Home  About DigiTV DigiTV - The Headlines
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DigiTV - The Headlines |
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Who is DigiTV and why it exists...
DigiTV is a service offered to public sector bodies, primarily local government and their partners, which allows the publication of services on digital interactive TV and mobile phones. DigiTV is wholly owned and managed by Kirklees Council and works on behalf of the local government community in the UK, by providing a unique and cost effective technology to publish services, as well as making its voice heard within central government and the various digital TV debates. With 56% of the households in the UK currently able to interact via their TV sets and over 90% of the adult population owning mobile phones, increasingly with the ability to browse the Internet, these are channels that cannot be ignored. All local public service providers face a conundrum. We are being tasked with providing more quality services on budgets that are being squeezed every year. There are clearly cost/efficiency savings to be found if you can encourage members of the public to ‘self serve’. However, there is a well documented portion of the population that does not have, and will never have a PC at home that is connected and on which they have the right skills to navigate the internet. Many homes in the UK simply do not have a PC at home (current estimates suggest around 40%). Worse still, there are many UK homes that do have a PC connected to the internet, but this is only being used by the younger generations in the household who have the appropriate skills. All public sector organisations now provide some form of web service – and these are increasingly sophisticated. However, there is clearly a significant part of the population who will never engage with these online services. It is also fair to say that they often represent those in our communities who are most in need of access to public services. So how can we encourage these people to self serve? The answer comes from having a channel strategy that embraces all mainstream forms of technology over which a range of services can be provided 24x7. Digital television is one of these channels as is mobile, and with the digital switchover process already begun in Whitehaven (Oct 2007), the importance of the television as a channel for service delivery is only going to increase. The DigiTV Starter Kit was designed to provide a proven and cost effective solution whilst providing a local ‘destination’ on the various television platforms that people can identify with and return to on a regular basis. |
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