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Cabinet Minister for digital inclusion?

A timely piece from the BBC’s Ashley Highfield on the ‘digital divide’. It’s timely, because as of this week, Britain has a Cabinet-level minister with responsibility for digital inclusion - Wales secretary Paul Murphy. This news appeared to come as a surprise to BBC Wales’s David Cornock when it emerged at PMQs this lunchtime. Mr Brown announced:

The new Secretary of State for Wales has responsibilities in addition to his responsibilities for Wales. He is overseeing the British-Irish Council, he is responsible for the joint ministerial committees on devolution, he is the Minister responsible for digital inclusion, and he is responsible for data security and information assurance. Those responsibilities are in addition to his responsibilities as Secretary of State for Wales.

All of which is very timely, for reasons I’ll reveal here tomorrow. (Although if you attended my session at Barcamp, you know already.)

• Simon at 10:47 pm on 30 January 2008

  Just to note, with some pride, that this post was #1 Google result for the search term minister for digital inclusion by Wednesday evening.

• What is a minister for digital inclusion? « OurKingdom at 5:01 pm on 31 January 2008

  [...] What responsibilities will this new minister have? Google has been unrevealing - the top entry this Simon Dickson blog, who notes he will also be responsible for “data security” and “information [...]

• David Cornock at 11:05 am on 4 February 2008

  Congratulations on making number one on Google, Simon - perhaps you could get the RSS feeds to work on the new Wales Office website when you have a moment…..

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