Digital Inclusion

We first shared our digital inclusion plans with you in July last year, and since then we have been working on lots of our central systems to ensure we not only offer safe spaces inside and outside, but also online.

The online world is not somewhere we can control entirely which makes it both scary and exciting, and we want to help everyone feel more excited than scared. So, we’ve gone back to basics to make sure we’re doing it all correctly and for the right reasons. This includes our IT systems, data management and digital resources, which will all go towards helping us to help you more effectively.

We have been working with our new IT partners ADNS, to build on our Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus certifications which we achieved last Summer, to enhance safety through our multi-layer security on all our devices and wifi network, which means no one can get in or out of our systems that shouldn’t be.

Gaining a Cyber Essentials certification is not something easy to come by, it is recognised by the Education Department as a safeguarding resource and is part of the Information Commissioners’ Office (ICO) recognition, which ensures organisations are GDPR compliant and using data fairly. So we are very proud to have achieved these standards and hope to take this a step further by moving more of our systems online.

The team will also be updating their GDPR training over the coming weeks and with that we, and our online management of systems, becomes a lot safer and we are able to manage higher quantities of information - something we hope to be very useful as we grow the organisation across Middlesbrough.

We are also establishing more ways for the community to access laptops, tablets, training, wifi, phones and all-round better access to the online world, by being a member of the Good Things Foundation and other digital partnerships. The aim is to establish a programme available to the community that helps you feel more confident online and less isolated for it.

By getting our systems in order internally, we will be able to ensure that what we offer you externally is the best it can be and will help you for as long as you need it.