Town Deal – Digital St Ives Manifesto

Vision

St Ives will be a town with a thriving digital presence, helping to improve the lives, the businesses, the prosperity and the wellbeing for all its people, whilst also contributing to the growth in the wider digital life of Cornwall and the UK and global digital economies.

Mission – To develop a project framework achieving identified outcomes

This subgroup will investigate all work that is being undertaken in the digital sphere in Cornwall and form relationships with the key organisations. The aim is to establish how we will work with these groups in the future and not duplicate what they are doing.

This subgroup will liaise with the other subgroups working on the St Ives TD to establish what digital and data support they need to fulfil their objectives.

From the above investigations, we will produce an outline plan to specify:

·      The digital and data functionality required together with evidence for the need.

·      How we use and feed into work on digital aspects being done elsewhere.

·      What digital skill training is available and what extra in required in St Ives.

·      How advances in digital communications, cable and mobile (including 5G) will be used.

·      The projects or start-up companies to implement the digital and data functionality.

·      Ballpark timescales and costs.

·      Potential other sources of funding, including match and co-funding.

·      How this functionality will be sustainable and become self-funding in the future, with the TD funding acting as an incubator.

Purpose

Digital technology is one area of the UK economy set to expand post Covid19 and there is huge potential for digital technology to improve the long term economic development of St Ives. Therefore, digital technology will play an increasingly important part of our daily lives, whether at home, work or leisure. Everyone will need to develop basic digital skills and some will develop specialist skills in the various aspects of digital technology. 

The aim of this subgroup is to support the people of St Ives to develop the digital skills appropriate for them in their daily lives, the businesses of St Ives to be part of a digital economy and the workers of St Ives to obtain higher value jobs. Overall, the objective is to improve the opportunities and prosperity of all people in the town.

Potential outcomes 

·      St Ives will be a place with a thriving digital economy where full time, high value jobs are available for all who want them.

·      St Ives will be a place where data is made available by organisations, businesses and individuals for anyone to access, use and share to improve all aspects of their daily lives, including education, health, work, travel, finance, leisure, running a business, shopping, food, our heritage, relaxing, collaborating with others, art and culture.

·      St Ives will be a place where all have the skills, or access to training to acquire the skills, so that they can access and use all aspects of the digital economy.

Businesses in St Ives will have the skills and resources necessary to operate effective e-commerce systems or to operate as full e-businesses, where this is possible and desired.