall, a definite cheer for a very welcome policy that clearly nails the goverment’s committment to equality, skills, and the eradication of child poverty to the mast.